He grimaced. “She is nothing like Amelia. Indeed, I do not know how two more disparate creatures could emerge from the same branch of any familial tree. Amelia was cunning and icy, grasping and manipulative. Sarah is…”
He allowed his words to trail off as he wondered how to even answer his own question. To wonder if he could. He had seen precious glimpses of the lady he had once known last night. But hiding beneath had simmered so much rage and resentment, he could not say if she had changed. He hoped she had not, for Lady Sarah Bolingbroke had been utter perfection as she was: sweet, trusting, innocent, lovely, and clever. She had lips he wanted to kiss and a mind he more than admired.
“Hell.” Monty’s disgust was evident as he refilled his snifter. “You have the same expression on your face you did that day at the Bellingham ball. I remember it too well. Bellingham was serving orgeat or some such trifling nonsense, and we had decided to locate his spirits because we were bored. Do you recall?”
“You were bored,” he reminded Monty, aware of a humiliating flush tinging his cheeks. “Your mother had insisted you attend with your sister. I was in attendance because I knew Lady Sarah would be.”
He had hardly expected her to slip into the chamber where he had been awaiting Monty. But when she had, he had been unable to believe his good fortune—once he had ascertained she had not sought out the chamber with the intent of meeting some useless fop for an assignation.
“She was the one in the chamber with you that day,” his friend said shrewdly. “I always suspected, but I did not wish to press, given your interest in the lady and the damage it would have done her reputation. In hindsight, you ought to have compromised her then and there before the other one got her hooks into you.”
“I wished to court her properly,” he recalled, regret punishing him anew for what had happened.
Though he had indeed courted Lady Sarah properly for nearly a perfect three weeks, when he had come calling upon her one afternoon, she had not been in attendance. Her sister, Lady Amelia, had awaited him in her stead with the explanation that Lady Sarah was suffering from a megrim. At her urging, he had gone on a walk with her in the tiny terraced garden behind Elsmere’s townhome. Lady Amelia had stumbled, claiming her ankle hurt, and when he had knelt to aid her, she had pulled him atop her, pressing her lips to his.
Stunned by her sudden onslaught, he had pried himself away. But it had been too late. The Duchess of Elsmere had been presiding over the entire sordid scene, along with a handful of other august ladies, from a window in her salon overlooking the garden.
“Being a proper gentleman never pays off,” Monty said, interrupting Philip’s grim reminiscences.
He still recalled the overwhelming dread and disgust that had filled him, nothing in comparison to the pale face of Lady Sarah who had witnessed it as well. Just a hint of her hurt eyes and then the flurry of her skirts retreating.
“Perhaps you are right, Monty,” he allowed, refilling his snifter. “Lord knows it never did me one whit of good.”
“I can assure you, I live a life of general happiness and iniquity.” Monty raised his snifter in a mock salute. “No scheming females attempting to become my duchess, no one to answer to now that I’ve sent my troublesome mother and sister off to Scotland, and all the drink and quim a man could wish at my disposal. It is not too late to save yourself, Pip.”
Pip. Philip ground his molars. Only Monty called him the hated diminutive, and Philip allowed it because Monty was, well Monty. Even if the name made him feel as if he were a lad yet in leading strings.
“You do know I loathe being called that, do you not?” he asked lightly.
“Christ, yes. It wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining if you liked it,” Monty said cheerfully.
He had rather thought so. Philip tipped back his snifter. The familiar confines of his study—dark wood, rich leather, and pastoral oil paintings—blurred into one forbidding swirl behind his friend’s head.
“Damnation,” he said aloud. “You are a bounder, Monty.”
But a likeable bounder, for all that.
“You are serious about marrying the chit, aren’t you?” Monty asked.
“Utterly.” He had to believe he had a chance. That somehow, some way, she would grant him a second chance. Now that he had kissed her again, had held her in his arms, he could not simply walk away.
Not without fighting for her.
Which he damn well should have done two years ago, but he had been so caught up in duty and honor. The situation had been hopeless. If he had not become betrothed to Lady Amelia after all the witnesses who had seen her kissing him as he lay atop her in the garden, he would have ruined her. And if he had ruined her, he would not have been able to wed Lady Sarah anyway.
“From the moment I first saw her, I have wanted to make her mine,” he added, unabashedly. Perhaps it was the brandy speaking for him. Perhaps it was the freeing nature of finally acknowledging the truth after so long. Or the fledgling hope that all was not lost for him. “It is foolish, I know, but I feel as if I have loved her forever. As if she has always been meant to be my countess.”
Monty stared at him as if he had announced he was infected with a deadly pestilence. “God’s fichu, I always suspected you were a Bedlamite, but this proves it.”
“God does not wear a fichu,” he argued, for he had taken leave of his faculties, and he knew it. From the moment he had first seen Lady Sarah Bolingbroke, he had been forever changed. Forever hers.
Monty eyed him archly. “How can you be certain?”
He thought for a moment, grateful for the distraction from the enormity of his thoughts. “Reason.”
“And yet you have just demonstrated you possess none,” Monty concluded, his tone victorious.
“God’s fichu is not an oath,” he countered, taking another sip of brandy.
“It is now.” Monty grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “I have others, as well, but that is rather a new favorite of mine. Would you care to hear more?”
“Devil take it, Monty, no.” Philip decided he was not nearly foxed enough to endure Monty’s sense of humor. Or the grim matter of his future, for that matter. The possibility of everything he had wanted, of the woman he loved, within his reach at last, terrified him.
“You truly want to leg shackle yourself?” his friend asked then.
“No. Yes.” He paused, sighing, and scrubbed a weary hand over his face. “Damnation, I do not know. All I do know is that I have loved her for years, and I never thought to have her. I have spent the last two years attempting to banish all thoughts of her.”
Unsuccessfully, a voice inside him nettled. Thoughts of Sarah, longing for her, had continued to dog him with the tenacity of a ghost. Until she had turned up last night in his ballroom, a veritable ghost herself, in the image of her sister. But more beautiful. Far more beautiful. And with a kinder, gentler heart.
Actually, with a heart. Full stop.
“Perhaps you haven’t bedded enough wenches,” Monty suggested then, unhelpfully.
Ah, Monty. Roué of the first order. But who was he to judge? Philip was no innocent himself, Lord knew. He had made more mistakes, committed more sins, wronged more people, than he cared to count.
“There are not enough wenches in all England to make me forget her,” he said, the admission torn from him.
“Let me assure you, there are wenches aplenty,” his friend countered, grinning. “Clearly, you are not exerting yourself enough. Come with me to the Temple of Flora, and I promise you, you shall change your mind.”
Philip tossed the remainder of his brandy down his gullet, then poured himself another. “I refuse to follow you to one of your dens of iniquity, Monty.”
Monty sighed. “Mistress Illyria can perform feats with her tongue that would astound you.” He paused. “What do you think of Satan’s earbobs?”
Philip said nothing, merely quaffed his brandy.
“The good Lord’s chemise?” Monty tried next.
“Damn your hide, Montrose,” he growled. “Enough with the curses.”
Chapter Six
With the reluctant blessing of Lady Frederica and Mr. Kirkwood, Sarah returned—with Lady Frederica as a chaperone, of course—to Elsmere House, her father’s London townhome. It was in Amelia’s chamber at Elsmere House where many of her belongings had gone into storage following her death. Including her journals.
Sarah had packed the journals away herself.
And it was the journals she was in search of now.
As Lady Frederica watched, Sarah sifted through the interiors of trunks. Dresses, needlepoint, letters, calling cards, and books lay scattered over the floor. A lone lamp lit the room, much of the furniture covered, so that the entire chamber resembled a macabre display of specters. Lending to the grim air, the night beyond the walls of Elsmere House was nothing short of a stormy uproar. Gales howled, thunder cracked, and bolts of lightning brightened the sky beyond the carefully drawn window dressings.
Being back in Amelia’s space once more was dreamlike for Sarah. The letters and gowns and fripperies packed away by Mama and Sarah herself in tearful haste following Amelia’s death still carried her preferred scent—albeit faintly—of rosewater.
A fresh rumble of thunder sounded, making Sarah start.
“I cannot find the journals,” she told Lady Frederica.
She had been so very certain she and Mama had placed them in the largest of the trunks. But that trunk was now empty, and she had yet to find even one of the handful of leather-bound volumes Amelia had filled with her exacting scrawl.
“Are you certain this is the trunk where they were being kept?” Lady Frederica asked.
Thunder roared once more, followed by a bright flash of lightning.
“Yes.” She turned her attention to another trunk, opening it, and beginning an examination of its contents. “Mama tied them together with a ribbon. Perhaps one of the servants moved them for some reason.”
After all, two years had passed since Amelia’s death.
“Perhaps your mother moved them,” Lady Frederica suggested.
Sarah frowned as she found a packet of letters, also bound with ribbon, and removed them. “I suppose it is possible. Though why would Mama wish to do anything with Amelia’s journals?”
“If there was information contained within them that could result in scandal, it would be reason enough for your mother to want to make certain they were never read,” Lady Frederica pointed out sagely.
Mama had died not long after Amelia had, and the intervening time had been a blur. Their mother had always been frightfully protective of Amelia, and she had taken Amelia’s death especially hard. If anyone would have taken an effort to hide damning information concerning her sister, it would have been Mama.
“She would have had ample opportunity to return, alone, and take the journals,” Sarah allowed, a new sense of desperation coursing through her. “But if the journals are gone, that means I will never discover the answers.”
Lady Frederica crossed the chamber. “May I?” She held out her hand for the packet of letters in Sarah’s hand.
Feeling guilty for poking through Amelia’s private correspondence but still in search of information, she relinquished the letters to Lady Frederica. “Perhaps we can find at least a hint of something helpful within these.”
She removed another stack of letters from the trunk before untying the knot keeping them together. Thunder rolled overhead once more as she began working her way back through the past.
At long last, she discovered a letter written in Amelia’s flowery script, torn in half. Sarah fitted the two pieces together and began reading.
Dearest Bernard,
Ever since you were sent away, my life has been desolate. I miss you, my beloved. I do not suppose you shall ever see this, for my father has forbidden me from contacting you or knowing where you have gone. Mother has determined I must marry the Earl of Markham. He has been courting Sarah, but Mama says I must marry first, and if I cannot have you, I shall find some solace in marrying well. Markham is terribly wealthy and highly regarded. My condition will soon become apparent, and Mama says we must act soon. Oh, how I wish you had not gone…
The halves of the letter flitted to the floor, dropping from Sarah’s numbed fingers.
“It was a footman,” she said, almost to herself, as everything began to make perfect, awful sense.
“I beg your pardon?” Lady Frederica asked, drawing nearer. “Have you found something?”
“Yes,” she said, betrayal stealing over her. “We had a footman named Bernard who was suddenly removed from Elsmere House. He was quite handsome, as I recall, and always had an eye upon my sister. Father had noticed, I thought, and sent him to another estate. But he was sent away because he got Amelia with child. According to this letter, my mother decided to entrap Markham into marrying Amelia to save her reputation, at my expense, and Amelia chose Markham because he was wealthy.”
“Oh, my dear.” Lady Frederica put a consoling arm around her shoulders. “How horrid.”
Horrid did not begin to describe the treachery, nor did it touch upon the depths of Sarah’s misery. Her mother and sister had both lied to her and betrayed her. Most damning of all was the realization that her mother had placed greater import upon Amelia’s future than Sarah’s happiness. Mama had known she had been in love with Markham. And she had known Markham had never truly compromised Amelia beyond the scene the two of them must have manufactured in the gardens.
“They betrayed me.” The words escaped her on a half-sob. “My own mother and sister. How could they have done it?”
Worse, her mother had never told her the truth. After Amelia had died, Mama could have been honest. She could have revealed their manipulations. Sarah could have had another opportunity with Markham. Instead, she had been robbed of her chance at happiness with him. She had mistakenly spent the last two years thinking he had seduced her sister, two years wallowing in rage and the need to avenge her sister’s death…
And it had all been based upon nothing but lies.
It had all been for naught.
“I am so sorry, Lady Sarah.” Lady Frederica drew her into a comforting embrace. “Sometimes we cannot make sense of the actions of those we love. Sometimes the ones we love the most are also the ones who hurt us the most. But at least you have discovered answers you sought.”
“At long last,” Sarah agreed, no longer fighting her tears.
She allowed them to fall, just as the storm clouds overhead at last unleashed their fury. Rain lashed the windows. Lightning flashed. The ominous boom of thunder drowned out the quiet sound of her anguished sobs.
“What will you do now?” Lady Frederica asked gently.
There was only one answer. “I will tell Markham everything I know.”
The morning of his reckoning dawned grim and dreary as the remnants of the wild storm the evening before refused to fully relinquish its grasp upon London. Though a low fog rolled over the streets and a chilly drizzle came down from the sky, Philip refused to allow the weather to dampen his mood.
He was early for his meeting with Lady Sarah, he knew, but he had spent every minute since watching her disappear into the darkness after his ball in restless anticipation. At last, he would see her again. At last, he could plead his case to her once more.
The butler led him not to a drawing room or salon as he had anticipated, but to a study. A grim-looking Duncan Kirkwood stood to receive him. Though Philip was a member of Kirkwood’s club, he did not know him well. The man was something of an enigma, the bastard son of a duke who had found tremendous wealth and success on his own. A formidable opponent, he had heard.
“Mr. Kirkwood,” he said stiffly after they had exchanged formalities. “I confess, I was not expecting to meet with you today. Is Lady Sarah ill?”
“Lady Sarah is perfectly well, aside from one matter,” Kirkwood said, holding up a newspaper for his inspection. “Have you
seen this, Markham?”
Philip’s gaze swept over the caricature with dawning disgust. “Bloody hell.”
“My sentiment precisely, Markham.” Kirkwood arched a brow. “You do know His Grace entrusted Lady Sarah to my care while he tended to an urgent matter on his estate, yes?”
“Yes,” he agreed, though he had not known the precise details, only that Lady Sarah was returning to the Kirkwood home.
This knowledge was not particularly welcome, for it gave the grim expression on Kirkwood’s implacable countenance a new meaning entirely. He prepared himself for the inevitable request for him to name his second.
“And it would seem I have failed my charge in the most reprehensible fashion possible,” the gaming hell owner added. “The Duke of Elsmere is going to have my hide when he returns and discovers I unwittingly enabled his innocent daughter to attend a masked ball alone. Even worse, that you compromised her.”
Philip sighed. “What would you have me do, Mr. Kirkwood? I am prepared to wed Lady Sarah, if she will have me.”
Indeed, Lady Sarah was all he had ever wanted.
“A part of me is tempted to thrash you, Markham,” drawled Kirkwood. “But trouncing one’s clients is rather bad for business.”
“You wish for a duel, then, to settle the matter?” he guessed.
God’s fichu, he had no wish to answer Duncan Kirkwood on the field of honor, but he would if it was necessary. Bloody hell, he thought then, he had just used one of Monty’s nonsensical curses in his own mind.
“No duel,” Kirkwood said coolly. “My wife will have my hide before Elsmere can if I challenge you to pistols at dawn. What I wish is for you to sort out the mess you have made. Do the honorable thing. Wait until Elsmere returns from Oxfordshire, and then ask for Lady Sarah’s hand in marriage. I expect him to return shortly. In the meantime, and at the lady’s request, I have done you the favor of stopping the printing of Lady Sarah’s volume of poetry. The lady painted a damning portrait.”
The Midnight Hour: All-Hallows’ Brides Page 21
