Not being much capable of understanding that some people move through the world ruled by the passions of their hearts, Charles had believed that his brother resented his own position as the heir to their father’s estate.
Charles smiled. “I see that you wish to save face, Andrew, and I cannot blame you for that.” He smiled lazily. “But as for your denial, I simply do not believe it.”
Charles Godwin was a young man who viewed the world primarily in terms of the things he owned versus the things that he planned to acquire. Lady Rebecca Winterson had always fallen into the latter category, and perhaps this desire had always been compounded by the suspicion that she liked his brother rather better.
But it did not matter. She was his.
Andrew took a sip of his brandy, leaning back in his chair to contemplate his brother. His repressed anger animated every muscle in his body, but through practice, he was able to assume a relaxed and unconcerned attitude.
Charles can see straight through it, a small voice in his head whispered. He forced the voice away — it was unbidden and unwelcome.
“Not at all brother,” he replied in his mildest possible tone. “I do not believe in the slightest that I would perform this office of Duke better than you. I lack the natural grandiosity and firm belief in my own importance, which I believe necessary for such a role.”
Charles reddened, but did not let his temper get the better of him.
“So you considered our father grandiose and egotistical, did you, brother?”
“I considered and still consider our father to have been a gentleman of the first rate,” Andrew responded promptly. The truth was that he was so relieved that the subject of the conversation had passed away from the matter of his jealousy that he was able to keep his composure well.
“Yet you do not wish to do honor to his memory by respecting his wishes,” Charles said flatly. “Your role as the ever-faithful son comes into question in light of recent behavior, brother.”
“I believe our father to have been the most excellent man that ever lived, but that does not mean he was not capable of making mistakes,” Andrew exclaimed warmly.
“Ah.” Charles face came into a repose of triumph. “Mistakes. I see.” He leaned back in his chair, a small smile playing about his lips. “So what mistakes are these, brother, that you would wish to see put right?”
He smiled still broader, an expression of recognition growing on his countenance. “Is it perhaps about the matter of your inheritance? I had thought it to be rather generous for a second son, but perhaps you would like a little more?”
He stood up and walked towards the desk. “If only you had said so at the beginning, brother. We could have arranged that easily enough.”
I will not stay here to be insulted, Andrew got up from his own armchair and placed the brandy glass on the desk with a calm, restrained motion. He did not let any of his true feelings show until he was at the door, at which point he turned to cast one final damning comment back at his brother.
“We are not all mercenaries like you, Charles.”
Chapter 11
I scarcely know why I continue to play, Rebecca thought after the third movement of the concerto had ended and her company forgot to provide their smattering of polite applause. It seems my only function at this instrument is to provide the gossip with a cover so that they will not be overheard.
In between chords she could catch snippets of what her father was saying. Though he was nominally addressing Caroline or Grandmamma Horatia, she could see that the primary audience for his remarks was himself.
“The boy is jealous,” she heard her father say. “I understand it well enough. My own younger brother was of a similar disposition, unable to discern his proper place in society.”
This caused Rebecca to play a good deal louder than the sheet music indicated and with a considerable amount more feeling.
“Andrew is struggling,” she later heard Grandmamma Horatia acknowledge. “Though I do not believe that his discontent centers around the dukedom. After all, he has always known that Charles would inherit and has never seemed to have been ill-affected by the knowledge.”
“That is because he did not yet know the feeling of seeing his older brother enjoying a place in society that he himself would never occupy,” the Earl responded. It occurred to Rebecca that while she had been doing her best to remain silent during the excruciating dinner, her father had subdued himself by taking liberal swigs of the claret.
She prayed internally that he would not add to the evening’s indiscretions. She tried to catch Caroline’s eye in the hope that her friend would signal some companionship, but this was to no avail. Caroline had busied herself with her embroidery and had the wisdom to refuse to be drawn into any speculation over Andrew’s motives or state of mind.
“Keep on playing, my dear!” Grandmamma Horatia called out in her quavering voice when Rebecca became too lost in thought to continue. “It does me more good than I can express to hear such accomplished musicianship.”
And so I am relegated to acting as an ornament. Rebecca turned the pages of the music to find some piece that might adequately express her current feelings. Well, it is not the first time, nor do I expect it will be the last.
She was quite certain that her father’s speculations about Andrew’s motives were wrong. She had known Andrew all her life, and while he had always scrupulously conducted himself in a manner that he considered befitting of a gentleman, he had never appeared in the least concerned with the trappings of money or grand status.
She recalled, in particular, one conversation that they had shared when she was thirteen or fourteen before she had been expected to act like a young lady and he like a young gentleman, when they had still been able to enjoy innocent play together as brother and sister.
“One day, Becca, I am going to get away from this place,” he had informed her from his seat on a tree branch.
Rebecca had been sitting on a branch of her own a few feet above his and had called out teasingly, “And where is it that you intend to go?”
“Anywhere,” he had responded. “Anywhere apart from Godwin Hall.”
Rebecca recalled the conviction behind his words and the surprise that she had felt on hearing it.
“Your ancestral home, Andrew?” she had remarked then, with a lack of inhibition that she could only dream of now. “Do you not feel any attachment to the place at all?”
Andrew had shrugged and climbed higher. “The Hall will go to Charles, and as far as I am concerned, he is welcome to it. I have other plans for my life than to play lord of the manor, as he will.”
“But does it not seem unfair to you?” At that age, Rebecca had not fully taken in the fact that she would be married one day, and that she would no more inherit her father’s estate than Andrew would. Then, all she had known was that as her father’s only daughter, there was no one else who would take precedence over her.
“Not in the least,” Andrew had replied, smiling cheerfully. “Charles will always have to do what is best for the estate. I expect he’ll end up marrying some rich, dull girl so that he can combine her fortune with his.”
Rebecca clearly remembered blinking at the mention of marriage, and then laughing heartily at the idea of Charles ever marrying anyone. She had known that such things happened between adults, but the idea had been so remote to her as to be entirely preposterous.
“And what about you?” she remembered saying teasingly, quite taken with the idea that the Godwin boys would marry one day. Andrew had grinned.
“Well, that is precisely my point. Without the weight of expectation on me, I’ll be able to marry whomever I wish.”
“As long as she is rich,” Rebecca had pragmatically pointed out. Even then, she had known that the aims of courtship were necessarily different for second sons.
“Well,” Andrew had said, climbing higher to join her on the branch where she was seated. “Better not to get married at all than to marry for
the wrong reasons.”
“I am sure your father will see things the same way,” she had remarked drily. Andrew’s face had fallen at that.
“My father wants whatever is best for my own happiness,” he had said, and Rebecca remembered thinking at the time that Andrew had not believed his own words in the slightest.
What she also remembered thinking then, and what hit her painfully once again now, was that her father wanted many things in life, but for her to be happy was not really one of them.
Chapter 12
Andrew had no idea why he had behaved the way that he had.
He was the first to own that it was nothing like him — not the indiscretion at dinner nor the cold assessments of his brother’s motivations.
I do not have any plan to improve this situation, he realized. And yet I cannot help myself from trying to disrupt this marriage.
The conversation with Grandmamma Horatia, the sight of Rebecca’s clear unhappiness at dinner, and Charles’ vulgar, mercenary manner in their conversation in the library had all served to crystallize the facts in his mind.
He loved Rebecca. He always had. And he could not support the idea of her marrying Charles.
Yet, what was there to do? He had tried to shame his brother by appealing to his sense of decency with regard to the mourning period for their father, and that had been to no avail at all. Charles believed himself to be entirely in the right and was clearly hungry for a time when Rebecca was his and his alone.
Andrew wondered whether Charles had correctly discerned how he felt about his fiancée even before Andrew had admitted it to himself, and that was why he was pushing forward the event of their wedding with such apparently reckless haste.
Perhaps Charles knew how he felt about Rebecca and was doing his best to spite him or perhaps he knew and did not care.
But in his heart of hearts, he was sure that Charles lacked sufficient sensitivity to discern a hidden emotion that ran as deep as forbidden love.
Andrew had scarcely been paying attention to where his legs were carrying him, and it was half in a daze that he realized he was standing on the terrace behind Godwin Hall, which by day had a fine prospect of the grand lawn and the woods and brooks that lay beyond. At this time in the evening, however, the terrace revealed only darkness. Leaning on the marble balustrades, he felt as if he might fall face-first into the abyss of the night.
He stood there for a while and was so caught up in his thoughts that at first, he did not notice the sound of a lady’s tread behind him. At length, he started and thought with a dizzying mixture of hope and fear that it might be Rebecca.
But alas, it was not.
“Miss Swanson,” he said upon turning around and recognising the lady. He did his best to prevent disappointment from creeping into his voice, but he knew that he was not entirely successful. “Good evening.”
“Lord Andrew,” Caroline replied, inclining her head. She had an air of grace and breeding that suited her very well, and if Andrew had been in a fit mood for admiration, he might have thought to himself that she looked very pretty.
He had never paid much attention to Miss Swanson one way or the other, though he was not the kind of young man that took pleasure in snubbing his social inferiors the way that his brother Charles did. He recalled dancing with her several times over the course of the last London season.
Now he could see that the reason he had danced with Miss Swanson was that it was a way of remaining close to Rebecca without monopolizing her in a fashion that would have led to assumptions about their engagement being drawn.
For a few brief seconds, he let himself imagine what it would have been like to keep dancing with Rebecca, to allow the London gossip mill to draw whatever conclusions it might. He should have been perfectly happy to keep dancing with her all evening long for every evening of that too-brief season, which seemed such a long time ago now.
“Rebecca has gone to bed,” Miss Swanson said, interrupting his reverie. “And the Earl and Grandmamma Horatia are both fallen asleep in front of the fire.” She smiled. “That leaves me with very little to divert me.”
Andrew smiled in response. He wished that he did not have to play host while he was experiencing such inner turmoil, but his native manners would not allow him to shirk his responsibility in entertaining Miss Swanson.
“I do not know how diverting I am capable of being tonight, Miss Swanson,” he said. “I fancy that I am poor company. But I will undertake to provide you with whatever entertainment is in my power while you are a guest in my house.”
His voice faltered a little as he realized the irony of his last words. This was not his house at all, it was his brother’s house, and he had no true liberty while he was in it.
“The dressmaker is coming tomorrow,” Miss Swanson said. “For Rebecca’s trousseau, you know. I cannot see how it can possibly be completed by the time of the wedding.”
Andrew felt his heart sink. Though he was not averse to the idea of a little small talk to distract him from the matter at hand, even small talk on the subject of dressmaking, the idea of Rebecca having a trousseau to marry anyone other than him plunged him still further into despair.
“I expect that anyone Charles will hire will be up to the task,” he responded lightly, though it cost him a good deal of effort.
“Yes, I suppose that is true,” Miss Swanson agreed. She looked up at him with those coal-black eyes of hers, eyes that he had never been easily able to read. It occurred to Andrew that he knew very little of Miss Swanson and how she had come to be Rebecca’s companion.
They stood in silence for a few seconds, neither seeming able to think of a thing to say to each other. Then eventually Miss Swanson broke the silence by alluding to the one thing they held in common.
“Rebecca is not happy.”
“No?” Andrew was taken aback by the abrupt confidence and struggled to know what to say in response. I should say that she will be most content once she gets used to the idea of marrying Charles, he thought bitterly. Or some other such nonsense that I do not mean in the slightest. Instead, he responded, “I am sorry to hear that.”
“You cannot be surprised,” Miss Swanson replied in a manner that was almost businesslike in its brusqueness. “She and Charles, they are not a good match. That is plain for anyone to see.”
“Well…” Andrew fumbled for a reply. Normally he was so adept at working out what was expected of him, yet now he had no notion of what Miss Swanson’s intention in engaging him in this conversation could possibly be. “I hope that she will forgive any boorishness on my brother’s part. I believe that he will adapt.”
He did not even convince himself with his words.
“It is not your brother’s behavior with which I have a quarrel,” Miss Swanson replied. It took Andrew a few moments to absorb the impact of what she was saying, and at first, he thought he had misheard.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Swanson?”
“Rebecca’s father has taken steps to secure her future prosperity and happiness,” Miss Swanson continued calmly, with the manner of one who has run a script through her mind a great many times and was seizing upon the opportunity to speak it out loud.
“But I do not believe that it is what she wants,” Andrew said. He knew that he was perhaps speaking a little indiscreetly, but he was genuinely confused. He knew — or thought he knew — that Rebecca and Miss Swanson had long nurtured the intimacy of sisters. To hear her apparently speaking against her friend surprised him a great deal.
“Rebecca is accustomed to being in the fortunate position of asking herself whether or not something is what she wants,” Miss Swanson said. She did not sound angry so much as sorrowful, and at once Andrew understood. Although Rebecca’s father had not acted in the best interests of his daughter’s heart, he had at least undertaken to act in her interests.
Miss Swanson had no one in the world to do the same for her. In that respect, we are not unlike each other.
Andrew’s
thoughts were interrupted by a sound at the other end of the terrace. He looked over to see the silhouette of his brother standing at the far end, having just emerged through the French windows of his library. He stood there, smoking a pipe and staring out over the lawn, apparently lost in his own thoughts.
“Please excuse me,” he said to Caroline. He had no appetite for another encounter with his brother, certainly not tonight. He recalled from their youthful disagreements that there was every chance that they might quarrel and rage late into the night, and tonight he did not have the stomach for it.
Miss Swanson has just said to me in so many words that Rebecca is not happy. Far better that I divert my energy toward being a good friend to her than in scoring points against Charles.
The Obscure Duchess of Godwin Hall_A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 6
