by Liz Tyner
‘His Grace and I would not get on well.’ She reached up, pushing an errant lock behind her ear. ‘He doesn’t even like the way I dress my hair.’ She shrugged. ‘He does not know how to live for himself, only for others. I do not know how to live that life. I have seen what happens to a woman who falls in love and marries a man when he does not love her back—or think her above his tracks in the dirt.’
‘I would not treat you ill.’ The duke’s words bit into the air.
‘But in your heart you would. Now you can promise—anything. Everything. That is easily done.’ She looked across at him and slipped a pin from her hair, and tossed it to the table beside her. ‘My father promised to return to my mother. He would hurry, he said.’ She stared at Rhys. ‘He promised most sincere agape, love, when he meant it the least. And do you know what my mother’s last words were?’
Rhys blinked, forceful. Jaw firm. Solid, unmoving.
‘She asked if my father was on the ship in the harbour. But he was not. He was never returning. I knew it.’
‘You cannot judge other men by your father.’
‘You judge other men by yours.’
He shook his head, causing a strand of hair to fall across his eyes. He put his hand to his temple and thrust the lock back into place. ‘I know he was a stickler for convention. But that does not mean—’ He used his flat palm to indicate himself. ‘He was a good man and I can follow his example. All men make mistakes. Even him.’
‘You made a mistake and now you must correct it?’ She tilted her head.
‘We must be married. You cannot hide away in Scotland.’
‘I find it nobler to be a spinster than to throw myself under your feet. I do not care who you wed, Your Grace. As long as it isn’t me.’
‘You should tell him everything, Bellona. Rhys isn’t worth much, but he can keep his counsel,’ Warrington advised.
Bellona stared forward. Rhys thought she’d looked much gentler when she’d held the arrow to his stomach.
*
Warrington left the room, his grumbles mixed with curses at her father.
Rhys stood, his face with so little expression she could not read it. Behind his eyes he was secured alone with his thoughts and she suspected they were not charitable ones.
She refused to discuss any more of her life with him. Warrington said Rhys could keep silent, but the earl didn’t realise Rhys was the one person she most did not wish to tell.
‘We are finished here,’ she said. ‘You’ve done as much as you can to help me. You’ve tried to correct what you see as an error. You should go about your duties and remove this from your thoughts.’
‘Remove it from my thoughts? And how might I do that?’ He moved to stand in front of the painting and pointed to the smallest girl. ‘If I wave my hand over the canvas, will it make the scene disappear? Will it make the memories I have go away?’
‘Memories are the past. Thoughts are what are in a person’s head at the moment. I do not care what you do with your memories. You may polish them until they outshine the sun. But do not keep me in your thoughts.’
He whirled from the painting to look at her. ‘You think I am so uncaring a person that I can bed you in my home and just toss that aside.’
‘Did you not do that to a woman once before—a servant?’
‘Even that was not as simple as the way you speak of it. It was not.’
‘My mother loved my father so much. And she thought she could not live without him. But he was not to stay and she died. Perhaps she spoke the truth of her love. Which showed me so much. The warmth faded from her body while my father painted. I was not with him, but I know—at the very moment my mother died, my father had a brush in his hand, a canvas in front of him and more concern about the light than my mother. She never meant more than being a subject for a painting to him.’
‘He will pay for that.’
‘He cannot. It cannot be done.’
‘You do not have to worry about your father, Bellona. I can ensure he has a set-down. It will be his word against mine. You and I can face this together and it will never be more than a rumour. A tale we laugh away.’
‘No.’
‘He cannot spread such tales if we are wed. It will be ridiculous for him to do so. I will take care of him for you, Bellona. He cannot cross a duke and get away with it,’ Rhys said.
‘No. Do not add more coal to the fire.’ Bellona shut her eyes. She should have left England earlier. Now her father would feel he had successfully chased her away if she left, but she did not know how she could stay and watch Rhys wed someone else.
‘It is not about increasing the gossip. I will see that he ceases it altogether. We all have our weaknesses, Bellona. All of us. And I can find his.’
‘Searching them out will not be hard. They flutter about him like birds over grain. I do not want you to be pulled into his mire. He relishes such things.’
‘I will relish this.’
‘Do not meddle. I am his daughter.’ If she confronted her father, he could tell more truths. More truths she did not want known. She could not lie away the truth. ‘His actions do not truly surprise me. I do not wish to be near him and he feels the same about me.’ She ignored the way the air seemed to have the scent of her home again and she could hear the waves. ‘I am so much his daughter that we cannot bear each other.’ Rhys could not get involved in her past.
‘You are not like Hawkins.’
‘Oh, I am.’ She put her hand over her heart and patted. ‘I do not use mine to guide my actions. It is to beat and keep me alive, nothing else.’ She shut her eyes. ‘The letters my father sent my mana… My sister read them aloud to her so many times we could recite them. Such words of love. Tears in Mana’s eyes. Hope in Melina’s voice. Thessa and I would later go to the sea, fall on to the sand in front of the waters, and repeat the words, each of us speaking with all the sincerity we could bring to the speech. None of the fish ever changed the direction of their swimming. The waters continued on as before. Gold did not fall from the heavens. The words were worth nothing. They were not love to Mana. They were words for himself. A painting he created on paper instead of canvas.’
‘Words may disappear into the air, but a special licence is binding.’
‘My father married twice. Two too many times, but he married for a reason each time. His first wife’s funds and my mother’s beauty. I will not marry you for your title. Or for your protection of my name.’
‘You cannot tell me you do not care for me.’
‘No. I cannot. I would say I care for you more than anyone in London does. But no matter what feelings I have, one person’s love in a marriage is not enough.’
Chapter Nineteen
She held out a hand to brace herself against the thoughts buffeting her, but nothing fell into her grasp. Rhys stood there, not speaking.
But his past gripped him as strongly as hers held her tight. She’d been marked on the outside and the inside.
Her mother might have called the spot on her body a longing mark, but it wasn’t. The mark was her strength. A reminder not to repeat her mother’s broken heart. All her father’s children had the blemishes—her father’s London wife had told her how each of her children had been born with similar marks. They were a legacy, just as a title was. But where her sisters had brown marks, hers had red in it—like a scrape, as if the blood had risen to the surface on her hip and never healed. A heart that was broken.
Now she truly believed that her mother had wished for a torn heart for her daughter.
Better to have a broken heart than a broken soul from loving someone who could not love her in return.
If she didn’t turn her back on him in that instant, she would not have the strength to do it at all. She turned. She could not look at his face.
She left him behind.
Rushing up the stairs, she went to her sister’s chamber, not knocking but running inside. Melina sat in there, her son’s toy soldiers arranged on the tabl
e, and Willa stood at the side, moving the toy men into rows. A governess sat in a corner chair.
When Melina looked up, Willa ran to her aunt and wedged herself against Bellona. For a second, the hug erased the pain deep inside her, but then when she looked at the little girl’s tousled curls and cherub cheeks, she realised she had given up her chance to have a child by the one man she loved. Sharp spasms of pain hit her body and she forced herself immobile to let the hurt pass.
Melina looked at her sister’s face. ‘Take Willa to play in the nursery,’ she said to the governess.
‘Warrington told me about Rhys.’ Melina stood as the governess and Willa left. ‘When you moved to Harling House to be a companion to the duchess, I knew you were taking a risk, but how could I warn you?’
‘You could not have. I already knew. When I met Rhys in the forest, I knew. No one had ever unsettled me the same way he did.’ She’d pointed the arrow tip at him to keep herself safe, but not in the way he’d thought at the time.
She couldn’t stay at her sister’s house. Rhys had even taken that from her. To see the children grow and watch her sister’s family flourish while she stood on the outside looking in would wither her spirit. She had to leave.
‘You will survive,’ Melina said, walking to put an arm around her sister’s shoulder.
‘How would you know?’
‘You have no other choice.’ Melina reached out as if to pat Bellona, but instead pinched her sister’s arm.
‘Stop it.’ Bellona pulled away.
Melina reached out, fingers poised to nip Bellona again.
Bellona took a step away. ‘You had better not.’
‘It is only because I care for you.’
‘Do not let us get in a competition to see who loves the other the most. Your children do not need to see such behaviour.’
‘If you do not want me to hurt you, then you must remember that you would not want a husband who does the same.’
‘I know. My mind knows that.’ She put her hands to her head, pushing back the hair that had fallen at her brow. ‘But my head cannot find a way to tell my heart. I do not understand why it will not listen.’
*
The man of affairs still sat in front of him, patiently awaiting the return to his duties. Rhys didn’t know how a man could smell of roses and be content in life, but Simpson seemed to have mastered that. Rhys felt he could kick the chair legs from under the man and he would receive only an apology from Simpson for having placed his chair in the wrong path.
Rhys’s jaw hurt from keeping his words careful and precise and all emotion banked.
He began looking over the ledgers again. He spotted an error. One he’d made. He crossed it out, irritated. He couldn’t have been paying attention to have made such an obvious mistake.
Voice ever so solicitous, the man of affairs said, ‘I wish to speak with you about a private matter, concerning a bit of rubbish currently being batted about.’
Rhys nodded. Apparently the man of affairs had heard the on dits. Rhys could sense a change in the man—an awareness of unsaid things.
‘So—’ Rhys relaxed his body in the chair, interlaced his fingers behind his head, and fixed his eyes on Simpson ‘—what is the talk?’ Might as well get the words on the table, so to speak, and then get on with things.
‘Talk?’ The voice was just a tiny amount too shrill. ‘I would not call it that. Only small minds repeating things heard. Embellished, I’m sure.’
Rhys didn’t speak, but let his eyes pull out the words. He waited. And in the same manner of a gust of air blowing over his body, he viewed his physical self. He’d never sat in a chair in such an informal way. Rhys put his feet flat on the floor, hands on the desk, straightened his back and leaned forward.
‘It’s said the dark-eyed foreign woman had wild ways, and you, well—’ his head swiveled sideways ‘—did as a normal man would and partook of her favours.’
‘That’s all?’
‘It’s said she’s even claimed to be that Lord Hawkins’s daughter—the one who paints. Trying to disgrace him—though you know how he’s viewed by the ton as full of himself and rather like a belch that’s gone on too long.’
Rhys let his palms feel the smooth wood.
‘And we all know,’ he continued, ‘that the sisters come from Grecian high-born people on an island where the French have been claiming treasures abound from the past. But people are supposing the youngest one is unsettled.’
Rhys’s lips firmed and he glared at the man.
‘You asked.’
‘Yes, I did.’ Five heartbeats of silence followed and Rhys reminded himself he had offered to wed Bellona. She had refused.
‘One other thing.’
Rhys waited again, wanting to throw an inkpot at the man to hurry him and strangely upset at the thought that the man would not pick up the tossed inkpot and hurl it back.
‘Lord Hawkins, he doesn’t seem to be taking things well and is blaming the girl. He’s said she’s hurt his children with her tales.’ The man put his fist loosely to his upper lip, as if to blunt what was said next, concentrating on his words. ‘Of late, it’s said he can’t even get along with himself.’
Rhys only response was his usual flick of the brows.
Lord Hawkins wasn’t cracked. He knew him. The man didn’t have an unselfish bone in his body. He could lecture for hours on a bird’s beak, as if no one but he could see it. As if everything he saw, he saw in brighter colours and with more meaning than mere humans could digest.
‘He’s not doing…’ The man’s words trailed away.
Rhys met his eyes and forced him to continue.
‘He’s not doing her any good at all, Your Grace. He’s talking about her in a way no lord should talk about a girl who has been a guest at a duke’s home.’
Rhys placed his right hand on the desk, above the drawer, and knew that underneath lay a newspaper, with the words neatly printed, not only the reference to a certain duke, and most of the things his man of affairs had just said, but repeated several times, as if once wasn’t enough.
Bellona was referred to as the Untamed Grecian Temptress from a land of Saturnalian delights, ready to leave a trail of women in tears as she danced about for their husbands.
The simple-lined caricature did not look like her, but a Gillray sketch, hair flowing as a brief covering swirling around her, while she held a tambourine, dancing. The goddess of beguilement. He hoped to be able to return a copy of the newspaper to the artist, personally.
‘We’re through for today,’ Rhys said.
Simpson shuffled the papers together. ‘You’ll do fine, Your Grace.’ He coughed. ‘Not a life about doesn’t have some struggle from time to time. You’ve just had more loss than most of recent. Time for a spell of good luck.’
Rhys waited until Simpson left and returned to his examination of the man’s meticulous records. Truly, he wondered if Simpson hadn’t managed better alone.
Rhys wanted to return his life to normal. To erase the impact of tales that might be told, before the whispers grew louder. To gauge the look in the faces of others and listen, and steer the conversation if they mentioned anything of the improprieties he had caused. But most of all he wanted to forget.
Folding his arms flat over his desk, he rested his head on them, closing his eyes and trying to trick himself into sleeping. In the night, whenever he’d lain in bed, his mind had darted alert, thinking of all the mistakes of the past few days, and the woman whose image he could not erase.
The sound of a rap on the door caused Rhys to raise his head. He brushed his hand over his eyes, uncertain of how long he’d slept. A servant stood there, holding a salver with a calling card.
Rhys straightened, and reached out. The tray was moved to him and he pulled the pasteboard card into view. Lord Hawkins. Bellona’s father. He’d sent for him the day before. He tossed the card back on its resting place.
Rhys brushed a hand across his cheek, feeling the bristl
es.
The grimness of Jefferson’s face alerted Rhys. Jefferson had been trained well. With just the briefest narrowing of his eyes, and the extra-precise steps he took as he moved backwards to the door, he told Rhys this was not a congenial guest.
‘Show him to the sitting room,’ Rhys said, ‘and serve him cold tea. Collect me when he has reached a proper temperature to boil the water.’ Rhys put his head back on the desk.
*
He felt he’d just shut his eyes when the sound of Jefferson clearing his throat woke Rhys.
He pushed himself up from the desk, stood, pulled his waistcoat smooth and reached for the coat he’d tossed on a chair, donning it.
‘Would you care for a comb, Your Grace?’ Jefferson asked.
Rhys shook his head and walked out through the door, running a hand to smooth his hair, but not really caring.
When Rhys walked into his sitting room, the scent of a painting just completed lingered around the man, perhaps linseed oil or painting pigments.
Bellona’s father sat, holding a cane, gnarled fingers grasping it, a birdlike flutter to his movements. It felt as if someone had left a raptor in the room and it had flown from place to place, leaving feathers and droppings about. A chair had been moved a bit. A tea cup sat half-empty with crumbs scattered. Rhys examined Hawkins’s face, looking for a resemblance to Bellona. He saw none, except perhaps a bit of the chin. And they both tilted their head to the side when showing displeasure.
Hawkins stood. ‘Rolleston.’ His bow was more the semblance of movement than anything else. ‘I have wasted near a day waiting on you.’
‘Greetings to you as well, Lord Hawkins. I am going to make you pay for what you did to Bellona. It is nothing personal, you understand. It is justice. You left your daughters to fend alone. You left a family without funds to live in little more than a shack on an island while you lolled about here.’
‘I did no such thing.’ His lips twisted. ‘My only family has always been in England.’
