by Edith Layton
“A toast!” Justin said, rising from his seat, holding his glass high. “I know we’ve had many before, but we were starving then and not so eloquent. So I propose one more now—one made on comfortable stomachs and full hearts. My friends, I give you a toast: to Jared, earl of Alveston, who’s home at last, thank God.”
They cried, “Hear, hear!” and downed their drinks. But as Justin sat, Jared stood. “I give you another toast,” he said, smiling at his brother. “To a truly just man. Having him returned to me means more than any title could. My lords, ladies, friends, and relatives: I give you a toast to my brother, Justin, restored to me at last, thank God!”
They were still smiling when dinner was over and the ladies went into the drawing room to wait for the gentlemen to join them. Della made her way to a corner seat, and Fiona came and immediately sat beside her. She smiled, and Della finally understood the force of that smile as well as Jared’s reaction to it, because it melted half her hurt and some of her confusion. The lady’s beautiful brown eyes sparkled and were filled with lively curiosity.
“You must tell me about the Colonies,” Fiona said, angling herself as close to Della as she could, considering both of them were wearing enormous skirts. “I’ve never been farther from home than the front gates—” She giggled. “Well, not really. I’ve been to London, to see the queen—and king—but never farther. I’ve met people from the Continent, of course. But you’ve come from across an ocean! From a whole new world! Tell me all about it, please! And Jared—I mean the earl—tell me about him, too, if you please; he says you were like a sister to him, so you must know everything. Was he really a servant? What did he do? He won’t talk about it to me. It must have been terribly sad. Oh, please, tell me all.”
The oddest thing was that Della found herself almost ready to confide everything to her—until she remembered the way the lady and Justin had sat at their part of the table and behaved as though they still had the right to command all of it.
“Mistress Fiona,” Della said quietly, “it’s not my place…”
“Oh, pooh!” Fiona said. “Don’t stand on ceremony with me! Jared said your father has a title, though he doesn’t use it, and so you’re a gentlewoman, too, even if you don’t call yourself one. So let’s be colonial and dispense with formalities. Is it true that hardly anyone uses their titles there? How do you know who comes from good families?”
Della grinned in spite of herself, because the woman was so ingenuous.
“Well, some people do use them, but most don’t,” Della told her. “We judge a person on how they behave, not on how their ancestors did,” she said piously. Seeing Fiona’s expression, she relented and laughed. “That’s what we say, but I think it’s really because it would be too confusing. We don’t give out titles in the Colonies, so no one could be ’the earl of Philadelphia,’ for example. Even if someone called himself the earl of Alveston, there, it would sound fine, but it wouldn’t matter much because no one would know who or what he was. We’re not all English, you see. We have people from many countries—more arriving each day—from so many places it would be hard for anyone to care about any one particular country’s titles. And honestly, I don’t think it would help a man’s business one bit if he made a fur trapper or an Indian call him ‘my lord.’ And business is what the Colonies are all about.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” Della said quickly. “We have heaps of titled men at home. We’re quite civilized, you know. But the new settlers wouldn’t take to it. They might even resent it. After all, most are coming to the Colonies to make a fresh start. Everyone thinks he has a chance to live like a lord even if he wasn’t born one. But if he works hard enough, he really can. Not in such houses, of course,” she said in embarrassment, looking around the elegant room, “but very nicely, even so. We have so much land and so few people on it, so a title doesn’t mean as much as a full purse does. You see, at home, people are making their fortunes now the way our ancestors did here in England long ago. But it’s harder because we don’t have serfs—only slaves and bondsmen.”
“Which is what he was,” Fiona said eagerly, “so tell me about it, please. He worked for you, didn’t he?”
Della hesitated. She could discuss Jared for hours, but his harsh past wasn’t Fiona’s business. She wanted to say it, but she was beginning to like the girl.
“You’re going to say it isn’t my business,” Fiona said promptly. “But it is. After all, he could be my husband if I insisted.” She giggled at Della’s shocked expression. “It’s true,” she explained with a mischievous grin. “It’s not just my vanity. You see, our land touches on the hall’s on the southwest side. Our fathers were friends, and so when I was born, they agreed that I should wed the next earl when I came of age so that the two properties could become one. It’s in a marriage contract.
“Jared vanished the very year I was born. It didn’t make any difference to the settlement, because there was Justin to take his place. I grew up with him; we’ve both always known what our fate was going to be. The only reason we aren’t married now is because he’s kindly agreed to let me have a little fun before I start filling his nursery for him. I’m only nineteen, you see. And though I dote on Justin, no girl is going to rush into marrying a man she’s known forever, is she?”
Della sighed, thinking of why a girl would do just that, as Fiona went on, with a devilish gleam in her eye. “And just look at our new earl of Alveston. He’s like a brother to you, so I suppose you don’t see him the way a girl does. But just look at him!” she whispered, as the gentlemen came into the room to join them.
Their gazes immediately arrowed to Jared. He was smiling at something Justin had said. It didn’t matter that he was the topic of conversation; side by side with his brother, he was the one who would draw the eye. Della’s dark-blue gaze locked on him because she could never look anywhere else when he was in the room. Fiona’s brown eyes widened as she looked at him, because he was new and somehow more vivid to her than Justin was. His was the more intense coloring, the darkness of his tanned skin making his smile whiter, and his gray eyes clear as ice. As he led the gentlemen into the room, it could be seen that he was an inch taller, leaner, and more muscled; in everything, he seemed more than his brother now.
“Mmm. See what I mean?” Fiona purred. “Justin will have to look to his laurels, don’t you think?” She laughed, showing little white teeth. She looked just like a cat, Della thought in dismay, an adorable, silken little cat that one couldn’t blame for what it thought anymore than one could stop it from thinking it. Yes, Della thought, as Fiona stared at Jared, she looked just like a sleek little cat that had just found something fascinating to play with and then devour.
* * *
Della couldn’t sleep. And it wasn’t because she was in a new bed in a new house. She hadn’t slept in her own bed for a month, and exhaustion had claimed her swiftly all those nights. She couldn’t sleep now because she was so near Jared and yet he was further away from her than he’d ever been. The man who wore Jared’s face was a stranger to her now, and it troubled her as much as it frightened her. She got up from her bed and went to her window. There was nothing but starkly moonlit gardens to be seen. She turned and paced her room once, and then drew on a robe. She felt trapped.
Her nightshift had no hoops; her hair was gathered in a simple tie at the back of her neck, just like a fashionable young man’s. She was without corset and bodice; she was unfettered and yet chained to her room for the night. She was where she’d yearned to be and not at all where she needed to be. She was moonstruck and longing—and so unhappy she knew she had to find human company.
Not him, of course—she was moon-mad, not entirely mad. He was probably sleeping, as she should be. There was no one she really could talk to now, she knew that. Her father would only be frightened if she tapped on his door to wake him. Her hardworking maid lay snoring in deserved sleep in her trundle bed. But there might be a servant who could direct her to the library, Della
thought hopefully. Once there, she could hold a book in her hands and pretend to be reading, and he might hear of it, and she might see him.… No. Della sternly banished the fantasy because she hadn’t had any luck so far, and so there was no reason to think she’d suddenly find some this eerily bone-white night. But if she stayed alone in her room, she’d howl at the moon, she was sure of that.
She left her room, tiptoed across the hall, and then skimmed down the stairway, which was bright as day beneath the glass dome above it and cold as the stars in this endless night. She wished she’d thought of wearing slippers. There were no footmen awake downstairs, but she eventually found the library anyway—after several toe stubbings and brief, painful encounters with tables and chairs that hid their sharp edges in the deeper shadows.
It was a grand room, with a cool, polished wood floor and not half enough carpets to cover it for her comfort. She saw a massive fireplace on the far wall that held a great gaping mouthful of shadows. She wished she could light a fire, because she wasn’t used to such cold Octobers in Virginia. But she knew it wasn’t really that frigid—half the chill was in her own heart.
The moonlight had looked bright enough to read by, but it wasn’t. She sat curled up in a chair by the window anyway, holding a book and staring at it, seeing only her own problem on the strangely bleached white pages.
“You’ll ruin your eyes. We’ll have to get you a walking stick and a begging bowl if you keep that up. If you want to read, I’ll get a light.”
She sat up sharply, clutching the book to her breast. “No! Don’t,” she said. He stood in the doorway, tall and fair, in a long robe that came to his feet. In that moment, she didn’t know if it was really him or just his brother or her longing to see him that had produced a vision of him.
“Why aren’t you sleeping, Dell?” Jared asked, coming into the room.
Her heart picked up its steady beat. “Can’t,” she said breathlessly. “New house, new room, new bed, you know.”
“Don’t I just?” he murmured, putting his hands into the deep pockets of his robe and staring out the long windows to the moon-drenched grounds beyond. “Isn’t this place something, though?” he asked, gesturing at the window, the room. “Is this not something, Della?”
She nodded.
“I couldn’t sleep, either,” he said. “I tried. But then I came downstairs. I often do. I roam this place at night, Dell. I still do, after a month. I can’t believe it’s true. I guess I’m still afraid that if I fall asleep, I’ll wake to find it was all a dream.” He sounded so lost that he stopped talking when he heard himself. When he spoke again, his voice was lighter. “I heard you—or someone—making noise and trying to hush it immediately after. I came to see who was bumping into everything that had a corner on it and swearing like a sailor as she did. Traveling by sea has been educational, hasn’t it? If Alfred heard you, he’d wash out your mouth. Shall I?”
“Just try,” she said in the rough little voice she had always used against his teasing threats.
“What do you think of it, Dell?” he asked suddenly.
She knew just what he meant. Her spirits rose. This was Jared talking to her now, Jared as she’d always known him—not the earl of Alveston, whom she didn’t know. “It’s everything you said,” she answered promptly, “and more. I didn’t understand the grandeur of being an English nobleman before. It’s like—it’s like you’re a king or something here.”
“I know, I know. Sometimes it’s too much, but sometimes, I admit, I wallow in it.” He spoke to her there in the low light, and it was like talking with himself, only better, because he knew she understood him. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it,” he admitted. “By God, Della, do you understand the differences I’ve known? From being considered a piece of human rubbish to being treated like a king—and all in one lifetime? Sometimes I think both extremes are absurd. Sometimes I don’t—and that worries me. Thank God you’re here.”
Her eyes flew open wide and she began to smile.
“You and Alfred put things into perspective for me,” he went on, as her smile faded. “I can never get too far above myself with you two around. You’re living reminders of what I was.”
“You might come to hate us for that,” she said in a small voice.
His big hand came down on her head and rested there lightly before he ruffled her curls, as he would a child’s. “Yes. Likely,” he scoffed. “Oh, very likely, isn’t it? I meant only that you make all this real to me, because none of it seemed real until you and Alfred got here.”
“You’re happy?” she asked, feeling the chill in the night as his hand left her hair.
“Happy?” he laughed. “What an inadequate word. It can’t hold all I feel. I suppose I was happy once before, before they stole me away. But I didn’t know it then. But this? This is much more than ‘happy.’ I’m home, Della. Do you know what that means?”
She couldn’t answer because of the lump rising in her throat, so she only nodded, not even knowing if he could see her head move. But he could see her clearly, only as though she were a silhouette cut from paper, all in black and white. Her hair was darker than the darkness in the room, and it formed an inky frame for her white face. When she moved her head, it moved the shadows, showing her in flashes of high drama, as though he were watching her during a lightning storm. But he didn’t have to see clearly; he knew her expressions better than his own. And he felt her warmth from where he stood. He smelled the fresh floral scent she always wore, and his heart grew full. She was here—his Della was here. Things seemed right at last.
She saw him glowing golden in the dim light, the brightest, warmest thing in the chilly room. He wore such a colorful robe that the shadows couldn’t extinguish it, and his hair was loosed and fell in soft golden waves to his wide shoulders. He was tall and straight and strong and everything she remembered, everything she wanted. She felt all the old stirrings and more. But though they were so close and alone together in the moonlight, there was no romance in it for him and thus only sorrow in it for her. She clasped her hands tight over the book to keep them still and to keep herself together, so he wouldn’t know.
He was so relieved to be with her that he relaxed and spoke of things he usually didn’t.
“Those days, before I met Alfred and you,” he said, his voice soft and dreamy as the night, “how can I explain it? I knew I’d been someone once—I almost got myself killed for insisting on it more than once—but the truth is, sometimes I myself wondered if I’d only imagined it.”
“We believed you,” she said, keeping her voice even, fearful of ruining the intimacy of the moment. He seldom spoke of those days, even with her.
“Yes, and I thank God for it. I don’t think I’d have lasted much longer, Dell. I was getting to the point that I didn’t care. Nothing hurt anymore. That was the worst part. If you feel pain, you try to avoid it. But I was getting to the point where I didn’t. It seemed to me that if I’d only imagined I’d been an earl, then I was mad and didn’t deserve to live. If I had really been one, then it was too degrading to live the way I did.”
Della was glad it was too dark to see the pain that must be in his eyes.
“I could always take the beatings and the humiliation,” he said thoughtfully, “because I knew I was better than my master was. If you fill up a boy with a sense of his worth early on, it’s like filling a camel with water: it keeps him going later when everything else has gone. But I was coming to manhood, and there were other dangers. Old Higgins was threatening to sell me to a man who wanted— It doesn’t matter,” he said abruptly. “I don’t think I’d have survived much longer. No one believed me; I even doubted myself.”
“Thomas believed you the moment he heard what you said.”
“Thomas,” he said softly. “By God, I wish he could be here to see this. You were lucky to have such a brother. I’ve always tried to take his place for you, even though I knew I never could.”
She went very still. “Don
’t worry about it,” she managed to say. “I don’t need another brother…but I can always use a friend. So,” she said more briskly, “my lord Alveston, what next?”
“What, indeed? Learn the estate, learn my duties, begin where I left off and hope I don’t make a botch of it, I suppose.”
“You’ll never come back?” she asked, and swallowed hard.
“Back? Oh. Virginia. Well, to visit—of course. This is my home now…but what’s this talk about going back? You just got here. I want you and Alfred to stay on and on, to share this with me. It’s nothing without you, you know.”
“If I were going to be with you, then I would stay. But…but the earl of Alveston makes me nervous,” she said in a rush.
He laughed.
“No, I mean it,” she said, looking for a light way to put a hard thing. “Take the wig you wore today—I mean, I know it’s all the rage, but it’s not the Jared I know. You have such beautiful hair,” she said wistfully. “What I wouldn’t give to have such… I hate to see it covered over with white curls like a sheep’s. Or like old Mr. Peterson’s, at home.”
He put back his head and roared with laughter. Old Peterson was a miserly shopkeeper whose flea-bitten old wig was the joke of town.
“So bad?” he said gasping with laughter.
“No,” she admitted, “not really. But not Jared, either.”
He grew somber. “I’m not precisely Jared anymore, Della. I’m the earl of Alveston now.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, “and so then I guess we’ll soon see you rigged out with silver-headed walking sticks and china snuffboxes and very high heels that make you totter, and you’ll paint your face a bit, and wear a fan at your belt, and start to drawl when you speak?”
