Baleful Godmother Historical Romance Series Volume One

by Emily Larkin

  “Are there smugglers here?”

  “Not here. Further north.”

  The stilted, awkward conversation dwindled into silence. They walked without talking. Butterflies fluttered among the wildflowers. A brisk breeze brought the scent of the ocean. Birds soared on the thermals, making sounds like cats mewing, and beneath those sounds, a voice echoed in his ears. Marcus’s voice. You fucked my wife.

  “I never thought you’d move so far from London,” Barnaby said, when he couldn’t bear the voice in his head any longer. “I always thought you’d stay within a day’s ride of Parliament—and Jackson’s.”

  “I’m stepping back from politics.”

  He glanced at Marcus in surprise. “You?” His gaze met Marcus’s for a moment, before skidding sideways.

  “The slave trade’s abolished. And I have a son, now. I want to spend as much time with my family as I can. I don’t intend to model myself on my father; my children are going to know me. And as for Jackson . . . I’ve hired one of his men as a groom, chap called Sawyer. He can’t fight in the ring anymore—but he’s good with horses. We spar several times a week. Sawyer usually wins. Charlotte says it’s good for my vanity.” Marcus grunted a laugh.

  Barnaby’s answering smile felt like a grimace. He looked away. This is futile. We can’t go back to what we once had. It was impossible to mend something this broken.

  “I had this seat built for Charlotte,” Marcus said. “Towards the end of her pregnancy, she couldn’t walk far, but she liked to come up here.”

  Barnaby glanced around.

  The seat in question was wooden, solid and sturdy and big enough for two people. It faced the sea.

  Marcus crossed to it and sat. After a moment’s hesitation, Barnaby followed. His joints didn’t want to bend; he sat as stiffly as an old man.

  “I spent a lot of time here with Charlotte, that last month of her pregnancy,” Marcus said, leaning his elbows on his knees. “It was cold. December.”

  Barnaby managed another smile-grimace. He looked down at his gloved hands. I can’t stomach two weeks of this, both of us pretending.

  “Marcus, this isn’t going to work,” he said quietly. “I’ll leave tomorrow.”

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Marcus said, equally quietly, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  Barnaby closed his eyes. “Marcus—”

  “You never told me what happened with Lavinia.”

  His brain rejected the words—No, Marcus didn’t just say that—but his ears told him otherwise. Marcus had said it.

  Barnaby’s chest seemed to grow hollow with horror. Finally, he turned his head and looked at Marcus. “You want to know?”

  Marcus nodded.

  I owe him that.

  Barnaby looked down at his clenched hands. “She came to me one afternoon, asked to speak with me. We went for a walk in the gardens. When we got to the folly, she started crying, and she said that you’d taken to hitting her and that she was scared and . . . and I tried to comfort her, and . . . we had sex.”

  His mouth filled with excuses: I never meant to. I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t plan to cuckold you. Barnaby gripped his hands more tightly. “The next day, she came to see me again, and I told her we couldn’t—and she cried, and when I wouldn’t touch her, she flew into a rage. She . . .” He paused. How to put that alarming fury into words?

  “I am familiar with Lavinia’s tantrums,” Marcus said dryly. “She broke things, threw things, screamed like a banshee.”

  Barnaby nodded, still looking at his hands. “And then she went back to Hazelbrook and told you what had happened between us.”

  Marcus stretched out his legs. “Actually, what Lavinia told me was that the two of you had been having an affair for several months.”

  Barnaby jerked his head around to stare at him, aghast. “What? No! It was only once!”

  “And she also said that you seduced her.”

  Barnaby shook his head, open-mouthed, mute with disbelief.

  “Lavinia was an excellent liar. I didn’t realize how excellent until after her death.” Marcus rubbed his brow. “So, she didn’t start crying until you were at the folly?”

  Barnaby closed his mouth, and shook his head again.

  “A good choice of location. Secluded. Private. That handy chaise longue.”

  Barnaby felt himself flush. “I didn’t choose to walk in that direction!”

  “No, Lavinia chose. And she kissed you first, didn’t she?”

  Barnaby hesitated, and nodded.

  “And initiated the sex?”

  He nodded again.

  “Tears and kisses, and then sex . . .” Marcus grimaced. “I fell for that ploy quite a number of times. I’d be astonished if any man could have resisted that one. She was exceptionally good at it.”

  Barnaby blinked. “What?”

  “When it came to sex, Lavinia was a manipulator par excellence. She led me by my cock that first year of our marriage—and I was too blindly in love to notice. Even when I began to have my doubts, it took me months to acknowledge it. I didn’t want to admit that she’d married me for my money and my title—because she was so damned beautiful.”

  Barnaby looked back down at his hands. Beautiful was too mild a word for the late countess. She had been luminous, slender and golden, as lovely as an angel.

  “Lavinia used me. And when I stopped letting her walk all over me, she turned around and used you, too. You were a pawn, Bee. She seduced you in order to hurt me.”

  Barnaby pinched his thumbs together. You think I haven’t realized that?

  “My first memories are of you, you know?” Marcus said. “In fact, every good memory I have from my childhood has you in it.”

  Barnaby closed his eyes. He wished he could close his ears, too.

  “Thirty years, Bee. We can’t just let that go.”

  Barnaby opened his eyes and swallowed the lump in his throat. “It’s over, Marcus. We can’t go back.”

  “No. But we can go forward.”

  Can we? Can we bury a betrayal of that magnitude and carry on as if it never happened? He’d hoped so, once, but he knew better now. Barnaby shook his head.

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Marcus said, “Do you still believe I hit her?”

  “No.”

  “And I know you didn’t seduce her.”

  Barnaby unclenched his hands. “Doesn’t matter who seduced whom, does it? I still had sex with your wife. I’m not someone who should be your friend.”

  “Bollocks.”

  Barnaby glanced at him and then away. “You don’t trust me. You said so yourself, the last time—”

  “That was a year and a half ago, Bee. I’ve changed my mind.”

  Barnaby stared down at the ground, at the grass, the wildflowers. An orange and brown butterfly settled on a nodding white comfrey head. “It’s not the sort of thing you change your mind about.”

  “I won’t say it came easily,” Marcus said. “Because it didn’t—I must have talked it over with Charlotte a hundred times—but the thing is, Bee, when I compared what you said that day at Mead Hall to what Lavinia had told me, I realized that she’d been lying and you’d been telling the truth, and that it had only been one afternoon—and if it was only the once . . . That changed things.”

  Barnaby stared down at the orange and brown butterfly.

  “When Charles was born, when I saw him the first time—” Marcus paused. When he spoke again, his voice was lower: “If I were to die, and if for any reason Charlotte needed help . . . I hope she’d come to you. Because I know you’d look after her, and I know you’d look after my son. I’ve told Charlotte that. She knows it.”

  Barnaby’s throat tightened. He watched the butterfly explore the flower head.

  Half a minute slowly passed, and then Marcus asked, “Am I wrong to trust you?”

  Barnaby shook his head. I would die rather than betray you again. “No.”

  Another half
minute passed.

  “What, then?” Marcus asked, an edge of frustration in his voice.

  Barnaby blew out a breath, and turned his head to look at him. “For Christ’s sake, Marcus. I had sex with your wife.”

  “So?”

  “So, we can’t be friends after that!”

  “The last time I saw you, you asked if we could—”

  “Well, I was wrong,” Barnaby said flatly. “Some things are unpardonable, and what I did was one of them.”

  Marcus looked at him for a long moment, his gaze penetrating. “You can’t forgive yourself.”

  Barnaby grimaced, and turned his head away. He’d cuckolded his best friend. How could any man who’d done that forgive himself?

  The silence between them stretched. Barnaby stared down at the butterfly and listened to the waves crashing and the birds crying and the grass rustling in the breeze.

  “I don’t think there’s a man in England who could have withstood Lavinia once she set her sights on him,” Marcus said.

  Barnaby had a flash of memory: Lavinia, her eyes starry with tears, her mouth tragic, begging him to kiss her. “A true friend would have—”

  “Only if he was a eunuch.”

  Barnaby shook his head.

  “You turned her away the second time, Bee. That counts for a lot. Believe me, I know exactly how much willpower it took to resist Lavinia.”

  Not willpower; shame. I was so sick with shame I couldn’t even look at her.

  Marcus sighed again. “If you wish to leave tomorrow, then of course you may. But I hope you’ll stay.” He paused, and then said, “We can’t go back, Bee, but we can start again.”

  Barnaby closed his eyes. Start again? God, if only he could start again. Not be the man who had betrayed his best friend.

  Too late. He would always be that man.

  Marcus cleared his throat. His voice became diffident: “Charles is being christened next week. Charlotte and I were hoping that you’d stand as his godfather.”

  Barnaby’s head jerked around. “Godfather?” he said, appalled. “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But . . .” But I cuckolded you. I can’t stand as godfather to your heir. Barnaby’s throat was too tight for speech. He shook his head.

  “Please think about it.” Marcus pushed to his feet and stood for a long moment, looking down at Barnaby, his face unsmiling, his gray eyes serious. “He’s called Charles after Charlotte’s father, but his second name is Barnaby.”

  Chapter Four

  Merry loved the cliff-tops. There was no better place for thinking; the breeze blew all the clutter out of one’s head, and the view stretched forever, and there was something about the sea—the constant, rhythmic swell, the sharp salt-tang, the thud-crash of waves against the cliffs—that was both invigorating and calming.

  This afternoon, Merry had a lot to think about. Sir Barnaby’s arrival, most especially. She strode along the cliffs to her favorite spot, where gray limestone thrust up out of the grass, weathered into fantastical shapes by centuries of wind and rain. Here was the patch of the grass where she liked to sit, the rock she liked to lean her back against, and the view she liked to gaze at, out over the sea.

  Merry intended to bend her mind to the problem of Marcus and Sir Barnaby, but she found herself fishing her mother’s letter out of her pocket by habit. The corners were tattered and the creases almost worn through.

  My darling Anne,

  If you are reading this letter, it is because I am dead, and dead or not, there is something very important I must tell you. It is this: You have a Faerie godmother.

  How absurd it sounds! I know I thought it a great joke, when your grandmother told me. However, as I have recently discovered, it is no joke, but the perfect truth.

  On your twenty-fifth birthday, you will be visited by a Faerie. Treat her with utmost caution. She is a malicious creature who delights in doing harm. No one knows her true name, but among our family, she is known as Baletongue.

  Baletongue will offer you a Faerie gift. Choose very carefully, my love. The wrong choice can lead to madness or death. I am enclosing a list of the gifts you may choose from. Your grandmother received it from her mother. Read the annotations thoroughly.

  The list her mother referred to was safely locked in Merry’s escritoire. She could see it in her mind’s eye: the old parchment, the fading ink.

  There were so many tempting choices—the one Charlotte had chosen, for example: metamorphosis. Who wouldn’t want to be able to turn into a bird and fly? But the gift she kept coming back to, time and time again, was Finding People and/or Objects. According to the annotations, two of her ancestresses had chosen it.

  Merry narrowed her eyes and stared out at the white-capped sea. All she needed was to find one hoard of treasure, and she’d have enough money to buy a town house in Bath or London, or a pretty cottage in the country, or perhaps even both.

  Is that the gift I want?

  Five days left to decide, and she still didn’t know. Merry blew out her breath. She refolded the letter, placed it in her pocket, and bent her mind firmly to the problem of Marcus and Sir Barnaby.

  It was a problem with two halves. One: Marcus. Two: Sir Barnaby.

  She knew Marcus’s character, knew his values, knew how his mind worked. Sir Barnaby Ware was a mystery.

  Therefore, I need to understand what’s going on inside his head.

  Merry climbed to her feet and continued along the path, her stride purposeful. The rest of the afternoon laid itself out neatly in her head: she’d walk along the cliffs, then run Sir Barnaby to ground and offer to show him the walled gardens.

  She could surely unravel the workings of Sir Barnaby’s mind in an hour spent among the espaliered trees and beds of vegetables. It was merely a matter of introducing the right topics and watching his reactions.

  At this point, her plan underwent an abrupt change, for there, sitting on Charlotte’s cliff-top seat, was Sir Barnaby Ware. Alone.

  Merry’s steps slowed. Sir Barnaby sat with his elbows on his knees, his posture so weary, so sad, that it hurt to look at him.

  She felt an almost overwhelming urge to hug him tightly, as if he were a child and not a grown man. But hugs weren’t going to mend this problem.

  “Hello!” Merry called, when she was a dozen yards away. The wind snatched her voice from her mouth and flung it ahead of her.

  Sir Barnaby stood before she reached him. “Miss Merryweather,” he said courteously.

  “What do you think? Isn’t it beautiful?” It was easy to let her enthusiasm spill over. She loved these cliffs.

  Sir Barnaby’s answering smile was mechanical. “Very beautiful.”

  “Did Marcus take you as far as Woodhuish House? No? Well, I’m heading that way. You must come with me!”

  She saw reluctance in his infinitesimal hesitation and in the flicker of his eyelids. He wants to be alone. But Sir Barnaby was too polite to say so aloud. “It would be my pleasure,” he said.

  They walked side by side along the riding officer’s path. Sir Barnaby made a good pretense of strolling—he commented on the wildflowers, the limestone cliffs, the seabirds—but it was obvious that most of his attention was turned inward.

  If she was to gain any understanding of him, she needed to see the real Sir Barnaby, not this polite automaton walking alongside her.

  “I wonder if you ever met my father, Sir Barnaby?” Merry said, watching his face closely. “He was a dancing master. Alexander Merryweather.”

  She saw the blink of surprise, the slight blankness of his face as he processed the words, the dawning realization in his raised eyebrows. “You’re Alexander Merryweather’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  That had broken through his preoccupation. Sir Barnaby halted, and stared at her in astonishment. Merry stared back intently. The next few seconds would tell her about his sense of self-importance.

  The change from politeness to polite condescension was somet
imes overt, sometimes almost imperceptible, but Sir Barnaby displayed none of the signs. He didn’t draw away from her. His chin didn’t lift; it lowered. And it wasn’t haughtiness in his eyes, but interest.

  Not a snob.

  “I never met him, but I heard of him, of course. He was legendary.” And then Sir Barnaby’s manner altered again. There was genuine sympathy in his eyes, in his voice. “I heard he died last year. I’m very sorry, Miss Merryweather.”

  Merry nodded acknowledgment of his sympathy. “Thank you.”

  She saw an unspoken question form on Sir Barnaby’s face, and then his expression became politely disinterested. He resumed strolling.

  Merry matched her steps to his. What had he been about to ask? Why am I at Woodhuish Abbey? “After Father’s death, I went to live with friends of his, but then Charlotte and I became acquainted—our relationship is very distant, neither of us knew the other existed! And she kindly invited me to live with her.” Charlotte had been researching her ancestry, trying to find others who shared the same Faerie godmother—but that wasn’t a detail she could share with Sir Barnaby.

  “Your mother’s family didn’t take you in?” he said neutrally. “Your grandfather’s Lord Littlewood, is he not?”

  “My mother’s family doesn’t acknowledge my existence.”

  Sir Barnaby uttered a faint snort. “The Littlewoods have always been very high in the instep. One would take Littlewood for a duke, the way he carries on.” And then he glanced sideways at her and gave a wry, self-deprecating smile. “Says a lowly baronet.”

  Merry smiled back. I like this man. “At least they’re consistent. They never acknowledged Mother after her marriage. They’d have looked foolish, if they’d suddenly turned around and acknowledged me.”

  “Heaven forbid that a Littlewood should ever look foolish,” Sir Barnaby said, dryly. The sea breeze blew the hair back from his brow. He had a very pleasant face, Merry decided. His features were harmoniously arranged, and more than that, his colors were harmonious—the red-brown hair, the hazel eyes, the light tan, the freckles. If autumn were personified, he would be Sir Barnaby.

  There were laughter lines at his eyes and mouth, but she didn’t think Sir Barnaby had laughed in a long time. A resolution formed between one step and the next: I shall make him laugh today.