“With great pleasure.” She smiled, feeling more comfortable with Lewis than she ever had in the past. “This should be a day without shadows.”
Chapter Eighteen
Of course the Debenhams could not be left at the Orchard with no member of the family in residence, but two and a half days in a carriage with them left Annabelle with the passionate hope that Alex had succeeded in finding Christa and persuading her to marry him. What was a little—well, a big—scandal, compared to a lifetime of having Sybil in the family?
The Debenhams dropped her in St. James’s Square, stopping only long enough to ascertain that Alex was still among the living before continuing to their town house. Sybil did suggest dutifully that she stay and “lend her dear sister support,” but she was no more eager to do it than Annabelle was to have her.
Annabelle immediately went to Alex’s room, where he lay on a chaise with an unopened book in his lap. Obviously her brother was not at death’s door, but his worn, gray look struck at her heart. She went to him and dropped a kiss on his forehead before seating herself. “You didn’t find Christa?” she asked softly.
Alex closed his eyes, a spasm of emotion crossing his features. “I would rather not talk about her, Belle. In fact, please forget everything I told you.”
“If that is what you wish.” She paused, then asked diffidently, “What about Miss Debenham?”
He shrugged slightly. “The engagement stands.”
“But you don’t love her!”
“It really doesn’t matter, Belle. I’ll be at sea most of the time. Sybil knows what she is getting into, and still wants to marry me. Someone might as well be satisfied.”
Annabelle could have wept to see her brother this way, but could think of no words of comfort. Had Christa rejected him, and done it cruelly? Annabelle had trouble imagining her sensitive abigail doing that, but obviously something deeply traumatic had happened to Alex. He seemed as desolate now as Annabelle had been after the disillusion with Sir Edward Loaming, and he had no Christa to tease him out of it. She sighed. He would have to find his salvation in his work; if he was determined to throw his life away in a loveless match, she could not change his mind.
She went to sit on the floor by the chaise, taking her brother’s hand and leaning her cheek against it to convey her wordless sympathy. They sat in silence for a long time as the shadows deepened. Eventually Annabelle straightened up and said, “Perhaps Jonathan will be luckier in love than you and I.”
Alex smiled a bit at that. “Life goes on. By next week I should be well enough to go to Plymouth and start provisioning my new ship. Would you like to have Cousin Hattie stay here? She is the most agreeable of the available female relatives.”
“She’ll certainly be an improvement on Aunt Agatha. I don’t suppose she can be induced to leave those dreadful birds of hers at home?” Cousin Hattie was notorious for her shrieking, messy pairs of inappropriately named lovebirds.
His mouth twitched. “I think it highly unlikely.”
Annabelle sighed. “Perhaps I’ll get a cat. Who knows, there might be an accident involving a bird cage.”
Alex laughed aloud and swung his legs down to the floor. “If you can get away with it, you have my blessing. But if you fail, expect a drumhead court-martial from Hattie.” He leaned over and brushed his sister’s hair. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I always will be. I plan on cultivating the eccentricities suitable in a maiden aunt.”
“I will be highly surprised if I don’t have Post Office packets chasing me all over the Atlantic, begging for your hand.”
Annabelle wrinkled her nose. “I have decided that in the future I will prefer quality to quantity when it comes to courtship. Shall I ring for some tea?” Without waiting for a reply, she pulled the cord. If she wasn’t to have much more time with her brother, she intended to make the best of what was left.
The Earl of Radcliffe was feted and welcomed everywhere in the three weeks after his miraculous return home. He had always been a popular young man, and his apparent demise had been sincerely mourned. Though London was thin of company, he had numerous invitations and Radcliffe House was flooded with letters from friends around the country rejoicing in his survival.
No longer quite the carefree young man about town, Charles regarded the furor with a slightly jaundiced eye. He would always be a sociable creature, but the forms of the beau monde mattered a good deal less to him than they had in the past. Two years as a prisoner and a fugitive will concentrate the mind wonderfully, and matters that had seemed important in the past could only appear trivial now.
What was important was family, and observation convinced him that something was seriously troubling his sister. No one would have guessed who didn’t know Christa as well as he did, but he sensed sadness under her bright manner.
Charles leaned against the door frame of the music room and watched her play the pianoforte, rippling out a bright sonata that he recognized as Viennese in origin. Christa made a charming picture in the early-afternoon sun, every inch the society lady in her flowing high-waisted gown and her stylishly tousled black curls. As she finished the composition, she glanced up with a welcoming smile, then turned on the bench to face him.
“Good afternoon, Charles. Isn’t that a lovely bit of music? Broadwood’s English action piano has a much more powerful tone than the German instrument we had in Paris.”
The earl straightened up and entered the room, sitting down on a sofa where he could see her face clearly. “Yes, it has, and you play it very well. It must be all the practice you have been doing. In fact, you’ve been playing the pianoforte so much lately that I’m beginning to wonder if you’re going into a decline.”
Christa’s laughter was light, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “Why would I do that? I feel like a fairy princess. My family and fortune have been restored. What more could I ask?”
Charles decided on a direct approach. “That is exactly what I have been wondering. You just don’t seem the same.”
She looked at him levelly. “Are you the same as you were two years ago?”
“No. No, of course not,” he admitted. “I defy anyone to spend a year and a half in a filthy prison under sentence of death and come out the same. I’ll never be able to take the cut of a waistcoat or the turn of a card quite so seriously again. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the pleasures of society.
“You, however, have walled yourself up in here like a hibernating bear. You’re in a position to take London by storm, yet you spend all your time reading or playing the piano or wearing out horses and grooms in Richmond Park.” Charles leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees, his hands loosely clasped. “I’m getting worried.”
Christa sighed and turned her head, one hand stroking the keyboard in absent accompaniment to her thoughts. She was grateful to the depths of her soul that her mother and brother were alive and well, and she herself restored to name and fortune. She would have made a good life for herself working with Suzanne, but only a fool would prefer that to the freedom that wealth and position provided.
But all the wealth and family in the world could not heal the pain of losing Alex. Most of her life she had kept her emotions under firm control, responding to trouble with logic and laughter. Then Alex had created holes in her defenses that could be repaired only by him. Christa’s rational mind occasionally suggested that someday she might meet and love another man as much, but her heart flatly refused to believe it.
How could she possibly explain to Charles that when she had found she would not have a child, her intellectual reaction of relief had been swept away by a rending, primitive sense of loss that had shaken her to her bones? Christa knew that she couldn’t have Alex, but she hadn’t known how much she had hoped to have his child until the possibility was gone. She glanced at Charles’s intent gray eyes and smiled inwardly. No, her mother might understand, but it was not the sort of thing one could explain to a protective big brother.
Christa was briefly tempted to confide in Charles, but the experience of loving Alex was too precious to share with anyone, and her foolish pride didn’t want to admit that the young Comtesse d’Estelle, the belle of Paris, had been unable to win the love of the one man she wanted. She doubted that Alex loved either Sybil Debenham or her, but his sense of obligation and commitment to the Peacock was stronger than the physical attraction he felt toward his sister’s maid.
She appreciated Charles’s concern; it was good to have someone that cared enough to worry about her after so long alone. Since her brother knew her too well to believe that all was well, she decided to tell him a portion of the truth. “I feel … disoriented, Charles. The last two years have been so strange. The first year was interminable. I felt entirely alone, and as if the world would never be right again.
“This last year has gone much more quickly, and most of the time I was happy. It was good to be busy and to make friends, to stand on my own feet. As my father told us both, there is dignity in work, and it gave me back myself.”
Christa moved her hands restlessly as she sought words to explain herself. “But in order to be a servant, I had to become a servant. I never forgot my old life, but I had completely convinced myself that it was gone beyond recall. If I had not truly believed that, I might have destroyed myself with self-pity, and anger against the injustice of life.
“Even when it might have been to my advantage to speak of my birth, I never did.” She stopped abruptly. She had tormented herself with wondering if it would have made a difference if she had told Alex who she was that night in the library when he had asked her to become his mistress. Instead, her reflexive pride had sealed her lips and Alex had turned to Sybil Debenham.
When Christa was sure her voice would be steady, she continued, “I find it strange now to be waited on, to be a lady of leisure. I look at your servants, and I understand their position in a way that was impossible to a wealthy aristocrat, no matter how liberal my education and sympathies. Can you imagine how that has changed the way I see the world?”
Charles considered seriously before answering. “I think so. In France, I shared a twenty-foot-square cell with two dozen men of all classes and ages. None of them except Jean-Claude Bohnet knew my background, and we were very much equal in that cell. Strength and compassion had nothing to do with breeding, and I can never look at people again and see them as simply servants or peasants or tradesmen. Before, I had an abstract belief in equality, but now I know that while I may be luckier than most men, I am inherently no better. Is that what you feel?”
“Yes. The thought of going back to the frivolous games of polite society takes a good deal of getting used to.” Christa gave a sunny smile. “I promise that I shall not become a recluse, and I will learn again how to flirt and act the part of a young lady. But I am not ready yet.”
“I can understand that.” Charles drew his brows together in his sternest big-brother expression. “But are you sure that is all that is troubling you?”
Christa wrinkled her nose. “Well, I am not looking forward to running into any members of the beau monde that knew me as a servant. There are only a handful that would recognize me, but it will be embarrassing, and I haven’t yet decided how to deal with that.”
Charles grimaced. “It would certainly damage your reputation if it was known that you stooped to work for a living, particularly as a servant. Genteel starvation would have been much more acceptable. But surely you can play the countess so thoroughly that no one will believe you have ever lifted your dainty hand to anything more strenuous than a handkerchief.”
“I might be able to convince most people that any resemblance to a certain lady’s maid was strictly accidental,” Christa said with a shrug, “but not my second mistress. We spent too much time together for her not to recognize me.”
“Would she cause trouble for you?”
Christa shook her head decisively. “No. She had a kind heart.” Annabelle would not be a problem—she would probably be enchanted by the romantic story of a lost-and-found countess, and Christa was sure they would be friends under any circumstances.
As for the others, Lady Pomfret was too myopic to recognize her, and most members of the ton that Christa had casually contacted would have scarcely noticed her face. The real obstacle was the Peacock, so soon to become, Lady Kingsley. Christa had waited on her for days, and it was likely that even such a self-absorbed creature as Sybil would recognize her.
Even that would have been tolerable; in her countess mode Christa could outface Sybil. What was unbearable was the thought of seeing Alex, or worse, Alex with his wife. She could face the prospect with equanimity in some distant future, but not yet. No, she would not go into society until he was safely married and gone back to sea.
Charles said thoughtfully, “Do you know, you have never mentioned the names of the people you worked for.” He had the information from Suzanne, but was curious how his sister would reply.
“There is no need for names,” Christa said a little too airily. “A proper servant is always discreet about her employers.”
Charles stood, towering over his younger sister. He put a finger under her chin and lifted it so he could see her eyes. “Are you telling me the whole truth, little cabbage?”
Christa gave her gamin smile. “I have told you all I intend, so don’t try to bully me, mon frère, or I will put a frog in your bed.”
He grinned back. “That is supposed to be my threat. How was I to know that when I did it, you would turn the frog into a pet?”
“You should have guessed I would have an affinity for the poor creature. After all, you used to tell me that I looked like a frog.”
Charles blinked at the thought. “So I did. Older brothers can be quite barbarous.”
His sister agreed with a laugh. “True.” Christa stood and took his arm. “Shall we see if Maman and Uncle Lewis are available for tea? If we can find one of them, we shall probably find the other.”
“Very likely,” Charles agreed. “I enjoy watching them together—they are both so happy. It makes me feel like I am of the older generation, and they are the younger.”
“Lewis seems like a wholly different person,” Christa said thoughtfully. “More relaxed, and much more likely to laugh.”
“Mother does have a talent for bringing out the best in people.” He added, “You may not know this, but in England it is against the law for someone to wed the sibling of a deceased spouse. However, most laws can be circumvented, and the fact that Mother is a French citizen should help. If they decide to marry, they can do it somewhere on the Continent. But that is for the future. Shall we see if they are in the morning room?”
Charles had accepted Christa’s evasions because he knew that more questioning would be useless, but all of his sister’s explanations and obfuscations merely confirmed his view that something was amiss. He would just have to look further to find what it was.
Charles was reluctant to discuss the issue with Marie-Claire, who was enjoying her first real happiness in years. Why worry his mother if there was nothing that could be done? After lengthy consideration, he finally decided to take the bull (or should he say cow?) by the horns and visit Christa’s former mistress. His sister had spent months in close proximity with the woman, and perhaps Miss Kingsley would know what had upset her so badly. Or perhaps the lady herself was the cause. Christa had said the woman had a good heart, but that was faint praise—perhaps the good heart lay under a foul temper. An aging spinster might have resented Christa’s youthful attractiveness, and made her life miserable.
Charles chose a sunny day in February to make his call, reasoning that everyone was better-natured in bright weather, and since it was unfashionably early there were unlikely to be other callers to disturb the discussion. The earl had a matter-of-fact awareness that most women were kindly disposed to him, but old ladies were usually starched up, and unlikely to welcome calls from total strangers, no matter how well-born
.
At Kingsley House the butler admitted him with impassive mien and took his card up to Miss Kingsley. Charles rose when the parlor door opened, then simply stood and stared. It is disconcerting to confront a mermaid when one has been expecting an old trout, and the blond young woman who entered was so lovely that he temporarily forgot his mission.
Miss Kingsley carried his card and her delicate face was knit in puzzlement. “Forgive me, my lord. Have I had the pleasure of meeting you, perhaps at one of those dreadful squeezes last autumn?”
She glanced at his face, then blushed at his expression. He really was quite extraordinarily handsome, and without thinking she blurted out, “I can’t imagine that I would forget you.”
At the visitor’s laugh, Annabelle blushed so hard she was sure her ears must be red. He shook his head and said, “No, I have not had the honor of an introduction. If I seemed a trifle stunned, it was at your youth and beauty. I met Lord Kingsley some years ago, and had assumed his sister would be much older.”
Annabelle’s brow cleared and she gave an enchanting smile. “You must have known my father. My brother Alex succeeded him two years ago. He is about your age.” She dragged her gaze from his face, then said daringly, “I was just about to have tea. Will you join me?”
She rang for a servant, knowing full well that Cousin Hattie would shriek like one of her birds if she knew Annabelle was entertaining a gentleman caller. Annabelle didn’t care; she had a reckless desire to take her time discovering why Lord Radcliffe had called.
“Thank you,” the earl said as he took a chair. “I was out of England for a considerable period of time, and had not realized there was a new Viscount Kingsley.”
They exchanged commonplaces until tea and cakes arrived, with Annabelle covertly studying her visitor, intrigued by his general resemblance to Alex. There was similarity in height and coloring, and a certain vivid energy, but the features were quite different, and Radcliffe’s voice was lighter in tone and quicker in its speech rhythms. While her brother was very good-looking, she rather thought that the earl surpassed him. But what was the man doing here?
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