“Lady Avis has no other source of female companionship. Of course she would appreciate Lily Prentiss.”
He stalked off, yelling at the lads to fetch the Bothwell coach, while Hadrian wondered how, exactly, an earl’s daughter had become so smitten with a laird’s rascally son that she’d tossed propriety to the winds, three times over, before solemnizing their union.
Ashton Fenwick certainly came from passionate, if not exactly respectable, stock.
Chapter Four
“You’ll use those pigeons?” Avis asked Harold as Hadrian watched them emerge from the stables.
“I promise I will.” Harold patted the hand she’d wrapped over his forearm. “I will write frequently and send back whatever fantastical treasures I find that might appeal to you.”
“You don’t need to send gifts, Harold. Just be safe and happy, and let us know how you go on. I’ll miss you.”
“None of this sentiment, Avie Portmaine,” Harold replied, wrapping her in his embrace. “You’ll have need of my handkerchief, and then I’ll have to borrow Hay’s when we get into the coach.” He held her, his chin resting on her temple, while Hadrian considered riding back to Yorkshire for the sheer, predictable hell of it. “You’ll remember what we talked about?”
She nodded and stayed right where she was, the sight of her clinging to Harold twisting Hadrian’s heart most disagreeably.
“I hate good-byes,” she said. “You’ve been such a good friend, and I will miss you.” She dissolved into open weeping, while Harold shot a chagrined look over her shoulder at Hadrian.
“We’ll miss him together,” Hadrian reminded her, tucking his handkerchief into her hand. “At least Harold’s departure means you and I might renew our acquaintance, and I flatter myself that’s a good thing.”
A good thing years overdue, in fact.
“It is,” Avis agreed, stepping back. “A very good thing, and I know Harold won’t take any stilly chances, and he won’t leave port unless the sea is as calm as glass, and he’ll be sure to write, and to be careful, and to send us a pigeon every so often.”
“Two pigeons,” Harold agreed, kissing her cheek. “Now I really must go, lest I embarrass us all by canceling my travel plans because I miss my neighbors before I even set sail.”
He kissed her cheek again and then let Hadrian bundle him into the coach.
Harold slumped against the squabs before the horses were moving. “Ye merciful gods. I’ve been so focused on the practicalities of leaving, and the thought of leaving you, I didn’t see that coming.”
The coach clattered out of the stable yard, while Avis stood curiously alone, waving Hadrian’s handkerchief.
“That?”
Harold flourished his handkerchief out the window, then folded up his linen and tucked it away. “I’m a decade Avis’s senior, and she and her sister are the closest thing I will have to daughters or younger sisters. I shall miss Avis sorely and worry for her endlessly.”
“You love her.” Hadrian said the words slowly, tasting them for signs of insult and finding none. Harold loved Avis, while Hadrian…probably loved her too, in a fraternal fashion.
“I do love Lady Avis, enough that I keep an eye on Hart Collins and pass along all I learn regarding his whereabouts to Benjamin and Vim.”
Somebody should certainly remain apprised of Collins’s movements. “I’m surprised Collins still draws breath. He’s an offense against the natural order and stupid to boot.”
A vicar could not have been so honest.
“Coming from you that is harsh, though I have to agree. Collins has been forced to eke out an existence on the Continent for most of the past decade, but he periodically slips back to England. He holds the barony now and is owed the occasional coin as a result.”
Wilhelm Carpentier, Avis’s older half-brother—Vim to his familiars—was likely responsible for ensuring Collins kept his distance from Cumberland. “Have you been tempted to challenge Collins?”
While Harold considered his answer, the coach topped the rise that separated Blessings from Landover.
“Vim asked me not to call Collins out. Said it wasn’t my place and my contribution was looking after the girls as they convalesced. I was to leave Collins’s comeuppance to Vim and Benjamin.”
Hadrian braced his boot on the facing bench as the coach headed down the declivity toward home. “It’s been twelve years, Hal. Avie lives at Blessings like a hermit, and Collins has not been brought to account by her brothers.”
“She’s content, Hay.”
“She doesn’t have any choice,” Hadrian said, thinking of Fenwick’s reasoning regarding Lily Prentiss. “This life is all she can imagine, but she deserves more.”
“So show her more.”
“Hal, if you think—”
Harold waved a dismissive hand. “You’re a man of the church, full of principle, a gentleman, and not subject to the same base urges as the rest of us. Avie’s a woman grown, she never took holy orders, and you are likely one of few who might be able to pierce her armor.”
The Landover succession needed an heir, in other words. “Spring is upon us, and you’re off on romantic idyll. Spare me your innuendo, Harold.”
And of course, Harold’s smile turned appallingly sweet. “I am off on a romantic idyll. I’ve waited years and years for this, Hay, and I have you to thank for allowing me this freedom.”
As if Hadrian had had a choice.
“You will send pigeons,” Hadrian said in his most stern tones. “You will write. You will not set sail unless the sea is calm as glass. You will not take chances, nor drink too much with Swedes and Danes who are even bigger than you are, and you will come back to us, when you can, in great good health and better spirits.”
“I won’t let you down, Hay.” Harold’s expression was utterly serious. “Not even about the Danes and Swedes.”
“Lest your Finch fly away. I suppose the man has his uses after all.”
The next morning, Hadrian couldn’t think of one positive thing to say regarding James Anderson Finch, except perhaps—just perhaps—Finch loved Harold, made him happy, and gave him the courage to dream.
Three things, then, but only three. Finch was also tolerant of large, slobbering hounds, which added a foot note to the short list of his virtues.
“I’ll write,” Harold recited as he and Hadrian stood alone at the mounting block. “I’ll sail only calm waters, I’ll send pigeons, I’ll come back to visit often and I will be fine.”
“One has no choice but to trust you on this,” Hadrian said, as the dog bounded along the fence row.
“I trust you as well,” Harold replied, tugging on his horse’s girth.
“Trust me?”
“You’ll do right by Landover,” Harold said, gazing across the empty saddle at the cavorting hound. “You’ll do right by your legacy, but I think Landover will also do right by you, if you allow it.”
“You’re waxing cryptic in your dotage.”
“I’m nearly eight-and-thirty years old, Hay, and I feel like a boy going up to Town for the first time.”
“You look like a boy too. Eager, happy, and ready to take on life. You will enjoy this excursion or I’ll know the reason why.”
Harold pulled Hadrian in to a fierce hug and held on, and for the first time in their relationship, Hadrian had the sense of being the elder, the one who brought more wisdom to a situation.
“Finch is your choice, Hal,” Hadrian said softly, “but you’re also his. You’re leaving behind land and a title, but he’s leaving his entire family, because he can’t bear to live without you any longer, because you make him a better man. Trust that.”
Harold stepped back, surprised and beamish. “You understand.”
“In my better moments.” In his best moments, perhaps. “They never last long where hanging felonies and sinful abominations are concerned. You think you’ll miss me and Landover, and you will, but by the time you’re at the foot of the drive, you’ll be thinking of the future, no
t the past. By the time you’re off our land, you’ll be so eager to get to Harwich, you’ll barely keep your horse from a flat-out gallop.”
“I never said those things to you,” Harold mused. “All the times you went off to school, up to Town, I never knew what to say.”
“You say good-bye.” Hadrian initiated this hug. “Godspeed and safe journey.”
Harold took a long slow inhale in his brother’s arms then stepped back.
“Good-bye, Hay. God love you, and I will never, ever cease being grateful that you’re allowing me this.”
“On the horse, Hal, now. Your future awaits.”
Hal swung up, whistled for his dog, and cantered off.
And because Hadrian was more experienced than his brother when it came to partings, he called for his own horse and rode not down the driveway after Harold, but rather, up into the hills, into the brisk morning air, into the brilliant light of the rising sun, into the breathtaking views of…all Hadrian was now responsible for.
* * *
“When Lily comes down,” Avis said, “tell her not to wait breakfast on me.”
“Very good, my lady.” The footman held the door for her, and Avis was out into the lovely morning air, ready to begin another week of managing her brother’s estate. With that responsibility in mind, she would pay a call on a neighbor, the first such call in five years.
Getting to Landover took longer than it should have because Avis made a habit out of avoiding the most direct path. She instead trotted into the Landover home wood, the trees above her only beginning to leaf out.
And then, that sensation prickled at her nape, the feeling she dreaded most, of being tracked like prey.
“Who’s there?”
The trees were tall enough to weaken the early morning sunlight, and patches of mist still clung to the ground. The forest should have been otherworldly, a fairy glen of old, but instead, Avis’s surroundings felt alien and unsafe.
“Avis?” Hadrian Bothwell emerged from the bend in the bridle path, his blond hair windblown, his cheeks ruddy.
Relief coursed through her, and a pleasure beyond simple relief. “Good morning, Hadrian. You’ve seen Harold off?”
“At very first light.” Hadrian drew his chestnut up beside her black. “Shall we walk? Caesar needs to cool out.”
“You were galloping off the dismals?”
“I’m fine, thank you, and you?” He smiled self-consciously, and Avis let him have a little silence, a little dignity. “I’ve always been the one striking out into the world while Hal stayed here, tending the flock, so to speak.”
“You tended different flocks. Brothers grow up.”
“We at least grow older, though Hal never once complained, never shirked, never implied by word or deed that raising his little brother was an imposition.” Harold had been, in short, a good shepherd.
Avis nudged her horse forward down the path, Hadrian doing likewise. “Your brother has a strong parental streak. I’ve understood why Harold might not want to marry, but I’ve always thought he’d make a wonderful papa.”
“Why wouldn’t he want to marry?”
What did Hadrian know, and what would he be comfortable discussing? “Not everyone feels the need to marry. Harold has the gift of appearing content, and he’s been patient enough not to settle. He could well meet somebody on these travels who strikes his fancy.”
“I doubt he’ll marry,” Hadrian said. Carefully.
What was a former vicar to do with a beloved older brother bent on thwarting society’s most prosaic conventions?
Avis patted her horse’s neck and searched for safe conversational ground. “I expect marriage can be as much a prison for men as it is for women, at least once the children start coming.”
“Prison? I hope my late wife didn’t see it as such.”
“I think you’d know if she had, and you’d certainly know if you did.”
“One forgets,” Hadrian said slowly, “how insightful you can be.”
Or maybe one forgot how little tolerance she had for small talk. “One forgets how hard you’ll work to dodge a moment of sentiment, Hadrian Bothwell. You love your brother, and you’ll miss him terribly.”
Beside her, Hadrian let his horse amble along on a loose rein. Fenwick had sung rhapsodies about that horse, and Hadrian looked entirely comfortable with the beast.
“Are you in love with Harold, Avie?”
Hadrian’s company was not exactly restful. Avis had forgotten that, too, though not even Fenwick called her Avie in that exact, familiar tone of voice.
“I love your brother, of course, and I owe him much, but he never showed more than a brotherly or avuncular interest in me, and for that, I am grateful.”
Birds flitted from branch to branch, the soft green leaves stirred in a mild breeze, and the forest was once again pretty rather than sinister. Nonetheless, the past abruptly yawned before Avis, a conversational quagmire in the middle of an otherwise lovely morning.
“I didn’t mean—” Avis began. “Well, maybe I did mean... Were Harold interested in me in that way, it would have been awkward. I thought for a while he’d offer me a white marriage, but was relieved when he didn’t.”
“A white marriage might have solved some problems,” Hadrian said in that same neutral voice. “For him.”
“Relieved him of the perennially hunting mamas and widows?” Avis suggested. “They were no real problem for him. He smiled, flirted, and escorted them on the dance floor, and they made no progress.”
“What about you?” Hadrian stretched up in the stirrups then settled back into the saddle. For a man of the church, he was quite at home on a horse. “Would a white marriage have solved problems for you?”
“You’re brave, Hadrian.” He was also still her friend, to ask such a question, and friends were honest with each other. “I would have wanted children, you see, and Harold would have tried to accommodate me, and our white marriage would have awkwardly become something much less than the friendship we shared instead.”
“Or maybe something more?”
“We’ll never know. I attribute that to your brother’s great and often underestimated perceptivity. What of you? Have you thought to remarry?”
He scowled at the bracken bordering the path. “I was not a very good husband.”
He’d not been a happy husband, then. “Tell me about your wife.”
Avis didn’t want to listen, not to this, but twelve years ago Hadrian had listened to her, listened, and listened, and listened, no matter how sordid and unbecoming the tale, and she owed him the same courtesy.
“Her name was Rue. She was the daughter of a clergyman and seemed suited to the life I envisioned. Harold didn’t like her.”
Had Hadrian liked her? “Harold once said she had her eye on Landover, not you. That observation was a rare breach of manners for him, so I recall it clearly.”
“Harold likely had the right of it. I wanted children, though once the marriage had settled, Rue wanted to wait. For what, I don’t know.” He rode a length ahead and held a branch back so Avis’s horse could pass.
“Was your wife waiting for a better position?”
“I provided from my own funds, not from the livings I held. We never wanted for much, though a vicar doesn’t exactly seek an image of idle luxury.”
“You had servants?” Avis was no pattern of card of Christian virtue, to be relieved that the memory of Hadrian’s late wife did not cause him raging grief.
“We had at least a maid of all work and a man of all work,” Hadrian said. “We had a conveyance to use, more than tallow and rushlights. I didn’t feel material want, but a woman needs a few simple comforts.”
“She had you,” Avis said, wanting to throttle this Rue person who’d put such doubt in a good man’s eyes. “You’re much more than a simple comfort.”
He straightened in the saddle and took up the reins. “Generous words, coming from you.”
“I speak the truth, Hadrian Bo
thwell,” she said sternly. “Perhaps your wife failed to appreciate the wealth she had because she was too busy anticipating the wealth to come.”
“One doesn’t want to speak ill of the dead.”
Oh, yes, one did. The vicar was already losing his hold of the man, which was doubtless what Harold had hoped would happen.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Avis said. “Something that doesn’t speak well of your former spouse.”
“Late spouse.”
The last of the mists dissipated around them, while Avis waited, as Hadrian had so often waited for her to find words.
“There were letters,” he admitted some distance later. “She wrote to her sisters of her discontent. Upon her death they gave me the letters, likely not recalling their exact contents.”
“The lot of them sound in want of loving kindness.” Or plain common sense.
“Death doesn’t always make us think more clearly or carefully,” Hadrian said, as they emerged from the trees. “When Rue died, I stopped thinking for a time. I stopped nearly every mental function, while the body soldiered on, like a ghost ship without rudder or crew.”
“But you watched yourself soldiering on, like reading a book about the life and times of one Hay Bothwell, a tale neither boring nor amusing, but simply…a tale.”
He drew his horse up, the morning sun showing both the fatigue in his eyes and the sheer male attractiveness of his features.
“Is it still like that for you, Avie? You’re observing as somebody resembling you lives your life?” His voice and his gaze held such concern, she looked away, across the dewy loveliness of the deer park.
Avis seldom rode this close to the mares’ pasture, though it was fitting Hadrian be the one to accompany her. “Usually, I am content, Hadrian, and I can take pride in running Blessings; nonetheless, I’m having the dower house refurbished.”
The admission felt like a confession, a sin of which she should repent.
“The dower house?”
“I’ll be thirty in less than two years, Hadrian.”
“You said you’d want children.”
He had wanted children, too. “What one wants and what one gets are not always the same,” Avis said, addressing herself to a space above and between her horse’s ears. “One sometimes has to send a brother in his fourth decade off on a quest across the water.”
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