Fairchild Regency Romance

by Jaima Fixsen

  “Forgive me. It’s the music,” he lied.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said, flashing diamonds at him.

  “Lovely rhythm,” he said, failing valiantly. Heavens, let the dance end soon. “Like—like the paces of a good horse.”

  Lady Wincholme’s parting, at the end of the set, was less warm than her greeting at the start of the evening. No matter. William was searching out his wife, wondering if he could lure her into one of the alcoves.

  No, this one was taken, and the next was flanked by Jasper and his least favorite nephew. No good. If Georgiana wouldn’t dance with him, she sure as hell wouldn’t follow him into shady corners under their son’s nose. But he did catch her eye over the hair plumes of his waltz partner at the end of the evening. Georgiana’s answering smile was small and quick. Dazzling.

  So dazzling that he found himself humming inattentively on the carriage ride home. Tunelessly, but that went without saying. Georgiana, who was an expert on all his deficiencies, forbore comment. Anna, of course, was too polite to complain.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Pivot

  After hearing the hall clock chime four, Anna decided it was no use and got out of bed. She regretted it instantly. It was December and hours before dawn; her room was blood-sappingly cold. Leaping from one carpet to the next, Anna grabbed a heavy wool dressing gown draped over the folding screen and burrowed into it, adding a shawl for good measure. The fire was dead, nothing but powdery ash, but Anna knew her room well enough to find the armchair without lighting her candle. She’d been here nearly four months. It was time to stop avoiding the issue and find herself a husband. It might take a good six months or so, and she hadn’t even started. She couldn’t stay at Rushford House forever.

  Anna leaned her head against the wing of the chair and pulled her hands deeper into her sleeves. She was as bad as Henry, balking at this like he did when it was time to brush his teeth. A sigh escaped her, wafting up like a feeble white flag. Her heart wasn’t in this; it had deserted her and gone to Spain. Unfortunate, but not really surprising. Hearts were unruly things. They caused a good deal of trouble.

  There must be some man out there who was sufficiently kind and passably handsome. No, forget that. Better if he was passable company. She’d danced with a score of gentleman at Lady Wincholme’s ball—surely one of them met this standard. It shouldn’t be this hard to separate their faces and pull up their names. She must forget Alistair. She’d promised to release him. It wasn’t the first time she’d made plans like this in her dark room, but this time, she really would put him away.

  Anna had enough practice with night-time worries she could make them awake or asleep. She did both, dozing intermittently in her chair. When her maid came early in the morning to light a new fire, Anna lifted her head, smiled blearily, and shuffled back into bed to thaw under the covers and wait until the room warmed. Then she rang and dressed. Tired, but resolved, Anna was surprised to find herself alone at the breakfast table. She considered the wind scouring the street and testing the windows an excellent reason to stay indoors, but Lord Fairchild was seldom deterred from his morning ride by unfavorable weather. No matter how thick the frost, he usually beat her to the table. Not today—a fine piece of luck, Anna realized, spying the letters resting beside her plate. Lord Fairchild didn’t pry, but she’d rather read them unobserved. Forgetting the welcome smells of breakfast and her night time resolutions, Anna reached for the letters with an accelerating heart. There were two: one with battered corners, the direction written in Alistair’s swirling hand, and a second with crisper edges but cruder script. She broke the seal on Alistair’s first, ignoring a twinge of guilt.

  Dearest Anna,

  It was how he addressed all his letters, but regular use didn’t lesson her pleasure in the endearment. His next sentence made her pause.

  I’m a shocking liar. Selfish too.

  Selfish? No—he was anything but. And lies—well, his imperfections certainly didn’t detract.

  I can’t stand the thought of you and Mr. Worthy, whoever he might be. When I engaged myself to you, it was because I wished it were true. I wanted you for my own but a partial loan seemed like the best I could get.

  Something was happening to her breathing—or else the room was losing air.

  Will you marry me?

  Of course she would! Yes, and yes again!

  I’ve nothing to recommend me—

  The wonderful idiot. Didn’t he see?

  —save that I look well in a uniform and on a horse, but I’m mad enough in love that I’m certain we could find a way. Not maybe a life of wealth and triumphs, but for me anyways, one of happiness.

  I want you and I want Henry and I want to spend my days collecting your smiles. Would you mind terribly?

  She devoured the rest of the brief letter, her skin alive with each word, especially his closing:

  Burning and fervent and possibly half-cracked, but all for love of you,

  Alistair

  Wasn’t she also? Surely there could be no greater joy than this mutual madness. Anna read the letter again, torn between containing this unstoppable torrent of feeling and letting herself dance around the table. The merely tolerable husband of her late-night plans died unnoticed. She would have Alistair.

  Still no Lord Fairchild. Anna grinned, hugging the letter to herself and sinking back into her chair. She brushed her finger over his signature, and—no one was looking—pressed her lips hard and swift against the paper. Even when she put it away, her hands still yearned for it.

  She peeked at the door again, composing herself, reaching for marmalade she wasn’t going to eat. She added extra sugar to her coffee and sliced open an orange and then gave up. She read the letter over again, quickly, because she already knew the words by heart, then slipped it out of sight on to her lap. She might not be able to eat, or drink more than a swallow of her syrupy coffee, but she could make a pretense of reading the other letter.

  She read the first paragraph twice, her heart beating slower and slower as cold inertia overpowered her. Yes, it was from Griggs. She dragged her eyes back up to the top of the page, forcing herself to decode each word, for though the letters were neatly made and spaced, they felt as strange as a foreign alphabet. Almost, she wished they were.

  Mrs. Morris,

  He’s bad—we all were along the retreat, sick and cold and hungry, but of course our Captain isn’t one to complain. The only action was a trifling skirmish, a little thing. Wasn’t even mentioned in the dispatches. But Captain got a nick below his knee and of course the only thing we regretted was the ruin of a good pair of boots. A clean cut, so he didn’t get stitched until we arrived at Ciudad Rodrigo, and then it was already festering. He’s too fevered to write or understand a word anyone says and he sweats and rattles with chills and shudders so bad I think he’ll knock out his teeth.

  I’m doing my best, as I promised, but can’t say as he’ll outlast the fever. He’ll need help if he does, but he’d never ask you for it, even if he could. I’ve been with him a good many years though, and I know what he wants. Figure there’s nothing wrong if I ask for him. I’m guessing you’re the kind that likes to know. And I’m guessing you want to keep him on this side of the great beyond too. He’ll want to see you. I’ve sent on the letter I found in his jacket pocket. It’s at least a few days old, cause he’s been too sick to write.

  This explained the scuffed appearance of Alistair’s love letter. Anna swallowed, trying to understand this unfathomable cruelty—rejoicing one moment in her beloved’s confessions, and the next discovering he might already be a dead man, nothing more than old ink on dry paper.

  She curled over her plate, struggling to breathe, watching tears spatter on the china and drop onto her uneaten toast. For minutes or seconds, she couldn’t say—it felt as if the world had stopped and she was the only animate thing left in it. A stupid delusion, and one she must dismiss. Time was advancing, even if she couldn’t feel it, and d
ripping all over the table wasn’t going to help. Lord Fairchild hadn’t appeared—a small mercy, and one she must use. She might be able to hold up in front of the servants, but not a friendly face. Anna rose from the table and hastened upstairs.

  Lucy Plunkett was surprised to hear of the sudden change in plans—“I’m taking Henry to see his Grandparents today”—but didn’t question Anna about the early hour. She was used to Anna’s eccentricities. If she’d stayed to see the methodical assembly of two valises though, she would have wondered. Anna and Henry made their whispered way down the stairs and out the door.

  “It’s a secret,” she told him. “We’re going to join Captain Beaumaris.”

  “Then why are you crying?” Henry asked, reaching up to wipe her nose.

  She’d give him the truth soon, but she couldn’t manage it now. “We’ll miss Lord and Lady Fairchild.”

  “Not that much,” he said, skipping ahead of her on the pavement.

  When the hackney dropped them at her parents’ house, Anna just made it through the door and into her mother’s arms. Tears came, and this time they were sobs, so it was some time before she could make herself understood. She gulped at a bottomless cup of hot tea, spilling her story, while her mother and father listened silently and took turns chaffing her hand. Then she cried again, because her father wanted to go with her.

  “Papa, not in winter,” Anna said, begging him to be sensible. His shoulders were stooped and his hands arthritic, the fingers swollen and veering sideways. “We must ride through the mountains and—” Her voice broke. “What if we don’t reach him in time?”

  She couldn’t say that he would slow them down, but he understood. “I’ll take you to Portsmouth, at least,” he said. “Henry?”

  “I can’t leave him,” Anna said. “And if I did, Frederick would snatch him.”

  Some parents would argue and insist she be sensible, but hers didn’t question. They understood this was a time for practical action. Handwringing never saved anyone. Her mother oversaw the packing, transferring the valises into two compact trunks, adding stores of bandages, basilicum, and tinctures she thought Anna would need. Her father drove into the city to change her remaining money from paper to gold and to buy her a pistol. “Not much good with them myself, but if you at least learn to hold it right and keep it by you, you should manage.”

  Traveling to Portsmouth by post-chaise, he sat with Henry on his knee, drumming advice into Anna’s ears and explaining to Henry how sailors were expected to behave. “It’s your first adventure,” he said to his rapt grandson. “Think over everything carefully and it won’t be your last. You want enough to fill a lifetime.”

  He saw her to Portsmouth, found her a ship and didn’t blink when she told the captain that she was journeying out to nurse her husband. “Wise idea,” he whispered to her, when they were private. “Didn’t realize you’d kept the ring.”

  Anna frowned at the jeweled band Anthony had given her as if it were a fetter. Her father put an arm around her and squeezed. “Too much my girl to throw away anything valuable. Tell me, has it been hidden away in the back of your bureau all these years?”

  “Under the chamber pot.”

  He laughed. “You remember what I said to Henry. Think everything over before you act, and choose where to put your trust mighty carefully.” Anna turned and put her arms around his neck, remembering when his bones had been padded with a thick layer of muscle. “Thank you, Papa.”

  His voice turned gruff, as it was wont to do when any of his family kissed him. “Yes, well, you’ll be all right.”

  As a younger man, he’d confronted chaotic docks, gales, and foreign navies, reducing all to neat lines in a ledger. That counted, of course, but it was mostly because he was her papa that Anna believed him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A Challenging Campaign

  Lady Fairchild was entertaining callers, wishing Anna Morris would finally choose to appear. Her mother arrived instead, in a gown so plain she might have been taken for the housekeeper.

  “Lady Fairchild. I am sorry to interrupt, but I have some news. I’m afraid Anna was too upset to think of informing you.”

  “What happened?” Lady Fairchild asked, forgetting for the moment that her visitors were almost as gossipy as she was.

  Mrs. Fulham settled herself tidily in the nearest chair. “Captain Beaumaris has been wounded, gravely I fear. His man wrote Anna and held out little hope.”

  Lady Fairchild set aside her cup of tea, keeping her face turned to the table, resting her chin on her hand to still her trembling. These things happened all the time. Handsome young men went to war and died, even though they still looked like the irascible boys they’d been not long ago.

  “What happened?” she asked again.

  “An injury to his leg—not a large one, but it’s become inflamed. He’s sick with fever.”

  Lady Fairchild held back a shudder. Nothing scared her more. She could remember, clear as if it were yesterday, how her baby boy had sweated and thrashed, then turned limp and dry, his lips cracking, his skin painfully hot to the touch. It was torture to watch, but better than what had come after, when he had turned empty and waxen and cold, as lifeless as the box they had to put him in. Georgiana shut her eyes and pressed her fingers hard against her mouth. This wasn’t the same. Alistair was older, stronger. Even if he died, she would not have to watch it—but she didn’t need to. Her imagination was far too good.

  The walls wavered, like the room had filled with water. “Does Anna wish to stay with you?” She would want comfort through this difficult time.

  Mrs. Fulham rearranged her hands. “No. She’s going to Spain. Left for Portsmouth already. Captain Beaumaris needs her, so she’s gone to help him.”

  Edging away from Mrs. Fulham’s sharp gaze, Georgiana shrank beneath memories of her frequently voiced objections: the time she’d called Anna a pretty face with empty pockets, and a girl with baggage and no breeding. The truth of these assertions didn’t excuse her. They were ungracious and unkind. Silence pressed on her, but Georgiana couldn’t speak. A hundred sniffs, slights and snide remarks made it near impossible to breathe. Why couldn’t she have treated Anna with compassion? She’d been petty and proud, unwilling to acknowledge Anna’s better qualities, namely that she fought for the people she loved. Georgiana realized, prickling with shame, that no fortune or pedigree could equal that. Bravery and commitment were more important, and Anna had both.

  She should have been kinder. Then Anna might have told her, or asked for help. Instead, her treatment of Anna had earned her the humiliation of hearing this predicament afterward, when it was too late offer comfort or aid. And in front of guests . . . .

  “Is your husband with her?” Georgiana asked, flushing.

  “Just as far as Portsmouth. He’ll help her find passage. Anna felt, and it is the truth, though we wish it were not, that my husband wouldn’t fare well in the journey through the mountains. She didn’t want to leave Henry.”

  “She’s taking him to Spain?” Fear doused embarrassment, leaving Georgiana clammy and cold. She could have kept Henry, protected him, if only she’d given Anna the least reason to trust her.

  “It’s not quite the Sahara,” Mrs. Fulham said calmly, but Georgiana’s head was spinning. Mountain passes in winter, infested with brigands and the British Army—thousands of layabout rogues culled from the slums of England. Even the officers were not to be trusted.

  “Her reputation—” Georgiana gasped, glancing at her guests and realizing it was too late. “They’ll never reach him—and even if they do, he might be already dead! Who will protect them?” How could the Fulhams have let her go alone, taking the boy? The peninsula was no place for a lone woman and four-year-old child. Someone must go with them. William or Jasper or—

  Cyril. Of course. Yes, it should be him, because if Alistair was gone, someone must marry Anna and bring her home. Georgiana knew she’d have all manner of difficulties bending Jasper to
her will, but she was confident of succeeding with her weakling nephew.

  “She’s gone already, you said?” Georgiana asked, rising from her chair.

  “Yes. To Portsmouth. She’ll sail to Oporto and go from there to Ciudad Rodrigo.”

  “Forgive me. I must go.” She and Mrs. Fulham could wrangle over the handling of this crisis tomorrow. They might as well become acquainted, since Anna was going to be part of the family one way or other. If Georgiana was to fix things, she must act now, before Anna and Henry got too far ahead. The poor girl needed someone to help her. If Frederick Morris ever learned of this, he would have every right to take her son back.

  “Where’s Lucy Plunkett?” Georgiana demanded, striding into the hall. She couldn’t see Jenkins, but she trusted he would appear, sensing her need.

  He didn’t fail her. “She may be in the kitchen,” Jenkins said, materializing at her elbow. “But I’m not certain.”

  “Watch her. Don’t let her leave the house.” Anna might pay her wage now, but Georgiana didn’t forget that Lucy had been hired by Frederick Morris first and couldn’t be trusted. William was out—gone to Tatersalls—but Georgiana wouldn’t wait. She ordered the carriage brought round.

  “Take me to St. Audley Street,” she said.

  It was early enough in the afternoon that she found Cyril at home. “Just tell me where he is,” she snapped at the butler, unwilling to give her nephew the luxury of a warning. He wasn’t, as she expected, foraging at the sideboard, assembling a late breakfast. He was in the billiard room, lounging over the table. She glared at him, at his too long hair, at the cue in his loose fingers, his foaming cravat and his tasseled boots. Cyril’s other hand was sliding over his watch fob, trying to tuck it out of sight.

  “Don’t bother. I’ve already seen it,” she said, and Cyril flushed, as well he might. A naked woman! Really! “Utterly tasteless,” she said.