“Is that why you’re determined not to return to Sussex for the holidays? You are going with us, you know. If I have to wrap you in heavy silk cords and tie your skinny arse to the saddle, you will not remain behind by yourself.”
The trick with adolescent males was to know when to be an authority, when to be silent, and when to be a knowledgeable resource, ready to step in, but unwilling to interfere uninvited.
Dayton and Phillip were good fellows, and Axel had had their entire lives to learn their moods, while Matthew’s boys were more subtle. As Matthew himself had put it, Christopher had appointed himself Assistant Papa upon Matilda’s death, Remington was appallingly canny for a boy just up from the shires, and Richard…
Richard was growing secretive and difficult.
Richard snipped at the air with the shears. “I could run away. You might force me to go with you, but you can’t keep your eyes on me every moment. We’ll stay at inns between here and Sussex, and I could sneak out in the middle of the night.”
Well, then. Axel would be sure to share a room with his youngest nephew en route, though a boy who announced a plan to run off was not a boy who truly wanted to run off.
“You don’t want to face something or someone in Sussex,” Axel said, turning the rose bush so the graft was closest to the lamps. His plants did not need sunshine to grow—he’d done experiments—any sort of light would suffice, though sunshine was best.
“I’m not a coward,” Richard retorted, bending the bush’s single bloom toward his nose. “Belmont House is my home. I’m not afraid to go home.”
“That bloom hasn’t much scent,” Axel said, sweeping leaves, dirt, and twigs into a pile on the work table. “The prettiest ones often lack a beguiling fragrance.”
“What do you think of this Miss Jennings?”
Richard’s tone was carefully neutral, as boys of a certain age must be when discussing the reality of adult female sexuality. Axel was glad for the opening, however, because the conversation was far from over.
“What I think of the lady matters naught. If your father is taken with her, then in the first place, I’m relieved. Matthew has been a damned monk, and with you lot out from under foot, that appalling transgression against commonsense can be addressed.”
Richard pulled a single yellow leaf from the rose bush and tossed it on the pile of detritus.
“In the second place?”
In the second place, Miss Jennings was not who or what was troubling the boy. His sulks and broods had been going on since he’d left Sussex.
“In the second place, if your papa is enamored of her, then she must be a good sort. He’s no fool, and neither are you.”
Richard wandered away and hiked himself up on the second work table, which was free of clutter and mostly clean.
“She might be after Papa’s money.”
Interesting theory, and not one most adolescent boys would come up with on their own.
“She might well be after his money,” Axel said, brushing the leavings into a dust bin, “because a woman has so few avenues of acquiring wealth in her own name in these enlightened and chivalrous times.”
“Uncle, not the lecture on France, please.”
“Mark my words, Nephew: Most Englishmen are cowards posing as knights in shining armor, and one day soon, Englishwomen will call that bluff. I thank the Almighty I have no daughters, for that day will be lively indeed.”
“About Christmas,” Richard said, with the air of a young man schooling a fractious puppy. “I’d really rather not go home.”
Axel fired his dust rag at Richard’s chest, which was not as skinny a chest as it had been six months ago.
“I don’t want to go either,” Axel said, leaning back against the work table and crossing his arms. “Travel in December is invariably unpleasant. The coaching inns are full of influenza and worse. Riding horseback on frozen roads holds even less appeal, and if your father is in the middle of a courtship, pretending to ignore that farce will tax my nonexistent stores of tact. Then there’s your dear Aunt and Uncle Capshaw.”
Richard shook out the rag he’d been twisting. “You don’t care for them?”
Was that hope in the boy’s voice? Relief?
“Your aunt is a good woman, albeit tediously pious and incapable of setting a decent table on a constrained budget. Your uncle is an utter buffoon, and a trial to the nerves. Five minutes in Manny Capshaw’s company explains why your aunt has turned to no less comfort than Almighty God, whose mercy she must augment with genteel tippling.”
Richard fired the rag back at his uncle. “You don’t like Uncle Emmanuel?”
“Don’t like him, don’t respect him, and don’t trust him either. Matthew says the Capshaw tenant farms are not in good repair. Your brothers have noticed that Manny philanders, which euphemism is as much delicacy as I’m capable of.”
“So Miss Jennings being thoroughly ruined and having a bastard daughter is just fine, but Uncle Manny philandering is beyond the pale?”
Axel studied the boy, who sat, hands braced on the table’s edge, shoulders hunched. This question had been vexing Richard for some time—an interesting question, too.
“What your father has told me of Miss Jennings’s situation suggests she was quite young at the time of her downfall, had no one to properly guide her decisions, and has since become a pattern card of probity. I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. Emmanuel, by contrast, took vows to your aunt and has been so lacking in discretion that his own nephews know of his rutting and strutting.”
Richard pushed off the table and dusted his backside. “Uncle’s fault is a lack of discretion?”
“You should be a barrister,” Axel said, cuffing the boy on the shoulder. “Miss Jennings failed to show proper respect for herself, in succumbing to the charms of some bounder.” Or several bounders. The stories Axel had unearthed hinted at a spree of determined dissipation, not a single romantic mis-step. “Capshaw shows a lack of respect for your aunt in allowing his foibles to become common knowledge.”
Richard’s brows rose in a gesture reminiscent of his father when that worthy had stitched together seemingly unrelated bits of evidence into a possible solution to a criminal mystery.
“Uncle disrespects Aunt Agatha, but Miss Jennings disrespected herself,” Richard said. “I see the difference.”
“Then you will also see that Miss Jennings has apparently regained her self-respect, or at least improved the company she keeps. Will you please not run off on the way to Sussex?”
Richard studied the grafted rose, for which Axel had high hopes. “I might be sick a lot once we get to Belmont House, have a deal of studying to do, that sort of thing. If Aunt threatens to have us over for supper, I will fall victim to a violent megrim.”
“The first contagious megrim in medical history,” Axel assured him. “For I will be prone to the same ailment.”
Richard smacked him on the arm—a good, hard blow, the blow of a young man, not a mere boy—and dashed out the door.
Chapter Seventeen
Supper at Linden had been a tense affair, reminiscent of the many difficult meals Theresa had endured growing up at Sutcliffe Keep.
Often, Grandpapa’s complexion had grown more choleric with each course—and each bottle of wine—until one of the twins said or did something outrageous, and crystal was hurled the length of the table. Theresa had learned by the age of fourteen to excuse herself with an impending megrim after the soup course when Grandpapa was in particularly loud form.
“Theresa, will you join me in the family parlor after you’ve looked in on Priscilla?” Thomas asked as he assisted Loris from her chair.
A request, but like many requests from powerful men, also an order.
“Of course,” Theresa said, rising and avoiding the baroness’s worried gaze.
Loris was besotted with her handsome husband, but she was also the daughter of a steward, and caretaking was in her bones. If Thomas had shared with his wi
fe what Beckman and Jamie had doubtless confided in him earlier in the day, then Loris would be worried for Matthew too.
By the time Theresa reached the nursery suite, Priscilla had fallen asleep, and even Alice was on the point of retiring.
“You were so happy when you rode off to the hunt meet,” Alice said, closing the book in her lap. “You’re not happy now.”
Theresa latched the door that led from the playroom to Priscilla’s bedroom, though that would mean less warmth in the bedroom.
“Matthew proposed to me today. I feel as if those words can’t possibly mean what I know them to mean. He offered marriage—to me. Not mere courtship, holy matrimony. His affection for Priscilla is without doubt, he’s well-fixed, handsome, and he’s offered to marry me.”
Alice pushed her spectacles up her nose. “Priscilla matters. Handsome does not matter, well-fixed only matters some. His regard for you matters a lot.”
“But I never, ever, in my wildest fairy tales imagined that such a man—he’s good, Alice. He’s kind, he’s honorable. He’s… he’s worth every year I spent at Sutcliffe, ignoring the curate and keeping the books to the penny.”
“You trust him, in other words.”
Oh, the situation was even worse than that. Theresa loved Matthew Belmont. “He trusts me. Alice, you cannot imagine what a gift that is. He’s not scowling at me from the back of my mind, waiting for me to pounce on the gardener’s boy beneath the hawthorns, or gamble away my pin money.”
“Your brother doesn’t know you very well. Give it time, Theresa, and don’t stay up too late. Tomorrow is another day.”
Alice rose stiffly, set her book on the mantel, opened Priscilla’s door a crack, and retreated to her own bedroom.
Thomas was waiting in the corridor when Theresa left the nursery suite, the flickering sconces making him look like a demon haunting his own home.
“Did you think I wouldn’t heed your summons, Thomas?”
He turned down the lamp’s wick, which made the shadows denser. “I thought you would join me, but I neglected to have the fire lit in the family parlor earlier in the day. That room will be freezing.”
Because at Linden, nobody used the family parlor. Theresa knew where it was, but hadn’t spent so much as an hour there.
“Let’s talk in the playroom,” she said. “It’s cozy, and we won’t be disturbed.” They wouldn’t be disturbed, provided nobody got to shouting.
Theresa crossed the corridor first, but Thomas beat her to the door. He opened it and bowed her through, the idiot.
“You never smile at me,” he said. “Or is it more accurate to say, we never smile at each other?”
His mood was hard to decipher, but then, they’d avoided anything approaching a real conversation for nearly a decade.
“You smile at your baroness,” Theresa said, taking the seat Alice had vacated. “I like Loris very much, Thomas.”
Thomas took the second rocker, the chair creaking as he set it in motion. “What I feel for my wife is so complicated, and so fine, I don’t try to put words on it. I suspect you’re to become an aunt, and that…. That…”
Doubtless, Thomas had intended to raise some other topic, and yet, impending parenthood was too enormous, too all-consuming to ignore.
“Are you afraid?” Theresa asked.
He looked at his hands, elegant, competent hands, but not yet a father’s hands. “Terrified, now that you ask. Terrified I could lose Loris so soon after I’ve found her. Terrified for the child, terrified I’ll bungle it all, terrified Napoleon will escape again fifteen years hence, and my darling firstborn will run off to join some damned regiment. I’ve gone quietly daft, and nobody warned me about any of it.”
In the next room, Priscilla stirred. Her dreams had always been vivid, almost as if a single day wasn’t enough to hold all the fancies and fears her imagination could conjure in twenty-four hours.
“That terror is normal, Thomas, for us at least. Priscilla was five years old before I realized that most of my fear was not for her, but was instead the fear I’d grown up with, no parents worth the name, in a rackety old castle full of dangerous staircases, crumbling parapets, and indifferent servants. The twins’ waking joy was teasing me when they weren’t taunting you into a round of fisticuffs. Your child will be safe, Thomas, far safer than you were.”
Thomas had had a sister looking after him, but Theresa had had a brother who’d at least tried to look after her too. How she longed to have that brother back again.
“I don’t like to think of you, alone at the Keep, becoming a mother, raising Priscilla on your own.”
An admission and an understatement.
Becoming a mother was a careful euphemism for three days of agony and blood. Priscilla hadn’t wanted to be born, or perhaps Theresa hadn’t wanted any distance to come between her and her child.
“The Keep became peaceful once the twins removed to Town. Grandfather’s passing was peaceful too.”
Thomas nodded, suggesting no more need be mentioned on that topic. “Belmont says he’s offered for you. He apparently did not feel inclined to ask my permission to court you.”
Good for Matthew. “Are you angry at him?”
A log fell on the hearth, sending sparks up the flue. Loris had ordered wood burned in the nursery, an extravagance Theresa would never have dared at Sutcliffe Keep.
“I am angry at you,” Thomas said, his tone rueful. “My wife says anger is a way to stay connected with the object of my ire without having to examine more tender sentiments. Brave woman, my baroness.”
And one to whom Thomas listened.
“We needn’t plough old ground, Thomas. You have acknowledged me and Priscilla. I’m grateful for that.”
“Grateful. I suspect such gratitude applied to my backside would smart considerably. Belmont says we must talk. He has suggested, scolded, ordered, threatened, and dared me to talk with you. In the past few weeks, my neighbor has learned to know you better than your own brother ever knew you, and that is… that is not right.”
Thomas was merely stating a problem rather than tendering an apology.
Though he was trying. Matthew had inspired Thomas to try, when all of Theresa’s letters and prayers had not.
“Matthew is ruthless,” Theresa said, “all the more so for being good-hearted about his objectives. He cares little about how I conducted myself ten years ago, and has asked very few questions. What shall we talk about?”
Theresa knew exactly what they must not talk about, but other matters could be spoken of, and probably should be.
“How much of your descent into ruin was your own doing, and how much was the twins leading you astray?”
In other words, how much guilt should Theresa bear, and how much should she reserve for her younger sibling? For years, a part of her had longed for absolution from Thomas, for understanding, for anything. Now she wanted only for peace between them, and a way forward.
“Much of what befell me was my own doing,” Theresa said, an admission she could not have made as an angry, hurt, bewildered young woman. “By the time I was seventeen, Bertrand and Rothchild had introduced me to strong spirits, wagering, and worse, though I was still making an effort in the direction of discretion, particularly when you were home from school breaks. Grandpapa realized what was afoot though.”
“Go on.”
So Thomas sensed there was more, and none of it good. He was finally listening, and he might never afford Theresa another opportunity to discuss the past.
Because Matthew expected it of her, she’d share with her brother what she could.
“Grandpapa never had any intention of seeing me presented at court, which came as a bitter surprise. For years, I’d told myself, ‘When I have my Season…’ ‘When I make my bow….’ ‘When I’m old enough to be presented…’ I’d have friends in London, lovely girls who’d laugh and tease and share secrets with me.
“I’d have new dresses, gentlemen might tell me I was pretty, not
simply a bother and a brat. I would waltz away to a lovely new life, with my own husband and my own household far from the stink and noise of the sea.”
Thomas rose and took up the fireplace poker, shifting the logs back and adding another to the blaze.
“If Loris and I cannot have children, then the barony can be preserved through your line. Neither the twins nor I had married when you turned eighteen, and Grandfather should have presented you at court for the sake of the succession.”
“I can preserve the title?”
“Baronies tend to be old, their patents liberal in some regards.” Thomas resumed his seat, the room a little brighter for his attentions to the fire. “I gather Grandfather’s decision to keep you at the castle left you peevish.”
“I was furious, heartbroken, disbelieving. I’d never been fond of Grandfather nor he of me, but after that… he hated me, Thomas. He must have simply and purely hated me. I felt like a prisoner, as if I’d preserved my virtue and the best part of my innocence—despite all temptation to the contrary—for nothing.”
Thomas crossed an ankle over his knee and tugged off a boot. The second boot followed, and he set them away from the fire. A gentleman would be so informal before only family or close friends.
Regret rose up, like a wave from the sea, deluging Theresa’s heart with nine years lost forever.
“You had a tantrum,” Thomas said. “Apparently, the Jennings family excels at the protracted public tantrum. Grandfather certainly had his share, and the twins tantrumed themselves right into early graves.”
An hour ago, Theresa might have asked Thomas if that was an apology for his own tantrum, but the need to be right, to be vindicated, had slipped from her grasp.
While the need to protect her younger brother was probably a life sentence.
“For years, I had a tantrum, to the delight of our cousins, and the dismay of our grandfather. When I learned I wasn’t to have a London Season, then realized I wasn’t to have any escape from that damned stinking pile of rocks, I considered running away, I considered throwing myself into the sea—except you had taught me to swim, and I could not allow Grandfather to win. Then he found somebody willing to take me off his hands, and my rebellion became instead a battle for my own survival.”
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