Bitterness stabbed through him. He’d certainly made a hash of things. The black knight, storming in to save the day, spurring his horse to a lather, and himself spurred on by demons, usually did.
“Sometimes I catch Miss Reed wearing that very expression.” He heard Louisa speaking as if from far off. “Wounded and hopeless, but with the same mulish tightness about the mouth. Unyielding.”
For a moment, he felt almost like a boy again, looking up at her, so much taller than he, and so much gentler than anyone he had ever known. He almost wanted to pull her down beside him and weep upon her breast. He had never allowed himself to do that when he was a boy. Too late now. When he spoke, his voice was thick.
“Tell me,” he said, “are you so very lonely?”
“Isidore,” she said, searching his face. She leaned over and put a finger beneath his chin. She used to do that when she wanted his attention, wanted to make him listen.
Let Michael go back with you. Let Michael try to talk with him.
She said, “It’s not your fault.”
His jaw worked without his volition. He would not look at her. She pulled back and straightened.
What’s not my fault? He wouldn’t be able to ask without sneering. He would not subject her to his scorn. Louisa was a sweet, uncomplicated woman. She’d never understood him. She’d never understood Phillipa. He would not punish her for having a simpler nature. A better nature. But her exoneration meant nothing.
“You could leave town.” He smiled bleakly at the vase of roses on the table. “Shut up the house. You could stay with Edwina.”
“I wouldn’t want to impose.” As Louisa spoke, the room dimmed. The blinds were open, but the sunlight no longer beamed bright squares upon the carpet. The red of the roses deepened. Blood-dark.
“She’d be happy to have you,” he said, but he knew it for a lie. Edwina found her mother’s presence cloying. Always had. She took after Michael. Practical, efficient, active. Displays of strong emotion displeased her. Two weeks after Phillipa’s death, Edwina had already lost patience. Sid, she’s not trying to get better. She likes to be miserable. I can’t endure another minute of it.
Still, he pressed on. “You’d be a great help to her, I’m sure. I could settle things here. You could go at once.”
“And take Miss Reed?” Louisa sat gracefully in a seat across from him. The last rays shining through the windows thinned, and the room swam with shadows. Clouds were rolling in from the country, filling the sky, replacing that pale, scrubbed blue with a dome of gray.
“Miss Reed wants nothing more than to work as a governess.” He realized as he said it that he believed it. Well, why not take her at her word? He had offered her a truce. If she would refrain from voicing histrionic transmissions from the other side, he would not malign her to Louisa. “Find her a position. She won’t regret an early dismissal if you honor your agreement.”
In the murky room, Louisa’s face was indistinct beneath her upswept hair, the gray strands luminous. She was young to have gone so gray. That hair used to be warm, chestnut brown. Her eyes were soft as moss, shading between green and brown. All of her daughters had inherited Michael’s coloring. Phillipa’s eyes had been like chips of obsidian. .
He heard her sigh. “You know, I have thought about it.” For a split second, he thought she meant going to Edwina, releasing Miss Reed from her service. But even before she continued, he knew she had never considered the suggestion. She had barely registered his words. She was picking up a different thread, the one always unspooling in her mind.
“I’ve thought about why it’s so hard,” she said. “After all, other women have lost their children.”
“No consolation there,” he said gruffly. “Each person’s suffering is only a small share of the great sum of suffering in the world. Just makes you sorrier for the world.”
“But other women bear it better.”
What could he say? “People are different.”
“I’ve often thought … ” She started again, “It would be easier if it happened … differently. Illness. Childbirth. It’s not that I would have been prepared, but I could have wrapped my mind around it. Understood it somehow. Come to terms with it. The way it was … so sudden. I always think … there was one last thing she had to tell me.”
“She was twenty years old.” He realized he was digging his nails into the damask of the sofa arm. “She had many things to tell you. A lifetime’s worth.”
“No.” Louisa’s whisper floated from the depths of the chair. “That isn’t what I mean. I think … she died with something important unsaid.” She had sunk into herself.
He wanted a drink. Or seven.
“It’s dark.” He rose abruptly to light the lamps. Rutherford wasn’t coming. The man was too discreet to knock on a closed door. The hiss and flare of the lamps, the warm yellow light, was a relief.
“There,” he said.
“That’s better. Thank you. I hadn’t realized.” Louisa stirred in her chair. “Sit.”
But he couldn’t sit down again. Rising had been a victory. He needed to quit that room. He had a bottle of whisky in his apartments that was already aged to perfection. He would go.
First, a concession.
“Take this month with Miss Reed,” he said. Perhaps Louisa would even benefit from her presence, albeit not in the way she intended. Mothering Miss Reed might take her mind from Phillipa.
Then, a request.
“But after this month, I beg you, put an end to it. No more séances. No more strays.” However lovely. He paused. Played his last card. “Michael would be concerned if he knew. He too would think you need a change. If I saw more cause for alarm … I might feel compelled to write to him.” Louisa did not notice, or did not acknowledge, the implied threat.
“Michael. He’s so reasonable.” She shrugged. “He was a good father. A better father than a husband.”
Isidore stirred uncomfortably before he could stop himself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t talk like this in front of you. You always looked up to him.” She shifted in her seat, and her skirts rustled. She smoothed the silk, a gesture too absently tender, too intimate for Isidore to watch. He looked away.
“You would be a good father.” This snapped his head back toward her.
“You would have had children by now,” she said. “I think of that sometimes too.”
Christ almighty. “Maybe, maybe not.” He should look at her. Not meeting her eyes, rocking on heels—those were his tells. He should look at her. But it was impossible. “Not every married couple produces children.”
“You would have.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “Beautiful children.”
Before she could begin to name these phantoms and place dimples in their cheeks and ribbons in their curls, he cleared his throat.
“It’s time I go.”
“Of course,” Louisa said at once, rising with a little shake of her head. Banishing the grandchildren that never were. “You came on foot? I’ll have the coach sent around to take you back.” He demurred, but she could be insistent. “The weather has turned,” she said. “It’s the coach or a hat. I thought so,” she said with a gleam in her eye as he gave her a rueful grin. “You’re coming to the Tenbys’ party on Saturday?”
He’d almost forgotten. He frowned. Polite excuses.
“I’m allergic to turbot,” he murmured. Now it was Louisa’s turn to frown.
“Then confine yourself to the turtle soup and capon,” she said. “You talk to me about loneliness, but really, Isidore, you’re the one who acts like a social gathering has the appeal of a tooth extraction. Roger Tenby was a good friend, if I recall.”
Yes, damn it, they were all good friends. Five years ago, six years ago, seven years ago. The whole glittering crowd. Young, wild, in love with themselves, and, for a week here and there, in love with each other. One big, happy family.
He’d have to remember to send Tenby a letter. Frightf
ully sorry, old boy. Sudden toothache. He couldn’t just pick up where he’d left off. Didn’t have it in him. These last two days had proved it to him.
“I’ll consider it,” he said.
She waited with him while the coach was brought around.
“I’m going to bring Miss Reed,” she said. “I’m aware that I’ve put her in a gloomy situation. Gay company will do her good. She’s very serious. Didn’t you find her so?”
This merited a shrug. He had found her serious. Among other things. Intelligent. Quixotic. Fascinating.
“It will be interesting to introduce her to Mr. Huntington.”
The suggestion in her voice caused his eyes to fly to her face. She wore a tiny smile.
He scowled. “Now you want to play matchmaker? Do you hope to tempt a member of the beau monde into a mésalliance with your medium?”
Louisa ignored his scowl. “Mr. Huntington is a sober-minded young man. And Miss Reed is a woman of good sense and good breeding. Don’t protest! I may know very little of her background, but certain things are self-evident.”
He snorted. Even Huntington would want to know that his well-bred wife hadn’t dropped down from the moon. A mysterious past could be an asset for a woman who wanted to play medium. For a woman who wanted to walk down the aisle it was a distinct disadvantage.
He said only: “Miss Reed expressed interest in a paid position, not an advantageous match.”
“Yes. Unusual, isn’t it?” Louisa mused.
Unusual. Try suspicious. Red flags. Alarm bells. He didn’t want to dwell on the mystery Miss Reed presented. It might make him reconsider his truce. And if the truce were called off …
He would have to renegotiate terms. The idea of a renegotiation caused his veins to constrict. He would, slowly, so slowly, disrupt the mechanism that powered her, coil the springs tighter and tighter, until they shot in every direction. He would melt her steel will and hold her molten in his arms. Take her hot tongue deep into his mouth. Part her quicksilver flesh and slide his fingers …
“Her father died quite poor, I believe,” said Louisa. “I wonder if there might be a sad story there.”
“Ah,” he interrupted. “The coach.”
He didn’t want to reprise Miss Reed’s sad story. Come up with more flattering variations. Sad stories didn’t interest him. They were the air he breathed. They suffocated him. He needed to stay far away from her. And he would.
He had done what he had to do. He had assessed the situation, kissed the daylights out of the suspect, and neutralized the danger. Now all that remained to him was to ride, boldly ride in the other direction and not look back. If he managed that, it wouldn’t be a complete rout.
But he couldn’t keep himself from a parting remark.
“Huntington needs an heiress. Or at least, his creditors would prefer it.” Sober-minded. Huntington. Indeed.
As he bent to kiss Louisa’s hand, he did refrain from murmuring, “See you in a month.”
Chapter Ten
A month can feel like a very long time. A minute can feel like a very long time. Clocks tell a man nothing about how he experiences the duration of the passing moments. Isidore looked at his pocket watch often, staring at the slender hands, which seemed frozen in place. Surely the watch had wound down? Surely the hands would have shifted by now around the dial? Somehow every activity, every errand, produced some new reason for him to pay a visit to Trombly Place. He grew restless waiting these reasons out. Yes, Louisa loved irises, but he’d managed to pass costermongers daily for weeks without having to fight the inclination to dash over to her with a bouquet. He was going soft in the head.
On Friday afternoon, he stood in the street staring at the flowers like a lunatic until the woman sitting behind them, Irish by her lilt, asked him if he mightn’t prefer planting a seed between the cobbles and staring at that. He bought a bouquet of irises then, but as soon as he turned the corner, he saw another woman selling potted plants and flowering sprigs—laurel and myrtle, geraniums and hawthorn—and he couldn’t help but buy a budding hawthorn branch. Miss Reed’s lips would curve if he gave it to her.
“From Avalon,” he would say, and her lips would part into a smile that revealed those slightly crooked teeth. The smile would flit across her face and vanish, and he would have to tease her until she smiled again. She responded to his teasing. It rallied her; she became arch, confident, uninhibited. Playful. She forgot, for an instant, her reserve. Maybe he should buy a laurel branch too. Something he seemed to recall that the Romans bent into wreaths and wore about their heads … instead of hats. Presenting her with a laurel wreath might even make her laugh. Miss Reed had felt the shared fun of his poor jokes about the Romans. Her iron self-control had melted just a little.
Remembering Miss Reed’s self-control, he remembered—belatedly—his own. He returned at once to his apartments.
“Yes?” he snarled when Brinkley’s mouth fell open.
“Nothing, my lord.” His valet recovered quickly. “Very lovely. Shall I put them in the breakfast room?”
He wanted to snap, “You can put them on the refuse heap,” but instead he responded with a curt, “As you please,” handing over the irises and hawthorn, and silently resolved to take his breakfast in his study for the rest of the season.
Saturday he dedicated entirely to business. He had plenty to keep him occupied. He’d made strategic investments in Egypt and gotten involved with several commercial houses in Alexandria. Cotton cultivation. He’d done well, and he’d needed to. His father hadn’t been happy when he left England. In fact, he’d lunged across his desk with a dagger and tried to cut off his ear. The left one. The one he hadn’t sliced when he was a boy. That was a prelude to cutting off his income.
He was lucky Michael Trombly had drilled the basics of business into his head, and he’d prospered. Now he was in the process of selling. Exports were bound to go down with the War Between the States over and America poised to reenter the market.
There was also this continuing issue of what to do about his hereditary landholdings. The Blackwood estate required radical restructuring, not only of the land use and terms of tenancy, but also of the relationships between the Blackwoods and the families who lived and worked on their properties. He would not follow in his father’s footsteps. He would not run the viscountcy as though nothing had changed since the Restoration.
Technological innovations and political reforms were slowly disintegrating the calcified hierarchical system, freeing men of all classes to move from their ancestral homes, to find new occupations. England would see the day when all men met on equal footing. Of that he had no doubt, even if the majority of his cohort of lords insisted on denying it. The act of trade, not the fact of birth, would define social relations. And feudal ties … they would fall away. The estate had to become economically viable and socially satisfying for everyone involved, or it would crumble.
Paternalism had always struck Isidore as a rather bad model for running affairs. The well-being of the group depended entirely on the benignity of the father.
And sometimes the father was a brute. A perverted, pitiless fiend.
Yes, there was plenty to do. He moved his breakfast tray from the desk to a chair and spread out his papers, arranging them into stacks. He picked up a pen. He could develop plans for farm organization, brainstorm methods, sketch out the balance of inputs and outputs. He shifted his papers again to make room for a writing pad. He put the tip of the pen to the paper.
He had the capital to invest in machinery; he would take advantage of innovations in agricultural science. He would counteract years of inertia, implement improved drainage systems, educate the farmers on crop rotation and fertilizers, and shift the distribution of profits so they realized more income from their labors and felt more responsibility for, and pride in, their achievements.
It would be a monumental task. The Blackwood estate had stagnated for generations; the changes would have to happen in stages. Every decisio
n presented a challenge and an opportunity. Focus was essential.
He looked down at the writing pad. He’d scrawled a zigzag line, a series of peaks and troughs. Not unlike the repeating shape of a finely molded upper lip, with a deep valley and two crests … He dropped the pen. It was too soon to draft a plan anyway. Before he could educate farmers, he needed to educate himself. He stalked to his library, returned with a copy of Morton’s Agricultural Cyclopaedia, and settled back at his desk. He read for what felt like a decade then checked his watch. Definitely broken. He let the Agricultural Cyclopaedia bang shut and picked up a copy of The Journal of the Agricultural Society of England. He leaned on his elbows over the journal, furrowing his brow, aping concentration in the hopes that the posture would penetrate to his brain. Concentrate. Ah, soil complexity. Fascinating. As he blinked at tables listing crop yields in trial plots fertilized with different quantities of superphosphate of lime, he found that his knee was vibrating. His eyes kept wandering up to fix on a wall sconce, and he had to push back his chair again and again to stand and stretch the bunched muscles in his thighs.
His chair had grown remarkably uncomfortable. His study smelled stale. A bit of fresh air … a walk to … Berkeley Square. No. It was imperative that he remain in his study, that he persevere. His estate manager had arrived in London the previous evening; they had an appointment for three that afternoon. He needed to be ready with questions, proposals …
He checked his watch. Still eleven a.m. Maybe more coffee. He could ring, or better yet, go down to the kitchen for it himself. No. No coffee. Soil complexity. He leaned again over The Journal of the Agricultural Society of England.
Soil. Who would have thought it was so goddamn complicated? Wasn’t anything simple?
He pitched The Journal of the Agricultural Society of England across the desk and watched it sail through the air. The edges flopped against the mantle as the journal fell, making one of his carvings—a basswood donkey, braying, big eared—skip closer to the mantel’s edge. He should give the thing to Clement. But it was crudely done. The donkey’s ears were a little too big. Clement himself was a perfectionist; he should give him a better example of his craft. He tried to turn a dispassionate eye on his woodwork. His gaze lingered on the carving of the deer—its slender legs rising from a hunk of unfinished wood as though it stood on rough forest ground. It was his finest piece, his finest animal, at any rate. Anyone with knowledge of both woodcarving and instrument-making would judge the clumsiest of his violins finer than the best of his figurines. He had a calling as a luthier.
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