The Perils of Pleasure

by Julie Anne Long

  She turned her back and strode purposefully to the carriage.

  The driver held out a hand to her, and he saw her dark-gloved hand briefly join those white-gloved fingers, and the springs bounced a little as she boarded. The door closed on Madeleine Greenway. The ribbons cracked, the carriage lurched forward, and Colin watched it roll away until it was just a distant speck on the road.

  She’d never looked back.

  Colin stood transfixed until he realized the bells were still pealing behind him.

  And then he turned and ran like a madman for the church.

  Chapter 23

  It was a squat stone church with a tall elegant spire and several incongruously brilliant stained-glass windows added a full century after it had been built. To the unbiased eye, there was nothing elegant or singular about the building, but it was well used and well loved by everyone who lived in Pennyroyal Green.

  Colin pushed open the doors as narrowly as possible and slid inside quietly.

  Though the door creaked a little, fortunately no one turned, as their attention was engaged by the beautiful people aglow at the front of the church.

  The vicar had just begun intoning the ancient words that bound men and women together for their lifetimes. Over rows of women from the finest families bonneted in their very best, over husbands and brothers and neighbors groomed within an inch of their lives, over the heads of people Colin had known since he was capable of remembering faces, he saw his brother Marcus, who stood gazing down at Louisa.

  Her hair was shining like the sun, and her face was luminous. Dear God, she was lovely. She created her own light, Louisa did. Her hands were in Marcus’s. Not yet man and wife, then. But a few words from now they would be.

  Colin hovered in the doorway an instant, pressed against the wall, and stared, his heart thudding in his chest like the clapper on that damned church bell.

  And then Marcus—perhaps because he was one of the only other people actually standing in the church—must have sensed him, or seen him.

  His posture betrayed no knowledge or surprise. But Colin saw the joy there. The humor. The dare.

  And yes, he saw a hint of fear pass through his brother’s dark eyes.

  Colin met his brother’s gaze evenly. God, but he hated seeing any sort of fear in Marcus’s gaze.

  Their eyes held as the vicar spoke on.

  Then Colin gave a slight nod. And deliberately, while Marcus was looking, he took his place in the back pew where Horace Peele was already sitting, and Marcus turned away again, subtly, slowly, back to Louisa.

  Miraculous, really, the kind of communication only brothers could achieve. He’d silently given Marcus his blessing. It had taken mere seconds, and Colin was certain no one in the church witnessed the exchange.

  Horace Peele slung a companionable arm over Colin’s shoulder. And the two of them watched a woman Colin had loved his entire life become the wife of his brother.

  Louisa, the dream Colin had cut free.

  Colin didn’t want Marcus’s and Louisa’s wedding day to be about his dramatic return, but once he’d been spotted—he’d tried to slip out of the church unnoticed to return to Eversea House before anyone could see him, but this was Pennyroyal Green and therefore impossible—it could hardly be helped.

  He began by apologizing for needing a shave and a bath, which made everyone laugh. He made light of his entire drama and said his escape had all been far, far less exciting than the newspapers and broadsheets would no doubt make it out to be, that he’d simply wanted to rush back for the wedding. He was innocent. He reassured everyone that everything was fine now, that he was free, that it had all been a mistake.

  It wasn’t quite fine, of course. But it would be, once he presented Horace and stories were told to the proper officials, so it wasn’t entirely a fib.

  And then he introduced Horace Peele and gave an extremely abbreviated version of events. The one he’d rehearsed with Horace, the one that excluded resurrected bodies and Redmonds, and made it sound as though Horace had simply been misplaced and located only now. And finally, the consensus had it that Colin was the finest of Louisa and Marcus’s wedding gifts.

  As for the fine wedding present…he was extraordinarily weary.

  But he was home. Home. Upstairs was a comfortable bed that belonged to him, and a bathtub that could be filled endlessly with hot water if he wished it, and fresh clothing that fit him and, oh, wonder of wonders, a soap and razor. His life, in other words, the way he’d left it several months ago. A lifetime ago.

  Colin found his room, did a cursory wash and change of clothing, then returned to eat.

  His mother had decided upon a midday meal rather than a breakfast, which was quite modern of her, and would no doubt affect the digestion of guests for days. They were traditional here in Pennyroyal Green, and everyone was accustomed to eating regular meals at regular hours.

  His mother merely held him fast for a long time when he appeared, and wiped her eyes, and said nothing.

  Mothers were extraordinary. Both his mother and Fanchette Redmond.

  Colin regarded his mother across the room, actively charming a guest, and she, too, looked entirely different to him now, though nothing outwardly about her had changed. She had rich dark hair with a single encroaching stripe of silver at the crown, a heart-shaped face, deep blue eyes. Still lovely in her middle years, in other words. Her two pretty daughters looked very like their father Jacob, while resembling her, too. And her three other sons looked very much like both her and Jacob.

  Ah, but then there was the one changeling son who might very well be part Redmond.

  Colin wondered at the tides that moved in his mother’s heart, of the things she might be hiding, of the forces that had shaped her, and whether Jacob Eversea was her true love. Or if Isaiah Redmond had been her passion. He wondered if he would ever have the courage to ask her about Isaiah Redmond.

  One day, perhaps, he might take his mother for a walk over the downs and ask difficult questions and wait for her answers. One day he might know for certain whether he wanted to know all the answers. But one thing he did know: whatever had happened between his parents, they loved each other still. He saw it in the way they moved and spoke to each other, in the rhythms of their life.

  Love was extraordinary. More specifically: marriage was extraordinary.

  And besides, given his own history, he knew he was in no position to judge anyone at all.

  He made one decision: that he didn’t have to do anything for now besides eat, bathe, and coddle his broken heart. There were mounds and mounds of glorious food on tables in the ballroom, and he heaped a plate with it and looked for a quiet corner in which to eat with animal enthusiasm in peace. He thought he’d found just the place, near the servant’s stairs.

  But Louisa found him.

  It was a shock to see her, in the flesh, so close. She was so lovely. Having dreamed of her for so long, she’d become more dream than woman to him, and in a way, she always had been. He was a trifle abashed now, knowing this. She’d reflected and grounded him and she had been his friend. But they weren’t meant for each other. He wasn’t in love with her.

  And at first, now, they didn’t know what to say to each other. She just stood and looked down at him. He settled his plate down on the stairs and stood and gave her a bow.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, sit down, Colin,” she said.

  He did, and she sat down next to him. He couldn’t presume to know what moved through Louisa’s mind. How odd. She seemed comfortable and familiar, but strangely opaque to him now. Yet she was no different than she’d ever been.

  “You look very beautiful,” he told her finally. This was generally a safe place to begin with women.

  “Colin…”

  He smiled. He’d missed her voice.

  “And you look very happy,” he added hurriedly. “Are you happy, Louisa?”

  She looked helpless for a moment, and flattened her hands against the skirt of her gow
n. Her way of being nervous.

  He didn’t want her to suffer any sort of twinge on her wedding day. Not one bit of regret or one feeling that wasn’t entirely related to joy, if he could help it. Then again, as he knew all too well, life wasn’t always as tidy as one preferred. He would do his best for the sake of both of them.

  “What I meant to say, Louisa, is that nothing makes me happier than seeing you happy. I do mean it. With all my heart. And I mean to say the same thing to Marcus.”

  He didn’t add, Though I think he already knows.

  Louisa studied him shrewdly for a moment, and apparently decided he meant it, because her face registered soft relief. “I love you, Colin.”

  He paused. “I know.”

  That made her smile a little. “Is that a terrible thing to say to another man on my wedding day while my husband stands a few feet away?”

  “Quite bold of you. Very modern, I should think. But I do know what you mean, Louisa.”

  She smiled again, a warm and wistful thing, and said nothing.

  Colin was aware of the irony of hearing “I love you” from two women on the same day, and knowing that he would never be with either of them.

  He didn’t ask her if she loved Marcus. What he knew, and she knew, was that Marcus loved Louisa in a way that he simply couldn’t, because Marcus was simply more suited to her, and she to him. Marcus loved Louisa the way he loved Madeleine: with an unswerving, soul-deep certainty.

  If Louisa didn’t love Marcus now…well, it was only a matter of time. But then she glanced over at her husband, and Colin saw her face, and well…he suspected she already loved Marcus, even if she didn’t know it. They were meant for each other.

  “We don’t suit, Colin,” she began tentatively. “You and I. Not in that way.”

  Well, she didn’t need to explain it. “I know.” He realized too late that this might not have been the most gentlemanly of responses.

  An awkward little moment passed.

  “Does your pride hurt?” she whispered. As if confiding a secret to a friend.

  “A little,” he confessed.

  “Mine, too,” she admitted.

  They laughed. It was bittersweet but very funny, and a lovely release.

  “I’m inordinately glad you’re alive,” she told him, more lightly. “And soon to be free and innocent in the eyes of the world.”

  “That makes two of us. Go be a bride, Louisa, and go talk to the rest of your guests, and hang on your husband’s arm. I want to eat and have a very good wash and become a human again. Welcome to the family. I’m glad you’re an Eversea.”

  Because it was his right as her brother, he kissed Louisa on the cheek, which was as soft as he remembered. And if any of the busybodies of Pennyroyal Green had seen and were wondering about them—and there were many busybodies in Pennyroyal Green—he ignored them. God forbid they should be without something to talk about, and now that Colin Eversea was alive, they would have plenty to discuss.

  She had one more thing to say before she left, and she whispered it as she stood: “I saw you, Colin. When you entered the church.”

  He smiled a little. “Good,” he said gently. He was glad she’d made the choice for herself.

  And then he watched Louisa walk away, lovely and happy and wrong for him, to join her husband, who watched her come to him with fierce joy.

  Oh, hell.

  Colin sagged back against the stairs and indulged a moment of feeling sorry for himself. Now that he knew what love truly meant, he suspected he could never be happy in the way that Louisa and Marcus were. Not with a Madeleine Greenway–shaped hole in his heart.

  Ah, well, he thought magnanimously. Perhaps he was destined to feel happy for other people. Who would have thought Colin Eversea, of all people, could be quite so generous of spirit? He had a quiet, ironic laugh at himself at the thought.

  As he’d once said to Madeleine: life could be the very devil sometimes.

  Madeleine knew almost nothing about ships, though this one was reputedly seaworthy. Its enormous sails swelled and snapped in a bracing wind, and on the whole it appeared impatient to tug free of its anchor and be off.

  She approved.

  Still, she’d have thought the very sight of this ship would have made her heart fill like those sails. Instead, her heart persisted in feeling like an anchor.

  A trunk—her entire life now fit in just one trunk—awaited loading, and she stood on the dock while other excited passengers eddied around her, people setting out for visits or entirely new lives in America. She thought of the shipboard weeks ahead, during which she could come to know these people or keep to herself. Curious glances, but not unfriendly ones, slid her way. She looked respectable. She was alone, which was unusual and possibly suspect, but the high seas tended to loosen societal strictures, and her manners and grace and matronly status as a widow would no doubt take care of the rest. She would make friends. She wanted friends.

  Madeleine half smiled to herself. Little would any of those people know about a particularly carnal evening in a loft with an escaped criminal, and how she became herself again by loving Colin Eversea. She shifted her eyes from the crowd and began to watch the sea undulating beneath the great prow of that ship. But the sea called to mind eyes the color of thunderstorm skies, so she jerked her head back toward the sails spread against the blank blue sky instead.

  She’d known an immense, indescribable relief when Sussex and Colin and his eyes and his “I love you” were behind her altogether, and she sobbed alone in that carriage as though she’d escaped with her life, as though her sobs could drown out the sound of his voice, wash from her memory forever the expression on his face when she left him. She refused to give the relief an opportunity to metamorphose into regret or anything else; she’d spent the week in a blur of determined, ceaseless attempts to acquire the money she needed to pay for her Virginia farm. She’d pawned clothing and belongings, she’d gone to Croker, who’d actually donated ten pounds, and eventually she was able to make the final payment for the farm, but not her passage to America.

  So Madeleine had done something shockingly bold and resourceful. She called upon a very surprised Fanchette Redmond and asked her to pay for her passage. It wasn’t quite blackmail, but Mrs. Redmond more than perhaps anyone respected the power of secrets. And since Isaiah had, of course, restored her allowance, Fanchette Redmond saw the wisdom of paying someone who possessed delicate information about her to go to America.

  Suddenly she felt something damp and warm on her arm where her dress sleeve had hiked just a little. Her head whipped down and around, and there, of all things, was Snap the dog. He was gumming her affectionately, balancing on his three legs and smiling up at her.

  Madeleine smiled a little and ran her hand over the dog’s big, smooth head, then looked past him for Horace Peele, who bowed and smiled happily. “Why, Mrs. Greenway!”

  “Good day to you, Horace. It’s lovely to see you. Out for a walk on the docks?”

  “Me ’n’ Snap, aye, that we are. Fine morning fer a walk. Yer off to America, then, Mrs. Greenway?”

  “I’m—”

  Her hand froze on Snap’s head.

  And all at once the heaviness in her chest cracked open and a realization sent a wash of gooseflesh up her arms. The dock and Horace Peele swam before her eyes, because tears were pouring from them. But she was smiling, too, which, judging from Horace’s expression, disconcerted the devil out of him.

  It was…Snap. She’d been terrified of him when he first hurtled toward her at Mutton Cottage. And just like that, love had hurtled toward her, and she’d been relieved to escape it, because it terrified her. But there was nothing to fear, and she couldn’t escape it, really.

  Because she carried it, and Colin, everywhere with her now.

  An old fear had sent her away from Sussex. But it had no place in her life anymore. Love drove her to her feet now, and she only hoped it wasn’t too late.

  “No, Horace. As it turns
out, I’m going to Sussex.”

  He hadn’t been sleeping—sleep had been fitful for the five days he’d been home now—so Colin heard the first pebble strike his window. One little click.

  He was so alert to everything now—he’d in fact been lying awake wondering if alertness was just one of the legacies of his days on the run—that he considered that it might have just been the sound of a large and unfortunate insect’s demise. But when the clicks continued to arrive at relatively even intervals, he decided it couldn’t possibly be insects or even rain.

  And his heart leaped into his throat.

  He was afraid to hope. Too nervous to pray. So he took action instead: he slid out of bed, parted the curtains, and looked down.

  To see Madeleine looking up. Well, what he saw was actually nothing more than a pale blur in the dark against the tree, but he’d seen her in so many dark enclosed spaces, he would have known that pale blur anywhere.

  He slid the window up and went back to sit on his bed. He’d told her about the tree. He thought he’d make her work a bit for this.

  Less than a minute later he heard the sound of her shinnying up—leaves shimmying, the narrower branches jumping—and then she appeared on the open sill and, despite her skirts, gracefully, crisply, swung her legs over it to perch there.

  “You were wrong,” she said.

  “Was I?” he said softly, conversationally. His heart was flinging itself at the walls of his chest. He could only speak softly. “About what?”

  She hovered on the sill, looped her arms around her knees. As if deciding whether to come in or not.

  “I’m not the bravest person.”

  “Surely this isn’t true.”

  She snorted a little laugh, and then glanced down to gauge the height from the sill to the floor. Deciding it was safe to do it, she lowered herself a bit then jumped the rest of the way, landing easily. She came to sit down at the foot of his bed. Deliberately out of arm’s reach, he noticed, for now at least.