That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.”
Jareth’s mother clasped her hands together and made a small gasping sound. “Oh, my dear, that was so very lovely. Oh, Portia—” this she addressed to Lady Rathford “—your daughter’s accomplishments are legion! How well you have done with her.”
Lady Rathford’s spine appeared to elongate several inches, and she dipped her head down in an acknowledgment of the compliment. “You are kind to say so, your grace.”
“And now we have a presentation for you, as well,” the duchess said, her anxiety betrayed by the quick glance she shot to Jareth and the slight waver in her voice only he would notice. To the butler, she said, “Summon my granddaughters, Frederick.”
The servant bowed and exited. Jareth sat up, knowing the same apprehension his mother felt. It would not do to have Sarah drop onto her hindquarters and pull off her shoes and socks to play with her feet, or for Rebeccah to take the cream from one of the tarts and smear it all over the furniture. Either was liable to happen. The children were, despite their favorable impression last time he saw them, woefully undisciplined.
“I cannot take all the credit for Helena’s accomplishments,” Lady Rathford was saying with inflated pride. “She had an excellent tutor. The woman was very stern, exacting at all times, and so Helena always performed her best. Miss Clavermore was in full agreement with our philosophies. A perfectionist at every turn, she never allowed Helena’s efforts to flag, not for one moment.”
Jareth felt a hardness in the pit of his stomach at her words. He looked at Helena with pity in his heart, but she was stone-faced with only the slightest trace of a smile on her exquisite mouth.
Of course, one must always look pleasant, even in repose.
“Miss Chloe, Lady Rebeccah and Lady Sarah,” Frederick announced. Lady Rathford fell blessedly silent. Jareth braced himself and turned.
Before him stood two young ladies, dressed as miniature princesses in stiff crinolines and with satin bows cinching their waists, and a very docile-looking young woman with her hair neatly pulled back in a tight, unflattering chignon. But Miss Chloe’s eyes sparkled, almost dancing with pleasure as she came into the room, her two charges in hand. She paused in front of him, kicking her foot behind her and dropping into a respectable curtsy. To his amazement, the girls did the same.
“Your grace,” she murmured.
The transformation was fascinating. She still moved like a dancer, she still buzzed with a vitality that was both intangible and undeniable, but to all intents and purposes, she was blamelessly comported. Good heavens, she was nearly unrecognizable!
When the children were presented to the Rathfords, each stepped forward and smiled at Lady Rathford and Helena in turn. Rebeccah even gifted Lady Helena with a painting she had done herself, explaining that it was of flowers and she hoped that Lady Helena liked flowers.
Helena smiled and told the child she did indeed love flowers and would treasure the painting.
Altogether a rewarding exchange, Jareth noted with satisfaction. Chloe hovered in the corner, clearly the puppeteer. The girls looked to her for signals, which she gave with little nods and almost imperceptible hand movements. Jareth saw she had cleverly positioned herself behind his mother, so the duchess remained ignorant of the machinations, taking full pride in her granddaughters’ exemplary behavior.
“Why, your grace, your family is charming,” Lady Rathford declared. “What a pleasure to see children so well behaved.”
Jareth’s mother glowed. “They are darlings.”
Lady Rathford addressed Rebeccah. “Do you enjoy music, child?”
“I like to sing. We sing songs in the nursery. Would you like to hear one?”
The older woman seemed to find this delightful. “I would indeed.”
Rebeccah, who apparently thrived on having an audience attend her, performed several children’s rhymes.
From the corner of his eye, Jareth saw Chloe silently clap her hands twice as if to applaud Rebeccah’s efforts.
“Wonderful,” Lady Rathford declared. “What other things do you like to do, my dear?”
“I like to dig in the dirt,” Rebeccah proclaimed.
The room went silent.
Lady Rathford blinked rapidly, her right hand coming up to toy with the frothy lace at her throat. “Pardon me?”
Chloe stepped out of the shadows. “She said she likes to sing in church.”
Lady Rathford was immensely relieved, although how she could have believed such a feeble excuse, Jareth couldn’t fathom. “Oh! Oh dear! Of course. Would you like to share one of your favorite songs—”
“I believe we should have our next song from Helena,” Jareth interjected. “The children have yet to hear her wonderful voice, and it would be such a treat for them.”
It was exactly the correct diversion. Far more interested in her own daughter’s talents, Lady Rathford quickly agreed with the idea. Helena complied with a soft hymn that kept the children spellbound. When she was finished, Chloe suggested that perhaps the children had stayed long enough, and the duchess readily assented.
Far later, after the Rathfords had taken their leave amid a flurry of compliments, when Jareth and his mother were sitting in the drawing room, Jareth said, “The children did quite well today.”
“Yes.” The duchess sounded distinctly relieved. “I hardly dared hope it would go so well.”
“Miss Chloe did a fine job preparing them, did she not?”
His mother gave him a look he remembered well. It used to cow him when he was a boy. As a man, it gave him pause, and he wondered what he had said to win such blistering disapproval.
“Perhaps in the future she will counsel them to dispense with the merits of mucking around in the dirt.” The words were spit with vituperative emphasis.
Jareth countered, “Yet it was Miss Chloe who eased the situation.”
The duchess’s eyes narrowed. “Are you defending her, Strathmere?”
Jareth made a harsh sound, meant to be a short laugh. “Hardly.” Yet his mind was betraying him, dwelling on how her presence had filled the room with energy. Even with the distance she kept, he felt her, sensed her intensity, her desire to please, her desperation that the children shine. And they had. She had made it happen against all odds.
His mother didn’t answer. They fell into silence until he took his leave and retired to his chamber.
In her little room off the nursery, Chloe fingered the paper doll she had made that day.
She had a flair, that she knew, for drawing. The doll was a good facsimile. So was the gown she wore. Chloe had bared the shoulders, capping them in a swath that draped softly with large rosettes at the neckline. In pale mint-green—colored by borrowing Rebeccah’s water paints—it was befitting any debutante.
The kind of dress Lady Helena would wear, Chloe thought. Unhooking the paper dress, she placed the pieces in the wooden box where Rebeccah had determined the treasures would be held for safekeeping.
Rising, Chloe brought it back into the nursery and returned to her room. She paced a bit, arms wrapped around herself to ward off the chill.
Lady Helena Rathford was the perfect mate for the duke. Beautiful, poised, accomplished, she was everything Chloe was not.
What an idiot she had been to even think of the duke for a moment as anything other than what he was—the man who employed her. No more. Never more. He was worlds above her, his life was beyond hers. All this she understood and accepted. What she couldn’t reconcile was the new experience of wanting it to be different.
Sighing, she laced her fingers through her thick brown hair and lifted it, then let it fall in a silky cascade. She wasn’t making any sense, not even to herself. It was as if she saw the duke as two people. The real duke, trapped inside, was the one with the soft eyes, the haunted features, the awkward pauses and unsure silences, as if something were within, tugging at him, fighting the other, who was, as she thoug
ht of him, The Duke. Capital letters, no other explanation needed.
Lady Helena was perfect for The Duke. But oh, what a dismal trap for the real man.
There were ghosts in the garden that night. Jareth watched them. Even the lure of the clear night—a star-filled sky and a waning moon—could not distract him.
They were mere memories, but somehow alive and real m the darkness around him, so real he could almost touch them. He could hear them, he could see them. The images filled his head, his internal vision, and took him back…
Himself. And Charles. How many years ago? In this garden that had been his refuge and where Charles would run whenever his tutor allowed him any time to himself.
A great sadness welled up inside Jareth. As a boy, he hadn’t understood the import of the events around him, but as a man full grown, a man now in the position of duke and with all of the responsibility that had, at that long-ago time, rested on Charles’s boyishly slight shoulders, he knew better how it had been for his eldest brother, and he felt Charles’s grief.
It was his own now.
As Jareth was now finding out, the yoke of the dukedom was unavoidable.
The garden, shrouded in the welcome press of night, came back to him as the shades of memory faded away, into the past again.
Emotion left him trembling a bit. His hand sought the back of the wrought-iron bench he knew to be about somewhere. There, he found it and sank down.
A few deep breaths to clear his head, his heart, and he looked up. The lights at the back of the house were yellow squares, a mocking symmetry that the garden mimicked with its carefully laid-out paths and clipped hedges. The drawing room was still occupied. Its gas lamps still burned. Upstairs, in the nursery—oh, he could remember looking out those windows on rainy afternoons down upon his garden—a weak light burned.
He thought of Chloe. It was strange, but he wanted to see her—a dull yearning. If she would walk past the window just now, it would be enough.
Why this would occur to him didn’t bear examination. He just sat with the wanting for a while. He gave up after an hour, feeling a bit of a lingering ache as he headed inside.
It was a lonely night.
Chapter Ten
Gerald arrived, and with him the first hard blows of winter. He made his entrance at Strathmere with profuse exclamations over the harshness of the clime, shaking the cold rain off his greatcoat and stamping his muddy boots.
The duchess hurried him into the library, although a cozy fire was already dancing a lıvely jig in the fireplace in the parlor. She argued that it would be much cozier. At first Jareth was puzzled by this breach of convention until he saw the mud flaking off Gerald’s soles onto the old worn carpet. The carpet in the parlor was a plush Persian, purchased only last year, but the library one was old and in need of replacement anyway. Jareth chuckled at his mother’s cleverness as he poured out a generous snifter full of brandy for his cousin.
“Everyone is heading to Italy and France,” Gerald grumbled as he inched his chair closer to the fire. “What I’m doing here in the north of England at this time of year, I haven’t the slightest idea.”
The duchess smiled, not lifting her eyes from her crochet. “It is because you are so selfless. You think of how we have missed you, and deny yourself the pleasures with which others consume themselves.”
A bland smile graced Gerald’s ruddy face. “Aunt Charlotte, you are too flattering. However, I regret to disabuse you of the notion of my virtue. It is completely selfish of me to come and visit with my favorite aunt.” His watery blue eyes slipped to Jareth, who was standing by the window. “And cousin.”
Jareth turned to him and answered with a small nod.
Gerald had changed. His body was loose and thickened considerably with the years, and his face held the telltale look of a man too fond of drink. Red, large-pored skin, a bulbous nose, the tiny veins visible all gave away his penchant for spirits. His languid ennui bespoke of the dissolute life-style to which he must have become accustomed in London. He had run with the affluent young bucks, that much Jareth knew from his frequent visits to town. He used to arrange to have dinner with his cousin, but they had drifted apart and the points of common interest became harder to find. The dinners became less and less frequent, which was a relief—for both of them, Jareth suspected.
But his mother’s perceptions were anchored in the past, in a time when they had all been companions. She smiled at her nephew now. “We do so love your visits. Do we not, Strathmere?”
“That we do,” Jareth agreed without much enthusıasm.
“Strathmere. Seems odd to call you that. It must take some getting used to, eh?” Gerald swirled his brandy about in its snifter, studying it absently.
Jareth looked at him sharply, but Gerald refused to meet his eye. He kept staring into his glass.
After a moment, Jareth answered. “It grows on you.”
“On me? Not on me, dear cousin. You are the duke. I am merely a poor relation.”
“Of course he is the duke,” the duchess interjected smoothly. Her brow was slightly creased m confusion. “And you, sirrah, are a most treasured relation. You are being so silly, Gerald.”
He lowered his face to his glass. “Yes, Aunt, I am indeed.”
She laughed as if to indicate that all was settled satisfactorily. “Tell us what you have been doing in London all this time. You naughty boy, you never write.”
Jareth couldn’t keep his peace. “When I saw you last, you were busy at the various gaming halls in the city. Are you still at it?”
“What?” the duchess gasped. “Surely not. Gerald?”
“Fell in with bad company, Auntie, I confess it. Played too much, too hard and for far too much money. The wages of sin.” He paused, tucking his thick chin into his chest. “It is not easy for a man like me—with limited means—to keep up with his betters.”
Jareth raised a brow. “Trouble?”
Gerald squinted at him. “I don’t suppose you’d understand. You never went in for gambling, did you?”
“My dear fellow, I gambled very heavily in my past. My entire quarterly allowance, as a matter of fact. Sunk every dime into a business with one ship my partner had won in a card game and knew how to sail, but that was about it. Neither one of us was educated in commerce.” He felt the swell of pride building inside him. How exciting it had been to build Burke and Hunt Shipping from nothing into a small empire. “So, yes, I am familiar with the art of putting one’s life-style on the line.”
“It is not the same thing.” Gerald threw back his brandy and wiped his hand crudely across his mouth. “It is a pestilence inside me. I can’t stop thinking about it. It rules me, makes me sick, yet I crave it.”
“Oh, surely you exaggerate!” the duchess declared, her tone indicating that the messy little confession was to be dropped.
Jareth felt a stab of pity as he watched his cousin. Gerald gave a single, silent laugh and rose to fill his glass again. “Of course I am. I acquired a taste for the dramatic in London, Auntie. Comes from rubbing elbows with all those court dandies and their gossiping ladies.”
The duchess sniffed. “Well, it is not amusing, Gerald. Really, to discuss something so common. Do remember yourself in the future.”
A new voice cut into the tensions of the room, just a small gasp, a barely breathed, “Oh!” Recognizing it, Jareth snapped his head up to see it was indeed Chloe, looking apologetic and a bit frightened, standing in the doorway.
“Excusez-moi,” she declared, backing up. “I came for something to read to the children. I did not know anyone was in here.”
Jareth made to move forward—not even giving it any thought—when his mother’s voice sounded sharply. “My dear, your manners are atrocious! Have you never been taught to knock before entering a room?”
Chloe kept her chin up, yet managed not to look defiant. “The fire was laid in the parlor earlier. I merely assumed you would be entertaining your guest there. I see I was mistaken
. I apologize for disturbing you.”
“No,” Jareth said, finding his voice. “It is no imposition. What book were you looking for?”
“It is not important. I shall come back later.”
“I shall get it for you now if you like.” He tried his most winning smile. “It will save you a trip.”
“I…” She was indecisive. “It was one of the astronomy books you told Rebeccah she could see. May I borrow it to read to her?”
“Yes, yes, of course. I believe I have one that would be suitable for your purposes.”
He went to the shelf and began to search for the volume. She was trying so hard to bring the children and him together, fueling theır interest in his hobbies.
“Still stargazing, Jareth?” Gerald threw out the question.
His mother’s voice behind him sounded almost shrill. “You knew about that?”
“Certainly. Jareth can be a damnable boor when he gets talking about the equilibrium and solace and other such phenomenon.”
“That is absurd,” Jareth replied as his eyes scanned titles. “Those terms have nothing to do with astronomy.”
“Oh, whatever,” Gerald sighed.
“I hope you are not boring Lady Helena with talk of such trivialities,” the duchess said. “You cannot expect a lady of such quality of breeding to be tolerant of unconventional interests.”
He found it. That first volume that had sparked his interest as a boy. Cradling the well-worn leather in his palm, he turned to Chloe, locking eyes with her stormy ones. He had a strange thought. It occurred to him just then that a man could get lost in those eyes. They held such pity, such understanding, and something within him surged to life.
He held out the book, taking a step forward. She held out her hand, moving toward him. Her eyes wouldn’t let him go.
Without shifting his gaze, he said to his mother, “What would you have me say in conversation instead, then? Regale the fascinating details of the new lace from Brussels? Perhaps the merits of curling tongs used on dampened hair versus dry?”
Strathmere's Bride Page 9
