The volume of good wishes from Christian’s peers and neighbors quite honestly surprised him. Each day brought more letters, some from people he’d never met, congratulating him on his safe journey home, thanking him for his service to the realm “above and beyond the call of duty,” wishing him well in light of his “noble sacrifices.”
Platitudes, all of them, and they made Christian at once furious and humble—though nobody had any word regarding Girard.
“Will I disturb you?” The countess in her dark bedclothes stood in the doorway, her hair a golden rope braided over one shoulder.
“Of course not.” Christian rose, for she was a lady. An increasingly kissable, holdable lady. “Sleep eludes you?”
“I’m hoping not.” She advanced into the room and closed the door to keep in the fire’s heat. “I’ve brought your volume of Blake back, lest it find its way to some trunk or portmanteau of mine.”
She was doing it again, hinting at her departure, and all the conflicted emotion he’d felt contemplating his mail transferred itself to the lady in bare feet before him.
Long feet, with high arches and pink, fetching toes. Surely, composing odes to a widow’s feet indicated inchoate loss of reason?
“Shall you choose another volume? And what can you be thinking, my dear, to wander about unshod?” He hoped she was home, where such lapses were not a privilege but a right.
“I wasn’t thinking.” But she smiled, that same wan smile that he often saw her turn on Lucy. He suspected that smile signaled a lack of children in her life to love, which lack she ought to lay squarely on Greendale’s no doubt tidy grave. “A want of regular, rational processes is my besetting sin, according to my late spouse.”
“Whom you have the sense not to mourn overmuch. Come here by the fire, then, and be warm, despite your lack of forethought. I’ll choose another book for you.”
“Kind of you.” She advanced to the hearth and took a seat on the bricks. “You’ve had the fire going all day. The bricks are warm.”
“I want one room in the house where the constant chill in my bones must do battle with a decent fire. I know it’s summer, but…”
Before he could bluster his way into some ducally appropriate explanation, she stroked a hand over the bricks.
“The warmth helps,” she said. “Someone should make it a rule that spouses die only in spring, so the warmth of the summer is available in first mourning to provide the simplest comfort of all.”
And to think Greendale had tried repeatedly to call her stupid.
Christian brought her another volume of poetry. “An anthology, perfect for browsing at the end of the day.”
He sat on the hearth beside her uninvited, because he hadn’t wanted to give her a pretext for popping off to her widow’s bed. “Thank you for protecting me from Vicar and his wife. I’d forgotten he has four girls to fire off.”
“He was subtle about it, but a new roof for the nave must take precedence, I’m sure.” She hugged her robe more tightly around her, despite the fire hissing and popping softly behind them.
“Is the church in such bad shape as all that?” And shouldn’t Christian take Lucy—and the countess—to services some fine Sunday morning?
“I don’t know. When I visited here, Helene wasn’t inclined to attend services.”
“We neither of us were. I used to go occasionally, show the flag, admire a few babies. Vain of me, playing the duke.”
“And was your faith much help when you were captured?”
“No,” he said, the question taking him too much by surprise for him to make the proper polite noises. “Not in the sense you mean. The Old Testament, perhaps, where simple justice is endorsed, but certainly not that tripe about turning the other cheek and forgiving them, for they know not what they do. They knew damned good and well what they did, delighted in it.”
Though Girard had seemed sincerely regretful too, which Christian desperately wanted to attribute to malignant genius. And yet, an echo of the blond guard’s final apology—“I’m sorry for it… Girard is sorry for it, too”—rose up from memory. Did the devil apologize for his own wickedness?
“It’s frightening,” her ladyship said, hugging her knees, “to think such evil is truly walking among us, probably going to services, admiring babies, even as you once did.”
Did she regard her late spouse, fencing her away from the roses, denigrating her intelligence, as an exponent of such evil?
“I was morally asleep,” Christian said. “I wish to God I had remained in such a state of innocence.”
She turned her head, her cheek pillowed on her knees. “You don’t sleep well now, do you? I can find you down here most nights up until all hours. You ride out at first light, and you look…unrested.”
“You are in an observant mood tonight, my lady.”
Except she could always be counted upon to harpoon him with the occasional pithy observation, the periodic disconcerting question. He wasn’t sure he liked her for it, but he liked her for the courage it suggested.
And for bearing such a sweet, restful fragrance.
“One worries about you,” she said, huddling down more closely to her knees. “You are almost as quiet as your daughter, Mercia, and when one thinks the company of your military fellows might be useful to you, you’re stuck here in the country, partly at my insistence.”
“You did insist, didn’t you?”
“You let me.”
That smile again, sweet, a little sad, a little self-mocking. He got up—the hearthstones were damned hard under his backside—and went to his desk, opening the bottom drawer.
“I have something of yours,” he said, crossing back to the hearth. He resumed his place beside her, there on the hard, warm bricks, and unfolded her black silk shawl, letting the slippery pleasure of it run through his fingers, warm now, not cool.
“Here.” He looped it over her shoulders and used it to draw her close, holding the gathered hem with its delicate, extravagant embroidery in one hand, and bringing his free arm across her shoulders.
Such slender bones she had, and so sturdy.
“You’re cold. Despite the fire, your bare feet have made you cold.”
Or maybe she was merely lonely, but beside him, right beside him, the tension gradually seeped out of her.
Like the sands in an hourglass sinking from one chamber to the other, Christian felt loneliness trickling from her into him. Or maybe what filled him was his awareness of being set apart by his experiences, the way a widow is set apart by her grief. The distance was always there, but with activity, chronic fatigue, and determination, he could ignore it.
She burrowed closer, and it relieved something in him, that she wasn’t put off by that distance he carried inside him. His simple, animal warmth could draw her closer.
“Tell me you’ll stay.” The words were out, unbidden. He was foolish for having to speak them aloud, and desperate for her answer. “Countess…” He closed his eyes, but this was no help, because it made him more aware of her warm, rosy female scent. “Gillian.” He leaned closer, thinking to say more, right into her ear, but his lips grazed her temple.
“Say you’ll stay with us.” He whispered the words, hoping his voice reached her over the soft roar of the fire.
He gave in to the impulse welling up over the loneliness, and kissed her temple, then her cheek, letting his lips linger, then drawing away.
Those kisses had not been erotic, but neither had they been exactly cousinly—not to him. She should slap him, she should bolt, she should politely tell him she would depart at week’s end…
She slipped an arm around his waist. “For now. I’ll stay for now.”
They stayed huddled like that—cuddled—until the clock chimed midnight, when the countess lifted her head and gave a yawn.
“We must to our beds, Your Grace. My r
iding habit is finished, and tomorrow I’d like to ride out with you and Lucy.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” Though in a small corner of his soul, the part that felt ambushed by this impulse to put his mouth on her, he also dreaded their next encounter.
She soothed, beguiled, and healed some aspect of him, brought him down off the high, cold misery of the French mountainside, and yet…revenge would be closer if he stayed on those ramparts, alone save for rage, scars, and memories.
He escorted her up to her bed, and she allowed it, another small satisfaction he’d castigate himself for in the morning—maybe. At her door, he tarried, wanting to say something, to hear something from his voluble countess.
“Sleep well,” he said, leaning down to touch his lips again to her forehead. She was standing, he didn’t have to twist his neck, and it was the easiest thing in the world to touch those lips again to her cheek as well.
“And you,” she said, lifting a hand to brush back the hair that had come loose from his queue. “Try to rest.”
He both wanted and dreaded her kiss, but she only ran her hand over his hair again, turned, and disappeared into her bedroom.
Leaving him alone in the cold, dark corridor, relieved, bewildered, and telling himself all that mattered was that she’d said she’d stay. Even if he spent time in London, off on the other estates, or tracking down and killing Robert Girard, she’d stay.
***
“With all due respect, General, you should investigate why nobody searched any harder for Mercia when he went missing.”
Devlin St. Just kept his tone casual, but no less than three generals had invited him—a mere colonel—into this late-night hand of cards. The purpose as revealed after adequate portions of brandy was to harass him into extracting a report from the Lost Duke.
Who was found, and probably still lost. God knew, Devlin often was.
“We’re happy to nose around a bit,” General Baldridge said, newly up from the South. “But it’s a delicate business when a duke goes and gets himself captured out of uniform and there’s a war on. How much effort is enough?”
General Tipton, arrow straight, sober as a Methodist preacher, eyebrows like a tangled gray hedge, took up the reins of the conversation.
“All we’re suggesting, St. Just, is that you look in on the man. Reminisce over a few brandies. He seemed to take to you.”
“And your dear papa wouldn’t mind if you were given some leave, eh?” General Porter added.
Dear Papa being the Duke of Moreland, who happened to be married to the Duchess of Moreland, who would deliver a harangue worthy of a gunnery sergeant on the topic of wasted ammunition if she learned Devlin had been offered leave and declined it.
But going home meant dealing with Devlin’s family…and feeling keenly the absence of his brother Bartholomew, and the fading presence of his brother Victor, slowly dying of consumption.
War seemed a cheerier prospect, but the Corsican, buttoned up on his island in the Mediterranean, was no longer obliging.
“I’ve my own men to see to,” St. Just said, but he understood army politics too. “Perhaps in a few weeks.”
Baldridge beamed an avuncular smile. “A few weeks, then. Word is Girard held Mercia for nearly a year, and Girard is the devil’s spawn even in the estimation of his own superiors. Damned man has turned somebody up sweet at the War Office, though—who’d have thought he came from English stock? We would give a lot to know how a soldier born to every privilege withstood Girard’s treatment, St. Just. Quite a lot.”
A promotion then, and promotions would be hard to come by in peacetime. At the very least, Devlin would have the pick of the commands available—if he could get a decent report from Mercia.
The generals wanted to know how Mercia had been abused, in detail, what torments, in what order, and how he’d withstood them. What injuries had he suffered, how had those been dealt with, or had his wounds been departures for further abuse?
St. Just knocked back two fingers of fine French brandy—he’d sent his papa a case the previous week—and excused himself from the next round of cards.
And as wearying as the prospect of dealing with his family might be, they loved him. He had no doubt of that. The alternative—shipping out for a wilderness garrison amid the Canadian winters—had no appeal whatsoever, not even in peacetime.
So he’d be the next to torture Christian Severn, this time into reliving months of hell the duke was no doubt desperately trying to forget.
***
The countess with the spine of steel, who’d so casually allowed Christian a scrap of passing affection last night, was disobeying his orders.
His requests, rather. Christian stepped down from Chessie’s back and leaned on the stone wall surrounding the family plot.
“I told you to leave this to the gardeners, my lady.”
“Good morning, Your Grace.” The countess—Gillian—sat on her heels and drew the back of her hand across her cheek, leaving a smudge of dirt. “I don’t recall you forbidding me to tend these plots, though you asked me not to bring Lucy here.”
Christian sensed about thirteen separate rebukes in those two sentences. For failing to greet her properly, for using the imperative, for accusing her of ignoring his wishes, for not bringing Lucy to her mother’s grave, for not visiting that grave himself, and little Evan’s grave, and on and on.
She made her words count, did Lady Greendale. He resigned himself to summary court martial, tied up Chessie’s reins, and sent him off toward the stable.
And again, the sight of the horse trotting away tickled some vague recollection in the back of Christian’s mind, the very elusiveness of the memory adding to his bad mood.
“Won’t the lads worry about you? Fear you’ve come to harm?” her ladyship asked.
“Not unless I can tie up my reins as I tumble into a ditch.”
He scrambled over the wall. A year ago, he would have vaulted it cleanly, but he didn’t trust himself to pull that off, and got up a little resentment of the countess as a result.
“What exactly are you doing?” He dropped to the blanket she’d spread under her knees. “I employ an army of gardeners, and they’re well paid to keep the entire estate in good trim.”
“I’m transplanting violets and lily of the valley. Here, make yourself useful.”
She passed him a clump of earth with some violets sticking out of one end, slender white roots dangling from the other. He stared at those roots, so pale and vulnerable and yet necessary to the plant for life and stability.
“I have a general notion which end goes down and which goes up, but what had you in mind for these, Countess?”
She spared him a glance, and she might have been smiling—not at him, of course, for he was out of her favor over something.
Kissing her last night?
Not kissing her last night?
“Put them in there,” she said, pointing with a hand trowel. “Along Evan’s grave.”
“Aren’t we supposed to greet the dead, say prayers as we work? Maybe sing a hymn or two?” He scratched at the dirt with some implement she passed him. The tool was like a metal claw and bit into the soft soil easily, though he hadn’t the knack of using it with his right hand.
He switched it to his left. The two fingernails Girard’s fellows had appropriated had almost grown back to a normal length, the wound to the smallest finger was nearly healed, and by virtue of riding, he’d developed some grip strength as well.
“You are disrespectful of the dead,” she said, hacking at her patch of ground with the trowel.
“You are disrespectful of me, regularly. Of all in your path. God above, those smell good.” He took her gloved hand in his and brought some lily of the valley to his nose. “Why did you choose these?”
“They manage well in partial shade, and you have them in a
bundance along your walks. Give those back.”
She’d dropped her hand, leaving him sniffing the little white flowers, their dirt trailing over his riding breeches. He passed them to her at nose height.
“Stop teasing.” She took the flowers and smacked his hand. “If you must tarry here, at least plant something over your son’s grave.”
He’d spent half the evening at his son’s grave, telling the boy all about his sister, about Cousin Gilly, and Chessie. Happy things, mostly, so the sorrow could wash through him all the more cleanly.
And yet, on this pretty morning, the countess’s tone was sharp, too sharp.
“What’s amiss, my dear?” He patted his violets into the ground as she did violence to the earth with her trowel. “Tell me, hmm?”
Maybe she’d felt coerced into staying here at Severn, and needed to dress him down for that cozy scene by the hearth last night. To think she had regrets over it made him sad, for if she had regrets, he’d have to muster some too.
He truly didn’t want to distress her.
He put his gloved hand over hers. “Countess, desist. You are vexed, and I would not have it so.”
“How can you not care about them?” she wailed softly. “They were your family, and you don’t even care…”
“Not care?” He sat back, setting his claw-toothed tool aside. “You conclude I didn’t care for my family because I am indifferent about the ground where their remains lie? Is that it?”
“You’re…almost jolly, and they’re d-dead.”
She was crying. Hell and the devil, the Countess of Starch and Disruption was crying. To shut her up—to make those damned tears stop—he stood, put distance between them, and spoke over his shoulder.
“Would you have me crying, Countess? I haven’t seen you crying over your departed husband. You have rejoiced in his death, rather, and told me you are happy he’s gone.”
“You cannot be happy Evan is gone.” She glared up at him, her face dirty and tear streaked and furious. “You cannot.”
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