Brighton Road

by Susan Carroll

  Gwenda blushed and fretted the ends of her shawl. This was absurd, she thought, after all that she and Ravenel had been through together, for both of them to be behaving so shy and awkward now.

  She cleared her throat, preparing to say what she had attempted to earlier in the tilbury. "My lord, I want you to know how grateful I am for everything—"

  "Please! No speeches, my dear." A mischievous smile tipped Ravenel's lips, as devastatingly charming as it was unexpected. It was the way he had always been meant to smile, Gwenda thought sadly, not in that constrained manner she knew he would adopt as soon as he set foot out the door.

  She tried to assume a cheerful manner. "Well, I daresay you will find yourself quite busy. All those business affairs you have had to neglect because of me and—and ..." She faltered. "Miss Carruthers will likely be in Brighton soon."

  "I suppose she will." Ravenel sobered at the mention of Belinda's name, although he asked teasingly, "Any more advice for me, Miss Vickers?"

  Gwenda started to speak, then firmly shook her head. At that moment Jack came bursting into the hall, carrying Ravenel's hat.

  "Fitch locked it down in the wine cellar!" Her brother rolled his eyes. "I am not certain how well he is going to serve as a butler, either."

  Ravenel merely smiled as he took the curly-brimmed beaver from Jack. He asked Gwenda to express his thanks to her mother and father, then shook hands with Jack. Under her brother's curious eyes, Gwenda thought Ravenel would do the same with her. But when she offered him her hand, he carried it to his lips and pressed a fervent kiss upon her wrist. He turned and strode out the front door, without glancing back.

  He had not taken five steps away from the house when he heard someone call his name. "Ravenel?"

  He turned quickly at the sound of Gwenda's voice She stood silhouetted in the doorway, the simple white muslin accenting her curves. The breeze ruffled her soft curls, her ever-changeable eyes assuming the green luster of the sea.

  "Yes?" he asked hopefully.

  "I do have some advice." She drew in a deep breath. "I hope that sometimes you will remember to be just a little improper."

  Ravenel playfully tipped his hat in acknowledgment of her words. She withdrew into the house, the door inching closed. As soon as she was gone, his smile faded. He grasped his hat, heading toward where one of Lord Vickers's grooms had brought around his tilbury.

  Ravenel was somewhat amused to see Spotted Bert waiting there in the gathering dusk. The dog barked at his approach, charging forward and wagging his tail.

  "What! Did you think I was going to leave without saying good-bye to you, either?"

  He bent down to scratch Bert beneath the chin, but he found his gaze traveling past the dog to the sea, which was wide and mysterious, lapping against the shingled beach, so empty, so wretchedly lonely.

  Ravenel jerked to his feet, saying sharply to the dog, "Damn it, Bert. What a fool I am! I didn't have to marry her. I wanted to. That's why I've been going on and on about duty, making such a pompous ass of myself. I'm in love with the woman."

  He started purposefully back toward the house, only to halt again. He glanced down at Bert padding by his side. "But it is of no avail, is it? She doesn't want to marry me. There is no reason that she should."

  He thought of his title, his twenty thousand pounds per annum, the vast cold manor in Leicestershire. He stared at the Vickers town house where the lamps were already being lit, the light glowing warmly beyond the panes of glass. Through the open window he could hear the sounds of singing and laughter.

  "I don't really have anything to offer her, do I?" Ravenel murmured, his shoulders sagging.

  He replaced his hat on his head and turned to go, pausing to pat the dog one last time. "You will look after her, though, won't you, Bert?"

  The dog cocked his head to one side. Bert's only reply was a low, mournful whine.

  Chapter Nine

  Gwenda dipped her quill pen in the ink and scratched it laboriously across the page. For nearly a week she had been closeted in her room, seated at the small desk by her window overlooking the sea. If she ventured out at all, it was only for her brief visits to Donaldson's Lending Library. But The Sepulchre of Castle Sorrow had not advanced much beyond the first chapter.

  The wind whistled past the velvet curtains. The candle flickered and went out in a hiss of smoke. Roderigo felt the chill of the grave pervade the castle walls, the stench of decaying flesh, crumbling bones, and the dark deed long forgotten—

  The last word trailed away in a smear of ink as Spotted Bert nudged his cold nose against Gwenda's elbow. He thrust his head in her lap, whining, rolling up his eyes in mournful fashion.

  "Bertie, please!" Gwenda forced the dog back. "How am I ever to accomplish anything with you moping all over me? "

  Her exuberant Bertie did not seem to be himself ever since their arrival in Brighton, the day that Ravenel had left. Feeling a twinge in her own heart, she suppressed the thought. No, likely it was only that the sea air did not agree with Bert. She blotted the ink and reached for her pen once more.

  The shade of an ancient warrior rose up before him, its bloodstained visage awful to behold. "Roderigo! " quoth the ghost in dire accents, which would have caused a man of less fortitude than the young count to swoon. "Roderigo! Arise. The time hath come to address the wrongs done me by your family. Roderigo staggered back, slapping one hand across his noble brow. "What! Before I have even had my tea?"

  Gwenda flung down her pen in disgust and tore the parchment in two. The pieces joined the others that littered the soft carpet at her feet. She started to lean her aching head against her hands when Bert startled her by springing up. Thrusting his head through the open window, he gave a series of short, joyous barks.

  She leaped up herself to peer out. But she saw nothing in the stream of fashionable coaches, gigs, and phaetons making their way along the Marine Parade to have aroused such excitement in Bertie.

  She was about to haul the dog back from the sill when she spied the tall man walking along the grassy enclosure, his features obscured as he bent forward to keep his curly-brimmed beaver from being snatched by the stiff breeze. Gwenda's heart quickened only to plummet with disappointment when the man doffed his hat to a passing carriage. Not glossy strands of ebony but only an unfamiliar dull brown.

  Spotted Bert's barking faded to a chagrined whine.

  "Oh, Bertie," Gwenda scolded, but her vexation had little to do with the dog. "Go on. Get out of here. Find a cat to chase."

  Although Bertie hung back, she managed to thrust him out her bedchamber door, then slammed it behind him. But she immediately felt ashamed for being so short-tempered with Bert. Truthfully, these past days, she had been as bad as the dog, ever hopeful of catching a glimpse of a cravat with a little too much starch, a swarthy-looking man constraining his hard-muscled form beneath the stiff garb of a most proper gentleman. Yet if Ravenel ever was abroad, enjoying the Brighton sunshine, he never passed by her window.

  "Anyone would think I was in love with the man," Gwenda grumbled as she sat back down at her desk.

  That thought had been occurring to her all too often of late, a most frightening, distressing thought. Romantic as it was in books, Gwenda did not care for the notion of pining away from unrequited passion. She would much rather have a love that was returned, so that she might be comfortable and happy.

  With Ravenel, that was too much to hope for. By the end of their journey, he seemed to have learned to tolerate her, to even be civil to her family. But that was a far cry from the warmth of feeling Gwenda would require in her lover. She had not heard so much as a word from his lordship in the past week.

  Gwenda reached for another sheet of paper, then sat staring at the blank vellum. This foolishness would pass, she assured herself. Had she not fancied herself in love twice before? She had been much younger then, barely seventeen that disastrous season. She could smile at her youthful self now, all those torrents of emotion, the conviction t
hat her heart would be broken in two if she was not able to marry Jasper. She had survived that only to be equally certain she would go into a decline and perish if she did not become Marlon's bride.

  She did not experience any such violent fancies about Ravenel, only the feeling that as each bright sun-kissed day passed without his presence, the summer sky seemed permanently washed in gray.

  Gwenda thrust the sheet and ink pot away from her. She was doing no good here She might as well round up Bertie and take him out for a walk. She retrieved her bone-handled parasol, then descended belowstairs, whistling for Bert. The lower floor of the house basked in the afternoon silence, except for the distant strains of Papa practicing at the pianoforte.

  Fitch informed her that the master had already demanded Spotted Bert's eviction. The dog always howled when her father sang, so Fitch had been obliged to chase Bert outside.

  But although she stood on the front steps and called, Bert seemed to have raced off out of earshot. Gwenda could not face the prospect of returning to her lonely room, so she opted to venture on her walk without the dog. Yet her listless footsteps got her not much farther than the seven-foot-tall statue of the Prince Regent mounted in front of the Royal Crescent. Disgraceful thing, Gwenda thought. The buff-colored stone had been eroded by sea squalls until one arm broke off. Most mistook it for a likeness of Nelson.

  She leaned against it, poking the tip of her parasol in the grass. A party of ladies and gentlemen rattled along the Parade in their carriage, all of them laughing, apparently bent on some excursion of pleasure. Then Gwenda watched a family with a large brood of children go past, likely off for some sea bathing. Why did the rest of the world always seem to be having a wonderful time when one was at one's most miserable?

  "Hallo there! Gwenda! "

  The sound of her brother's voice snapped her head around toward the distant line of town houses. Jack bounded down the steps and raced toward the grassy enclosure, waving something.

  He came up to her, panting with indignation. "That blasted dog of yours is moving on from boots to belts now."

  He thrust a strap of chewed leather in her face. Gwenda pushed it aside weakly, mumbling that she was sorry.

  Her brother, obviously bracing himself for a heated exchange, snapped his mouth closed and blinked. "What? " he asked. "No 'Plague take you, Jack' or 'If you didn't leave belts lying around, Bertie couldn't get them, Jack'?"

  "I am not in the humor for quarreling." Gwenda sidestepped her brother. She tried to open her parasol, but the breeze coming off the sea was a shade too brisk. Abandoning the effort, she trailed away from Jack, heading for the shingled beach.

  Her brother caught up with her and fell into step. "You are not in much of a humor for anything since you came to Brighton. I never saw such moping, unless it is that silly dog of yours. It is beginning to put me in the hips just watching the pair of you."

  Jack scuffed the toe of his boot along the beach, sending up a spray of smooth, shiny pebbles. "As if I didn't already have enough to make me blue-deviled. Thorne is about to descend on us and Papa's cousins from Cheapside. They all want to see me before I leave to join my regiment."

  "That's nice, Jack," Gwenda murmured.

  He caught her by the elbow, swinging her about. "I say, Gwenda. I've got a notion. Why don't you come to watch the military review on the Bluffs with me and my friend, Neville Gilboys. He's a first-rate fellow. His family made him join the army, but he really wants to be a playwright. He's perishing to meet you and tell you all about this tragedy he means to write someday."

  In her present mood, Gwenda shuddered at the thought of meeting an eager would-be writer.

  But her brother persisted. "Do come! Neville's devilish handsome. Just like that Roderigo chap you're always dreaming about with blond hair and a trim mustache—"

  "Roderigo doesn't have a mustache. He has ebony hair and dark eyes, dark as the sea at midnight." Hugging her skirts close against the wind, Gwenda stared forlornly at the waves breaking over the shore.

  Jack vented his breath in a frustrated sigh. "What's amiss with you, Gwen? I've never seen you like this before."

  When she didn't answer, he planted himself in front of her. "I won't go away until you tell me." He injected that cajoling note into his voice that only Jack knew how to use so well. He always managed to wheedle her secrets out of her, and Gwenda knew she would be given no peace until she confided in him.

  "I—I think I have fallen in love," she said.

  "Not again! "

  Gwenda did not appreciate his brotherly frankness, not when she had just bared her soul to him. "If you are going to take that attitude ..." She began to walk back up the beach, but he caught her, forcing her to halt.

  "No, no, Gwen. I am sorry. Come back. Who are you in love with this—" He amended hastily. "I mean, who is the lucky devil?"

  She tried to maintain a stubborn silence, but instead she found herself resting her head against Jack's shoulder, tears beclouding her eyes. "Lord Ravenel."

  "Ravenel! Old Sobersides?"

  Gwenda straightened immediately, her cheeks firing with indignation. "Don't you dare call him that odious name."

  "I didn't mean anything by it. It is just that he does not seem in your usual line. Although he behaved splendidly fighting that smuggler for Bert, his lordship is not the most dashing sort." Jack hesitated, then blurted out, "In fact, there is rather something about him that reminds me of Thorne."

  "Ravenel is not in the least like Thorne!" Gwenda bristled, then remembered that she had once told the baron the same thing. "Well, maybe only a very little at times. But Thorne would feel quite self-righteous if one got hurt doing something wrong. Ravenel is the sort of man who, if I accidentally set the house on fire, would give me a blistering scold. But first he would make sure I hadn't been burned."

  "I see," Jack said, then infused his voice with a generous enthusiasm. "Of course. The very sort of thing to make a girl dote upon a chap."

  "You don't see at all." Gwenda shifted her gaze to the sea as though somewhere on the bright sparkling waters she would find the words to explain it to him. "Beneath his starched cravat, Ravenel is dashing. When I have dreams about Roderigo now, it is always Ravenel that I see coming through the mist. He has the most handsome eyes and when he kiss—" She broke off, heat rushing through her at the memory. She stumbled on. "It is not any grand gesture that makes him heroic, but all manner of foolish little things like tucking his coat around my shoulders in the rainstorm even when he was angry, and saving Bert even after Bert had chewed up his boot, and asking me if I was unharmed after his own head had nearly been broken by Quince's fist."

  "You must be in love." Jack nodded solemnly. "You are not making any sense. If you care so much for him, why did you let Papa send him away when he had offered for you? "

  "He does not love me. There is someone else. Not that I believe he is in love with Miss Carruthers, either, but she is so much more proper than—"

  "Belinda Carruthers? " Jack interrupted.

  "Aye. Have you met her? "

  "No, but I know of her. I ran into old Huddersby at the Ship Tavern just yesterday. Poor fellow was badly cut up; lost a big wager. It seems he had bet this Carruthers chit would wed the Earl of Smardon, but the earl didn't come up to scratch."

  "And now I suppose Belinda will be only too pleased to receive Ravenel's addresses." Gwenda flushed with anger. "She has treated him so shabbily, keeping him dangling, telling him she is recovering from a broken heart. Some tale of being in mourning over—" Gwenda searched her memory for the name Belinda had mentioned that day, "—a Colonel Percival Adams of the Tenth Cavalry."

  "The Tenth?" Jack said. "That's Neville's regiment."

  Gwenda added bitterly, "Somehow I never believed a word of what she said."

  "Then, my dear sister, the thing to do is to eliminate this unworthy Miss Carruthers as a rival."

  Gwenda slowly shook her head. She was not sure that Ravenel would care how sly
Belinda was, merely that she would know the correct way to conduct herself as the future Lady Ravenel. Even without Belinda, Ravenel would not willingly consider Gwenda for that role. What had his lordship called her once? The mistress of disaster.

  Her shoulders sagged. This conversation with Jack had only succeeded in lowering her spirits. Debating the matter with her brother had done nothing but to convince her how very much she was in love with Ravenel, and how hopeless it all was.

  "It was most kind of you to listen, Jack," she said. "But there is nothing to be done. I assure you I will recover." This time she turned and hurried back to the house, not giving him a chance to overtake her.

  As Jack Vickers watched his sister racing along the beach, he made no effort to follow. She would recover, Gwenda had declared, but her brother was not so sure. He had never seen that kind of dull pain in her sparkling eyes before, a heartbreakingly wistful kind of despair.

  "Damme," he muttered. "How can I just march off to enjoy myself shooting Frenchmen, leaving poor Gwen in such a state? My only sister, after all."

  Thoughtfully he walked along the sands, letting the water froth to the very tip of his boots. But the somber mood didn't last long. His spirits were as ebullient as the waves. Mad Jack Vickers never accepted any cause as hopeless. There was always something to be done.

  Chapter 10

  Donaldson's Lending Library was a gathering place for the haut ton that flocked to Brighton for the summer: a place to hear the latest gossip, to play at cards, to try out some new sheet music upon the piano forte--in brief, to do anything but select a book to read. Or so it seemed to Gwenda.

  She irritably brushed past the group of ladies crowded upon the veranda, smoothing out their light muslins, chattering about how positively dowdy Mrs. Fitzherbert had looked while attending the theater last night.

  Inside the library itself was no better. To even reach the book stacks, Gwenda first had to skirt by three dandies studying copies of the latest caricatures by Gilray through their quizzing glasses.