"Me? Dare you ask that question? Fitz, what on earth are YOU doing?"
"I've no idea what you're talking about. I'm doing nothing differently than I've done all our lives. You, on the other hand—"
"Ooooh!" She whirled, white wainscoting and hand-painted rose cascades flying past, and stalked to the window. Slivers of rain streaked the panes, dripped to the sill, as if Albemarle cried for their dying friendship. "That is just like you. It's never your fault, always mine, and if anyone's supposed to change—"
"You have changed, Beryl." The skin around his eyes tightened, as if his face had been drawn back by the ears. "You've changed and I no longer know you."
A shiver of wind, a spatter of drops against the glass, and a clattering of hoofs on the pavement outside. The iron monger's old cart horse slid in a spreading puddle, scrabbled for footing, caught his balance, and clop-clopped on, the cart he hauled pausing with him then rattling on. Give the drover credit for not swinging the whip nor trying to haul the poor beast up by the bit. Anguish flooded her and extinguished her tantrum, anguish for the horse, the drover, the rainy city street. For them. For what might have been and now couldn't be.
"You haven't changed, Fitz, not a hair. But because I have, I no longer know you, either."
There, that sideways, cocky grin, his eyebrows slanting to the same angle as his flopping forelock, and the anguish inside Beryl twisted to something bitter as he laughed.
"Don't start, Fitz. Please."
He scoffed, throwing out his hands. "What do you have against my laughter? It's like you've taken a vow against chuckling, a mandate against mirth, a covenant against conviviality. I start laughing, and you—"
"Don't start." The window and its sad little vignettes were safer than facing him down, even if the street below was now empty, damp, slick, and lonely. The puddle the old horse had slid through shivered with fresh droplets, stilled, shivered anew. The crying city might arouse companionable tears from her, she felt them fighting in her throat and heart for release, but Fitz, it seemed, could bring forth nothing more than rage. Their friendship, and all her longing dreams, were well and truly over. "I cannot see you any more."
Silence. "I beg your pardon?"
The pounding of her heart seemed unnaturally loud, louder than the old horse's diminishing hoofbeats, heard but no longer seen, and no more steady. This disaster had to end. "My time is no longer my own. I must marry soon, and therefore I should no longer be seen so often in the company of an unengaged man. Any unengaged man."
"It's him, isn't it?"
Fitz's voice cracked like a whip. She'd never heard him use such a tone before, not in all the years they'd known each other. She turned, astonished.
His smile was gone, and the hard edges of his usually good-natured face could have cracked rocks. "Cumberland. You've set your cap for him, haven't you?"
That voice. That tone of vindictive rage, as if she'd personally betrayed him. If she didn't know better—
It almost sounded as if—
He stormed to his feet. "Well, if you have, m'girl, then you deserve whatever happens to you. You deserve it, d'you hear?" He stalked from the room. The footman hurried past the doorway, but the front door crashed open well before the poor man could reach it. Heartbeats later, the wearer of a claret tailcoat, innocent of hat or cape, stomped through the shivering puddle, splattering it about the pavement, and then Fitz vanished up the opposite sidewalk.
"Miss Beryl?" Benson stood in the doorway. That hint of a scowl had vanished. But a vertical fold nestled between his salt-and-pepper eyebrows and his warm eyes were anxious. "Is there anything I can get for you?" He leaned a half-step backward into the entryway, made a beckoning gesture, and a footman ducked past, crouched and poked the fire.
For Benson, she managed a smile. "Thank you, no. It just seems the sort of day for arguments and misery, doesn't it?"
His lips twitched, and he gave her a pained smile. It probably looked rather like the one she'd given him.
The rain's tempo increased and pattered against the panes. It was time she joined the weeping. She'd outcry the city; there were so many tears within her fighting for release that there was no reason at all for the springtime bud of hope that poked its green shoot above her soul's surface.
****
The voices behind Fitz rattled on, rather like the rain tapping at the windows, and just as annoying.
"I vote for Boodle's." Crompton's voice, that was. And he would vote for Boodle's. Like a chump.
"White's." Ponsonby's tone brooked no argument. "We have bets and they have the book."
Ah, yes, the book, the book of books or at least the book of bets. Fitz harrumphed. "And what bets might you lot be referencing?"
"Oh, are you alive over there? Been lounging in our sitting room for so long, we thought you'd become part of the furniture." Funny, how Caird's Scots accent vanished so utterly, once they were out of company. "Perhaps we can convince you to sit up, turn around, and join the conversation."
"And then you might ascertain for yourself which bets are under discussion." Ponsonby again. More proof, if proof were required, that the man talked too much.
"Can't imagine anything more boring than that." He'd not even shift on the settee, not for that graceless invitation, even though whatever book had embedded itself into his right buttock gave him every encouragement toward such a movement. At the least. "Converse with you lot? Why, your topics haven't changed since Oxford. Caird's family back home in the savage north, Ponsonby's latest exploits about town, and whatever book Crompton's read lately." Probably the one digging into his increasingly irritated anatomy. "That's all such discussions entail."
"My, someone's grumpy." Ponsonby again; did the man never shut up? "If our conversations put you to sleep, then why did you select our sitting room in which to grump?"
Rattle rattle rattle. Blitheringly irritating. And not even a tree in the front courtyard for his visual entertainment; nothing but grey brick across the way. Nothing but rain and mindless chatter to distract him from his infuriated thoughts. "Because it's raining."
A chair's creak, as if someone rose, then the soft rustlings of messy, strewn-about belongings being shifted. "Miss Beryl's sitting room is closer to your home than ours." Crompton, doubtless searching for his missing book.
And he would be the one to bring up that sore subject. Not the aggravated right buttock, but Beryl.
She couldn't have meant it. But he'd told himself that lie for the last hour, after stalking from Albemarle to Seamore Place in the rain and throwing himself down atop Crompton's book in his old school chums' comfortably messy sitting room. Or uncomfortably messy, as the case might be. This time it was. Messy, of course. And uncomfortable.
Because he could no longer convince himself that his lie was true. Could no longer convince himself that Beryl hadn't meant it.
She'd rejected him. She'd become enamored with Cumberland, the rake, the rogue, the ruffian; she'd given Cumberland the look a man would die for. And she'd rejected him.
Unbelievable, how much that hurt. More than if she'd swung her riding cane and smacked him across the face. So much for those gentle means of feminine communication over which Cumberland had waxed eloquent.
There had to be a means of extricating her from that out-of-bounds bludgeoner's enchantment. Had to be a way of drawing her back from that brink before she plunged over. Perhaps a word with her father — but no, surely he was behind her suddenly accelerated hunt for a husband. She'd never mentioned that subject in Fitz's presence before, but he knew as well as anyone what a terror Belinda could be.
But did James Wentworth realize in what danger Beryl had chosen to place her heart? He couldn't, couldn't possibly. Too often Fitz had seen father and daughter together, their shared loving glances, their little touches and smiles. Mr. Wentworth treasured his daughter, had to want what was best for her. Couldn't know the ruination she faced.
Perhaps yes. Perhaps a word in the paternal ear.
"Lissie." Ponsonby yet again; he had to suffer some sort of verbal incontinence. Someone needed to find him a better physician, needed to find a cure for that running on at the mouth. Or swaddle his mouth.
Rustle rustle and thump, little noises circling the room as Crompton continued his search. No need to see that to make sense of the sounds; they'd all seen and heard Crompton on the hunt for a mislaid book before. Several droplets joined forces on a lower window pane, paused as if assessing their joint strength, then hurtled down the glass and vanished from view.
Fitz finally had to shift. "What about Lissie?"
Ponsonby laughed. "You really haven't been paying attention, have you? She's my bet. I shall marry Miss Lysandra McTaggart before the Season's end. And may the Lord have mercy upon my soul, because I shall then be surrounded by Scots, male and female, from morning 'til night."
Another laugh. Most likely Caird; he'd think that line funny, since he put himself out to be the punch line so readily and well. Wearing that outlandish Highland costume to the assembly, forsooth.
"Well, I can't see myself with Violetta." Caird's voice, as serious as a churchman. Perhaps it had been Crompton laughing. "I'd been considering Beryl, since her field seemed to be clear. But now…"
They were no older than he. And considering marriage? Considering marriage to Beryl, Lissie, Violetta, the girls they called their friends? And writing off Beryl because…
His stomach twisted as if he'd eaten something vile. The thought of her winding up with Cumberland was repellent. But the thought of her winding up with Caird was little better.
A push on his shoulder. Fitz whipped about, and Crompton fell back a step, his easy smile fading and guileless blue eyes starting open.
"Not trying to attack you, Fitz. But I've searched the room and the only place my book can be is underneath you."
Bluster him. Fitz yanked out the offending tome and thrust it toward its dastardly owner, jerking himself to his feet with the motion and heading for the door.
"Take it and be gone, knave. It's numbed my physique's netherland for too long. And allow me to return your sitting room, as well," he added over his shoulder.
Fitz closed the door on his old schoolmates' laugher. He'd lost that round, fair and square. And where the dribble had he left his hat and cape?
****
With Fitz gone, the morning dragged down to grey weariness. The rain pattered on, tapping against the window panes as if begging to come in and finish off the confused muddle of her day, and Paul slipped quietly around the sitting room lighting candles and again tending the fire. Beryl's hands moved automatically, the needle sliding in and out of the primrose silk, pink thread building a tiny, blowsy rose within the embroidery hoop's confinement. With all the work she'd get done on this neckline today, the reworked opera gown would be ready for the weekend's entertainments; less formal, a bit more homey, more the sort of thing to be worn to card parties and soirees. After all, she'd only attended the opera once; no need to keep a gown dedicated to an event she'd rather not attend ever again.
Whether she'd be ready for the weekend, though — that was another matter. It still stunned her that she'd actually done it. She'd actually sent Fitz away, something she'd thought she'd never find the strength within her to manage, and now it felt as if the sun would never return, the sitting room never brighten again. But that was the way it had to be. She had to get over him and reconcile her heart to another man, and the very thought sent her spirits plummeting down to join the rainy day's dullness.
But try as she might, she couldn't hold onto that depression. There'd been that moment, that sudden surge of anger in his twisting face, the heat in his voice. Those sharp, jerky movements, so lacking in his usual grace. As if by sending him away, she'd finally touched his heart. Finally communicated with him in a way he could hear and understand.
Without smacking him across the face with her riding cane. Still a tempting thought, that.
And no matter how many times she ordered herself to quit being silly, she couldn't quite convince herself that he hadn't been…
…perhaps just a little bit…
…a teensy, weensy bit…
…jealous.
He'd seemed so. He'd certainly behaved so. And if he was…
But she really, truly had to cease being so silly. Before she drove herself mad. And not temporarily, this time. Her emotions were plummeting to the depths of misery, then moments later soaring to ecstasy. One or the other clearly was a product of her deluded imagination, as Dr. Battie defined madness in his learned treatise. If only she could figure out which one.
If she could, then she'd know which man to pursue: the one her sense accepted, or the one her sensibility yearned for.
"What a beautiful image you make, my girl."
Papa stood in the doorway, the personification of kindliness. The candlelight lit his smile, flashed from his loving eyes, gleamed in a soft glow from his bald pate. Just the man to soothe her quivering nerves, and she smiled a relieved welcome as he crossed the sitting room. He'd sit beside her and she'd bathe in his warmth; he'd advise her, and everything would be better.
He didn't sit beside her.
"I hear young Fitzwilliam visited this morning."
Her heart began hammering, more loudly than the rain or the crackling fire. This was not a conversation she wanted to have, especially not with her thoughts so horribly unbalanced. "Only briefly."
A brooding shadow fell across her embroidery. Gentle fingers stroked her hair, tugged on one curl and played with it, entwining it around as Belinda had toyed with the ribbon before the assembly. That wonderful, horrible, excruciating assembly. "I hear there was another argument."
Not fair. In public, he'd said; he'd specifically said, in public. "No one else was here. Except for Benson and Paul, of course, and they'd never tell." Of course, someone had told Papa, most likely one of them, and the tension in her shoulders squeezed her neck like a cold fist.
"Perhaps—" he started to say.
And someone pounded on the front door.
Chapter Six
Wednesday, March 17, 1813 continued
As yesterday's brilliant sunshine had created crowds, so the unhappy drizzle encouraged empty streets, with anyone disposed for venturing forth not making it past the closest coffee house, the nearest bookstore or haberdashery. Sassenach's steady trot carried His Grace past the Corinthian columns of the Royal Institution, north from Piccadilly, the groom's horse puffing a half-stride behind. Not even a face at the windows they passed, merely grey brick, grey stone, grey skies, grey pavement, grey rain.
And a claret-colored tailcoat. Darkened by the drizzle. Chestnut hair plastered across a broad forehead, and a decent pair of white breeches ruined. No topcoat, no hat, no gloves; someone was not having a good day.
Excellent.
Fitzwilliam splashed through a spreading puddle in the road's center, finishing off the breeches, and pounded on the door of the first townhouse beyond the Royal Institution's final column. It seemed safe to assume who lived there and what his errand entailed, which meant this wasn't the young man's first visit of the day to that house. One might also presume that his first visit had not been a peaceful nor successful venture, if he'd departed without his outerwear. His Grace drew rein and dismounted as a young footman opened the black-painted door, the red trim of his livery startlingly bright in the dullness.
"Mr. Fitzwilliam—" the footman began, then broke off, dark eyes widening, staring over Fitzwilliam's shoulder.
"Left my blasted—" But Fitzwilliam broke off, too, and swiveled around. His eyes narrowed, perhaps at the water dripping into them, and his mouth grimaced. A grim and foreboding expression, that one.
His Grace handed the reins to the still-mounted groom. "Keep him moving and don't go beyond a whistle's reach." Then, as the horses sauntered off, "Is Miss Beryl at home?"
Fitzwilliam scowled.
Over the threshold and into graceful marbl
e, floor, staircase, pilasters, all still grey, but offset and overwhelmed by rich blue panels, carved oak table, gilt mirror, and a soaring vaulted ceiling picked out with clouds and sky and beautifully rendered songbirds. Quiet, quiet as a church, with only the ticking of a case clock and the footman's heels on the marble's frozen swirl. As if the house held its breath, waiting for the next act in their drama.
As well it might.
The footman collected His Grace's outerwear as a second footman produced another set, handing hat and gloves to Fitzwilliam and shaking out a camel-colored cape. But, scowl deepening, Fitzwilliam thrust his forgotten clothing back. "I know she's at home; I was just here."
"An hour ago," the staid butler said, standing beside the almost comically astonished footmen. "Miss Beryl is awaiting callers with Mr. Wentworth."
Her father. Indeed. His Grace let a small smile drift across his lips, savored Fitzwilliam's grim jaw. The game was progressing nicely.
The butler announced them, his voice steady despite the hint of apprehension in his lowered, tilted chin and drawn-together eyebrows. A pause, then more boot heels, at first muted, then suddenly clacking, as if stepping off carpeting onto the sweep of marble. The butler slid aside and back, gesturing. Fitzwilliam barreled past and into the room beyond; perhaps not the most diplomatic of actions, but he seemed in no mood to acknowledge precedence. Even if the lady or, more importantly at this stage, the lady's father, expected it.
But then, it seemed young Fitzwilliam had reached the game's crisis and wasn't thinking in his normal rational, more-or-less straightforward manner. Even better. He'd see the bait properly, without his usual preconceptions, when she was presented to him. And in excellent time.
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