“You looked a mite queerish, Yer Grace. Your ’orse is ready.”
The groom held up Chessie’s reins, as if the queerish dook might have forgotten he even had a horse. Christian reached up with his left hand out of habit, then had to switch hands to take his horse.
This enraged him, that a particular angle of sunlight should plummet him back to the day he was captured, that he was not able to use the hand God Himself had intended him to use, that his heart was ready to fight to the death when no enemy was about.
The elderly stable lad stood there, looking concerned but also uneasy, and Christian wanted to wallop the little fellow into next week.
With his left fucking hand.
“My thanks.”
The groom sidled away, sending one last leery look over his shoulder as Christian led the horse to the mounting block. He tarried, checking the girth, the length of the stirrups, each buckle and fitting on the bridle, because the sense of dread had not receded.
London was prone to riots, and Christian was out of uniform. This summer, everybody was in love with the soldiers in uniform. Hungry men or widows unable to feed their children might bear ill will toward a duke, but not toward a decorated cavalry veteran.
He should have worn a uniform. Again, he should have…
Some part of him watched as his mind prepared to launch into a flight borne of irrational fear and rootless anxiety, even as his horse stood patiently at the mounting block. Christian inhabited two simultaneous realities: the pleasant early evening in the stables, and the inchoate, amorphous disasters gathering in his mind.
Put in your mind a picture of what you can look forward to, and…add details to it, one by one, until the picture is very accurate and the urge to do something untoward has passed.
A snippet of the countess’s chatter, and yet it had lodged in his mind like a burr. The western facade of Severn popped into his head, with its long, curving drive that ran past the smaller lake. This time of year, the rose gardens around the central fountain would be in bloom, and the groundsmen would scythe the park lawns twice weekly. The air would be fragrant with the ripening hay fields and the cropped grass, while the fountain made a soft, splashing undercurrent, different from rain but equally clear and soothing.
An occasional lamb would bleat for its mama…
His heart slowed. Chessie stomped a back hoof, and Christian swung up as he let his mind add detail after detail.
The sound of carriage wheels tooling over the crushed white shells of the driveway.
Light bouncing off the windows on the third floor at the end of the day.
The scent of the lake when the breeze shifted, how the surface rippled with the wind. The ducks rioting and taking wing en masse for no apparent reason.
By the time he found his own mews, Christian was breathing normally and looking forward to seeing the ducal seat.
And to his next sighting of the small, fierce countess who gave surprisingly good advice.
***
“His Grace is riding up the alley, milady.”
“Well, thank God for that.” Gilly lifted her bonnet off and passed it to the footman, whose relief had been evident in his tone. The duke was a grown man, a peer of the realm, a decorated officer, and still, she’d fretted over him as if he were a child gone missing at the market.
“If you would tell Cook we’ll take a cold collation out on the back terrace, I’d appreciate it. Lemonade, plenty of sugar, no tea. And tell her to make it pretty.”
“Very good, milady.”
When he’d left, Gilly checked her appearance in the mirror above the sideboard, hoping her own relief was not as obvious as the footman’s had been. A hairpin had caught in her bonnet’s black netting, which caused a thick blond curl to list down around her shoulder. She hastily tucked it up, fetched her embroidery hoop, and managed to be sitting on the terrace, stitching, when His Grace came trooping through the gate from the mews.
“You’re back.” She rose, planting a smile on her face despite the inanity of her words. “How was your visit?”
“These are ruined.” He pulled off his dress gloves with his teeth, and passed them to her. “His Highness sends you his condolences. Have we anything to eat?”
“He didn’t feed you?”
“He didn’t…he…I forget.” Mercia ran a hand through blond hair coming loose from its queue. Gilly did not offer to tidy him up lest he use his teeth on her.
“I’ve ordered a cold tray.”
He muttered something as he wandered to the bed of daisies pushing up along the back wall.
“I beg your pardon?” Gilly raised her voice to carry over the clopping hooves in the alley beyond the wall.
“I said, you need not join me, Countess. I can take the tray inside.”
Despite his snappishness, the duke should not be alone. “I want to hear of your call upon the Regent.”
He wandered a few more steps, plucked a daisy, and began pulling off its petals, one by one. “You do not want to hear about my call on the Regent, which was perfectly prosaic, boring, in fact.”
“Was it boring for four or five hours?”
“I beg your pardon?” He lifted his gaze from the half-dismembered daisy, and Gilly saw the depths of an arctic winter.
“You were gone for nearly seven hours, Mercia. Prinny observes the courtesies, but by bestowing a few words here, a few minutes there. You missed tea.”
“I missed tea?” Those blond eyebrows rose, and Gilly steeled herself for a blistering set down. “So I did. Perhaps that’s why I’ll have something to eat now.”
He hadn’t said he was hungry, putting Gilly in mind of all the times she’d been too upset to eat. She was saved from concocting some reply when the footman arrived bearing a large tray.
“I’ll set it out,” Gilly said, offering the footman a smile. “My thanks.”
He bowed, shot a puzzled look at the duke, and withdrew. Mercia’s household endured a great deal of puzzlement of late.
“Come sit, Your Grace, unless you’d like to perambulate while you dine?”
He tossed away the denuded daisy and stomped over to the table.
“Strawberry?” Gilly held up a large red berry, wanting to stuff it in his unsmiling mouth. She’d worried about him, and here he was, no explanation, no apologies—nothing.
Mercia took the strawberry from her fingers with his teeth, and the air between them grew less tense.
“Please do sit, Mercia. If you loom over me, you’ll spoil my digestion.”
“Heaven forfend.” He took a seat, despite his sarcastic tone.
“You are a duke,” Gilly said, putting a half-dozen fat strawberries on a plate. “This petulance does not become you, despite what you may have heard about the privileges of rank. Shall I make you a sandwich?”
He eyed the strawberries. “Some buttered bread and cheese.”
Gilly met his glacial gaze, and folded her arms across her chest. “You forgot to say please. You are being perverse, perhaps because your afternoon left you in the mood to brawl with somebody. If you must indulge a violent urge like a territorial beast of the jungle, take yourself off to Jackson’s boxing salon, then. I am a lady. I do not brawl.”
Though God knew, the very thought of plowing her fist into Greendale’s soft belly had provided her a great deal of satisfaction. Restraining the urge had provided more satisfaction yet.
She passed the duke a roll, sliced in half and liberally buttered, a thick piece of cheddar tucked between the halves. She wanted to stuff it down his throat.
Also to cry, though she’d given that up years ago.
To think she’d worried over this…this…
“My thanks.” He took the roll from her, and they ate in uncomfortable silence for some while. Gilly had to slow her own meal to allow for her companion’s deliberate pace. His Grace
was incapable of bolting his grain, even after a long, hungry afternoon with the Regent.
“You’re coming undone.” He made that observation in the same tone of voice as he might have asked for the salt.
“I am slightly perturbed with you, because you have been inconsiderate. I am not undone. I am trying to make allowances.”
The light in his eyes changed, warmed a little. “No, your hair is coming down. Here.” He brushed a hand over her shoulder, where the errant curl was once again free of its pins and bouncing at liberty behind her ear.
“Feathers.” To touch one’s hair while eating was unladylike in the extreme, but there would be nothing for it.
“Hold still.” He rose and removed a pin from her coronet, caught up the rebellious curl, and fastened it securely back in place. “Why are you trying to make allowances?”
“Because we hardly know each other,” Gilly said. “You are not used to answering to a household, and I am not used to the least thing about you. You could not know I would…expect you back for tea.”
He took the last bite of his cheese sandwich and dusted his hands, stopping to peer at his left hand.
“What?” The question left Gilly’s lips unbidden.
“I ate with my left hand.”
“You hold the reins with it.”
“A single rein. I can’t ride in a double bridle. I don’t trust it for that.”
“I’ve never understood why a horse must be made to suffer two bits at once,” Gilly said. “As sensitive as the mouth is, one ought to suffice. You won’t tell me about your afternoon, will you?”
“It was unremarkable. If you’ll excuse me?”
And just like that, he was on his feet. No explanation for his delay, no apology for keeping the household guessing, no effort at making conversation.
“I was worried about you. I’ll be ready to leave for Severn at first light,” Gilly said, though she was having doubts about the wisdom of that plan.
“As will I.” He went back to the bed of daisies and chose another victim. This one he held in his right hand, tapping against the knuckles of his left as the evening shadows gathered around him. “Prinny thanked me.”
Gilly bit into one of the strawberries His Grace had disdained to eat. “He ought to thank you. You served long and well.”
“He said…” Mercia tapped the daisy against his own nose. “He said the way I’d been treated was useful for shaming the French into concessions at the negotiating table. Useful.”
“You were treated disgracefully. Shall you mutilate that flower too?” Gilly didn’t want him to. Yes, the daisies were profuse, and only daisies, but she didn’t want him to indulge in pointless destruction.
He looked down, his expression unreadable in the gloom. Then he strolled over to the table and tucked the flower behind Gilly’s ear. His fingers grazed her jaw, probably unintentionally, but it was a sweet touch. Gentle and soothing, unlike His Grace’s mood.
“My thanks for the food. I’m sorry you were worried. I’ll try not to give you cause for it again. You’ll excuse me if I don’t join you for dinner.”
He sauntered back out the gate, into the darkening alley, off on God knew what ducal errand, while Gilly ate the last of his strawberries and wondered if anything she’d endured in her marriage to Greendale could be considered useful.
Six
Gilly had grown too used to the quiet of the countryside, and her attempts to sleep in Mercia’s town house were fruitless. The streets grew quieter after dark, true, but the remaining sounds compelled the attention for being more isolated.
Then too, she was anxious. Anxious on Lucille’s behalf, hoping the duke’s reunification with his daughter lifted the child’s spirits, and hoping the child might lift the duke’s spirits.
Gilly tossed back the bedclothes and found her black silk wrapper. Was there any consolation to the new widow greater than black silk? She gathered her shawl around her shoulders and made her way to the library, intent on selecting a book for the next day’s journey. She could read in coaches, in short doses anyway.
Except even in this small task, His Grace had to frustrate her.
She rapped softly on the open library door—startling a man who cuddled up with knives was not well advised.
“Come.” He uttered the word without looking up from his desk.
“Good evening, Your Grace.”
He set his pen down with the long-suffering air of a composer interrupted by the charwoman. “I thought you were a footman coming to trim wicks and build up the fire.”
“Sorry to disappoint. What are you working on?”
“A report.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Obviously.”
His foul humor was so palpable Gilly wanted to stomp from the room. No wonder Helene had despaired of the man, despite his former good looks.
“I came to find a book, something soothing to quiet my mind, something to take with me on the journey to Severn.” She crossed to the bookshelves, which held more volumes than she could count in a month. “Shouldn’t you be in bed if we’re to be awake at first light?”
“Sleep eludes me as well.” He was up, prowling around, then poking at the fire.
“When Greendale died, the physician left me with enough sleeping draughts to put down a small herd of horses. I tried not to be offended.”
“He didn’t mean for you to use them all at once.” Now he tidied up his desk, capping the inkwell, opening and closing drawers.
“I’ve never been certain. Have you read all these books?”
“The ones in Latin, English, or French, probably. My Greek is rusty.”
“Then you might show a hint of good manners—nothing binding or impressive—and help me select a book I can take to bed with me and read in the coach tomorrow.”
“Poetry,” he said, banging a drawer loudly. He came over to stand beside her, which meant they were in some proximity, the rows of shelves positioned to accommodate one person browsing, not two. “Here.”
He took down a volume of Blake. “Bucolic, but with occasional nods toward the profound.”
“Read me a few lines.”
His scent came to her, rosemary and sandalwood, fresh, a little piney, male, and clean—even at this hour.
Had he eaten anything since he’d disappeared into the mews in the last of the day’s light?
“‘Like a fiend in a cloud, with howling woe,’” he quoted, “‘After night I do crowd, And with night will go.’ From the Poetical Sketches.”
“Not very soothing. Try something else, and this time read it, please, do not draw upon the gloomy reaches of your memory.” She leaned back against the bookshelf, crossed her arms, and closed her eyes, the better to hear the beauty of the poetry and ignore the grouch reading it.
“‘He loves to sit and hear me sing, Then, laughing, sports and plays with me; Then stretches out my golden wing, and mocks my loss of liberty…’ I cannot read this.”
He held out the book, and Gilly would have bet her favorite silk shawl he’d never opened it. He’d been quoting all the while. The bleakness in his eyes was unnerving.
“Today? When I did not come home?” he said, staring at the little book. “I was waiting.”
He was a foot taller than Gilly, battle hardened, and capable of meanness. He’d killed for King and Country, and endured all manner of privations in captivity, but at that moment, he was…uncertain.
“What were you waiting for?”
“The park…it wasn’t safe.”
She took the poetry from his grasp. “Explain this to me, Your Grace. I do not take your meaning.”
“I rode to Carlton House through the parks, to avoid the streets, the shops, the people…at midday, nobody’s in the park.”
“And later in the day, everybody who is anybody is i
n the park.” She took his arm and steered him back toward the fire, which was roaring merrily, thanks to his attentions. “You did not want to deal with the awkward questions and the well-meant stupidity.”
He frowned down at her. “I have underestimated you.”
“Most do. I prefer it that way.”
“As a widow, you’re subjected to awkward questions too, aren’t you?”
Gilly wanted to see his eyes, because she sensed his inquiry had hidden, gnarled roots, so she took a seat on the sofa and patted the place beside her.
Had Helene intended that her husband be left with awkward questions? Had she grown weary of the awkward questions related to his captivity? Was that why she’d made the choices she had?
“One isn’t supposed to be a happy widow,” Gilly said, certain in her bones Mercia would not judge her for the admission. “One might be merry, after several years’ bereavement, or peaceful, or content, but not happy. Perhaps you’ll consider me unnatural and limit my influence on Lucille, but I am a happy widow.”
He settled beside her, gingerly, as if the sofa were too hot to sit upon, and Gilly heard the poem again in her head: “He stretches out my golden wing, and mocks my loss of liberty.” “What was your report about, Your Grace?”
“Nothing of any import, old army business.”
“Then you won’t mind if I sit here and read for a bit while you work on it?”
His expression shifted, as if he were frowning because he was thinking too hard, not because she’d displeased him.
“I’ll be as quiet as a mouse,” she said, opening the book to a random page. “I can keep quiet, you know, when I choose to.”
“I’ve written enough for now.”
“Then find your own book,” she said, leafing through hers. “Find an old friend, and renew your acquaintance.”
He wandered off while Gilly chose a nice long poem about flowers and skies and lambs. She would not have remarked his return, except this time, he sat down like he didn’t expect the sofa to collapse under his weight. He sat close enough that the fold of his dressing gown casually draped over the hem of Gilly’s shawl.
He held another small volume, but stared into the fire, the book unopened in his hands. When Gilly yawned a half hour later and looked up again, he hadn’t moved in the entire time she’d been reading.
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