by Jaima Fixsen
“I’m still waiting for your questions,” she said, peering at him over the gilded rim of her cup.
“I was only waiting for leave to begin,” he said. “You will think them strange.”
“Dear boy. You know our family. I ceased long ago to think anything strange.”
He doubted the truth of that—Aunt Georgiana had a very precise sense of what was acceptable and what was not—but plunged ahead nevertheless. “What do you know about the Morrises? The Warwickshire ones.”
She frowned for a moment, setting down her cup. “Anthony Morris died some years ago—’09 I think. It was after you wrote us about Corunna.”
He didn’t care to remember that battle, or the subsequent retreat, so he kept his face still and waited for his aunt to continue.
“He was what your father terms a loose screw.”
Alistair snorted. “If my father calls him that, he must have been loose indeed.”
“Yes, one gathers they had difficulties. His father lost heavily in a canal scheme about twenty years ago and I think the family only managed to limp along since. It didn’t look as if they’d be able to bring out the daughter at all.”
“Oh?” Without realizing, Alistair took another tart.
“They did in the end, of course. Five or six years ago it was. Lucinda—I think that was her name—did quite well. Married someone from the north. Quite a bit older, as I recall, but she wasn’t especially handsome. Burlington? Beauchamp? I can’t recall his name. Haven’t seen either since the marriage, but the rest of the Morrises come to London every year.”
“I gather the family succeeded in putting their difficulties behind them.”
“One assumes so.”
“How?”
“The usual way.” She lowered her voice. “Marrying into money. I think they said it came from the colonies. Furs and timber. Never saw her though, so she must have been dreadful. Anthony Morris died of course, but there was a child, so the money and estate passed to him. Frederick Morris, Anthony’s younger brother looks to be holding the reins now.”
“Until the child is of age?”
“One assumes so.”
“You know nothing of Mrs. Morris?”
“Why should I? The veriest nobody. I may have heard she was tolerable to look upon, nothing more.”
Alistair flattened the crumbs of pastry littering his plate with the back of his fork. “I’ve seen her.” He smiled at his aunt. “She’s a good deal better than that.”
Lady Fairchild shook her head. “My dear boy, she’d do you no good at all. I expect her money is tied to Morris’s child. You wouldn’t want that, pretty face or no.”
“Who said I was interested?”
“You mentioned her. That means you’ve thought it, if only for a moment. If she’s as lovely as you say, no doubt you couldn’t help it, but man was blessed with reason for a purpose. I’m in favor of any course that sees you respectably established, but she isn’t it.”
“You’re very definite,” Alistair said.
“Isn’t that why you came to me? I know what I’m about.”
Nine times out of ten, she did, but he couldn’t help remembering how they’d both erred with Sophy. But on that point, he suspected it was best to keep his own counsel.
*****
William Rushford, Lord Fairchild, left his club in an unhappy mood. An hour in his favorite chair, deep in a brown study, hadn’t made him better, or eased his mind about the conversation he needed to have with his wife. One of his children was already lost to him—Julius, more baby than boy, resting beneath the patch of sod that had covered him nearly nineteen years. Sophy had come to him late, after the death of her mother—not his wife. It didn’t feel like Sophy had ever belonged to him, not until recently. And now she had flown.
This loss was different than the bewildering pain after Julius died that had felled both him and his wife—a wound this time, not an amputation—but it still pained him. He should have done so many things differently.
Another glass of your usual drink, he thought, meaning to console himself. He was used to living with regret. But it would be easier to swallow this dose if he knew what he was supposed to do about his wife. Lately it had been borne upon him that Georgiana needed care and—more strangely still—that he wanted to provide it. It was an impulse he could hardly remember feeling throughout the twenty-six years of their marriage, which was probably why he had no idea how it should be done. Chances were she wouldn’t let him, but he wanted to try.
It wasn’t far from the club to his townhouse, a swift drive in his curricle. He let himself inside and quietly made his way upstairs, thinking. He and Georgiana weren’t close, but that didn’t mean they didn’t know each other. You could afford to be careless among friends; enemies you needed to know better than your own self. Perhaps that was why his wife’s inexplicable behavior lately was so unnerving. For all he knew, she was preparing to deliver the coup de grace.
He snorted, stripping off his gloves with unnecessary emphasis. This wasn’t a blind; Georgiana was helpless and adrift. He had never seen her like this, not when he took Sophy into their home (cold compliance, but she took her pound of flesh), not even when Julius died (paralyzing grief, then attacks, swift and sharp-clawed). He owed her something. She and Sophy had grown close. She had been better to his bastard than he had any right to expect. But Sophy had fled and married her merchant, thumbing her nose at them.
He was still angry, but guilt was reasserting itself. If he studied this sad mess long enough he knew where to lay the blame: he was a devil of a father and a worse husband. Given their history, Georgiana was unlikely to accept any help he offered, but he felt he must try, if only to ease his conscience. So instead of disappearing into his library and the comforting world of the racing form book, he trudged into the drawing room. She was alone, with her embroidery.
“Yes?” she said, looking up, her needle poised in the air like a fencer’s sword.
He sat before he spoke, knowing he’d persist longer if it was harder to retreat. “How are you?” he asked, looking at her over his steepled fingers.
The question should have disconcerted her. He never made inquiries like this. “My days are a little flat,” she admitted. “There is not much to do.”
“You have your sewing,” he said, glancing at her embroidery.
“Yes. I always do.” She frowned at the piece in her lap. If he troubled himself to discover how many cushions and seat covers and whatever-the-hell things she’d stitched over the years, he expected the total would be prodigious. He knew she was skilled—there was a frightening perfection in most things she did. But she never smiled, never paused to admire her work.
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Not even a little,” she said. Her needle pierced the silk with a barely audible puff, then her wrist, fingers and arm floated up, trailing a coral-colored thread that pulled through the cloth with a sound like a long, deep breath. He watched her make two more stitches. She had a way of moving that made the work seem calming, almost meditative, but a sharp furrow stood between her brows.
“Why do it then?”
A muscle in her cheek twitched. She opened her mouth, started to speak, but couldn’t finish the word. Whatever she had been about to say died on her tongue. She tilted her head, tried again, but he’d had enough. She had no reason.
“You should stop.” Before she could counter his demand with a caustic reply, he pushed himself out of his chair. She flinched as he leaned over her, but made no move to resist when he plucked the embroidery frame from her nerveless fingers. Without noticing the design, he raised it, then cracked it over his knee. The frame splintered.
“Have you lost your senses?” she demanded.
“Probably.” Three strides brought him to the fireplace, but his hand halted above the screen. It was too warm a day for a fire. No matter. He would tear up the thing.
His first tug failed. He tried again. A third time. Swore.
&n
bsp; A nervous giggle escaped her before she could clap her fingers to her mouth.
“Just what is this?” he grunted, failing again. The square of cloth was too strong to tear, reinforced as it was by her stitching.
“A footstool cover.”
“Not any longer.” Before she could stop him, he snatched an evil looking pair of scissors from the basket beside her.
“Don’t,” she said, reaching for his arm.
“Have you changed your mind? Do you like it?”
“What else am I to do?”
It was the desperation in her eyes that decided him. “Anything you like,” he said, opening the scissors. His fingers were too large to fit into the handles further than his first knuckles, but despite his awkward hacking the blades devoured the cloth, snipping through the wadded folds and littering arrow shaped bits onto the carpet. Georgiana stared at him, her hands stuck to the arms of her chair. “I see no reason why you shouldn’t do anything you please. You could travel. Learn to paint. Form a dramatic society. Write a novel—clever or disgusting, whatever you choose.” He swallowed. “Take a lover. Or join the Quakers. Anything, if it makes you happy.” He dropped his hands to his sides, his aching thumb still trapped in the scissors.
She swallowed.
“I miss her too,” he said. “Let’s leave.” Until London recovered from the news, neither of them could be happy here. When he went riding he missed Sophy, and he suspected the parties were no better for his wife. Jasper wasn’t speaking to either of them, and though their daughter Henrietta was trying to be diplomatic, she was too occupied with her young children to give her mother more than occasional company.
“Together?” Georgiana asked. “Just what do you think we would we do?”
His heart, which had been thumping so wildly, turned to a lump of lead. On the eve of Sophy’s desertion he had promised his wife he wouldn’t let her be lonely. He hadn’t been thinking. Outside of plans for Sophy, they hadn’t had a real conversation all year—and for a good number of years before that.
Defeated, but still unwilling to desert the field, he slumped into his chair, staring at the fragments of silk scattered between them. He couldn’t imagine how many hours she had spent, stitching flowers or fruit or birds. “You deserve to be happy,” he said.
On her second attempt, she managed to speak. “I find it is very seldom that people get what they deserve.”
He felt the barb, but he didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry. You know I tried to keep her.”
“I can’t speak of it,” she said, raising a warning hand. This was her usual response to disappointment and conflict, but it was troubling him more and more. Beneath her disarranged flounce—she had started in her seat when he seized her embroidery—she was wearing two different colored stockings, one white, one the palest blush. She did not make mistakes like that. Ever. The lines around her eyes made her look tired, and she seemed ready to break at the lightest touch.
“Let me take you away,” he said without thinking. “We’ll go to Brighton.”
Her hand fell. “You can’t be serious,” she said, failing to hold back a bitter laugh.
“Of course I’m serious. Forget Sophy. Forget everything. Let’s go away.” Maybe it would be miserable. He hadn’t travelled with her for twenty years. She refused to admit that she got sick in carriages. In fact, she refused to get sick, mastering her stomach by sheer will. It made her about as friendly as a basilisk. But perhaps this trip would be different. He would be patient and they could travel slowly. Away from town, she could think of other things—the sun on the sea, the breezes that would play with her curls and pull at her skirts. She was still as slim as a girl. If she smiled . . .
“I don’t want to go to Brighton,” she said.
“What do you want?”
She looked at him with desolate eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t want to sew. I don’t want to eat. Or sleep. Or walk, or drive, or—or see people. I don’t want to go to Mrs. Fanshawe’s ball and I don’t want to buy a bonnet to match my new pelisse.”
“What about furs?” he asked, but she only shuddered. Most unlike her.
“I can’t have what I want. The rest is nothing,” she said, her wrist turning restlessly in her lap.
“Would you like companionship?” he asked, looking down at his hands.
She laughed, short and sharp. “And what would we say to each other, pray? Five minutes and we would use up every civil comment we had.”
He swallowed. “You wouldn’t necessarily have to choose me. Though I would be honored if you did,” he added.
She looked at him, a crease forming between her brows. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No.” She rose from her chair.
“Where are you going?” he asked, before she could escape through the door.
“To count the household linen,” she said.
William sighed. She had done that just last week.
Chapter Seven
Hidden Regrets
It was early in the evening, and Lady Fairchild found herself in Sophy’s empty bed chamber. Again.
Sophy’s brushes were missing, and her pearls—trinkets, only—but everything else was set out in a line on the dressing table: the perfume they had bought together, a painted fan, a new pair of gloves. The day she left, there had been a letter too.
I cannot marry him. I am sorry.
She had said nothing more.
Regrets were mawkish and beneath contempt. Lady Fairchild despised herself for sitting here, for comparing this dreary week to the way it should have been. Planning flowers for the wedding, and a menu for the breakfast afterward. Purchasing bride clothes. Perhaps a drive out to Barham to look over the house. Letters arriving, a sheaf of them, bearing the congratulations of family and friends. She and Sophy, their heads bent together, side by side.
Behind the glazed exterior, Lady Fairchild’s face threatened to crumple, so she sniffed and straightened the fan so it was at right angles to the edge of the dressing table.
Bagshot hated her, she was certain of that. Sophy was young and trusting; whether he deserved it or not, Bagshot was first in her affections. And now there was a knot of worry in her brow that was too tight to unpick. Better to avoid looking in the mirror.
She swept across the room to the window, but the rustle of silk as she moved was no longer comforting. Lady Fairchild had always taken pride in her bearing, in the arrangement of her tapered fingers, in the gleam of her hair and her clothes. She had arranged Sophy’s debut and Alistair’s proposal as carefully as an artist’s tableaux. She’d put herself into the scene—a confidante, a friend, a companion. Not the protagonist, but someone important to the happiness of all. It wasn’t a lofty part, but she wouldn’t have minded. Sophy would need her, and they would be close.
It was a sad thing to discover, even when you’d cast yourself in a supporting role, that you weren’t needed at all.
Lady Fairchild moved the curtain aside with a finger to peer into the street. She had no interest in the goings-on below, but she was tired of looking at the things Sophy had left behind. She may as well tuck herself away too, with the slippers and riding habits and gowns. She did not wish to go out, but she ought to go somewhere this evening. One had to support appearances. Talk would die down eventually, and she would continue on as before, entertaining, going to the theatre, viewing the newest spectacle, defining the mode. It was a bleak prospect. If she were not doing those things, someone else would. No one would notice the difference.
As she let the curtain fall, her eyes dropped to the window sill, where a blue book sat propped against the window frame. She picked it up, noting the title with surprise. Sophy was an adequate student, but it was unlike her to read a book of sermons. Frowning, she flipped open the cover and thumbed through the pages.
This was no sermon, she realized, her eyes falling on familiar words. This was a description of the Marchese de Montferrat! Lady Fairchild stopped reading. She examined the cover again and the frontis
piece. Sure enough, this sedate cover concealed the first volume of The Orphan of the Rhine. The cuts were scarcely noticeable, the new endpapers pasted in with niceness and precision. Only a careful eye could see these were not the original pages. And someone expecting a treatise on the sacraments.
Lady Fairchild snapped the book shut—she’d read this one already, and knew the fate of Julie and her children. She also knew how good Henrietta was with scissors and a glue pot. The only question was how many more proscribed books Henrietta had sent Sophy’s way. With a swiftness her servants learned to fear, Lady Fairchild’s eyes darted to the bureau. The next moment she was lifting out two more books from beneath a pile of gloves.
Hmmmn. Volume two of The Orphan of the Rhine looked unread, but there was a letter marking a place in Lady of the Lake.
No wonder Sophy had run away, with her mind full of this sort of romantic fudge. Lady Fairchild intended to have a few words with Henrietta. Without hesitating, she pulled out the letter. On the outside at least, it was addressed to Betty, Sophy’s former maid. The inside was another matter entirely.
Dear Sophy, she read.
I saw you and your mother driving in the park—alas your yellow sunshade told me you did not need to be rescued. I’m not sure exactly how I would have accomplished it, with myself on foot and you in your carriage. Also, your mother seems a formidable lady. I expect if she looked at me, she’d know at a glance if I’d said my prayers and cleaned my teeth. One wonders how you honed your propensity for mischief. Don’t take that as a criticism. I like that about you.
