by J. A. Rock
“Do not feign ignorance with me. You worked yourself to the bone to expose that repugnant Balfour for what he was so Hartwell and the Warrington boy could marry.”
“I exposed nothing. Lord Balfour was overtaken by a sudden desire to travel.” A lie through and through, but he’d repeat that well-rehearsed line all the way to his grave.
Her mouth twisted wryly to one side. “What sort of fool do you take me for?”
“I do not take you for a fool. But if I uncovered anything damning about Balfour, I assure you it was to challenge myself, not to aid Hartwell in marrying that dullard.”
“Very well. I will let the subject drop. I only want to say, my dear, that although I do not know what is between you and Mr. Benjamin Chant, if he is kind to you… would you consider accepting it?”
“Accepting it? What on earth do you mean?”
“Do not try to convince him that what he sees in you is not the truth. Allow yourself a bit of the happiness you wanted for Hartwell.”
How did she know? “Chant and I are acquaintances, that is all. I don’t imagine he has spent much time reflecting on my character.”
Lies, lies, lies. He told them so casually these days. Chant did think him decent. Had calmed him at the Harringdon ball, had forgiven him his rudeness this afternoon and last night. Gale deserved none of that kindness. He would do well to distance himself from it and put it down to Chant’s own foolishness. For if he let himself believe the good things Chant thought about him, then would he not be obligated to behave accordingly? That seemed an awfully difficult task.
His mother said nothing, simply studied him, drawing her own private conclusions.
“I cannot be who you wish me to be,” he said sharply. “I think I’ve made that quite clear over the course of many years.”
She stood and came toward him. He took a step back, startled. She put her arms out slightly from her sides, her expression questioning. “Would it be all right?”
He swallowed hard on a rush of gratitude. She had understood from his earliest years that his aversion to being touched was not obstinacy or temper, but rather as much a part of him as his long legs or brown eyes. And she had always asked permission. “Not right now,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.” Much as he cared for her, an embrace from anyone at this moment would give him the sensation of his skin crawling.
“I’ve told you, you must never apologise for saying no.”
He nodded, looking at the mantle rather than at her. He slowly put out his hand until she took it, and he squeezed gently. That was the best he could do.
She squeezed back, then murmured something about needing to make sure the girls were presentable. She left, and he sagged against the wall. Why should he now feel as though an embrace would scrape his nerves raw? Had Chant not touched him this afternoon without Gale’s skin crawling in the least? What small, vulnerable hollow had Benjamin Chant exposed that left Gale feeling as though everyone could suddenly see inside him, and that the best defence against this exposure would be to barricade himself in his room and never come out again?
His head throbbed thinking about Chant, so he decided to trade one headache for another, and go dress for a dinner that was sure to render itself indistinguishable from a circus.
Chapter 9
Chant arrived at Gale’s house just before seven. He was immediately ushered inside to meet his hostess for the evening, Lady Gale, in a bright, well-appointed sitting room. Lady Gale rose to meet him. She was nearly as tall as her son and just as imposing, and Chant thought within seconds of taking her hand that her son’s prodigious intellect was no accident at all because the same light shone in Lady Gale’s eyes, though perhaps not quite as sharply. But then who was the intellectual equal to Christmas Gale? Chant doubted such a person existed.
“How nice of you to join us,” Lady Gale said. “And how unexpected for Christmas to bring home a friend!”
As though he and Gale were scab-kneed tousle-headed boys who’d met playing in the park.
“It’s a pleasure to be here, Lady Gale.”
“It’s a sign of the apocalypse is what it is,” a young lady announced, sweeping into the room in a whirl of ribbons and curls and a cloud of sweet perfume. “Christmas made a friend!”
“Oh, Clarissa,” Lady Gale said, but her tone was equal parts amused and exasperated, and Chant knew immediately that this was not the sort of household where anyone stood much on formality or on any polite foundation of manners at all. Of course a spirit like Gale’s could never have been formed except by an extraordinary upbringing, and he wondered if all the Gales, like their name, were prone to wildness.
“Lord Gale is still away,” Lady Gale said, waving her hand as though away might encompass anything from here to the Cape of Good Hope. “He and Edward have been travelling on the Continent. It is a most inopportune time for travel, but when one is at the beck and call of the crown, what can one do?” Her eyes sparkled, and Chant had no doubt that not a single person in their entire extraordinary family was under anyone’s beck and call, nor had ever been.
Lord Christmas Gale might have been a favourite of the news sheets, but his father and brother were just as famous. Richard Gale, Marquess of Shorsbury, had chaired numerous committees for the House of Lords, and Edward Gale, Christmas’s older brother, was a hero of Waterloo. Whatever they were doing on the Continent, Chant was sure it was not a pleasure trip.
“This is Clarissa,” Lady Gale said. “Clarissa, Mr. Chant.”
Chant bowed.
Another girl poked her head around the corner of the sitting room. This one was younger. “Is this Christmas’s friend?”
“This is Mr. Chant, yes,” Lady Gale said, and clapped her hands together. “Come, we shall all go to the dining room. I haven’t the patience to introduce everyone piecemeal. Eugenie, go and find your brother and drag him out of whichever book he’s lost himself in. Tell him Mr. Chant is here, and if he doesn’t show his face immediately, it will be too late, and we will have poisoned Mr. Chant against him for all time by sharing all his embarrassing boyhood stories.”
The younger girl laughed and hurried away.
Lady Gale hooked her arm through Chant’s and led him down the hall and into the dining room. “You must think us terribly ill-mannered, I am sure.”
“No,” Chant replied honestly. “Having met your son, Lady Gale, should I have expected a conventional family?”
Lady Gale laughed. “Oh, one should expect nothing when it comes to Christmas, and I suppose that includes the rest of us as well.”
They were joined in the dining room by yet another two sisters and little Elise.
“Mr. Benjamin!” Elise exclaimed. “Christmas said you were coming! Did you find Flummery yet?”
She was wearing a dress that seemed a little too large for her skinny frame, but it was clean. As were her cheeks, which had been scrubbed and possibly rouged by the same enthusiastic but unpractised hand that had also curled her hair.
“Not yet, I am afraid, Elise,” he said. “But we have the best people looking.”
He looked up to see Gale standing in the doorway with a pinched, narrow expression on his pinched, narrow face. His auburn hair was in disarray, and his cravat was crooked, the pin drooping sadly from the layers of muslin like a wilting flower. There was a blot of what appeared to be ink on the front of his waistcoat. Chant felt a smile spreading across his face at the same time warmth filled his chest. It had been a long time since a man had captivated him in the way Christmas Gale did.
“You’re here,” Gale said in a flat, disinterested tone that Chant barely believed.
“I’m here,” he agreed. “You invited me.”
Gale gazed right through him as his sisters tittered.
“Christmas never brings friends to dinner!” one of the girls exclaimed.
“Christmas doesn’t have friends,” said another.
“Oh, stop,” Clarissa told her sisters. “He brought Mr. Darling to dinner, re
member? Such a handsome man.”
Chant ignored the sudden sting of that, and turned his attention back to Elise. “Tomorrow, Elise, I would like you to visit my house. Some boys will be bringing by some dogs, and it is my dearest hope that one of those dogs is Flummery, and that we can restore him to you.”
Elise gasped sharply, her eyes wide. “Thank you, Mr. Benjamin!”
“It was Lord Christmas’s idea,” Chant said, only to realise his mistake when Elise turned and flung herself against Gale like a tiny whirlwind, gripping him tightly. Gale looked highly uncomfortable to have a child clinging to him, but he tentatively patted Elise a few times on the head as he attempted to extricate himself. And Chant found himself for a moment ridiculously jealous of a small girl.
“Come now, Elise,” Lady Gale said, slapping her hands together sharply. “It is time to eat. You can attempt to scale Christmas again later.”
The sisters tugged Elise off Gale and escorted her to the table.
There were, as Gale had said earlier, a lot of sisters. Five, by Chant’s count, but they were so loud and lively that, like a cage of fast, fluttering birds, it was quite difficult to be certain of their number at a quick glance. Chant wondered if Gale was mordant and biting simply because his sisters were so sweet and cheerful, and he felt the need to distinguish himself from them in some way. Or perhaps he would have been just as caustic had he been an only child.
Dinner was served shortly after they had taken their seats. A pair of footmen brought in trays of mutton, roast beef, and vegetables and a tureen of white soup. Chant, sitting with Lady Gale on one side and Gale on the other, at first listened to the sisters chatter about the ton, and who was wearing what, or invited where, or courting whom, but he gave up attempting to follow along when it appeared the topic of greatest interest this season, apart from Lord Hartwell’s hastily arranged marriage, was which young gentleman wore the most stunning hats—Mr. Morgan Notley or Mr. Loftus Rivingdon.
“Tiresome, isn’t it?” Gale sighed over his roast beef.
Chant considered for a moment. “I think perhaps I am a little out of practise when it comes to Society.”
That won him a quirk of the mouth too brief to be called an actual smile. “And I think perhaps I never learned.”
“Oh, it was not for lack of trying, darling,” Lady Gale said fondly, and leaned over and rested her hand on Gale’s for a moment. “On our part, at least. We did try to beat some manners into you, but it never took.”
Gale snorted. “You never raised a hand to me, Mother.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Perhaps that was where we went wrong.”
“Earlier today she said I looked too bony and pitiful as a child to thrash.” Gale raised his eyebrows.
“You were,” Lady Gale said. “But you could still outrun or outwit all your tutors. I can still recall seeing that fellow—what was his name? Marsh! Yes, your father and I watched for hours as Marsh waited for you underneath the oak tree, slapping a switch in his hand, but you outlasted him, remember? Eventually he fell asleep, and you climbed down past him and crept back inside. You slept in the attic for days to avoid him until he finally gave up and resigned his post.” She took a sip of wine. “That poor man. I think you quite destroyed his spirit.”
“One can only hope,” Gale said dryly, but Chant caught something in his eyes—some flicker of an old bit of uncertainty or sadness that was there and then gone.
Chant forced a smile despite the ache in his chest. The Gales were an eccentric family, but they were close. There was a fierce protectiveness in Lady Gale that was impossible to miss, even though she wore a carefully constructed mask of carelessness. Chant could not be sure whether he had ever had this closeness with his own family. When he thought of Jenny, feeling preceded memory. He did not even see her face in his mind’s eye; there was only warmth, settling over him like the rays of the sun on a summer afternoon. He could close his eyes and bask in that warmth, but only for a moment—then a cloud passed over, and a chill hit his skin. The sensation that followed was of an emptiness so vast he could no longer be sure he was anchored to the earth.
And when he thought of his father… a wrenching despair. The sense of reaching for someone in a dream, only to find the person’s face quite changed; they were now someone else altogether.
He was snapped back into the present by a crack of laughter—from Gale, of all people. Chant did not know what had been said to make him laugh so, but Gale was now grinning down at his plate, shaking his head. And Lady Gale wore a smirk as she took another sip of wine, suggesting she had been the source of her son’s amusement.
“If Elise’s dog is found,” said one of the younger sisters—Eugenie, Chant was fairly sure— “can he come and stay with us?”
“If he does, I shall move out,” Lady Gale replied. Then, seeming to remember that Elise was present, she gave the girl a sympathetic glance. “Though I’m sure he’s lovely. If one enjoys dogs.”
“Mama! You like Lady Notley’s dog!”
“Like is such a strong word. I find it amusing that it can be carried in a reticule is all.”
Elise seemed unfazed by her hostess’s slight to Flummery. “You said the boys would bring some dogs,” she said to Chant. “What happens with all the dogs that ain’t Flum?”
“Well…” Chant glanced at Gale, who lifted his dark brows as if in reminder that communicating with small children was strictly Chant’s purview. “They shall each be given a butcher’s bone and taken back to where they were found.”
Elise eyed him sceptically. “What if where they was found was somewhere cold? Or full of mean people?”
“Mr. Benjamin is a very kind man,” Gale said smoothly, reaching for another roll. “I’m sure he would never turn one of God’s creatures out in the cold.”
“So you’ll keep them all at your house?” Elise asked.
“I…” Chant could suddenly see where a sound thrashing might once have done Lord Christmas Gale some good. It was clearly too late now.
“Can we go and visit them?” cried Anne-Marie.
“Every day?” added Cordelia.
“Girls,” Lady Gale warned, though she was fighting another smile.
They were silent for all of ten seconds before Anne-Marie blurted, “Mr. Chant, is it true you were to marry Mr. Reid before he disappeared to France?”
It was as though Chant had been thumped in the gut.
“Anne-Marie!” Lady Gale’s tone was sharp this time, and she turned to Chant, her expression aghast for a moment before it settled back into its usual coolness. “Please excuse my daughter.”
“I only wanted to know!” the girl protested. “It seems a very romantic and tragic story.”
“I will turn your life into a tragic story if you do not shut up,” Gale snapped, all amusement gone from his face. “Really, Anne-Marie, have you no shame?”
Anne-Marie mumbled an apology and returned to her dinner.
“Why did he disappear to France?” Eugenie piped up.
Lady Gale put her fork down loudly. “That is enough. We may not stand on ceremony in this house, but I still expect my children to show common courtesy to our guests.”
“It’s quite all right,” Chant said, hearing the thinness of his own voice. He looked at Anne-Marie, who was still staring, red-faced, at her plate. “Mr. Reid and I were not well suited for each other, in the end. I am not sure why he left the country, as he said nothing to me of his plan to do so. I suppose he did what he thought best for himself.”
“I’m sorry,” Anne-Marie said softly, and Chant at first thought she was apologising again for bringing up the subject. But then she went on. “I wish you knew where he was, so you could at least write to him and say goodbye.”
“Or tell him what a scoundrel he is,” Clarissa said. “If he was a scoundrel.”
“Enough,” Lady Gale repeated, a thread of steel in her voice. “Mr. Chant, I do apologise.”
“It’s quite all right,” Chant said
again, his heart thumping so loudly he could barely hear himself speak. He wasn’t certain if he’d whispered his response or shouted it. Even now, years later, he still felt the sting of Reid’s… betrayal? He didn’t know if he could call it that or not. He didn’t know what to call it. He supposed that people fell out of love as often as they fell into it, and perhaps he might have come to terms with that had Reid spoken to him. But the silence… the silence still felt black and cold around his heart.
“It’s not.” Gale’s voice was low. “I violated Mr. Chant’s privacy with a similar line of inquiry this afternoon. Anyone would be hard pressed to be as rude as I was. See to it that none of you rises to the challenge.” He looked at each of his sisters in turn.
Elise stared around the table, her lips parted and her spoon held loosely in her hand. Then she went back to shovelling food into her small mouth.
Chant wished desperately to change the subject, and so he did, to the progression of Cordelia’s pianoforte lessons, which had been mentioned earlier. The conversation never quite reached its previous levels of liveliness, but the pain of memory soon faded, and Chant thought again that this was the sort of family he’d longed for as a boy—large, loud, teasing each other endlessly. How fiercely he had loved Jenny and her strangeness—though it was the sort of strangeness that well-bred parents attempted to keep out of the public eye. Jenny had languished in their small, quiet childhood home, her every outing carefully monitored lest she embarrass herself, and, by extension, the family. Their father had attempted to make up for her near-captivity by doting on her. And when she died, their quiet house became a silent one—the old mad earl dwindling in both body and spirit until he was no more substantial than a ghost, his wife disappearing one day as Reid had done, unable, Chant thought, to bear the silence.
Chant had discovered, at seventeen, that nothing could bring ghosts back to the realm of the living. Not battering walls nor battering other people at Gentleman Jackson’s. Not shouting, and not being silent and agreeable to a fault. So he’d learned to care for the shell of his father, chattering softly and good-naturedly about mundane things without the anticipation of a response. And he’d learned to tend to his sister’s memory like a garden, raking over the images of her bizarre outbursts and terrifying fugues, cultivating his recollections of the two of them chasing each other about the yard as children, playing games of chess in the drawing room, their frowning concentration growing so intense that eventually one of them broke and snickered, and then they both dissolved into laughter. And he planted recollections of a life that never was— birthdays they would have celebrated, operas they would have attended, each of them crying at the other’s wedding…
