“You are not a grouch,” Mr. Banks said, taking Kirsten by the elbow and leading her from the gloom of the stable into the sharp morning sun. “Or not only a grouch. You are also brave. Danny’s tale is not exclusively mine to tell.”
The sunshine was so bright as to hurt the eyes, but Mr. Banks did not seem affected.
“This Danny is illegitimate, then.” I did not say that. I did not say that.
Mr. Banks dropped Kirsten’s arm and turned his back to her, probably a vicar’s equivalent of loud, protracted cursing.
“Don’t run off,” she snapped.
He stood his ground—brave fellow—while Kirsten mentally flailed about in search of words to repair what she’d just put wrong.
The stable yard lay before them, an increasingly muddy soup of snow, horse droppings, and stray clumps of new grass. But for that morass, Mr. Banks would likely be striding off for the safety of the manor house.
“Please don’t let me chase you off, I mean. Illegitimacy is no great rarity. Sooner or later, you’ll hear that Della’s circumstances are irregular, and Nicholas was not a saint as a younger man. I’ll thrash you if you judge either one of them harshly.”
Mr. Banks faced her, and apparently Kirsten had stumbled on the right thing to say—a miracle, surely.
“You could do it,” he said. “You could thrash me, and I’ve at least three stone on you and considerable reach. You are formidable, Lady Kirsten.”
Her siblings called her contrary, stubborn, wrongheaded, and curmudgeonly. Nobody called Kirsten formidable, much less in an admiring tone of voice.
“I’ve never thrashed a vicar,” she said. “I don’t believe the Commandments expressly forbid it. Would you defend yourself with another hymn?”
Mr. Banks turned his face to the sun. His physiognomy was an excruciatingly attractive assemblage of the same parts assigned to most creatures at birth, but paired with the understanding and compassion in his dark, dark eyes…
“Come,” Kirsten said, leading him around the edge of the mire. “We will sit in the gazebo where all can see us, and you will explain about your nephew. If he’s your son, you needn’t hide that. I’d be surprised if some female or other hadn’t thrown herself at you. Scores of them, in fact. You’re human, Mr. Banks. The best vicars generally are. You’re also indecently handsome, through no fault of your own, of course.”
She was babbling, and Mr. Banks was coming along docilely. Kirsten shut her mouth before he called her something less flattering than formidable.
He sat across from her in the octagonal gazebo, which meant she could visually gorge on the myriad nuances of his expression without staring too obviously. The vicar was tired, he could do with more weight, and he’d tried to hide a frayed seam on his cravat by tying the bow off center.
The man needed a wife.
“The aristocracy can be tolerant,” Mr. Banks said, leaning back and resting an arm along the back of the bench. “One shouldn’t be astonished at this, but I am. My brother-in-law is a viscount, you know.”
That situation seemed to puzzle Mr. Banks.
“Viscount Fairly is one of Nicholas’s dearest friends,” Kirsten said. “He and his viscountess have joined us for an occasional meal.” How odd that Lord and Lady Fairly had never said much about her ladyship’s brother. A vicar in the family was usually an opportunity for boasting. “Lady Fairly bears a resemblance to you about the eyes.”
The viscountess also shared an air of sadness with Mr. Banks, and Kirsten suspected the boy, Danny, was the common element to their unhappiness.
Unfortunate for the child. Fairly would sort them out, though. His lordship was a toweringly competent man who cared not one fig leaf for social convention.
“The child is not mine, though I’ve wished he were,” Mr. Banks said as a turtledove landed on the back of the bench not a foot from his outstretched arm. “Danny is the dearest boy who ever winked at his—his uncle—in church. My sister fell into difficulties at a young age, and when she removed to London in search of work, I raised the lad at the vicarage in Little Weldon. Letty, as Fairly’s viscountess, now has the social standing and means to accept Danny into her household, and I have no reason to gainsay her. A mother should be with her child.”
The story was prosaic on the surface. Many a child was consigned to the care of a local vicar, either because the child was an extra mouth, slow, or otherwise in need of charity. Any vicar with extended family became a convenient place to stash a stray child. In a tolerant village, Danny’s origins might not have been held against his uncle.
The church’s attitude toward that arrangement had likely not been solicited.
“You took a risk, keeping the boy in your home,” Kirsten said as a second dove joined the first—a dangerously precocious pair, considering the weather. “A fussy bishop would have taken a dim view of your decision. Your sister owes you.”
“Letty owes me nothing.”
Another revelation: Mr. Banks was capable of anger. On him, ire was cloaked as barely discernible irritation. Did he even know he was angry? Did he know he was handsome in an entirely new way when fire flickered in his eyes?
The doves settled, as if waiting for the tea tray to be brought ’round. They were the first pair Kirsten had seen that year, and probably they wished they’d not arrived so early. Mr. Banks didn’t seem aware of them or their gentle cooing.
“In any case, you miss the boy,” Kirsten said. “Why not visit him?” Kirsten was meddling, but Mr. Banks’s saintly tendencies, if unchecked, would result in pointless suffering.
“I have visited him, Lady Kirsten, and the time spent together neither eased my worry for him, nor comforted the lad. The situation wants time is all, but until I know Danny can thrive in his mother’s household, I will not accept a missionary post for parts distant.”
The situation wanted a great deal more than time. “How distant?”
“Cathay has some appeal, or Peru.”
Kirsten rose and the doves fluttered away. Neither Cathay nor Peru was in her plans, and they shouldn’t be in Mr. Banks’s plans either.
“Danny will love that—waiting months for a letter from you, worrying that a dread disease has carried you off or that you’ve been eaten by cannibals or tigers. An excellent plan, Mr. Banks, for those who must have privacy for their holy pouting.”
He rose slowly, and for the first time, his size struck Kirsten as masculine and powerful.
“You don’t know the half of it, my lady. I’d counsel you to limit your comments.”
Oh, not him too. Life was just full of disappointments. Kirsten tucked the frayed end of his cravat under the seam of his waistcoat.
“Everybody counsels me to limit my comments, and then nothing of any import is resolved. Della is terrified of her reception in Town later this spring, but we don’t talk about that. Nicholas has a grown daughter, one of marriageable age but unfortunate pedigree, and we don’t talk about that either. He misses Leonie to pieces while she’s trying to learn how to serve tea at his grandmother’s in Town. Nobody talks about that.”
“You miss this Leonie as well,” Mr. Banks said, seizing on this insight a little too enthusiastically.
“Of course I miss her. We hardly know her, and she’s the dearest soul, and Nicholas should not have let her go, but she wanted to see London and he can deny her nothing. She writes to me, but her penmanship—” Kirsten hauled up short on the reins of a confidence not shared outside family.
Mr. Banks excelled at provoking expressions of sentiment, and all the while, he paraded around, a rascal in vicar’s threadbare clothing.
“You miss Danny,” she said. “He’s barely two hours’ ride from here if he’s dwelling under Lord Fairly’s roof. Trot over there and see him. You can be back in time for supper.”
The lift of Mr. Banks’s dark brows said she’d tempted him.
Kirsten would rather have tempted him with a kiss, so she went up on her toes and bussed his cheek.
I did just do that. She’d like to do it again too.
“The love of a child is fragile and precious, Mr. Banks. Some of us will never earn such a love, but you have. Take your horse out for a gallop, see the boy, and let him know you’re settling in here well.”
When Kirsten gave her family orders in triplicate, they invariably ignored her or argued with her. Mr. Banks touched bare fingers to his cheek, his expression hovering between bemused and bewildered.
Kirsten left him in the gazebo, pleased with herself for once.
And pleased with him too.
* * *
“You owe me,” Olivia said, though embarking on a harangue on a pretty Sunday morning was a chore even for her. “I would never have married that man if you hadn’t trifled with me.”
Bertrand Carmichael set the tea tray on a stool beside the bed. Sunlight reflected cheerfully off the silver service—Bertrand hadn’t used the everyday since Olivia had arrived three days ago.
The notion that some menial had extra polishing to do pleased Olivia nearly as much as Bertrand waiting on her did.
“The trifling was at least a mutual undertaking, Olivia, and long ago. You truly should not tarry here much longer, my dear. If you hang your head, dredge up some Scripture, and tearfully confess to the right bishop, Banks will have no choice but to take you back.”
Bertrand sat on the edge of the bed, not as lean as he’d been as a younger man, his red hair thinner. His features were the same though—refined, almost aristocratic, his hands always in motion and free of calluses.
Of necessity, Olivia had allowed the trifling to resume the morning after her arrival weeks ago. Needs must. Daniel Banks, wallowing in piety and honor, had never understood that.
“You don’t want me to go back to the vicar, Bertrand. I’ll take a cottage in the Orkneys before I resume a sentence under Daniel Banks’s roof.”
Bertrand poured out as gracefully as a duchess, the steam adding a black tea fragrance to the bedroom.
“Olivia, you’d be lucky to live under his roof again.”
God spare me from martyred men. “I’d be worked to death without the first luxury, expected to spend half my life in some dusty old church, my knees aching through every winter.” She’d also have to endure Daniel’s forgiveness, because Daniel would forgive Old Scratch himself. “I won’t do it.”
Bertrand tugged her braid from between the pillows and brushed the end across her mouth.
“You know I can’t force you to do anything, Olivia. I do fear for your immortal soul, though.”
Oh, that.
“I couldn’t keep the money Letty sent,” Olivia spat. “Daniel has it. If he hasn’t given it to his titled sister, he’ll put it aside for the boy and live on locusts and honey. My immortal soul is not so very imperiled.”
Yet.
Bertrand leaned down and took a sniff of Olivia’s cleavage. “You were wicked, Olivia. You took advantage of another’s misfortune, and you’ve done nothing to make it right. I love how you smell in the morning.”
Olivia petted Bertrand’s hair, not particularly concerned with his overture. Bertrand was elegant, refined, and biddable, entirely unlike Daniel’s hulking darkness. Daniel’s worst transgression by far, though, had been a stubborn independence Olivia had never found a way to curb.
That, and he’d failed to give her children of her own. Olivia was no great admirer of sniveling brats, but to have to raise another’s child, without any of her own to show for years of marriage, had galled bitterly.
Bertrand teethed her nipple through her nightgown. “Shall I take off my robe, Olivia?”
Olivia’s family in Yorkshire believed she’d come south before Christmas to rejoin her husband after an extended holiday among relatives. Daniel believed she still tarried in the West Riding, of all the godforsaken purgatories.
Bertrand, having had the good sense to survive a wealthy wife, was a comfortable—and biddable—port in a storm.
“Finish fixing my tea first, Bertrand. I have plans to consider.”
He left off bothering her, his gaze alit with lust and longing as he stirred a quantity of sugar into Olivia’s tea.
* * *
Immediately after kissing Daniel, Lady Kirsten had churned off toward the house, while he’d remained sitting in the gazebo, his emotions as tangled as the thorny hedges encircling the nearby knot garden.
Pleasure demanded his notice—the lady had kissed him. A friendly, presuming, confident buss to his cheek, such as a woman bestowed on a familiar.
Bewilderment marched forward as well, because, for the merest instant, Daniel had longed to put his arms around Lady Kirsten and turn that kiss into the beginning of a conversation that could go nowhere.
He was married, and a godly man. End of sermon.
So resentment also rustled in the bushes of his emotions, because he had no wife, no marital companion, no helpmeet at his side. As his father had warned him before the vows had even been spoken, Daniel had chosen poorly.
And finally, Daniel endured weariness of the spirit. He’d told Lady Kirsten the sad truth: visiting Danny only seemed to make the boy sadder, because every visit ended with Daniel turning his back on the child and riding away. Every choice led to sadness, and thus Daniel would not be visiting the boy again in the immediate future.
A horseman dismounted in the stable yard, a tall fellow on a fine gelding. He doffed his hat and tarried for a moment with the groom, sunlight glinting on the golden hair common to many a Haddonfield.
Mr. George Haddonfield came striding across the garden, his posture and pace suggesting his visit was not a mere social call upon his siblings.
“Have you been put out in the garden like a rambunctious hound, Mr. Banks?” Mr. Haddonfield asked, thumping up the steps of the gazebo. He lounged against one of the supports, all fine tailoring, gentlemanly bonhomie, and energetic good health.
“I expect in a few weeks, this will be a lovely garden,” Daniel replied, summoning small talk. Today was Sunday, after all. “A hound would enjoy being banished here. Have you come to call on your family?”
Mr. Haddonfield’s smile dimmed to a rueful and slightly puzzled expression as he appropriated the bench beside Daniel.
“That’s what I told my wife, but I lied, Mr. Banks—your first confession from the sinners of Haddondale. I lied to my new wife.”
“The early days of a marriage are difficult,” Daniel said. “One wants to be kind but also make an honest beginning. Why did you tell your wife this great falsehood?”
The middle days and end days of a marriage could also be laden with difficulty. A merciful deity would spare Mr. Haddonfield that insight.
“I’m on a reconnaissance mission, Mr. Banks. Your conversation with Digby got me thinking.”
Digby, the budding military scholar. Daniel sat up. “I can’t absolve you of a prevarication if I don’t know its nature, Mr. Haddonfield.”
“You will make a first-rate tutor, and it’s about that I wanted to speak with you. My stepson is developing rotten tendencies. I can spot these three leagues off because, as a lad, I had more than a few myself.”
“As lads, we all did.” Many a sound birching had persuaded Daniel to put his aside—for the most part.
“Digby, the apple of his mother’s eye, and my pride and joy, shut the pantry mouser in the linen closet.”
To Mr. Haddonfield’s credit, he was worried about this little domestic contretemps. The scent of cat on clean linen would drive any mother to screeching.
“The boy’s mother dotes on the cat?” Daniel asked.
“How did you guess?”
“Digby struck me as having an academic bent. His rottenness will have a strategic quality. The cat works his mischief
, Mama flies into the boughs with the cat rather than the true culprit, and Digby has eliminated a rival for Mama’s affections. How recently did you marry?”
Now Mr. Haddonfield sat up. “Very. I rather like being married to my Elsie, but the boy is becoming a problem.”
Mr. Haddonfield probably liked being married to his Elsie several times a day, exactly when young Digby wanted assurances that Mama was still exclusively devoted to her son.
“What did Mrs. Haddonfield think of this stunt with the cat?”
“She declared it an accident, but a six-year-old boy doesn’t stuff a cat weighing well over a stone into the linen closet by accident.”
“Malice aforethought, then.” Also excellent planning skills. “Are you asking me to pray for your budding felon?”
Daniel could do that easily. Every rotten boy should have somebody praying for him, as should the boy’s parents.
“I want you to teach him Latin, Mr. Banks, and ciphering and geography and so forth. Prior to marrying me, Elsie had to allow Digby to attend lessons with the local vicar, because the boy’s former guardian insisted. I can argue that Eton is now within Digby’s grasp, and a proper foundation is necessary if he’s not to be humiliated. Digby will leap on this proposal because I’ll get him his own pony for shuttling back and forth to his lessons.”
Strategic indeed. “You were truly once a rotten boy, sir.”
Mr. Haddonfield’s ears turned a shade of pink common to the newly married. “Elsie seems to like that about me.”
Another tall, blond fellow emerged from a Belle Maison side entrance, the Earl of Bellefonte himself. Had he seen Lady Kirsten kissing the new vicar’s cheek? Did Daniel mind if he had, when the kiss had been the merest gesture of friendship?
“Bellefonte has spotted me,” Mr. Haddonfield said. “We used to seek cover in the library together on Sunday afternoons. Nicholas put it about he was doing accounts, I purported to tend to my correspondence, and we both got a fine nap.”
Another confession, this one betraying concern for the earl, because Mr. Haddonfield had found a cozier place to nap of a Sunday afternoon.
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