He did not recognize the name, but the address was in the Temple Bar. “May I keep this? Thank you,” he said when she nodded. “I presume he interviewed you about Lady Bracebridge, else you would not have opened this conversation with a restatement of your loyalty to my wife.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have not engaged this man.” He gripped the top of the nearest chair. Could this be Cynssyr’s work? The duke was responsible for the cottage in Little Merton, after all. “What did he ask you?”
Her stiffness with him eased. She nodded. “He asked what I knew about your marriage and whether Lady Bracebridge is mistreated here. He asked whether you were a faithful husband and whether Lady Bracebridge is a faithful wife.”
If not Cynssyr, then Aldreth. Sinclair, for all his threats and pettiness, hadn’t the money for lawyers. Thrale was another possibility, though a remote one, since he was, to the best of Bracebridge’s knowledge, still at Blackfern with his wife. Was he to find that all her relations were aligned against him?
“I told him the truth.” She lifted her chin. “I’ll say the same to anyone else who asks. I mean no disrespect, but I was as shocked as anyone when I heard you’d married her. I never thought you cared for her that way.”
“You were wrong,” he said with undue curtness. Mrs. Elliot stiffened, and he forced himself to soften his manner. “What,” he asked as gently as he could, “is the truth you relayed?”
Mrs. Elliot sat at last, hands clasped on her lap. “I told him Lady Bracebridge is unhappy, but not mistreated.”
“Thank you for that.”
“I told him that I’ve not been with you long and might be mistaken.”
His heart thudded hard when he took in the rest of what she’d said. “You believe Lady Bracebridge is unhappy?”
“Yes, my lord, I do.”
“What makes you say such a thing?” He was afraid he knew the answer.
“There is a melancholy about her I never saw before. She had spells at the Cooperage, but that’s to be expected, given her father and his own particular spells. There’s no denying marriage is an adjustment for any woman, but, my lord, I know that girl. I know her. I watched her grow up and become the woman she is now. It breaks my heart to see such sadness in a woman so recently married.”
He released the chair he’d been holding so hard and sat. He had only ever considered his own side of this situation, and that was true even when he told himself he was thinking of Emily. In actual fact, he only ever considered how Emily reacted to him and never why she might react as she did. She was an expert at hiding her emotions; he’d certainly learned that.
The thought of her going through this marriage showing him only what she thought he wanted to see carved a crater deep into the center of him. Where his heart ought to have been, there was nothing. He had never seen this sadness Mrs. Elliot had noticed from the start.
“I told him she would never be unfaithful,” Mrs. Elliot continued, as if she hadn’t put a mirror before him and forced him to see an unpleasant truth. “In the time I have been in your employ, I’ve seen nothing in her behavior to convince me otherwise.”
Emily loved him. He knew she did. This damned house, so full of memories of his father he had done nothing to banish. He closed his eyes and saw a future in which he was a different man. Perhaps even a better one.
“A good many husbands take little notice of their wives,” Mrs. Elliot said. He opened his eyes in time to see her shaking her head. “You’re not alone in that regard.” She looked away, then back. “Many a union exists without passion. She’ll adjust her expectations of marriage and find, God willing, should she be a mother, other sources of joy.”
The word mother was a bucket of cold water in his face. Emily a mother meant him a father. Emily a mother transformed his life entirely. Mrs. Elliot meant was that Emily would settle into a version of their marriage in which there was no affection between them, and that he wanted such a result. But that wasn’t what he wanted, was it?
“I did not like that lawyer. He insinuated unpleasant things, asking whether she was faithful to you.” She clutched one side of the seat of her chair. “Her ladyship has shown you unwavering support, and I don’t mean just since I came here. Time and again, she defended you to her father.” She interlaced her fingers and leaned toward him. “Did you wonder why she has no wardrobe, after all the money Lord Aldreth and His Grace spent outfitting her and her sisters?”
“He’s refused to return them.”
She sat back. “I should think so, since he sold them the day after he discovered she was gone.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that. Everything gone. It’s not the first time he’s stolen from his daughters.”
“God willing, it shall be the last.”
“You saw her father, my lord, that day you came to the Cooperage, and I’ll tell you now what her ladyship never will; that such was a common condition for him. More than once I begged her to leave, to live with Lady Thrale or one of her sisters. But she had the duchess for a pattern, and Lady Thrale, and Lady Aldreth, who all did their Christian duty toward their father. She did the same as them.”
The world unmoored itself from everything he knew and desired of it. “You believe she’s unhappy.”
“She’ll settle in, my lord.”
He steeled himself. “I’m no paragon among men. But I am no Thomas Sinclair, either. She is a countess. Whatever she desires, it is within my means to see that she has it. What reason has she to be unhappy?”
“Why, none at all, my lord.”
“I have brought her to my home. Here and at Corth Abbey. We are in London so that she may obtain a wardrobe that befits her new rank and position. Lady Bracebridge is young. She has no experience with a household the size of mine. No experience with the duties that come with being Lady Bracebridge.”
Mrs. Elliot only shook her head. “Who do you think managed the Cooperage after Lady Thrale was married? The same accounts, the same bills, the same father as her sisters, only by the time it was your wife who tried to hold the household together, it was that many more years of hardship and mismanagement. That many more years of his bitterness.”
“That is my point entirely.” Desperation filled him, threatened to choke him. “Her life with me is immeasurably better.”
“I watched you fall in love with the duchess and prayed the two of you would find the happiness you deserved. I am sorry you did not. But none of that means Lady Bracebridge is less.”
“That goes without saying.”
Slowly, Mrs. Elliot stood, her disappointment in him a wound across his heart. “You’ll break my heart again if you aren’t the man to see that.”
“She knows me,” he said. “She knows me.”
“I don’t doubt for a moment that you and Her Grace would have had a life of love and happiness. We all wished that for you, for you both. But I’ll tell you what I’ve always thought since your wife grew up to be the young woman she is: She is a better match for you than the duchess ever was.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
As Bracebridge stood at the Margaret Street corner of Cavendish Square, a woman came around the opposite corner, a maid and footman trailing after her. She moved with a purposeful stride, not hurried, just determined. Emily moved like that. Full of joy and energy. Even from a distance, she was compelling.
His heart thumped when he realized that the woman was no stranger at all but his own wife. The shock of seeing her in this new way momentarily paralyzed him. She wasn’t the past he regretted, but his future. His wife.
She took the stairs to the door but did not immediately go in, even after her maid and the footman went downstairs to the servants’ quarters. Instead, she crouched at the threshold, protected from the rain by the portico. Had she dropped something? Had Pond forgot she was here and left the door locked, and now she was searching for a hidden key?
He headed toward the house. She was still crouched when he arrived at the steps. If she’d lost her
key or some personal possession, the item must be well and truly misplaced. He mounted the steps and heard her speaking in a cajoling croon.
“Poor little thing. Hush, hush. Shh. Kitty, kitty. There’s a sweet one.”
He stepped underneath the portico. Pond had planted flowers in the urns on either side of the door: yellow, purple, and blue. For years prior, they had stood empty.
“Shh. Kitty, kitty. Aren’t you sweet? Are you calm now?” Emily, now aware he was here, looked over her shoulder at him and then upward, because he was standing while she was not. She put a finger across her lips and moved so he could see what she was cooing over.
A cat. Considering its size, more a largish kitten. Whichever it was, it mewed and hissed as if it saw a portal to hell.
“It’s only got three legs, and it’s a baby, the poor thing. Aren’t you brave?” she said to the kitten. She got a hiss in response. “Oh, the poor thing. It can’t survive out here. Not by itself.”
“It has so far.”
“Pond said the kitchen cat has vanished,” she said.
“That isn’t the missing kitchen cat.”
She rolled her eyes at the implication she would mistake a sickly, three-legged kitten for a full-grown mouser. “We could have another cat in the house. Even if the other comes back.”
First Frieda, now a misfit cat? He put his hands on his hips and shook his head, knowing he would give in. What man could possibly resist that pleading look? “Bring it inside, then.”
“I don’t want to terrify it more than it already is, and besides it’s got sharp claws.”
The pitiful beast was jammed into the hollow formed by the side of the house and the stone urn that now held those flowers. Geraniums, he believed, and some sort of daisy. He propped his umbrella against the side of the house and removed his scarf. He folded it twice over as he moved toward her and the kitten. “Allow me.”
She made room for him. The moment he hunkered down beside his wife and made eye contact with the cat, it calmed, though without ceasing its yowls. She was right about it being a kitten still, though it was far too thin to be healthy.
“Do be careful,” she said.
“I shan’t hurt it.” He dropped his scarf over the animal and scooped it up. He held it tight to his chest.
“I meant,” Emily said from behind him, “that I did not want you to be scratched or bitten.”
Absently, he rubbed the kitten’s head. It purred loudly. “Poor little beastie.”
She grabbed his umbrella, then opened the door for him, and in they went. Pond appeared from the corridor that led to the servants’ quarters, ready to take coats and hats, then went wide-eyed at the sight of Bracebridge and his burden.
A dull thunk broke the silence; the metal tip of his umbrella hitting the bottom of the canister provided for the purpose of holding it. Emily hurried ahead of him, brushing through the ghost of his recollection of the day he and his brothers had played at soldiers in the foyer. Bracebridge had been at his turn with the sword they’d taken from the suit of armor that was no longer in the corner. His father had lit into him for that. You could have taken someone’s head. A ridiculous accusation. They had all of them studied with a swordmaster. He bloody well knew how to handle a weapon, then and now.
“Look what we’ve found.” Emily pointed to Bracebridge as she addressed Pond. “A kitten! It was by the door when I came home, and Bracebridge rescued it just now.” She made it sound as if he’d fought off the demons of hell rather than bent down and picked it up. Damned if he didn’t feel as if he might have done so, if what he got in return was that awed voice.
“Valiant of you, my lord.”
“Thank you.” He held the kitten securely against his chest. “We’ll take it to the kitchen and see if York will let us raid the larder.”
As ever, Pond remained calm in the midst of the excitement. “Straightaway.”
Emily moved closer to him, rubbing a finger gently along the top of the kitten’s head. “It’s still purring.”
“Indeed, it is.”
“I believe it’s taken a liking to you, Bracebridge.” The animal had settled into its fate as a captive of his arms and scarf. He caught the edge of a breathtaking smile when Emily bent in for a closer look. There was no denying she was a tenderhearted woman.
He lifted the kitten in front of his face for a better look. An awkward-looking creature, from what he could see. Black with white blotches and a head too large for its body. “It’s got one blue eye and one green one,” he said.
“Is that so?” She went up on tiptoe to look, and he lowered the kitten to show her. He breathed in the scent of violets and remembered the softness of her skin, the warmth of her when he entered her. For half a second, she held his gaze with the promise of lust to be explored at their leisure. “So it does. Isn’t that curious?”
Pond led the way to the kitchen, opening doors and ensuring the way was clear for them. Bracebridge was aware of Emily looking at him as if he’d saved God himself instead of a starving, bedraggled, three-legged dab of a cat. They had some distance to walk since the kitchen was in the far-left wing of the house. His cook came to attention the moment they walked into the space, a wide, low-ceilinged room of whitewashed walls and the tiniest of windows at the top of the rear wall.
“Mr. York,” Emily said with a wide gesture. The poor fellow looked as if he feared the worst from this invasion of his domain. “Lord Bracebridge has rescued a kitten.”
Pond smoothly said, “Might there be cream and some of last night’s chicken?”
York crooked a finger at one of the kitchen maids, but the girl was already heading for the pantry. Another fetched a small bowl and filled it with cream.
Bracebridge set the kitten down, keeping a hand on its back to prevent its escape, should it attempt such foolishness. His fear proved unfounded. Even after Emily reached in and gently pulled away his scarf, the kitten pressed against him and purred. The bedraggled, maimed cat hovered at the edge of hideous. Ugly and scrappy, like him, the kitten had persevered.
“Here we are, Lady Bracebridge.” One of the newly hired maids set down the cream and stepped back to watch Emily with worshipful regard. Meanwhile, York chopped and shredded chicken into suitably sized bits and arranged the meat on a plate.
Emily beamed at York when he set the plate before the kitten. His famously ill-tempered cook was transfixed by her. “Thank you, York. You are a hero.”
The animal investigated the chicken first. Its foray revealed that it was male and that the injury to its right rear leg must have occurred early in its young life, since the wound was mostly healed. How it had survived such an injury seemed both mysterious and miraculous.
Moments later, after a first, tentative bite, it snarled and tore into the chicken, absurdly fierce. Bracebridge’s heart pinched.
“Poor, poor creature,” Emily said over the sound of the kitten growling as he ate. “You need a home, don’t you? Would you like to live here?” Immediately, she looked to Bracebridge. “Mayn’t he? For now.”
Without thinking, he stroked the kitten. It purred and snarled at the same time. The servants stood in various attitudes of attention, but it was plain as day he would never be forgiven if he broke Emily’s heart. “I have no objection.”
“He needs a name. A grand name.”
The misfit cat finished the chicken and licked the dish twice over before turning to the cream.
Emily put her arms on the table, eyes on the kitten. “Ajax? Plato? Pythagoras?”
“Cicero?”
“Hypotenuse.” She laughed, and he smiled despite not wanting to. He didn’t smile often enough; that was his trouble. He’d got out of the habit of smiling.
“That’s a mouthful. Isosceles? Because he’s only got three legs. Or Socrates,” he said. “He was wise enough to choose our door as a refuge.”
She narrowed her eyes in thought, oblivious to him saying our door. “Socrates. I like that name. Yes. He is a profound
thinker, just as you have observed.” Emily left off gazing at the kitten to look at Bracebridge. Mrs. Iddings had called Emily kind, and that was true. Emphatically true. Frieda. Socrates. Miss Iddings. Clara. Mrs. Elliot, too. His wife took care of those whom she loved.
The kitten finished off his cream and hopped over to him. Bracebridge picked him up. “Socrates, my friend, welcome to your new home. You shall enjoy living here, you lucky beast.” He held up the kitten and looked into its different colored eyes. “I like the little fellow.”
“You’ll keep food on hand for him, won’t you, York?” Emily said.
There was silence while Pond and York looked to Bracebridge for confirmation of her request. He grinned, but the awkwardness expanded. “Please lay in a supply of delicacies to tempt our young philosopher.”
A pang of guilt burned its way through his heart. Had he just made a stray cat more welcome in his home than his wife?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Anne wrote in a hand that was neat to the point of artistry.
Dear Friend—
As I write, Mrs. MacInnis is here at Portman Square and is once again being exceedingly disagreeable to your wife. Well do I understand that you are a gentleman with great responsibilities, and I should never suggest that you neglect those. It grieves me to tell you that others speculate about your regard for my sister. It is unseemly, unkind, and hurtful to my sister. But what is one to think when, where one would expect to see a husband with his new wife, we do not see you?
She’d underlined you three times.
Others have remarked, my lord. Others have wondered if you intend—I can scarcely write these words—to abandon your marriage. It has been said in this very house. I have personally overheard those very words.
If you have any regard at all for my sister, please come to Portman Square at your earliest convenience. That woman has always been susceptible to your charms. Other thoughts of mine in this regard are reserved for some future time.
—A
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