And what a waste, to feel so dreary and anxious on a day like this. A few puffy white clouds scudded by, casting passing shadows over sun-drenched grass studded with wildflowers. Cornflowers and clusters of pale yarrow nodded in the breeze, with scarlet poppies interspersed. Bees rose and fell above and between, their buzz a gentle counterpoint to the shushing of the leafy canopy above Owen’s head.
Dread knotted his stomach. Why, oh why had Tom stayed away so long? He should have returned three days before, and Owen hadn’t even had a letter.
“Master Owen!” He started out of his thoughts and turned to see Martha, the housemaid, waving from the bottom of the garden. “Master Owen, Mr. Drake is here to see you.”
Owen’s heart leapt in his chest, and he followed suit, jumping up and running for the house before he could even take a full breath.
“Thank you, Martha!” he called out as he ran past.
“Master Owen, wait—” But Owen couldn’t possibly wait for Martha to announce him. Tom had come home, they’d be married in twelve days, and all would be well.
He burst into the drawing-room through the side door. A moment later, he stopped, his whole body suddenly cold, as Arthur Drake turned to greet him, lips drawn down into a frown and some terrible emotion darkening his eyes.
Chapter Six
Owen staggered back a step, his face numb. “What — good goddess, what has happened? Tom? Is he—” He couldn’t finish the sentence; he would make it real by speaking it aloud.
“No,” Drake said quickly. “He’s alive. Alive and well as of yesterday morning.” Owen felt Drake’s arm around his shoulders as he was half-dragged to one of the settees and pushed into it. He drew in a ragged breath and dropped his head in his hands, his relief almost more shocking than the fear of a moment before.
Drake had drawn back, almost as if reluctant to touch Owen for a second longer than he must, and Owen missed the warmth of his hand, fleeting and unwillingly given as it had been. He forced himself to look up, to face whatever it was that he must hear from this man who barely tolerated him.
“Tell me, then,” he said. “Something is dreadfully wrong, I can see it. And please don’t try to soften the blow. Suspense is worse than anything.”
Drake’s lips pressed together in a thin white line, but he nodded. “Tom is married.”
In the space of those three words, Owen’s entire world rearranged itself. He felt the shift like a physical thing, the objects surrounding him resettling themselves to suit his new circumstances. Before, he was happy, in love, with a life to look forward to; now he was abandoned, alone, and heartbroken, with nothing at all.
Owen thought he ought to faint, or weep, or scream, or do something to vent the terrible pressure building up within him, behind his eyes, under his sternum, even down to the tips of his toes. No such relief came. He swallowed dryly, tasting bile.
“How?” It was all he could manage.
Drake closed his eyes for a moment, his lips moving soundlessly. Finally he said, “It hardly matters. He is married, and suddenly, to the daughter of a city merchant. I don’t recognize the name. I had no knowledge of this, I give you my word.”
His apologetic tone made it infinitely worse. As if Owen gave a damn for whether Arthur Drake had known of this.
“It matters!” He almost shouted it, and then dropped back against the cushions, breathing like a bellows. He panted, and gripped the edge of the settee so tightly his fingers ached. “It matters,” he said, more steadily. “Show me his letter.”
“I don’t have it with me,” Drake said, with a slight hesitation. As if his honor rebelled against telling a lie he felt was necessary.
Owen looked more closely at Drake’s jacket, where it fell open over his waistcoat. “I can see it in your pocket.”
“And I’m still not going to show it to you,” Drake snapped. He paced to the window, and then back, his fists clenched. “Do you really think it’s fit for you to see? Do you believe that the man who could treat you so cavalierly writes in a more respectful manner than he behaves?”
“I have the right to see it. No matter what style it’s written in.” Owen was desperate to have his hands on that letter. Not because he thought it would soothe him, or accomplish anything — but just to hold it, the last time he would ever read anything written in Tom’s cramped hand, touch anything of Tom’s. “I’m begging you,” he said, his voice cracking. “I need to know the truth. Why would he say he — say — he loved —”
And at last the tears came, in a flood Owen couldn’t hope to control. The humiliation of losing his composure in front of a man like Arthur Drake only increased the force of the sobs forcing their way out of his chest. He felt small, and pitiful, and unmanned, and he curled into himself and choked and gasped out his misery.
He thought he heard Drake’s voice, low and angry, and he buried his head deeper into his arms and shook with fury and blind, animal despair. Big hands gripped his upper arms, and Owen wrenched himself away.
“Leave me alone!” Drake said something in reply that Owen couldn’t hear over the rushing in his ears, and he touched Owen’s shoulder again. “Leave me!” he all but howled.
A moment later, he heard the door open and shut, and he collapsed onto the settee. Blankness settled over him, and he drifted.
Some time later, it could have been minutes or hours, the door opened again. Owen lifted his head a little. His bleary vision showed him Arthur Drake, back again, and with something in his hand. Owen sat up, his head pounding with the motion. Drake looked about him and found an ottoman, which he pulled over just by Owen’s feet; he settled himself there, his long legs open so that his knees bracketed Owen’s.
It felt more intimate than even the position warranted. All of Owen’s senses were heightened, scratched raw by the turmoil in his mind, and his own breaths sounded echoingly loud. He could feel the heat of Drake’s body blazing against the coldness of his own. He thought he might never be warm again, and the contrast made him shiver all the more.
Owen blinked away the film of tears and could finally see what Drake held in his hands. It was a cup of tea, steaming hot, and from the looks of it, with just the right amount of milk already added.
“Is that for me?” His voice came out faint and rough.
Drake nodded and held it out, balancing the saucer on his palm so that Owen could use his hand as a makeshift table. His face showed very little; his dark brows had a slight furrow between them, and his eyes held nothing but understanding.
Owen swallowed hard, and took the teacup.
After a few cautious sips, he set it back in the saucer, his throat too sore for more. Drake set it on the floor, and then, to Owen’s shock, took both of his hands in his and began to gently chafe his wrists. His fingers were long, and strong, and bore the calluses of a man who enjoyed outdoor pursuits. Owen had never been touched this way by anyone outside his family, with tenderness, and with no intent but to comfort.
The distant sound of laughter drifted through the open window; Martha was passing the time of day with the butcher’s boy on the side of the house. A bumblebee droned past.
“Do you still want to know more than I have told you?” Drake’s voice, though quiet, made Owen start a little.
At the moment, he hardly cared — about Tom’s marriage, or anything else. But he needed to know. And once the numbness wore off, he would be desperate to know. This might be his only opportunity to hear it. He would never have the courage to seek out Drake and ask him again.
He cleared his throat, and he managed a brief nod. Meeting Drake’s eyes or speaking was impossible.
Drake’s hands tensed around Owen’s wrists. “I wish to all the gods I wasn’t the one responsible for telling you this,” he muttered. “Damn Tom to hell for this. I’m sorry. Excuse my language.”
Owen tried to laugh, but only a sad, scratchy sound came out. “I’m not a lady.”
“I know. Forgive me. I
t’s force of habit. My mother used to box my ears whenever she overheard me say anything like that. She still would if I saw her more than twice a year.” Drake resumed the movement of his fingers, caressing lightly over Owen’s pulse. “If your hands were free, no doubt you’d be boxing my ears for not getting on with it.”
That gentle touch began to fill Owen’s thoughts to the exclusion of anything else; the faint frisson of excitement it generated was too much, too strange under the circumstances to be borne. But he couldn’t just pull away for no reason. That would be insulting.
“Could I have that tea? And then — I won’t box your ears, but I need to know what was in that letter. I need to understand.”
Drake’s answering smile was tinged with sadness. “I’m afraid there’s not much to know, nor will you feel particularly edified by the details. Tom was never a man one could rely on.”
Thankfully, he released Owen then, and handed back the cup and saucer.
Drake sighed. “There’s no gentle way to tell you this.” Owen nodded his understanding, and he braced himself as best he could.
“The facts are these,” Drake went on, in a matter-of-fact way that Owen appreciated more than he could begin to express. “Tom had a liaison with a young woman, who then found herself increasing. When he returned to town this time, her father tracked him down and threatened him with legal action if he did not marry her at once. Tom was unable to deny that he was responsible, as there were multiple witnesses who had seen the two of them in compromising proximity, and the lady was quite definite in her story. Her father acquired a special license, and they were wed the day before yesterday.”
Owen stared down into the surface of his tea, letting Drake’s words sink in. Tom wasn’t just married. He was going to be a father. He would never wish ill on an unborn child, nor on its mother, but Tom’s marriage was not just some impulsive act, a quick wedding that could perhaps be annulled. He had made a lifetime’s commitment, to both this woman — goddess, his wife, and that word twisted like a knife in Owen’s chest — and to a child. He was forever out of Owen’s reach, now. Even if the opportunity arose, Owen would never, never wish to interfere.
He looked up at Drake, who sat examining him with a strange expression on his harsh-featured face. Compassion, perhaps. It didn’t seem to be an emotion that sat easily there. He found he minded it less after a few minutes in Drake’s attentive company.
“I understand.” Drake opened his mouth, and Owen thought to head him off. “I won’t cause any trouble over it.”
“Trouble?” Drake’s dark, straight brows drew together in a ferocious frown, while his eyes flashed fury. “Trouble? You think that’s my concern? That you’ll bring a scandal down on my family?”
“I wouldn’t blame you if—”
“Not another word,” Drake growled, so commandingly that Owen stuttered into silence. “You would have every right to tell anyone you please how badly Tom has treated you, and I would be the first to agree you are the wronged party, my brother or no. I think you ought to keep it quiet, though, just as I will, because if anyone’s reputation suffers, it will be yours.”
With no thought of publicizing the events of his brief engagement, and all his attention still focused on his immediate grief and betrayal, Owen hadn’t even begun to consider the broader consequences. Now, with Drake’s words, they hit him like a thunderbolt. He would be a laughingstock. Goddess-blessed Owen Honeyfield, already a bit of an oddity in Trewebury, jilted by a rake and all but left at the altar-stone. Good goddess. He cringed, imagining what the local gossip would be.
And not just local, either. An announcement had been sent to the major newspapers in the capital, all Tom’s doing. Not that Owen knew anyone in society, but they would know of him. And they would jeer at him.
“You are right,” Owen said slowly, all the humiliating horrors soon to crash down upon him seeming to loom, seething, like one of Mirreith’s deadly tidal surges sent to cleanse the shore. “Goddess. Until you said that I hadn’t even begun to think of what people will say.” Another aspect to his social downfall dawned on him then. “And they will all assume that if his — his wife was with child before their marriage, then he and I would also have — also have —”
Drake nodded, clearly comprehending precisely what Owen could not say. And then he hesitated. His mouth opened, and then closed again; the strangest expression passed across his features.
“There might be a way to avert all of that,” he said at last. “Or at least distract from it.” After a long pause, during which Owen’s nerves ratcheted up nearly to the breaking point, he said, “You could marry me instead.”
Chapter Seven
Arthur stared at Owen’s shocked face, wondering if the same degree of utter confusion was displayed on his own. The words had exited his mouth without his prior consent, and now they seemed to hang between them, like stones tossed in the air that hovered for a moment at their zenith before falling to crush everyone beneath.
“You — I — what?” Owen asked, not so coherently. He shook his head, golden hair flying, and gazed at Arthur with something like pleading in his beautiful cerulean eyes, huge in his pale face. That look would have softened a harder heart than Arthur’s. “You can’t have just said what I thought you did?”
Given such an opportunity to deny it, Arthur should have backtracked as quickly as possible. He should have laughed it off, cruel as that would have been, and run out the door, leaving Owen to be — well, to be the butt of every village jest, and to tell his kind and respectable parents that his future had been shattered, his good name destroyed. To face it all alone.
Arthur was nine years Owen’s senior; he had a large fortune, vastly more experience of the world, and an arrogant lack of concern for the way others spoke of him that arose directly from those other attributes.
With all that, he would have found Owen’s lot a heavy burden. To leave it all on Owen’s slender shoulders, to be borne without assistance? Impossible. No honorable man could justify it. A fresh surge of rage for his worthless brother, a dishonorable man if ever there was one, jolted through him like a galvanic shock. He would show himself to be better; he would be better. And if, intermingled with those creditable feelings, was a creeping, dark sensation very like triumph, he could ignore it. He had other, purer motives, and it didn’t matter that the idea of taking Owen, of having and possessing something Tom had so easily won and so foolishly lost, made his blood heat and his breath come faster.
“I meant precisely what I said.” Arthur hardly recognized the low, almost feral tone in his own voice. He felt like a man possessed by one of the demons let loose by the ancient gods, those legendary beings who had entered the souls of man and enslaved them to their lust and greed. “We are both free men. Marry me.”
Arthur watched in fascination as a brilliant scarlet flush crept over Owen’s cheeks, driving out his deathly pallor.
“But why?” Owen whispered. He met Arthur’s gaze, but barely; then his eyelids, reddened from weeping, dropped down to cover his eyes. “Your younger brother didn’t think me good enough to keep his promise. And I was hardly fit for him to begin with.”
“You were too good for him,” Arthur said with feeling. That, at least, he believed without any taint of self-indulgence.
Owen had clasped his hands in his lap, and he wrung them together. “I don’t want to be married out of pity,” he said, sounding a little stronger. “I won’t. Thank you. You’re generous,” and his voice broke a little. “But no.”
Frustration welled up in Arthur’s chest; he wanted to seize Owen by the shoulders and shake him out of his misery. And then pull him into his arms.
If he had been slightly less off-balance, he probably would have reconsidered his next words. “It’s not pity. It’s duty, and that’s a very different —”
“No!” Owen stood abruptly, and Arthur found himself facing the placket of Owen’s trousers. Good gods. He scrambled to hi
s feet with more haste than grace, tripping over the ottoman as he did. “I won’t be married out of duty any more than out of pity,” Owen spat. “This is hu—humiliating enough without forcing you to take Tom’s leavings—”
His heart stuttered. Tom’s leavings? Was Owen referring simply to the fact that he was Tom’s former betrothed, or had Tom actually dared to seduce this innocent, this trusting country lad? He would kill him. He would go directly to the city and find him, and break his neck — but Owen looked as if he were about to cry again, his long eyelashes damp and fluttering, his plush lips pressed together.
Seeing Owen weep once had been more than enough. More tears, Owen believing himself to be undesirable, less than he ought to be — intolerable. Arthur panicked. He grasped the nape of Owen’s neck, wrapped the other arm about his waist, and kissed him.
Owen’s lips were swollen, almost unbearably soft, and they tasted of salt. Arthur pushed past that initial flavor of tears and teased his tongue into Owen’s mouth, finding the sweetness he knew would lie within. Owen made a muffled little moan, and Arthur drank it down like sacramental wine. Just a little more, one more moment of feeling that perfect mouth yield to his own — and then it dawned on him that Owen’s body was pliant, with no sign of answering passion.
Even so, it took every bit of will he had to break the kiss; there wasn’t enough left to do more than that, and he held Owen close, inhaling the faint wildflower fragrance of his hair. Owen stood still in the circle of his arms, breathing in little, uneven gasps.
“Marry me,” Arthur said again. It now seemed critical that Owen should say yes; this could not be the only taste he ever had of such a delight. He mustered all the arguments he could think of, other than the obvious. “Anyone who heard that Owen Honeyfield was to marry a Mr. Drake of Alton Hall will learn that Owen Honeyfield has wed a Mr. Drake of Alton Hall, and any discrepancies will be put down to an error of some kind. I have no other attachments. I would welcome the good fortune the goddess’s blessing would bring to my endeavors, since my investments have been middling of late. What is it?”
The Replacement Husband Page 4
