by Kerryn Reid
Lewis’s father tasted the soup that had just been placed before him. “As for fatigue, young Wedbury here looks far more robust than you do yourself, Sir John. Are you quite sure it is he who’s been ill?”
Jack chortled. “Lord, Mr. Aubrey, m’father is never ill. Loses some hair every day, though. Say, Maggot—er, Maggs—are you going to finish your soup?” Jack’s bowl was already empty. Lewis felt his mother stiffen beside him.
“I am, sir,” Maggs murmured, his face expressionless.
“I say,” said Sir John to his guests, “you must tell me all that’s happened around town. Did they build that new mill they were talking about last winter?”
A thorough discussion of local business and politics ensued. Lewis did his part, while Jack devoted himself to his dinner and his wine. Maggs said nothing at all. As each new dish was served, his glance flicked to Lewis’s hands to see which utensil he should use. With that covert assistance, he acquitted himself well. Better than Jack, who, when he spoke, was likely to do so with his mouth full.
“Lewis tells me the new vicar has settled in nicely.” Perhaps Sir John chose the topic to remove Jack from the conversation. Each slight impropriety of speech or table manners brought a snicker or a smirk from Lewis’s father, another of those abrasive titters from his mother. Their expressions grew more smug, more exultant as the evening wore on.
It was Lewis’s turn in the game. “Seems so to me. I know Redfern is happy with Wrackwater Bridge.”
His father tsked, shaking his head. “Shows how out of touch he is with popular sentiment. Too unorthodox by half.”
Lewis leaned forward. “Because he’s not a sheep, following every stuffy tradition that’s ever been laid down? It’s good to have some younger blood in the pulpit.”
Father raised one eyebrow, feigned a yawn, and pretended to hide it. “Church and tradition go hand in hand.”
“But maybe they shouldn’t.” Lewis saw Sir John’s mouth open, but he forged ahead. His parents could not hurt him anymore. “Times change, Father.”
Mother rapped his knuckles with her dessert spoon. “That is quite enough, Lewis! Your father is right about Mr. Redfern. And she! So pert and frivolous. More appropriate to a tavern wench or…or an actress, than a vicar’s wife.”
“I know an actress.”
A dense silence fell as all heads faced Jack. The first words he’d said in ten minutes. Could he have thought of anything worse?
Jack took a bite of his lemon tart and looked up. He peered at all the faces, his expression bland, unaware.
With his nervous laugh, Maggs shifted beside him. “Oh, Mr. Wedbury, you—”
“That’s right, Jack,” Lewis said, leaning forward. “We saw a performance at Covent Garden, didn’t we?”
Jack nodded. “Saw several of ’em.”
“Of course,” said Sir John. “Everyone goes to Covent Garden. It’s expected, like attending concerts or balls. Or taking a lady driving in Hyde Park.”
Jack pointed his fork across the table. “Lewis did that. I never did. That yellow-haired chit you liked… What was her name? We saw her in Leeds, didn’t we, Papa?”
Who, Anna? Not in Leeds.
The heads turned toward Sir John. “No, no.” Sweat beaded on his face. “Merely someone who resembled her. We had only a glimpse—” He glanced at Lewis, then quickly away.
Why in God’s name would Anna be in Leeds? Visiting those relatives she’d mentioned in her final letter? Had she been there all through the autumn, so close, and he’d known nothing of it?
“No, you said it was her. I wouldn’t have recognized her at all. We talked to her, dammit. I just can’t remember her name. Though I s’pose she might have a different one now.”
Maggs and Sir John both started talking.
Lewis didn’t hear a word. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know.” Jack pushed his chair away from the table and gestured with his hand to show a round belly. “She’s breeding. ’Bout ready to foal, I should think.”
Cobwebs crept across Lewis’s vision as the blood drained from his brain. The room went silent. He felt the pressure of his fingers on the stem of his wineglass and carefully slid his hand away before he snapped it.
He’d never before been glad to hear his mother’s cackle. With it, the voices resumed. Sir John and Maggs. Then Jack said something. Father chuckled. The sounds buzzed in his head, meaningless, but the others must be listening to them, focusing on them. Focusing on anything but me, please God.
He had no idea how long it was before he drew a breath, before he dared to look up from his plate. Before a word fought its way through the fog.
“Velocipedes.” Sir John seemed to be describing those two-wheeled wonders for the benefit of Lewis’s parents, who gawped at him, eyes wide in astonishment. “For whatever fool reason, they’ve caught the fancy of the London dandies.”
How had they gotten on that subject? It didn’t matter. A surreptitious glance around the table showed everyone’s attention on the conversation, but for a flicker of concern directed his way from Maggs. Lewis could have laughed from relief. Or he could, more easily, have cried.
Father drained his glass. “With luck, they’ll never reach Yorkshire. What a ridiculous notion.”
“Oh, it’s great fun,” proclaimed Jack. “Going uphill, it’s only something you have to haul to the top. But egad, on the downhill you just lift your feet off the ground and fly! Friend of mine lost control once and ran straight into a milkmaid. Funniest thing I ever saw. Milk and maid went every which way, her skirts clear up around her—”
Maggs must have given Jack a kick, because he broke off with an “Ouch!” Mother turned red with shock, but the men all laughed. None of them, Lewis was sure, because Jack’s story was so funny.
No, they laughed to cover one thing or another. Maggs and Sir John to cover Jack’s ouch and the words he had thankfully not said.
Father laughed to cover his contemptuous glee over the fool Jack had made of himself this evening. Lewis could guess what was in his mind. The Aubreys had no title to pass on to their heir, as Sir John did. Their house and estate paled by comparison. Here, finally, was one area where Aubrey clearly outshone Wedbury. No bedlamite in their family, no indeed! Two healthy sons they had. True, one of them was unsatisfactory, a throwback to some inferior bloodline. But he was at least tall, and sane—and there was Gideon, a paragon to compensate for Lewis’s shortcomings.
Lewis laughed too, to hide the fact that nine-tenths of his mind was somewhere else entirely. Some inn or lodgings in Leeds where Anna sat out her confinement feeling… God, what must she feel? Despair the depths of which he could hardly imagine.
When the fruit and cheese had been cleared away and the party left the dining room, Maggs and Jack said their goodnights. Lewis longed to follow them up the stairs. But even if he’d been willing to leave Sir John to the dubious mercy of his parents, he was not about to let the man out of his sight.
Sir John had seen Anna, talked to her. Lewis intended to find out what he knew. Tonight.
Lewis bluffed his way through the next half hour in the drawing room. He laughed when the others did, nodded or smiled or shook his head as seemed most appropriate, uttered a noncommittal word here and there.
Finally, Sir John rubbed his face, to hide a yawn perhaps, and rose. “My regrets, but if I do not send you home now, I fear I shall embarrass myself by falling asleep in my chair.” He gently shepherded everyone out into the hall and called for the Aubreys’ carriage.
While Sir John exchanged some parting words with Father, Lewis helped his mother into her pelisse. Then he kissed that cold cheek once more.
“Imagine,” she murmured, “that Sir John would allow a servant to sit at table with company! Though it’s true that Mr. Wedbury needs a keeper. Poor Lady Wedbury.” She laid a hand over her heart as she said it, as though she really cared.
Lewis had nothing to say beyond, “Goodnight, Mother.”
&nbs
p; Sir John approached, and Lewis went to bid his father goodbye. But instead of the handshake he offered, Father gave him a wink and an elbow in the ribs. “You’re a sly one, lad. I’ve been waiting twenty years to see a drop of Gideon’s blood in you. Seemed such a shame that package between your legs should go to waste.”
Lewis stared in disbelief. Had he fallen asleep and into some nightmare? What man would say such a thing to his son? And he wasn’t finished. With a glance at the others to make sure no one was listening, he laid one big hand on Lewis’s shoulder.
“I could see you were rattled to hear the wench is increasing. Don’t let it bother you. That sort drops ’em as easy as passing turds. Don’t worry about her.”
Rattled? That doesn’t describe the half of it. Lewis’s heart pounded, driving heat up his neck to his face. Yet his body shook, his bones cold with horror. For years he’d wished for his father’s approval. Now it sickened him.
He twisted away, but Father clasped his arm and wouldn’t let go.
The voice was a whisper now. “If the tadpole should die, that’s even better, isn’t it. Then she has no claim on you at all.”
Lewis wrenched his arm from his father’s grasp. “My God, what kind of creature are you?” He choked on the words. Seared by the fire raging through him, he almost forgot he was a civilized man. He stepped away, taut with the compulsion to punch this devil until bones crunched and blood flowed. My own father!
He turned his back and strode into the library. Oh, how he wanted to break something! If it were his own brandy on the silver tray, he would hurl the bottle into the fire and relish the explosion. He would follow that up with every glass he could find. Take up the poker and smash the clock that ticked mindlessly on the mantel, then the mantel itself. Books, upholstery, paintings—there was plenty of destructive scope for a madman.
But he was not mad. They were not his books and bottles. Making a ruin of this civilized refuge would not change his father. Nor would it return Anna Spain to innocence.
He could not stop shivering. The brandy was not his to destroy, but he could damn well drink it. He tasted nothing as it went down, but he felt its heat in his throat and gut as it seeped into his bones, calming his jitters.
Not five minutes later, Sir John entered the room. Already refilling his own glass, Lewis poured a second, sloshing some of the amber liquid into the tray. He placed Sir John’s drink carefully in the man’s hand and took one more sacrilegious gulp—the stuff was much too good to be used merely as a sedative.
He set off on a prowl about the room. Father’s colossal vulgarity made it glaringly clear where Gideon came from. But it had distracted Lewis from what really mattered.
Anna.
Chapter 22
Anna was in Leeds, for God’s sake. A half-day’s drive away.
Jack had a long way to go if he was ever to fully regain his faculties, but he seemed certain of what he’d seen. And with that one wary glance at Lewis, Sir John had confirmed it.
“You weren’t going to tell me.” Lewis spoke from a dark corner as he eyed Sir John, who sat slumped into a chair by the fire.
The man didn’t even look up, merely sighed and stared into the flames. “I hadn’t decided. I knew you would take it hard. There’s—”
“Hard?” Lewis marched out of the shadows. “How else should I take it? I admit I don’t know much about pregnancy, but it’s nine months, right? If Anna Spain is with child—how did Jack put it? About ready to foal?—then the child must be Gideon’s.” My own niece or nephew. His parents’ first grandchild, a by-blow of their much-favored first son.
Sir John cleared his throat. “It might not be.”
“My God, you’re accusing me? It’s what my father thinks. For the first time in my life he’s proud of me, for a shameful thing like that.” Lewis tasted disgust like bile in his mouth. “But you! Don’t you know me better than that?”
Sir John gaped up at him. “That’s not at all what I meant, dear boy.”
“So you think she was raped by some random gent at just the same time she was falling for Gideon’s tricks? That’s bull.” He remembered who he was talking to and lowered his voice. “Sir. Sorry, sir.”
Lewis retreated to the shadows and forced his jaw to relax. That lasted all of five seconds. Because like that fictional random gent, Gideon was perfectly capable of rape.
Lewis squeezed his eyes shut, but it did no good. The pictures were inside his head.
He crossed to a chair and sat on the edge of it. Not the companion to Sir John’s comfortable chair by the fireplace, but a hard seat off to the side. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“Tell me what she said, who was with her…oh, everything.” His hands covered his face, muffling his voice. He heard Sir John swallow in the quiet room, the click of his glass as he set it on the table.
“She was with an older woman, I think a servant. She didn’t introduce us. We came face-to-face at the Rose and Crown—I believe they were collecting a parcel that had come in on the mail coach.”
Sir John paused and Lewis dropped his hands, watching as the narrative continued.
“She was dismayed, as you may imagine. I feared she might faint. She answered my greeting civilly enough, even asked after Jack’s health, but the words did not come easily, poor girl. If we had not come upon her so suddenly, I would have let her go without acknowledging the acquaintance. Jack hadn’t recognized her, so he would never have known the difference. I had no time to consider, however, and at a distance of three feet there was really no choice in the matter.”
“How did she look? Healthy? Happy?” Could this possibly be some other scenario, something innocuous? If the pregnancy were less advanced than Jack thought?
Sir John shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Rather drawn, perhaps. Her eyes seemed huge.”
“Jack seemed to think she might have married.”
Sir John shook his head. “Only because of her condition. Don’t suppose it ever occurred to him to think of London or Gideon. I addressed her as Miss Spain and she didn’t correct me, which you’d think she might be at some pains to do. To let me know all’s right and proper.”
He picked up his brandy and finished it. Lewis’s own glass was missing—he must have left it somewhere on his circuit of the room.
It didn’t matter, he didn’t want it. His rage had fled, leaving him in a state of oppression that felt oddly like grief. No one’s died, you idiot. He dropped his forehead onto the heels of his hands, his fingers burrowing into his hair, no doubt turning it into a ragged jumble.
He heard Sir John stand and approach him but did not move, even when a hand came to rest gently on his bent back.
“I’m sorry, lad. I wish I had told you yesterday so it wouldn’t have taken you by surprise, but I didn’t see the point. Even if it was Gideon, there’s nothing you can do. It’s not your responsibility.”
Lewis did not respond, and the hand withdrew.
He heard a yawn and Sir John said, “I’ll see you in the morning, then.” The door opened and closed. Lewis had what he wanted, silence and solitude.
Not his responsibility? It surely felt like his. Gideon would not be interested, even if he knew. And after tonight, there could be no question of his parents taking in their grandchild.
Don’t worry about her sort. What in bloody hell did Father know about Anna’s sort?
If his parents ever learned of the joyless event, would it have any effect on their opinion of their heir? Lewis thought not. Oh, Mother might pout and lament Gideon’s lack of consideration for her feelings. But he would gift her with his grin, throw an arm around her shoulders, and toss off some line about a man’s needs. She would gaze adoringly into his handsome face, pat his cheek, and all would be forgiven.
Father would feel nothing but pride in his son’s virility. That had always been the case. When Gideon was expelled from Durham School shortly before graduating, Lewis had been privy to his parents’ conversation as he sat reading
in the library.
“It’s no great matter, my dear,” Father had said. “I never expected him to be a scholar. Gideon is a man, he doesn’t need book learning. He’s like one of those ancient gods—he knows his due and takes it. No namby-pamby foolishness from him.” Here he’d turned toward Lewis with a sneer. “Gideon has more manliness in his little finger than Lewis will ever have.”
“Lewis is only twelve,” was Mother’s defense, offered with a dubious frown at her youngest. “Do you not think…?”
Mr. Aubrey had scoffed at that. “A fool’s hope, my dear.”
Pretending he’d gone deaf, Lewis had hidden behind his book. He refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing his hurt.
The clock struck ten. Still early, but there was no reason to stay downstairs. No reason to go to his room, either—it would be a miracle if he slept tonight—but at least the servants could go to bed. He found his brandy in one dark corner, topped it off, and carried it with him as he left the room. Muttering a goodnight to the footman in the hall, he trudged up the stairs.
He’d never known precisely what offense brought his brother’s schooling to that abrupt end, but he knew it had something to do with a girl. There had been plenty of such offenses, including one of their own serving maids when Gideon was just fifteen—the reason he’d been sent to school in the first place. Was that rat seducing them even then? Raping them? Had Anna been the first? Or merely the first lady of quality? Or not even the first of those?
Gideon had another girl on his arm when the Wedburys arrived in London. Lewis did not know her background, but she was part of the social season, no maidservant. Before her, who would know? In the years since leaving school, Gideon could have taken any number of women, with or without their consent. It would be easy to conclude that they were all stupid.
Without a doubt Anna was naïve. Trusting. Vulnerable. Romantic. None of those traits made her stupid.
But they made her a dreadful match for Gideon. Anyone who knew him must have predicted he would grind her to dust under his heel.
