His list of repentances just kept growing longer, while his remorse grew more and more difficult to find.
* * *
Kirsten had been patient long enough, and somebody needed to sort out the Banks menfolk.
“I do not share your sentiments, Lady Kirsten,” Mr. Banks said. “When that boy leaves my sight, a part of my heart goes with him. I am not grateful for his absence, and I cannot imagine a circumstance where I would be.”
Another glimmer of Mr. Banks’s well-camouflaged ferocity shone through, also his sadness.
“You’d die for that boy,” she said, her regard for Mr. Banks growing. Fathers cared for their sons that way, and cared enough to step aside when the child had a chance at a better life. Kirsten would never have been so noble.
“I would die for Danny cheerfully, my lady, and sometimes I think a part of me already has.”
Such drama—and such hypocrisy?
“If spiritual well-being matters more than material security, then the child should be with you, Mr. Banks. All the wealth and position in the world does not compensate a child for a father’s love.”
He sat back, his tea cradled against his flat middle. “How easily you chart a course through troubled waters, but a child also needs his mother’s love, Lady Kirsten.”
That was her cue to stand up, wish him the best with a complicated family issue, and make that trip to the vicarage in search of adventure stories for little boys.
“A voice in my head is clamoring for me to mind my own business, Mr. Banks, but you and I are friends of a sort, so I will, in my usual fashion, ignore the voice of common sense. A mother is as a mother does, Mr. Banks, and when Danny was troubled and upset, he did not confide in his mother or his wealthy viscount step-papa, did he?”
As far as Kirsten was concerned, that decided the matter. If the child had no allies, then he might as well be in enemy territory.
With no good options and a long, bleak future ahead of him.
“Fairly has the means to open many doors for the boy, despite irregularities in Danny’s pedigree.” Mr. Banks’s reply had the weary quality of an oft-recited prayer.
Lord Fairly was a canny sort. Kirsten liked him, but she didn’t entirely trust him. He moved too quietly and had a tendency to pop up unannounced in odd company. Then too, he was a physician, and she did not care for physicians as a breed. Nicholas considered him a friend though, and Nicholas, for all that he was friendly, was parsimonious with his friendships.
“Have you resigned yourself to the idea that Danny must adjust to his mother’s household?” Kirsten asked, taking a sip of her tea. How would that feel, to surrender a much-loved child into uncertain circumstances and know the child was unhappy but probably better off?
Awful, that’s how it would feel. And for the boy, to be taken from a beloved father figure and everything familiar and dear?
Worse than awful.
“Danny has been with his mother for some months,” Mr. Banks said, “though of course she must publicly remain Aunt Letty to him. Through inadvertence, the entire, complicated, unfortunate reality of Danny’s birth was made known to him. He thus also struggles with truths he should have been spared, at least for a time.”
Like Della, who’d figured out too early that the late earl was not her papa. She’d become a fierce, sad, bewildered little girl as a result, and a fiercer young woman.
“What will you do, Mr. Banks?”
Mr. Banks sipped his tea, though Kirsten doubted he tasted it. He hadn’t touched any biscuits either, while she was tempted to eat the lot of them.
“I’ve told myself,” he said softly, “that Letty is a good mother. She made sacrifices for that child no mother should have to consider. She visited as often as she could, she protected Danny from much. She and her viscount love the boy and will spare no expense to see him well situated.” Mr. Banks set his mug on the tray, next to the untouched biscuits.
“You are trying to convince yourself to leave matters as they are,” Kirsten concluded, disappointed, but also unhappy for him. The child would be better off in the home of a wealthy lord than in a makeshift vicarage—in the eyes of the world.
Then too, how had Mr. Banks explained the boy at his previous posting? A cousin’s child? A foundling? All he’d said was that he’d raised Danny “at the vicarage.”
“I’m trying to convince myself to leave well enough alone, and failing,” Mr. Banks said, pushing the biscuits closer to Kirsten’s elbow. “The sacrifices Letty has made or any imposition on me don’t signify. What matters is that Danny have the best start in life.”
“Then you’ll send him back?” Kirsten did not like that option, but Mr. Banks faced no real choice, did he?
Mr. Banks rose, and though his boots were worn and his cravat wrinkled, he made a fine figure in his riding attire, particularly when resolution sat upon his broad shoulders and a smile illuminated his features.
“I will send Danny back, for now, but he has arrived to an age where he should have regular instruction, and many boys live in with their vicar prior to public school. They leave home in manageable stages that way, get an education, and ease their path into wider company than one household, however wealthy, allows.”
Kirsten rose too, biscuits and tea forgotten. “You’ll add him to your collection of rotten boys?”
Marvelous notion, and what a marvelous man, for coming up with it.
“Legally, I still have authority over the child as his guardian. I can argue for Danny to join the boys here, where he has both company and studies to distract him from what bothers him.” Mr. Banks’s smile was pleased and determined, also relieved.
Kirsten was still casting about for adjectives to describe that smile when he took her hand in a warm grasp, cradling it in both of his as he bowed.
“Thank you, Lady Kirsten, for helping me sort through my priorities.”
His priorities? Kirsten seized the initiative and seized his mouth with her own as well, for she had a few priorities too.
* * *
Gracious, merciful, everlasting, confounded, sweet…sweet, so very sweet…
The sheer perfection of Daniel’s plan for Danny, the lovely rightness of it, had inspired a friendly gesture of thanks toward the woman who’d done much to bring order to a difficult situation.
A foolish, friendly gesture, for Lady Kirsten’s kisses were inspiring Daniel to nothing less than despair now. She plundered delicately, stole a man’s good intentions with a tender pressing of lips to lips, and made off with his honor by replacing it with pleasure.
Daniel got a half-inch purchase on virtue. “My lady, we mustn’t—”
She found him again with her mouth, with peppermint and with eagerness—a spice Daniel had not tasted in a kiss since before his marriage.
“Must,” her ladyship muttered, her arms wrapping about his waist. “You even taste good.”
For a procession of instants, Daniel’s resolve hung suspended between the mesmerizing pleasure of a woman’s honest, passionate desire for him, sorrow for what must be ended in the next moment, and horror.
He was not horrified to have lapsed—he was bitterly amused and mildly ashamed, and would find a proper penance for his misstep. He was horrified to realize that Lady Kirsten was no conscienceless strumpet, no overly bold aristocrat trolling for an illicit assignation.
She was innocent, the next thing to inexperienced, and with her inexpert kiss, she sought to invite Daniel to the very opposite of sinning. For that reason, he allowed the kiss to gentle, then subside into an embrace, the lady resting against him in a posture of wrenchingly misplaced affection.
Daniel gave himself one moment of sweet self-torture to imprint the embrace on his memory, then let his arms drop away.
“Lady Kirsten, I owe you the most abject, sincere, and remorseful apology a man can make.”
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br /> The dear, dratted woman cuddled closer. “Kissing takes practice, Mr. Banks. I expect we could both benefit by refreshing our skills with each other regularly. We’re off to a promising start, don’t you think?”
Women had breasts. Daniel had somehow misplaced that fact in the last few years. Misplaced the delight a man felt when a well-endowed woman in a friendly mood snuggled up to him simply because she chose to.
He would never again be able to forget that.
“You will hate me,” he whispered, and that was penance enough for any sin, for he never wanted to disappoint Kirsten Haddonfield, never wanted to earn her enmity. She was good-hearted, if lonely, and she liked children.
She liked Daniel. Though he had little coin, no ambition, and less sophistication, she liked Daniel.
“I might have hated you if you’d lectured the boy and sent him back to his mother in disgrace,” she said, “but I’d have got over it, eventually. I’m much better at appearing angry than I am at remaining angry.”
Lady Kirsten bore the scent of lavender. Daniel endured her patting his lapel, when he should have stepped back.
Some dark angel of mercy popped a painful, helpful thought into Daniel’s reeling mind: Lady Kirsten’s brother held the Haddondale living. Should Daniel find disfavor with the earl, the clerical calling was all but forfeit.
Daniel’s vocation was all he had left, and as of a few moments ago, was a means of reuniting somewhat with Danny.
“My lady, there has been a misapprehension of my situation,” Daniel said, taking Lady Kirsten’s hands in his and putting a foot of distance between him and temptation. “Your regard, even your friendship, will always be among my greatest treasures, but you must save your affections for another.”
Her pretty blue eyes clouded with an instant of hurt before her expression cooled. She slipped her hands from his—no dramatic gesture, just a quiet, tragic, inevitable untangling of fingers, sentiments, and lives.
In that moment, Daniel finally, finally knew what it was to hate his spouse. He’d been angry at Olivia, hurt by her, embittered and bewildered by her betrayals, but as all hope and warmth dimmed from Lady Kirsten’s gaze, Daniel caught a tantalizing glimpse of hatred.
And liked what he saw. Hatred was so simple, so easy, and as tempting as a succulent red apple.
“My apologies to you, Mr. Banks. I presumed on what was merely polite friendship. I am so sorry. It won’t happen again.”
She turned to leave, probably to curse him in the ladylike solitude of her private sitting room. Perhaps to weep. If Daniel were lucky, she’d dredge up scorn for the new Haddondale vicar, a task with which he could offer a bit of assistance.
“My lady—Kirsten, I am married.”
Her ladyship had ample stores of indignation, but if Daniel sought to inspire their display, he was disappointed.
Also consoled, for she was not so wroth with him as to storm away upon hearing his confession.
“Married, Daniel?”
Not Mr. Banks. “I did not choose wisely, as my own father often remarked. My wife and I live apart. She was unkind to Danny and betrayed my trust as well, but I will not dishonor my vows.”
He’d once thought he could not dishonor those vows, not in any serious or sustained manner. Even before leaving Little Weldon, he’d admitted the error of that assumption. He was still a man, and worse, he was a lonely, virtuous man.
“And if you were not married, Mr. Banks?”
What sort of mistaken, misled, rejected woman asked that question? A brave one, one entitled to honesty.
“I am not free to describe the sentiments that might befall me concerning you were I an unmarried man,” Daniel said, “but I spoke honestly earlier. Your regard, even your friendship, will always be among my greatest treasures if would you leave them in my keeping.”
He could have loved her.
Because Daniel could have loved Lady Kirsten as a man loves his intimate companion, and because he did esteem her, he spared her a recitation of sentiments that could not flatter her coming from him.
“I spoke honestly earlier too,” she said. “Daniel, I am so sorry.”
Not an apology, but rather, a condolence to a man bereaved of companionship and yet yoked to his solitude. On a soft swish of skirts, Lady Kirsten was up the maids’ stairs and gone.
* * *
Susannah peered over the top of a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets. “Something’s wrong.”
Yes, something was wrong. Susannah wasn’t supposed to haunt the old nursery suite, because this was Kirsten’s preferred place to be alone and think.
Also to grieve.
“How many versions do you have of those sonnets, Suze?” Kirsten asked, poking up the desultory fire. “Are you trying to memorize every one?”
“I own six different editions, and Nicholas keeps one more in each library,” Susannah said, closing the book around her finger. “What is bothering you?”
Why now, of all times, did Susannah have to take her pretty nose out of a book?
“You’d freeze in here and not even notice,” Kirsten said, perching on a hassock before the hearth. “You might eventually notice if it grew too dark to read.”
Susannah did not rise to the bickering bait.
“You have the same look you used to get when we made our come-outs,” she said, “when Lady Warne would discuss the gentlemen with whom we should dance and how to finagle them onto our dance cards.”
Bad moments, those, when Nick’s grandmother had prevailed on friends, goddaughters, whist partners, and passing marchionesses to ensure Kirsten and Susannah never sat out a dance.
“I hate London,” Kirsten said, though she hadn’t intended to announce that.
“If it weren’t for Hatchards and Gunter’s, I would too,” Susannah replied, putting her feet up beside Kirsten on the hassock. “Her Grace the Duchess of Moreland lets me borrow from her library, and Lady Louisa is always willing to talk poetry with me.”
“Are they your friends, Suze? The duchess and her daughter?”
Susannah was so pretty. Mellow afternoon sunshine slanted through the windows and gave her fair countenance a glow Kirsten associated with illuminated manuscripts and Renaissance Madonnas.
Susannah was also lonely, which might explain her devotion to Mr. Shakespeare.
“The Windham ladies are excellent company,” Susannah said, “but no, I would not say they are my friends.”
“Are we friends?” Kirsten’s mouth was marching off in all manner of unintended directions today—as usual.
“We’re sisters,” Susannah said. “That’s better than friends. What’s amiss, Kirsten? Your expression is distracted, and you’ve settled on that hassock like a broody hen when you’d normally be inspecting the mantel for dust and the window for smudges.”
“I’m not sure anything is wrong, exactly. Did you know Mr. Banks is married?”
Susannah toed off a pair of pink house mules embroidered with blue birds. Her feet were clad in white silk stockings, and even her feet—slender and narrow—had a graceful quality.
“Marriage would explain Mr. Banks’s domestication,” she said, wiggling her toes. “A man that good-looking oughtn’t to be so nice and well mannered, even if he is a vicar. He ought to be arrogant or silly.”
Men could be both. Sedgewick had managed it handily, while Arthur… Maybe he’d been arrogant and silly and Kirsten had been too heartbroken to notice.
“Mr. Banks and his wife are estranged,” Kirsten said, though she suspected the situation was worse than that. “A prodigal wife has to be awkward for a vicar.”
“Impossible, I’d say. We’ll be hearing stories next about how Mrs. Banks is off tending to her widowed mother or her sister’s difficult lying-in, until people give up asking directly. Nicholas did say Vicar might not be in the Haddondale pulp
it for long.”
Mrs. Banks. Ouch. “When did Nick say that?”
“I was in the library, looking for my Sappho, and Nick came in with Leah.”
“The blue sofa?”
Nicholas claimed the blue sofa had the sturdiest construction and the deepest cushions. The blue sofa did not squeak, in other words, or shift about when a certain randy earl got to frolicking with his countess. Adolphus, the Haddonfield brother who could rarely be torn from the scientific blandishments of Cambridge, had said Nick’s son ought to be nicknamed “Blue.”
“Not the blue sofa,” Susannah said. “Nick and Leah were making a biscuit raid, during which Nick mentioned that Mr. Banks might be bound for Cathay if Haddondale doesn’t suit. Our vicar must be very estranged from his spouse if Cathay beckons, though a spouse is a spouse, estranged or not. Sally Blumenthal was quite certain Mr. Banks would soon be holding her in a special regard. She will be devastated.”
Danny would be devastated if Mr. Banks decamped for missionary martyrdom, and for that reason, the Haddondale pulpit and Danny’s well-being were temporarily secure.
“I like Mr. Banks,” Kirsten said, nudging her sister’s discarded slippers so they were aligned with each other on the carpet. “I respect him and I like him.”
What a relief, to be able to respect a man again. An ironic relief.
Susannah set her book aside amid a considering silence.
Kirsten liked Mr. Banks exceedingly well, and learning that he was married only made her feelings more complicated.
“I’m sorry, Kirsten. You seem to have the worst luck with the fellows. Is Mr. Banks very set on a career with the church?”
An extraordinary question in the middle of an unusual conversation.
“I wouldn’t run away with him,” Kirsten said, “if that’s what you’re asking.”
Mr. Banks would not ask Kirsten to turn her back on propriety, not even for true love, because of all the vicars in all the parishes in all the shires, Daniel Banks’s vocation was genuine.
Confound the luck.
“But you’re disappointed,” Susannah said, crossing her ankles. “Mr. Banks is worth being disappointed over, while your beaus did not impress me.”
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