by Ava Devlin
Ruthie, their grandmother, had once commented that heaven must have gotten it mixed up, with well-behaved Caroline acting much more like her uncle Gideon in his childhood, and wild child Reggie channeling his auntie Hel. Gideon had agreed, but had also commented that if he'd survived Heloise's childhood, he was likely better prepared to go through it again.
Heloise knew very well that her best route of action tonight was to put on a smiling face and endure the evening, hoping that the hours might pass quickly and midnight would come and go in the blink of an eye. She'd have to stay tonight in the manor house, lest she raise the suspicion of her family, but tomorrow she would flee back to the dower house with Callie in tow and remain there until the first blush of spring. She would stay firmly and totally outside of the manor house until Callum Laughlin was gone and she was once again free to resume the comfortable routine of her life. It would be easy, with the temperature and ferocity of the snow a happy excuse to keep her comfortably enclosed on the other side of the grounds for as long as necessary.
She had long lamented that Rose knew her secret, but in this, at least, she could consult a confidante. It would mean Rose continuing to keep secrets from her husband, but if she hadn't told him by now, Heloise trusted she had no temptation to do so. It would only be a matter of finding the time and privacy to consult her sister-in-law and gather her advice. How much worse this would all be if she were utterly alone in her secrecy!
Callum Laughlin was, of course, at the table. He was seated with his mother near the bride and groom, looking utterly devastating in a gentleman's kit. She had never seen him dressed so, with a glossy, tailored suit cut to the broad and healthy lines of his imposing frame and a starched cravat folded against his throat. Heloise had only ever seen him in work clothes (or nothing at all, of course), and found it difficult not to stare at this presentation of nobility in a boy who had once chopped the firewood in nothing but his breeches just a few yards away from where they now sat.
Even his speech seemed more refined, somehow, though she was careful not to reveal that her ear was turned to his voice, desperately curious to hear every word he spoke. He was appropriately humble about his exploits on the Continent, though he did not begrudge a pelting of questions from practically everyone at the table. He blushed more than once, lowering his coal-black eyes to blink away the shock of such attention, and sometimes smiled in such a way that Heloise thought her entire soul might shatter like a pillar of glass.
He looked across the table at her more than once, open longing in those dark, dark eyes. She did her best to avoid returning his gaze, though it was a difficult task, with how he drew the eye. He was still somehow cut from pure Yorkshire wilderness, even in a suit and cravat. He had cut his hair since she'd last seen him, which he'd been painstakingly attempting to grow so that he could bind it at his neck. Now it was short enough to brush his cheekbones if unstyled and loose around his face.
She flexed her hands under the table, blinking rapidly to dispel the memory of her fingers in his hair, of the smell of hay and grass that seemed to linger there, in the mussed tresses that were always warm from the sun. It would serve her no purpose to allow such memories to take hold of her, especially now.
Next to her, Dr. Garber did his absolute best to keep her amused and distracted. He chatted to her about the clinic and how they might improve and expand it in the coming year. He suggested certain books they might order from Cambridge, which he could retrieve the next time he was down. It was important to keep an up-to-date library, he told her, with all the most recent procedures and discoveries to integrate into the practice.
She was grateful for the distraction, and perhaps a bit more encouraging with Richard's flirtations than she might have otherwise been. She allowed him more than once to touch her hand, to lean forward and whisper in her ear, so close that his breath stirred the red-gold ringlets that framed her cheeks.
Her heart was racing and her cheeks were flushed, but it was not from the good doctor's attentions. She could feel Callum watching, almost to the point of heat from the dark embers of his eyes every time the doctor took a liberty or brushed too close. She didn't have to look up to know his lips would be drawn into a grim line of dissatisfaction. He had always worn his emotions clear as day on his face, with none of the ton artifice that she'd had to endure in the rest of her life masking his true feelings.
She had loved that about him. She had loved him.
If they had not been so careless, so brash and reckless and impatient, he might have returned from the war to find her unspoiled and worthy of a true courtship, if of course he still wished it. Part of her took a keen sense of pain-laced pleasure in the fact that Gloriana Blakely was at the head of the table, a woman so glowing and beautiful as to embody what a base-born man might think of a woman of Society. Next to her, Heloise knew she was a freckled troll, and it was best that Callum see it, at last, and know that the pedestal he had put her upon was not one that was deserved, but rather the result of a limited scope of the world.
She swallowed, instructing herself to breathe, reaching for her wine in the hopes that it might dull the flickering lights and shadows that were spinning ever more persistently in her mind.
As she came back to herself, she got the distinct impression that Dr. Garber was pressing his knee toward her legs, as though he was hoping to make contact beneath the table and through the layers of her heavy winter dress. Was she imagining it? She did not look toward him to confirm, instead drawing her ankles together so that such contact would be impossible. If he was disappointed, he did not show it.
He is only interested in you for your dowry. You are an easy target, the eccentric spinster sister of the Viscount Somers, close at hand and a burden on her kin.
She quaffed the remainder of the wine in her glass, closing her eyes to allow the heat of the drink to soak through her. She was never this dramatic. She must pull herself together. It was only a few more hours.
What else could possibly happen in such a short amount of time?
8
Silly as it may have sounded to an outsider, the way Callum felt that night amongst the Somers household reminded him strongly of his first days in the army.
It hadn't been so bad back in the dining room, when everything was set into place and the movement of the meal was enough to indicate how he should behave. Now that they'd moved into open space, where they might freely mingle, he was crawling out of his skin. He hadn't felt this awkward in years.
When he had been a green lad of twenty, traveling under the starry-eyed ignorance of what was to come, he had arrived in Calais wearing his common breeding clearer than any badge or medal pinned to a soldier's chest. Every word he spoke, every gesture and glance, gave him away as someone beneath even cursory notice from the officers, which would have been well and fine, had his conscription at the behest of a marquis and an officer besides not placed him outside of the reach of his equals at the bottom of command.
He wasn't sure what had been worse, being ignored and disregarded by the gentry or being glanced at with suspicion and excluded from even the most mundane of interactions by his own ilk. There was nothing quite so painful as having been the cause of a bout of laughter dying if ever he drew too close.
Of course, Lord Moorvale had been more than friendly, and had done his best to provide a sort of guidance for Callum once they'd arrived at their destination, but for as much comfort as direct acknowledgement might have afforded him, the queerness of it seemed to sap it all away in the same breath. He could never have told any of this to Sheldon Bywater, of course, for it would have seemed ungrateful and childish, and for all of the little miseries, what Bywater had done for Callum had changed the trajectory of his entire life. It was a kindness that could never be fully repaid.
So it was much the same tonight at Somerton, with polite, if cool reception from those amongst the nobility who remembered him as a stable hand and direct avoidance and discomfort from members of the household st
aff, who had once considered him their peer. Once again, it seemed the only person in the room he knew how to approach was Sheldon Bywater, who was just as jovially oblivious to Callum's discomfort as he had ever been.
Even his own mother seemed to hover awkwardly near him, as though she had forgotten how to act in his presence in the years since he had last seen her. It was unbearable. It made him agonizingly aware of every spot he chose to stand in, every positioning of his body or tilt of his arms. He felt as though he, too, had forgotten how to exist within the context of home.
He was still numb from what had happened earlier, in the stables. Of all the ways he had imagined reuniting with Heloise Somers, somehow it had never occurred to him that she would have been angry at him for leaving. He thought they had understood one another perfectly when last they'd spoken. Had they not planned explicitly about building up to the type of stability that would make their proposed union more palatable to both of their families?
What a fool he'd been! He'd spent four years dreaming of her, every night, certain she was dreaming of him too, certain she was awaiting his return with the same limb-lost pain in his absence that he felt without her. All the while she'd been going about her life as though he'd never existed at all! Even now, she was pink-cheeked and smiling, nodding at something that predator of a doctor was whispering to her over glasses of champagne.
A nudge at his shins startled him out of his brooding reverie, his fingers clenching around the glass he held in an effort to prevent himself showing his surprise. He lowered his eyes, looking for the offending party, only to see a bolt of yellow fur winding its way through his legs and back out again.
"Nero!" he cried, dropping down into a squat to greet a creature he'd once nursed with clotted cream on the tip of his finger.
The cat wore a velvet ribbon of striking royal blue around his neck, and had at least doubled in size since the last time Callum had seen him. He purred heavily into Callum's outstretched hand, raspy tongue stealing a few rogue droplets of wine from the pads of his fingers.
The relief that swelled into Callum's chest at such a warm, enthusiastic welcome was almost too much. He felt the most absurd stinging at the corners of his eyes, and forced himself to shake away the sensation before he made an utter fool of himself. At least someone knew that Callum was the same person he'd always been.
"I'm afraid that cat no longer adheres to pesky norms like ownership," his mother said from above, drawing his gaze up to see her smiling fondly upon the scene. "He doesn't even know which building he lives in anymore, nor whose bed he prefers by night."
He cleared his throat, pushing himself to his feet and jerking down the line of his waistcoat, a bit of heat spreading across his cheeks at having made such a boyish display of himself. "I suppose a cat this handsome is entitled to indulging in his choices," he said with a crooked smile. "He certainly isn't a runt any longer."
"Mm," Mrs. Laughlin said, tilting her head with a bit of a sparkle in her dark eyes. "His mother still chases him out of the kitchen with remarkable success. She's half his size and twice as fierce."
"Ah, good old Bones." Callum sighed, a chuckle escaping him. "Protecting her kingdom at any cost."
"Well, any sensible woman ought to do the same," his mother replied, lifting her glass to her lips. "Once you know something is precious to you, all you can do from that point onward is hold it close and defend it from any who might take it from you."
Nero grew bored of this line of talk and darted over to the bride and groom, leaping easily into the bride's lap with the confidence of a feline who knew himself welcome. Indeed, the lady did not gasp or push him away, but only began to scratch him between the ears without breaking in her conversation with her new husband.
"It's strange to see them settled so," his mother remarked, watching the scene alongside him. "I never thought to see Lord Alex marry of his own accord, much less a woman like that one. Lord Somers, yes, I suppose, I knew he must marry eventually, but I'd make a poor fortune teller indeed. I never could have pictured a woman like Lady Somers at his side."
"It seems a good match, though," Callum said, seeking out the head of House Somers in the crowd, where he and his wife were standing opposite the township's Reverend Halliwell and the dowager viscountess. The group was exchanging what appeared to be pleasant conversation.
He noted that Gideon Somers had his hand resting affectionately on the small of his wife's back, as though such a thing were the most natural gesture in the world for a man who once feared to even laugh in mixed company.
"Oh, for certain, yes!" his mother exclaimed with an enthusiastic nod. "Just look around you! Do you ever remember ushering in the New Year in such grand style back in the old days? Lady Somers has breathed life into this drafty old manor."
"Yes, it seems she has," he agreed. "Perhaps Lady Heloise will be next to settle into wedded bliss?"
"Mm, don't be so certain." She drew his eye to meet hers, taking a step closer to speak at a lower volume. "That doctor has been chasing after her for months. I believe he even inquired with Gideon as to asking for her hand, but you know Lady Heloise is a wild one. She moved into the dower house when her mother returned from the Americas with a foundling babe, and seems content enough to live out the rest of her days there, if you ask me."
"Really?" He did his level best to keep his voice even, despite the spark of hope that flared up in his chest. "Lady Heloise may be wild, but she is also beautiful and wealthy. I find it a surprise that she survived even one Season in London without landing a husband."
Mrs. Laughlin snorted, perhaps giving away that the spirits had begun to loosen her command over her emotions. "There is a war on, my dear. There are far more available ladies of good breeding than there are eligible bachelors, and the competition is fierce. Lady Heloise can hardly be bothered to pin her hair up, much less coax and coddle some ton gentleman into asking for her hand." She paused, frowning as she considered the youngest Somers sibling, who had turned to allow Sheldon Bywater into her conversation with the eager young doctor. "Yes, there are the fortune seekers, but I rather think she sees right through them. I thought perhaps Lord Moorvale himself would ask for her hand, after seeing the way he's doted upon her all these years, but he spent the entirety of the autumn gathering moon-faced over some chit from the low country."
"Moorvale and Heloise?" Callum repeated, unable to disguise the horror in his voice at such a pairing. "It would be a disaster."
"Aye, it would at that." Mrs. Laughlin frowned. "Can you imagine the noise? I just like to see all the little ducklings home to roost, I suppose, but that Heloise has never gone where she's meant to go."
Callum laughed despite himself. "I hardly think the Somers family are wayward ducklings, Mother. They've proven that in spades, if nothing else."
"Well, perhaps I'm talking about you and not them," she returned with a little pout. "I suppose you might consider giving me a grandchild or two now that you're home and settled. Perhaps there's a girl in the township who's been awaiting your return?"
He shook his head, a fond half smile overtaking any discontent he might have been feeling at his current marital prospects. "I’m hardly settled. I've not yet been back a full day. I don't even know where I'm going to sleep tonight."
"Why, in one of the guest rooms, of course!" she told him in a tone she might use to give information to a simpleton or one of the chickens. "Lord Somers already told you that, surely?"
He grimaced, shrugging his shoulders. "I wasn't sure that was what he intended. It's damned awkward, isn't it? I don't want to be a guest in the same house where my mother is a servant!"
"And whyever not?" she demanded, narrowing her eyes and plopping her hands on her hips. "I do a right fine job with the running of Somerton, I'll have you know. You will never have a more hospitable stay in your life."
"I do not doubt it!" he said quickly. "But surely you do not wish to remain a servant for the remainder of your days? You must bristle at the th
ought that they are placing my status above your own."
"They are doing no such thing, Callum Laughlin," she snapped. "Why would you say such a thing?"
"Mother, be reasonable. There is a clear divide between the servants and the gentry. If given the choice, no one would pick the former. In fact, it is my dearest wish to buy a property and take you away from daily toil, so that you might live out your life in comfort and ease."
"Comfort and ease?" she repeated, her words taking on a dangerously dark tone. "Is that the woman you believe me to be? A layabout who resents honest work?"
"I believe you've worked hard enough for several lifetimes," he answered, squaring his shoulders. "You can't tell me you don't wish to be done with all of the bowing and scraping that comes with a life in service."
"Bowing and scraping!" she breathed, her eyes glittering with fire. "Look around you, son of mine. All members of this household are here tonight, in one room, sharing wine and bread as the clock counts ever closer to a new year. Do you see bowing and scraping about you?"
"Mother, it's a special holiday," he began, pressing his lips firmly together at the way she held up the flat of her palm to silence him.
"It is, isn't it? And I plan to enjoy it!" She pursed her lips, looking at him in such a way that he felt he was a small child again, about to be scolded for his ingratitude and dirty cheeks. "You might consider doing the same," she suggested, then turned on her heel and stalked away, leaving him once again adrift in a sea of people.
