Mortification stronger than Emma had ever known seized her. How callous she’d been mere moments earlier, comparing her teeth to leprosy and her social ineptitude to a pox. Worse yet, Vanessa hadn’t stopped her. She had neither scolded her for her callow insensitivity nor given any indication of what Emma should expect. Vanessa had simply allowed Emma to dig herself into a mammoth pit of unfeeling amusement.
Lesson learned.
Forcing her feet into motion, Emma stumbled forward to join the rest of the group. Lord Trenowyth stepped up to her, and she mumbled an incoherent greeting. Removing her gaze from Lady Morgan was fast proving to be a sincerely difficult task. Not because of the scars covering her. Not any longer.
As Lady Morgan spoke with Vanessa, the path of the young woman’s eyes lay somewhere in the vicinity of Vanessa’s hair. They held a faraway, clouded expression, as though she wasn’t seeing Vanessa at all. Or, perhaps, as though she didn’t see anything at all.
Emma’s jaw dropped, but she quickly snapped it closed. Mr. Cardiff’s eyes shot to her with newfound fury.
That couldn’t be. Could it? How could she be blind? Emma’s chest tightened unbearably.
Vanessa turned to her, guiding Lady Morgan’s free hand to take the one Emma held extended. “I’m sure, Mr. Cardiff and Lady Morgan, you’ll both remember my sister, Miss Hathaway.”
“I can’t forget, no matter how much I’ve tried.” Mr. Cardiff’s muttered words were filled with acid and vitriol. His cold, blue eyes pierced through her, making her feel as though she had no clothes on to protect her from his raving gaze.
“Miss Hathaway.” A smile lit Lady Morgan’s features, though it stretched her scarred skin. The smile did, however, ease some of the opacity of her eyes.
She released Vanessa’s hand and reached out for Emma. Her gloved fingers explored Emma’s hand, as though memorizing the size and shape, learning the contours. Emma had never experienced the like, and she trembled ever so slightly, more unnerved than she would care to admit, beneath the lady’s examination. Lady Morgan’s stare remained fixed at some point seemingly behind Emma’s head.
“I must admit,” Lady Morgan continued, her voice tinkling like chimes in a soft breeze, “I was undecided about attending the Buringtons’ house party this summer until Lady Burington wrote and assured me you would also be in attendance. Once I learned that, I couldn’t possibly refuse.” Her voice was haunting in its familiarity, particularly since little of her appearance remained as before.
Her brother grunted at her side, though his expression remained unchanged. Irate. Loathsome. Jeering. Just as he’d always been in Emma’s presence, only intensified ten-fold because of his proximity—usually, she only felt his rage from across a crowded room.
She wondered briefly what he must be thinking. The corner of his lip jerked when she stared at him a bit too long, and his eyes narrowed upon her before flashing over to his sister in agitation.
“I’m pleased to see you again as well, Lady Morgan,” Emma stammered. “It has been a very long time.”
“Too long.” The gentle, blonde-haired lady squeezed Emma’s hand before dropping her hold on Mr. Cardiff’s arm. She took up the same grip on Emma and, with slight pressure, urged her to turn. “Might you and I go for a promenade? I should like to take some exercise after a day spent in the carriage, and it is quite pleasant out today.”
“Morgan,” Mr. Cardiff interrupted, his voice low and steely, “I think it would be best for you to settle in your room, first. Your maid can take you for a walk through the park later. Don’t you agree, Niall?”
Without waiting for Lord Trenowyth’s response, Mr. Cardiff took hold of Lady Morgan’s arm and guided her into the house. The earl followed close behind, as a contingent of servants unloaded trunks from the carriages and carted them inside. The waiting housekeeper directed the Cardiff family to their respective chambers, leaving Emma staring after the lot of them, dumbfounded, mouth agape, and shaken to her core.
Emma felt Vanessa move up behind her.
“You didn’t warn me. About any of it. You never said a word. Not even when I got here, when I was making a fool of myself, comparing my problems to those of a leper.”
“No.”
Emma’s eyes filled with hot, ashamed tears. She spun to face her sister. “Why?”
Vanessa pursed her lips and her shoulders slumped. “You wouldn’t have come.” She made her way up the stairs with David at her side. When she reached the top, she turned around to look at Emma again. “It’s been long enough. You’ve got to face what happened. All of you.”
“You may take Lady Morgan for a brief excursion through the grounds once she has settled in,” Aidan said to his sister’s nursemaid. “No longer than a half hour, though. I don’t wish to overtire her.”
Janetta bobbed a brief curtsey. “Yes, Mr. Cardiff.”
They stood in the corridor outside Morgan’s assigned chamber—on the opposite side of the house from the river, just as Aidan had insisted upon. Not that Morgan could see the water, but she’d undoubtedly hear it. He wanted no reminders for her of what had taken place before.
Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Don’t go near the water. Keep her to the other side of the property.” Morgan hadn’t attempted to harm herself in more than two-and-a-half years, but Aidan saw no reason to tempt fate. “Perhaps today, you should limit her to a walk through the maze to the east of the house. If she wants to explore further than that, I’ll take her tomorrow.”
The little maid dipped her head and timidly excused herself to return to her mistress’s rooms.
After a moment’s hesitation of warring with himself over whether to inform Janetta he had changed his mind and would see to escorting his sister outside himself, Aidan spun on his heel and marched through the hall. He had to let go. He had to begin to trust Morgan’s sanity again, even if he could only take a small step toward that end at a time.
At the main staircase, he made his way down and headed for David’s study. His friend might not be there, but Aidan had no doubt he’d find a good whiskey in the sideboard. Few things in his life could ease the rage which always bubbled under his skin in quite the way a dose of spirits could.
Niall had been right, though it pained Aidan to admit it. They couldn’t hover over Morgan constantly; it would only serve to leave them all anxious and Morgan agitated with their interference. She wanted them to trust her. She wanted them to believe she was right-minded now and would not fall into a vast pit of despair as she had done before. She wanted them all to believe, herself included, that she could navigate the world without the aid of her eyes, that she could live her life as it was meant to be lived.
Aidan wanted to believe it, too. Desperately. He’d promised her years ago he would never give up on her, and yet how could he trust her to be all right after all that had happened? The one time he ought to have been unfailingly at her side, he’d left her behind again.
The only way any of them would find out for certain if she truly could live a normal life, though, would be to leave Morgan to do as she wished from time to time—or at least with only a servant to assist her when necessary.
Doing so at Tavistock Manor had been nerve-wracking enough, but Morgan had quickly proven herself adept at getting around with the aid of her maid or a walking stick, once she’d learned to count her steps and recognize the feel of things. But now, she wanted to go somewhere other than her home and to be around people again. Around society. Around vain twits like the vexatious Miss Hathaway, who apparently could not bear to see Morgan’s scars without gasping in abject horror.
Aidan grumbled something unintelligible even to himself beneath his breath. Just before reaching a side door which led to the rose garden, he pushed open David’s study. Empty, as expected, but the credenza was well stocked. Leaving the door ajar in case David wished to join him, he located a tumbler and pulled the cork on the nearest bottle, then sniffed the contents. Rich, aged whiskey. Perfect. He poured a full gl
ass and threw it back, dispatching it in a stinging swallow, then filled it again.
It would take much more than a few shots of whiskey to remove the revolted expression that had covered every blessed inch of Miss Hathaway’s face from his memory. With one look, a brief moment of at most a second, every ounce of fury Aidan felt toward this woman, fury which he had kept suppressed over the last three years, came crashing back to the surface with the force of a gale.
Somehow, Aidan’s ire toward her felt all the more powerful now than it had before. It was as though all the traumas that had befallen his sweet sister were Miss Hathaway’s fault, at least in some twisted manner in his mind.
Not just the incident at the river, but before that summer, when Morgan had thrown herself before a racing carriage in the hopes she would be trampled to death. Alas, Morgan hadn’t even met Miss Hathaway yet, so his reaction was entirely unfounded.
But he also blamed her for that time after the river, when Morgan had ripped leafy spurge from the ground and ate it, desperately wishing that it was water hemlock and would be enough to finish her off, and yet unaware that she’d selected the wrong poison.
They had been fortunate that the poisonous plant had not been lethal; however, Morgan’s eating it had caused her to collapse into the lot of it, and its sap had left her scarred and blind.
Aidan took another swallow of whiskey and carried his glass with him to the window. David’s study looked out over the rose gardens, where a number of lush red and sunny yellow blooms still blossomed, despite the lateness of the season.
How terribly unfair. On Morgan’s last visit to Heathcote Park, the sun had never peeked out from behind menacing clouds and heavy fog. The world had been cast beneath a dismal, gray blanket until it felt as though it would never change. The beauty of the place had been tarnished by the year without a summer, and now, when nature had returned to its usual heavenly glory, she couldn’t experience it. She couldn’t see how the colors of the flowers were bursting with life, or watch a sunset turn the sky first to flame, then pale gold, then soft rose.
For a moment, Aidan’s hand itched to pick up a pastel and capture the scene outside the window. It only lasted a moment, though, because then he remembered that he could never share his creations with Morgan again, that she could never experience his artwork for herself. That was why his pastels had become so grim, so gruesome. So rage-filled. He wanted to take his pain out on the one who’d caused it. Instead, he merely drew and shaded what he wished would happen.
It was never enough. He could never be enough.
David cleared his throat in the doorway, and Aidan turned to him.
“I thought I’d find you here.” David crossed into the study and poured himself a glass, scrutinizing the decanter before taking a swig. “Excellent choice, if I do say so myself.”
“That’s why I came this summer.” There was no masking the droll tone of his voice. “I can always count on you to have the highest quality in everything.”
“Don’t lie. You’re here because you still can’t stand to allow Morgan out of your sight—no matter that she seems to be fine now—and she is intent on getting out into the world again.”
“Fair enough,” Aidan conceded. “Allowing her to attempt to live life again has presented the lot of us with quite the riddle to solve.”
“At least she’s alive to make the attempt,” David muttered.
Aidan blanched. Did David believe he wished Morgan had died?
He eyed Aidan quizzically and took another sip from his glass. “Your mother seems to have no such qualms. She’s off in Shropshire. I’d say the countess is ready for Morgan to move on with her life.”
Being ready for Morgan to move on was only half the tale. “Either that or Mother can’t face the possibility that we’ve all been duped into believing Morgan is…believing she…” Blast, it was so hard to put things in words.
“That she won’t try to hurt herself again?”
A clatter sounded in the hallway, and glass hit the floor. An altogether-too-familiar feminine voice followed—the voice belonging to the very woman who had fueled his art for the last three years—and the cords in his neck tightened until he thought his veins might explode.
“Drat.”
A fortnight in Miss Hathaway’s company would prove far too long for Aidan to maintain any semblance of cordiality if the mere sound of her voice was enough to set his teeth on edge. David caught Aidan’s eye and scowled at him before stepping out into the hall.
He must not have hidden his reaction to the chit’s reappearance well. He remained near the credenza and sipped from his glass, waiting for her to go on her way so he could drink in peace.
“Oh, David, I was hoping you’d be down here,” Miss Hathaway said amongst the clunking of curios and trinkets being replaced on the table just outside the study door.
“Let me help you with this.”
“I’m just so clumsy all the time,” she murmured.
David laughed—a genuine laugh, which left Aidan seething even more. How could anyone feel anything but rage whilst in Miss Hathaway’s presence?
“Perhaps if you watched where you were going instead of trying to read and walk at the same time…”
Precisely the damned problem. Or one of many.
Aidan filled his glass from the decanter again and took a long swallow. This would be an absurdly long two weeks. At least others would arrive tomorrow. Maybe he could find a way to avoid Miss Hathaway—and to keep Morgan away from her as well. Surely there would be other young ladies present, others better suited to befriending his sister.
“Oh, dear. I must have broken this one.”
Much as she would break his sister again, if given the chance.
“Don’t worry about it, Emma. Why were you looking for me?”
“Oh. Well. I had hoped you would take me to the new library. If you’re not busy, of course. I know you said we could do it after supper, but Vanessa suggested you might have time now, and since Mr. Cardiff seems so wholly opposed to me spending any time with Lady Morgan today…”
Aidan couldn’t fail to notice the derisive tone her voice took on at that last bit. He slammed his glass on the sideboard and marched across the room. When he reached the doorway, he crossed his arms over his chest, stepped into the corridor, and glowered at the repugnant girl.
She jumped back at his appearance, her brown eyes rounding as far as they could go. “Oh, I…I’m sorry, I…”
David passed a look between them, his eyes flashing with annoyance when they fell upon Aidan, and then he turned to Miss Hathaway. “I’d be glad to take you to the library and give you a tour.” His tone had gentled. How was David so bloody well in control of his reactions around her? “Why don’t you wait for me in the drawing room? I’ll fetch you in a few moments. I just need to finish a word with Mr. Cardiff.”
She dipped her head. “Of course. If you’ll excuse me.” Before either of them could respond, she scurried off down the hall again.
Aidan wasn’t sorry to see her go, yet he couldn’t stop himself from admiring her retreating form. Good God, when had she gone from being as straight as a tree trunk to having the curves of a woman? And why the devil was he noticing it?
When she had disappeared around the corner at the end of the hall, David spun around and shoved a finger into Aidan’s chest. “You will remember that Miss Hathaway is my wife’s sister and accordingly treat her with the appropriate level of respect.”
Aidan rubbed the back of his neck. That stung, coming from David, because they’d learned to behave as gentlemen together. They’d gone to school together, taken their Grand Tours together—become men together. And David would never dream of treating Morgan with anything less than the utmost respect. “I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but you said plenty when you arrived. And your eyes just now said far more than you would ever dare to say with words in my presence.” David took a breath and let it out slowly. “I have never under
stood your animosity toward her, and I never—”
“You just—”
David held up a hand and scowled. “Allow me to make myself quite plain. I will not tolerate your behavior. If you cannot find a way to comport yourself in a civil manner with regard to my sister-in-law, or any of my guests, you will have to leave.”
“In that case, I’ll take Morgan with me.”
“I said you would have to leave. Morgan is free to stay.” David crossed his arms over his chest. “It will be her choice, just as living her life is. Trenowyth will remain, so there is no reason she must go just because you’re incapable of behaving as anything other than an arse.”
Morgan would never leave with him if given the choice, should he be forced to go. Aidan held no doubt on that score. This was her first foray into society in years, her first attempt to test herself and see how she could get along. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her behind. He wouldn’t be able to watch over her, to guarantee her safety.
That couldn’t happen. The family had all promised Morgan a fortnight of enjoyment. Two full weeks of diversions and entertainments, of not thinking about the past.
Well, he hoped she would not think of the past. That was the point of all of this, after all.
Despite the sharp stab of pain it caused his pride, Aidan nodded. “Understood.”
“Good. Then I suspect we’ll have no problems.” David walked away, following the path clumsily blazed by Miss Hathaway moments before.
Aidan stood there for a long while. How could he tamp down the rage that built within him every time he saw Miss Hathaway’s face or heard her voice? He would have to find a way.
This might prove to be a very long fortnight, indeed.
Emma took a sip of her chocolate the next morning and placed the cup back on the dining room table, cautious not to overturn anything. Perhaps overly cautious, but now was not the time to make a cake of herself again. She turned the page of her book as quickly as she dared, lest she rip the pages from the bindings.
Cardiff Siblings 01 - Seven Minutes in Devon Page 3
