Harlequin Historical September 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Christine Merrill

  He knew the pain of standing out. That boy...he had rallied other children to come after him whenever he ventured outside Maynard Park.

  Eventually he had stopped leaving.

  Eventually he had decided he preferred being alone.

  It was Hugh who had taught him how to behave.

  ‘Don’t talk about flowers all the time, Briggs.’

  ‘I don’t. All the time.’

  ‘No, but too often. And facts about soil and sun and things other boys don’t care about.’

  ‘I do not know what else to speak of.’

  Hugh had looked confounded for a moment. ‘Do you like the look of a woman’s breasts?’

  Shock and shame had poured over him in equal measure, as he was still coming to grips with the shapes his fantasies were beginning to take. But that at least was an easy answer to give. ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is something all those lot are interested in. If you can’t think of something else to say, extol the virtues of a woman’s figure.’

  Be shocking. Be charming. He had learned how to do that. He had learned to be a rake.

  And it had served him well.

  ‘All I ever wanted was to be like all the rest. To be a girl like every other. To have the same expectations for my life. But it was not the path for me. If I were not born with my illness, then perhaps I would not... Perhaps the things that you and I do together would not be something I desired. But I cannot untangle those hardships with which I was born from who I am with you. From who I am all the time. So how can I say that I wish it were not so? How can I say that I wish I were not Beatrice? For if one thing in my life was changed, then I might not be the woman I am here and now. And while I might wish away my every hardship, while I might wish that you would allow me to fully be a wife to you... I cannot take away the risk, the concern, the terrible things that I have endured, and keep these precious things that we have found.’

  He leaned his head back against the headboard, his thoughts a tangle. ‘But perhaps if everything wrong in my past was undone, we would not need these things.’

  ‘Perhaps. But they are not wrong,’ she said. ‘If we are both happy enough, they cannot be.’

  ‘The only way to avoid my father’s disdain was to be something completely different than what I was,’ he said. ‘My father despised me. And when I thought I had finally found the person who might care for me as I was, she also...found far more to despise than care for.’

  He had not meant to carry on this path. Had not meant to continue on with this conversation. It was fruitless, after all. There was no point visiting any of these wounds in his past. He had bested his father by the simple virtue that he accepted William for who he was.

  Something gouged his stomach.

  Do you?

  He did. What he had said to William was about keeping him safe. It had nothing to do with the way he thought the boy ought to behave. He loved the way that William thought. He was interested in the things that his son was, it was only that the rest of the world would never be. And it was not the same as what his father had done with him.

  Serena had solidified these truths.

  His father had been the one to teach them.

  ‘I was not what he hoped for,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ She looked up at him, her gaze filled with genuine curiosity. ‘You said before your father was ashamed of you. You seem everything a man could want his heir to be. You are handsome, and clever, and there is not a single person who does not enjoy rousing conversation with you. Why should your father not be proud of you?’

  ‘I’m not the same as I was,’ Briggs said. ‘I learned. I learned to be the heir to the title. I learned to become the Duke of Brigham. Obsessions and specific curiosities, inflexibility, none of it allows you to connect with those around you. I had to learn. The other children in the village, they hurt me, Beatrice. They sought to punish me for my differences with words and fists. The boys at school did the same until Hugh taught me.’

  ‘And so William must learn,’ she said softly.

  ‘It is not something you should concern yourself with.’

  ‘Briggs... Tell me. Tell me about your father. Tell me about you.’

  ‘There is nothing but the man before you,’ he said, and when he said it, he almost believed it. Almost believed that he had successfully become something other than he had been.

  ‘I am all that I must be. And that is all anyone ever need know.’

  He got out of bed, and she reached for him.

  ‘I cannot stay with you,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You already know the answer.’

  Perhaps she did know. Perhaps she didn’t. It was not essential.

  She could not become essential. And this could not become bigger than his responsibilities.

  Bigger than what he’d made himself.

  He had to remember. Even if Beatrice accepted him in her bed, it did not erase the way he had failed in the past.

  He had become Briggs because Philip had been wrong.

  And he stood there in the hall, by himself, imagining what it would be like for William when he was the Duke, and Briggs was gone. The idea, the image, made him feel hollow inside.

  So he put it away, and he carried on. He knew what example he must set. He knew what he must be. In the meantime, he would take care of William and Beatrice.

  Nothing else mattered.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  For days Beatrice had been beset by what had happened at the park. By how badly Briggs had hurt William, even if unintentionally. She knew it had been unintentional. But William had been... Different since it happened. Quieter.

  She wanted him to chatter again.

  She had a feeling if it had only been those boys that had said those things to him, he would not have been cowed at all, but his own father had told him not to speak of those things, and that was what had silenced him.

  She understood why Briggs had done it. She understood it was not out of any desire to hurt him or alter him in any way. ‘William,’ she said. ‘Would you like to take a walk today?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  It made her chest hurt.

  ‘What would you like to do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Come, let’s go to the garden,’ she said.

  She found herself the focus of his irritation, but she did manage to cajole him outside to the garden, where he at the very least seemed contented by the presence of the statues. She had not spent much time outside since coming to London, other than when they had gone touring. She hadn’t been out in the garden in full daylight, she realised. And for the first time she noticed that there was a large glass building out in the corner.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked William.

  ‘Oh,’ William said, looking where she was gesturing. ‘I don’t know.’

  It occurred to her then that the boy had never been here before. So asking him that question was silly at best.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I forgot that you have not been here before either.’

  ‘It looks rather like the one at Maynard Park,’ William said. ‘It is a greenhouse. It is where the flowers are kept.’

  ‘Flowers?’

  ‘Yes. Orchids.’

  She did not realise there was a greenhouse at Maynard Park. Briggs hadn’t mentioned. Then she had not had a chance to explore the grounds thoroughly.

  ‘Let’s go look,’ she said.

  William was uninterested. But she considered it a mark of progress that she was able to extract him from the statues, and convince him to come with her. They went down the path and peered through the glass windows.

  It was filled with flowers. Beautiful flowers.

  She cracked open the door and walked inside, and looked around the room.


  She did not know the name for all of these blooms. They were exotic and rare, brightly coloured.

  ‘I’m not supposed to be in here,’ William said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is a rule.’

  ‘How do you know you’re not supposed to be in here if you’ve never been to the town house before?’

  ‘It is the rule about the greenhouse in Maynard Park.’

  ‘It seems a silly rule. I am with you, so you cannot get hurt.’

  She grabbed his hand, just to be certain. And they began to stroll through the rows of exotic plants.

  She saw movement outside the glass door, and then it opened, and in came Briggs, looking... Well, he looked furious.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’

  ‘We were looking at the flowers,’ she said.

  ‘William is not allowed in the greenhouse.’

  ‘So he said, but he’s with me and...’

  ‘Out,’ Briggs said.

  ‘Briggs...’

  ‘Out,’ Briggs said, his tone clipped.

  She looked at him, at his handsome, angry face, and her heart squeezed.

  She did not understand this man. This complicated man who made her feel like she was flying every night, and then who left her to try to find a place to land all on her own. Who both satisfied and left her aching with desire all at once.

  Briggs...

  And now he was angry with her, because she had done something wrong, but he had not laid out expectations for this. And she didn’t know how he expected her to know exactly what he wanted her to do about everything if he did not tell her.

  He could not be so picky if he wasn’t going to be explicit in his instructions.

  ‘The plants are very fragile,’ he said.

  And she stopped. Because she realised that this wasn’t about William. It was about him. And it wasn’t even about protecting the plants, there was something else.

  ‘We will go,’ she said. ‘But you must take us on a walk, and you must entertain us,’ she said.

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘You owe us, for behaving the part of an ogre,’ she said. ‘We did nothing to deserve your wrath. You did not leave clear instructions for me, and I was not given to understand there was any part of the garden that might be off limits. Now you have been an utter brute, and you must make up for it.’

  ‘You are not an authority over me, Beatrice,’ he said.

  ‘Of course not, Your Grace,’ she said, looking at him from beneath her lashes and knowing it would inflame his desire. Her confidence had grown in that at least.

  She was rewarded with a flare of heat in his dark gaze.

  She had been correct. He liked that. Liked her deference, even when it was hardened with an edge of defiance.

  And that was how she finally got Briggs to take her and William out again, and how she got William slightly more out of his shell than he’d been over the past few days.

  She would have to talk to Briggs about that. About the way he had been affected by what happened in the park. And about what she suspected was Briggs’s part in it.

  * * *

  Afterward, they had dinner together, and then Briggs went, to his studies she presumed.

  She had a letter from Hugh to read, and one from Eleanor as well. Both informing her that they were coming for the Season, and would be there in just a few days.

  She knew that she should feel excited. To see her brother. See Eleanor. But... She felt selfishly upset that they were coming in and breaking up what was happening here.

  She wondered how it would affect the way Briggs treated her. And what happened in her bedchamber at night.

  She did not wish for that. She wanted to stay in her separate life, and she did not want Bybee House or her past to intrude.

  She realised that was vile of her. But she could not help herself.

  She waited for Briggs to come to her, but he did not. And finally, after becoming impatient, she went and looked in his study, but did not find him. And it was only intuition that led her down the stairs and out to the garden. Where she could see it. An amber light flickering back where she now knew the greenhouse was.

  She had been right. She had been right, in her assessment of the fact that he had been trying to protect something when they had been in there earlier, but that it was not about the flowers.

  This was him. There was a key here. A key to him. And she knew it. And so she stepped outside and followed the ambient glow of the light, and through the windows, she could see him. Inside, bent over one of the plants.

  She pushed the door open. She did not knock, for fear that he would turn her away.

  He might still turn her away, but she was already inside... He stiffened, then turned.

  ‘Is this where you are? When I don’t see you. I assumed you were in your study working away, but you’re here, aren’t you? William told me that there was a greenhouse in Maynard Park as well.’

  ‘Not always,’ he said.

  ‘Briggs, why haven’t you mentioned this?’

  ‘I learned a long time ago that there are things people do not wish to hear about. It is not a mark against them, it is simply up to me to learn what people are interested in, and stick to those topics.’

  ‘You like... You like flowers.’

  ‘Horticulture and botany,’ he said. ‘The more complicated the better. The less suited to the English atmosphere, the better. I find it diverting.’

  ‘For how long?’

  He looked at her, his dark eyes intense. ‘As long as I can remember.’

  ‘These are your cards,’ she said softly. She looked around. ‘Briggs, do you not know that you’re very like William?’

  ‘He likes buildings. I like flowers. It is not the same.’

  ‘It is the same. And that’s why you reacted the way that you did when those boys were mean to him. People have been very unkind to you in the past, haven’t they?’

  ‘It is no matter.’

  ‘But it is,’ she said. ‘Your father was unkind to you, wasn’t he?’

  He huffed out a laugh. ‘Can you imagine how useless a man like my father would find this?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Because I did not know your father. You will have to tell me.’

  ‘He hated this. He hated everything that I cared about. And I do not wish to speak further of it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It will only bore you, and I reached my limit with how often I can possibly watch a person’s eyes glaze over with boredom while I speak of things that matter to me. I reached the limit with how often I can disgust someone with who I am. I do not wish to do it any more.’

  ‘I am not a child. I do not mock what I don’t understand. I... I never had the chance to have friends, not when I was young. Maybe I would’ve been your friend.’

  ‘No, Beatrice, if you had not lived a cloistered existence for you were forced to be different than others, you would not have been any different than the children that accosted William. For that is human nature. It is who we are.’

  ‘I find that very grim.’

  ‘Humanity is grim. There is no denying it.’

  ‘I’m not a child now, though. I can certainly understand about this if you want me to.’

  ‘I do not talk about myself. About...’

  ‘I want to know, Briggs,’ she said. ‘I want to know you. It matters to me. You matter to me. And what matters to you will mean something. I can understand. Please, give me a chance to understand.’

  ‘If I’ve learned one thing in this life it is that when you give too much of yourself away there will always be those standing by waiting to tear pieces from you. It is inevitable. My father...’

  ‘I’m not your father.’

  ‘Believe me, I did not confuse you with my fath
er.’

  ‘What got you interested in this?’

  ‘Beatrice, this is not a wound that you can heal. I have learned to be different. I am content to see to my interests on my own time. It is not of any matter.’

  ‘I want to understand you. And if you would deny us...’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You want to understand me?’ He advanced towards her, and Beatrice shrank away. The intensity that radiated off him was confusing. For there was more happening inside him than she could fathom. There were things he was not saying. And it... It wounded her. Confronted her.

  He grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her up against him. ‘Do you pity me, Beatrice?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered.

  ‘You pity my son, I think.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t pity William. I care for him. He is a wonderful... Unique child. He is not like everyone else, and that... I know what that’s like. It doesn’t matter whether it’s because of buildings, or an illness, it amounts to the same thing. You end up on the outside looking in. And sometimes the loneliness is so bitter that you can do nothing to combat it. No, I don’t pity him. And I don’t pity you.’

  ‘You might. If you knew the truth. About me.’

  ‘Tell me, then?’

  ‘My father wanted a son. He always wanted a son. When he had his son, his heir, his life was complete. And then he had his spare. The problem is, his heir died. His perfect, precious heir. And then he was left with... Well, they are spares for a reason.’

  ‘Briggs... I had no idea. I didn’t...’

  ‘My brother died when he was ten. I was two. I don’t remember him. But I already showed signs of lacking where he succeeded. In every way I was inferior to my brother. And my father took every opportunity to make sure that was known. My brother spoke in full sentences by his first birthday. I could not speak when I was four. I was lost in my own mind. Often turning over concepts and problems that I could not express. I became obsessed with small things. Knots for a while. Shoelaces. Small things. Eventually, I became entranced by gardens. Plants. I wished to know all about them, how they grew and where. So I learned. I became fixated on the orangery in my family home. And meanwhile, my father was trying to get me interested in other things. Trying to get me so that I could go to school and not be... Mocked brutally for the fact that I couldn’t converse about anything more complex than an orchid.’