A Gentleman For All Seasons

by Shana Galen, Vanessa Kelly, Kate Noble, Theresa Romain

  They all looked much more ill than Georgie. As he squinted at her, evaluating, he wondered whether her cheeks were rosy from the cool breeze, or whether health and high color were returning to her.

  When she shivered and clutched at the edge of her cloak, though, he was decided. “Into the line we go.”

  Bertie paid their admission, and they joined the line, shuffling across a smooth floor until their turn came to face the spring itself. Framed within wicked-looking iron pikes, a stone basin was set into the floor. From it, rusty-hued water welled up and was dipped out into glasses.

  “One for you, Georgie, and one for me. And one for you, Eliza?”

  She stepped back, laughing. “I’d use my wish-not-to on this if you asked it of me.”

  “Not necessary.” Bertie sniffed at the brownish liquid in his glass. It carried a strong odor of sulfur that would have made his cavalry horse snort and refuse to drink. Trying not to inhale, he gulped it quickly.

  “Blargh,” he spluttered, handing the glass back to the dipper. “It tastes of rusty metal.”

  “I told you it was awful,” Georgie said. Her glass was still untouched.

  “It wasn’t.” His voice sounded hoarse and false. “It was wonderful. I feel so strong and healthy now.”

  “So convincing,” said Eliza.

  Bertie narrowed his eyes. “Drink your mineral water, Georgie. You owe me. I mean—you owe yourself. For the sake of your good health.”

  “So convincing,” repeated his sister. “Very well. The revenge water shall be consumed.” With a practiced toss, she swallowed the drink, shuddering as she returned the glass. “That’s the most I’ve ever enjoyed taking the water here. It becomes much more pleasant when someone else drinks it first.”

  “Anything for you, sister dear.” Bertie grimaced. His mouth tasted of old nails.

  “Does this anything extend to the consumption of a cream puff?” Eliza asked as they made their way out of the building. “Or some other baked treat? Because I suspect your sister would consume such a thing even if you did not lead the way.”

  Georgie bounced on her toes. “I could eat an entire tray of Madame Florian’s biscuits. The walk from the Friar’s House has given me a prodigious appetite.”

  “I know just the place,” Eliza said. “One street north, there’s a bakery that creates wondrous confections with puff pastry and piped sugar.”

  “I need that,” said Georgie. “North, you said?”

  As she strode off, gesturing impatiently for them to follow, Eliza laid a hand on Bertie’s shoulder. “I’ve chosen my wish-not-to,” she murmured, her breath a tickle in his ear.

  Of its own volition, his hand covered hers. His throat felt tight. “And what is that?”

  “I wish for this not to end.”

  Before he could unlock his tongue, she slid from his hold and walked off after Georgie—leaving him puzzled and yearning in her wake.

  He ordered his feet into service, following after Eliza. Toward wondrous confections. Toward something Georgie wanted that he had never thought to give her.

  I wish for this not to end. Whatever Eliza had meant by that—this moment? This hour? This day or season?—he agreed.

  They had already lived through endings enough. He could not let her slip away again.

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  By the time the few remaining days before Michaelmas had passed, Bertie had realized three things.

  First, a well-run household bore much in common—in organization and camaraderie—with a well-run cavalry regiment. Through hours in the study, the stables, and the butler’s pantry, he could give free rein to habits he’d honed in the military: punctuality, meticulous record-keeping, a patience with the grievances of one’s underlings, and a bit of reckless flair to keep everyone full of energy. Best of all, as in the 13 th Light Dragoons, there was a companionship and satisfaction in working together toward a common goal.

  Second, Eliza Greenleaf liked to be kissed to the point of breathlessness in the corridor before the secret passage—and also in the stables, and along the footpath leading to the tenants’ cottages, and late at night in the candle-lit kitchen while they wore dressing robes and boiled milk for chocolat chaud.

  Third, he had fallen in love with her again—if, in fact, he had ever managed to stop.

  In Bertie’s mind, quarter day had loomed in large, jagged capitals across his mental calendar, as he anticipated chaos and unhappy tenants. But with Eliza in the Friar’s House, welcoming everyone with the ease of a lady born to lead, this quarter day would be different. There was nothing he could not overcome.

  On the morning of Michaelmas, when tenants streamed to the house, rough hats in hand, they received smiles of greeting and a bit of chat about their families. Thanks to the notes circulated among those families by Bertie and the footmen, the Friar’s House rent rolls and records were up-to-date for the first time in…

  “Don’t ask how long it has been,” Eliza murmured in Bertie’s ear. She was seated behind a desk in the library, a ledger and strongbox before her. A burly footman kept a wary eye on the file of tenants, but Bertie saw no emotion on their faces except for pleasure at the sight of Miss Greenleaf.

  “What matters”—Eliza dipped a pen, ready to inscribe the next name—“is that we’ve sorted the numbers, at least until my father or brothers work over the accounts again. Mrs. Jenkins!” Her tone lifted. “What a fine baby you’ve brought. How old is he? Five months?”

  Thus it continued, smoothly as the 13th had once drilled and marched.

  The French servants were in their element, Georgie had roses in her cheeks and was chattering like a magpie, and even Lord Sturridge peeped in amidst his own quarter-day wranglings to raise a glass of brandy with Bertie in the study.

  “Atop the usual drama, you’ve stolen my wife’s guest.” Sturridge winked, looking scarcely older than he had during their Cambridge days. “You must send Miss Greenleaf back to us if you’ve a need.”

  “There is no need,” Bertie assured his old friend. “I should have stolen her away long ago.”

  As Sturridge took his leave, he reminded Bertie of their commitment to judge gourds at the harvest festival a week hence. “I must have angered Francesca,” he said of his wife. “She and your sister helped my brother’s bride arrange the whole festival months ago. They certainly could have given us a less dreadful task. Meanwhile, your friend Lochley has the plum assignment of judging cider and apple brandy.”

  “Ah. Greenleaf won’t return, then.” Andrew Greenleaf had once fancied himself the local arbiter of taste in every way imaginable. Now, of course, he had lost his sense of taste. Literally.

  Sturridge agreed. “I had not heard that he would.”

  Which was all to the good, wasn’t it? No need to create confusion in the minds of Hemshawe’s inhabitants about who belonged in the Friar’s House at present. Or to whom Eliza Greenleaf had given her allegiance.

  Eventually, the day’s business was concluded. Bertie bade farewell to the tenants, the justice of the peace, the Lochleys, and a few other callers who had dropped by for tea and a gossip with Mrs. Clotworthy. In the subsequent quiet, he found himself looking forward very much to the next week. And the one after that, and all the weeks beyond.

  Finally, he had a place to belong, and someone to belong to.

  Only one question remained: When to declare himself, and how?

  * * *

  Eliza tied the belt of her dressing robe more firmly about her night rail, then picked up the lantern and directed its light to the seam in the wall before her. Somewhere was the catch to open the panel from the inside—ah. There.

  “Don’t scream,” she whispered into the next room as the panel swung open. “It is only me.”

  Bertie was seated in a deep upholstered chair by the fireplace in his bedchamber, drowsing over a book. At the sound of Eliza’s voice, his head snapped up, eyes open and alert at once. “Scream? Not when a sight such as thi
s comes before me. I must be dreaming.”

  Eliza stepped into the room, closing the wall panel behind her. “No, you must not have followed the secret tunnel to its end.” She blew out the candle in her lantern and set it on the hearth. “We never did make it past the start, but this is where it leads.”

  One of the finest guest chambers in the house, Bertie’s room was in the wing customarily used by men. Eliza’s own bedchamber was at the other end of the great structure. She could have padded through silent corridors, hoping to remain unseen, but she had liked the idea of sneaking through the secret passage instead. An adventure begun together, and now completed.

  When he opened his arms, it seemed the most natural thing imaginable for her to join him in the chair. She settled sideways onto his lap. Her feet dangled over the padded arm of the chair as he held her steady, supporting her back in his embrace. Her hair now in a long plait, her head was tucked neatly beneath his chin.

  Through the strong frame of his body, she could hear his heart pounding. As she shifted on his lap, she felt his hardness beneath the silk of his robe.

  “Eliza,” he murmured. “How did we let so much time pass?”

  “I cannot imagine how we let any time pass at all.” He made a sound of protest, and she lifted her head, staying his words with a gentle fingertip on his lips. “I know. It was my fault, Bertie. All my fault. All these wasted years, my fault.”

  He kissed her fingertip, then caught her hand in his own. “The years were not wasted, were they? Perhaps they would have been better spent together—but perhaps not. We were very young, and the life of a soldier’s wife is difficult.”

  “Not so difficult as the life of a soldier. If you could be brave enough to be shot at, I ought to have been brave enough to pursue what I truly wanted.”

  “Damn the consequences?” He arched a brow.

  “Damn them all.”

  He sank back. “Ah, Eliza. Maybe we were right to wait. Having lost almost all my family, I would not wish for you to be estranged from yours. Not for my sake.”

  But for my own? If the act were of my own choosing?

  No, there were some things it was not right to say. Not now, with the firelight tracing his clean, strong profile; with the hard lines of his throat and collarbone bared by the loosened front of his robe. A soldier’s body. The body she’d known so intimately long ago.

  They were different now, but much that they had loved about each other remained unchanged.

  “We did well together today,” she said. “All the business of quarter day. I think we handled it beautifully.”

  “I think we did too.”

  “Are you tired?”

  He cleared his throat. “I thought I was, before you burst through the wall of my bedchamber and flung yourself onto my lap. Now I’m not so certain.”

  She chuckled, tugging free the binding of her plait and shaking out the long length of her hair. Taking up a lock, she trailed it over his temples, cheekbones, jaw, tickling him with the sweet silliness of it. Neck. Throat. She teased open his robe a bit farther. Releasing her hair, she laid flat palms against the bared vee of his chest, then slid her hands over his skin until his breath grew shallow. “Take me to bed.”

  “It would be my pleasure.” He caught her up in steady arms, then stood, holding her as though she were a slip of a girl instead of a woman of not-insubstantial size. “And yours, I hope.”

  She smiled. “I do not doubt it.”

  Still carrying her, he crossed from the fireplace to the great bed that dominated the bedchamber. Large-framed and draped in old brocade, it looked like the sort of bed on which lords and kings might have slept. Tonight, though, it was for a soldier and…whatever she was. Just Eliza. For tonight, she need only be Eliza, and she need only be his.

  When he placed her gently on the bed, she scurried to pull back the heavy coverlet, then she slid beneath the sheet.

  “Still wearing your robe?” he teased, letting his own fall to the floor before joining her.

  Beneath the robe, he was nude, and beautifully so. He had grown into himself, a broad and rangy man with the experience and confidence to carry himself as though he absolutely fit into his surroundings. Standing beneath an apple tree in bespoke coat and Hessians; stripping to shirtsleeves to help a tenant in need; baring himself entirely to Eliza’s gaze. Backlit by the firelight, his strong lines were traced in gold and heat, and words vanished from her mind. All she could do was sit up, shrug from her robe, and hold it out to him.

  He let it join his own on the floor.

  “Better,” he said. “But we’ve not got you bare yet.”

  Her night rail followed her robe.

  Eliza clutched the sheet to her breasts, watching him hungrily as he climbed into the bed to nestle against her. Mouth, hands, and shaft, he had once drawn her to a pleasure beyond all reason. The memory was fogged by time, but the curling heat of anticipation was instantly familiar. It made her wet her lips, made her nipples tighten, brought wetness to her core.

  “I’ve never been with anyone else,” she said. “Not in this way.”

  He stroked the line of her thigh, hidden beneath the covering sheet. “There’s been no one else for me since I met you either.”

  She dropped the sheet. “Bertram Gage! Are you telling me you lived like a monk throughout all those years of…of roistering in the 13 th?”

  He laughed, though his eyes were avid, fixed on her breasts. “You’ve talked to Lochley too much if you think war was all roistering. And no, I hardly lived like a monk. I didn’t…er…wear that long sort of robe. Or pray all the time. Or—what else do monks do?”

  “I’ve no idea, really. But I know what they don’t do.”

  “This?” He plucked at her nipple, drawing it to a hard bead of desire.

  She swallowed. “Definitely not that.”

  “They wouldn’t kiss it either, I’m certain.” Easing her to her back, he lifted himself to one elbow beside her and bent his lips to the nipple he had teased. Drawing on it with firm lips, with a gentle graze of teeth, he had her hips rolling with eagerness. More. More.

  “Could we…banish the hypothetical monk from the bedchamber?” she gasped.

  He lifted his head. “God, yes. Do whatever you like, as long as you don’t banish me.” He lavished the same attention on the other nipple, as her thighs loosened into a welcome, as her skin flushed and grew damp.

  “Please,” she begged. “Please, I need you.”

  “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to hear that,” he murmured into her ear. With a kiss on her lips, he found his way home, seating himself deep within her.

  As they moved together, there was nothing of memory between them. How could Eliza remember their first lovemaking when they seemed remade anew? Steady and familiar, but polished up. Battered a bit. Stronger. Better.

  Better together, and that alone was as it had always been.

  * * *

  Afterward, they lay spent, he on his belly and she curled beside him.

  From this position, she could see the scar left by his bullet wound. Where the ball had entered his back, the skin was dented down, as though the lead ball had drawn a bit of Bertie inward.

  “I wish it had not happened,” she said, trailing her fingers over the thickened, puckered skin. There was so much more she wanted to say, but that was a start.

  From his pillow, he blinked drowsily at her. “I wish it had passed on through. It’s odd, knowing I’ve a bit of the war always inside me.”

  “I imagine you would have that all the same.”

  For a long moment, he looked at her. Then he rolled onto his back and caught her fingers, lacing them through his own. “I imagine I would. Eliza, I wonder. Would you consider—”

  “Marrying you?” she blurted.

  One surprised lift of his brows—then a spreading grin. “Yes. My intended words exactly.” His thumb rubbed at the palm of her hand. “I wondered if it would be tedious, since I already asked yo
u once, and that didn’t exactly—well. You know how it went. But this seemed like a second chance, and I thought—”

  “Are you babbling?”

  He paused, considering. “Yes.”

  “Yes,” she echoed. “I will marry you.”

  Twisting his hand free of hers, he folded his arms behind his head and looked at her. “Good. That’s good. I—I want that very much. I have always loved you.”

  Her heart stuttered. “I do too,” she said. “I have too.” And this was true. Though things unsaid were a weight on her heart, she’d never spoken any words that were false. “When we marry, we will both have everything we’ve wanted for a long time.”

  “Then I’m yours. For tonight, and all the autumn nights after, and all the seasons of life.”

  She settled onto her own pillow and ventured to close her eyes. Humming something low and tuneless, Bertie combed his fingers through her unbound hair, fanning it over the covering sheet.

  A gentle rain began to pat against the window, a counterpoint to his hum, and Eliza began to drift into a sated sleep.

  Dimly, she heard him say something about a chill creeping in through the old stone walls, and he slid from the bed to build up the fire. When he returned, he took Eliza in his arms, and all—for that moment—was just as it ought to be.

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  In the morning, Bertie and Eliza announced their plans to wed, receiving a placid, “How nice, dears, I expected as much,” from Mrs. Clotworthy and shrieks of delight from Georgie.

  “A sister! I’ve always wanted a sister! Oh, please marry at once so I can have a sister.”

  Eliza laughed. “I’ve never had one either.”

  “I have,” Bertie reminded them. “And it can be—” Faced with three feminine glares, he hastily added, “The best thing imaginable. Everyone should have a sister.”