Daniel's True Desire

by Grace Burrowes

  Yes, she had disturbed him.

  “Very kind of you, Lady Kirsten, and I did not properly thank you or Lady Susannah for your aid this morning. Mrs. Blumenthal is probably sewing new shirts for those boys as we speak.”

  “Her daughters might be,” Lady Kirsten said, crossing to the desk. “You are concerned for your finances, Mr. Banks?”

  “Yes.” Somehow, Daniel’s finances had become tangled up with his immortal soul and his enmity toward his spouse. “If I’d been more astute about money matters, more vigilant and less trusting, my wife would not have wreaked as much havoc as she did.”

  Lady Kirsten ran a finger down the column of figures associated with coal expenditures.

  “You reproach yourself for trusting your own wife? If you cannot trust the one person in the entire realm who has taken a public oath to love, honor, and obey you, then what hope remains for any union?”

  Put like that, the hair shirt Daniel had mentally worn for months seemed a vanity rather than a penance.

  “I was a fool,” Daniel said, wishing he could close the door after all. Not because he sought more of Lady Kirsten’s kisses—long for them he might, but seek them he would not—but because Lady Kirsten was fair-minded, honest, and impartial.

  She cast sand over his expenses. “Mr. Banks, I can assure you, you are the only person in the history of people to have behaved foolishly, with your coin or with your affections. Nobody else has ever relied on another’s promise of love, nobody else has ever misplaced trust along with common sense. You are the first.”

  Her ladyship remained at the desk, staring at the costs associated with keeping small boys safe, well fed, and warm.

  “Who was he?” Daniel asked, though he should not have. Bad enough he liked Lady Kirsten, was attracted to her, and dreamed of her kisses. Her confidences would only make matters more complicated.

  And yet, he wanted those confidences, wanted her trust when he knew he could not have her heart.

  She poured the sand off the foolscap and into the waste bin.

  “I mentioned them to you earlier. The first of my follies was Mr. Sedgewick, heir to an earldom, a pleasant enough young man. I did not particularly esteem him, but he was friendly, tended to his hygiene, and didn’t seem to mind…me.”

  Daniel wanted to give Lady Kirsten flowers, smiles, a hug, anything to banish the bewilderment from her eyes. He offered her one honest question.

  “You would have settled for a husband who tolerated you?”

  She moved away from the desk and took a seat in the armchair flanked by the blue sofa, which, being sized to her brother’s dimensions, made her look young and diminutive.

  “Many women are happy to have a husband who tolerates them. Many more avidly seek a man who will forget he’s married for the entire hunt season, or while Parliament sits, or as soon as the heir and spare come along.”

  “You deserve better.”

  “So did you.”

  The symmetry of her logic was stunning, a direct blow to months of self-castigation and philosophizing. Daniel took a place on the blue sofa next to her armchair.

  “My father tried to warn me,” Daniel said. “I was young, no use to talk to me.”

  “You’re ancient now,” Lady Kirsten replied, her tone as lugubrious as Daniel’s had been. “Your great age explains your facility with Latin, seeing as it was spoken in the vernacular during your boyhood. You probably cut quite a figure in your toga and sandals.”

  “I’m not that—” Old. Daniel was only a few years past thirty, in his prime—so why didn’t he feel it?

  Why didn’t he act it?

  “Pax,” Daniel said. Then, because he was as amused as he was irritated as he was charmed, “You should not be in here alone with me, despite my doddering antiquity.”

  “The door is open, Mr. Banks, and no less than two sisters, a brother, a sister-in-law, and twenty-odd servants will interfere do I attempt to debauch you. That’s what I wanted to speak with you about.”

  How Daniel longed to tease Lady Kirsten for that sally, but she sat with her hands folded in her lap, not a jot or a tittle of humor about her expression.

  “I’d rather hear more about this Sedgewick boy first.” For only a boy would have failed to appreciate the fire in Lady Kirsten.

  She rose and wandered off along shelves that held books older than she was.

  “I referred to him earlier as a suitor, though in truth he was a fiancé. I wasn’t disappointed when he backed out of the engagement. I was mortified, and then I was furious.”

  “How does a man back out of an engagement without finding himself an object of scandal?” Or worse, a lawsuit. And why would he? Lady Kirsten might have her rough edges, but she was lovely, kind, loyal, intelligent…

  Drat Olivia to the foulest swamp. Drat all clueless young men too, even if that sentiment made Daniel sound exactly like his own father.

  “If the man is embroiled in scandal, then the lady is too, isn’t she?” Lady Kirsten observed. “Papa agreed not to bring a breach of promise suit in exchange for a sum certain, very quietly exchanged while I was seen to cry off.”

  “But you hadn’t cried off. You’d been set aside.”

  “Dumped like a load of refuse. Viscount Morton, who had also advanced to the status of fiancé, paid twice the sum a year later, though in defense of both men, they’ve kept their mouths shut and the engagements had not been announced.”

  The men had kept their mouths closed about their own perfidy, while Lady Kirsten had instead closed her heart, or tried to. She ran a bare finger along the bookcase’s edge, then examined her fingertip and wrinkled her nose.

  “Nicholas should burn peat and wood in here,” she said. “The coal dust is very hard on the books.”

  Daniel rose and passed her ladyship his plain linen handkerchief, which she used to rub dirt from her finger before returning the handkerchief to him.

  “Kirsten, I am sorry. One weasel would put any young lady off courting, but two is a reflection on them, not you.”

  She drew a volume at random and flipped it open. “There you would be wrong, Mr. Banks.”

  “You do not misrepresent yourself, such that you turn into a gorgon between the hours of dusk and dawn. You don’t tipple, you aren’t obsessed with fashion or gambling. You aren’t silly, though you have a fine wit and copious common sense, and you are very pleasing to look upon. Those fellows were simply idiots.”

  She snapped the book shut and shoved it at him—Rev. Cary’s recent translation of Inferno, from The Divine Comedy.

  “They were idiots who needed heirs, Mr. Banks, and of all the virtues you so generously attribute to me, I could not guarantee those men the children motivating them to take me to wife. My mother did her duty by the earldom splendidly, but the simple biological gift of reproduction has been denied me.”

  Abruptly, Daniel was staring at a heartache beyond comfort, a sorrow without end. I’m sorry was insultingly inadequate, and yet, even now, even with the library door open, he could not take her in his arms.

  So he shared with her a truth that had whittled away at his own joy, crushed the life from his marriage, and threatened his very faith in God.

  “I hate that you’ve been made to suffer thus, my lady. It isn’t fair, you don’t deserve it, and I’d do anything to relieve you of this curse, for I suffer it as well.”

  * * *

  “We’re to have ponies,” Fred Blumenthal said in the privacy of the livery’s haymow. “What about you?”

  “Us too,” Matthias Webber replied. “I can’t imagine what for.”

  Digby could. “Ponies are because we’ll live in with Vicar and have to ride back and forth to home on Fridays and Sundays. My papa explained it to me.”

  Papa had said the living-in part would be great fun too, though Mama had blinked rather a lot at
that bouncer. Living in probably meant cold porridge, regular birchings, and sore knees from praying all the time. Living in with Vicar would also put an end to meetings in the livery, where a boy could not keep clean and always ended up sneezing halfway home.

  “We walk everywhere now,” Matthias said, pushing his glasses up his skinny nose. “Vicar is up to something.”

  Schemers saw schemes everywhere, as Mama used to say about Digby’s Uncle Edward.

  “Vicar can’t ride our ponies,” Thomas Webber said. “He’s quite the largest vicar I’ve ever seen.”

  “He’ll sit on you,” Frank Blumenthal retorted, “and squash you in the dung the way you squash everybody else.”

  A tussle ensued, merely a skirmish because no mud or dung was to be had in the haymow, and everybody was preoccupied with thoughts of ponies.

  For each of them.

  “I know something,” Digby said when Thomas and Frank were done getting their clothes dusty.

  “You know your new papa is blowing the ground-sills with your mama,” Fred said.

  Digby let that pass because Fred was likely repeating something an older brother had said. Whatever ground-sills were.

  “I know Vicar has a son about our age,” Digby said. “His name is Danny, and he already has a pony.” Digby left out that Papa had shared this with him, and had also pointed out that Danny and Digby would be the only boys without brothers at Vicar’s establishment.

  “How’d he get a pony if his papa’s only a vicar?” Frank asked.

  “No sisters,” Matthias suggested. “Sisters cost a lot of money.”

  On this, the other boys seemed agreed.

  “Have you seen Vicar’s horse?” Digby asked, lowering his voice. “It’s huge and black and half-wild, and I bet that horse can kick a pony halfway to Dorset.”

  “Vicar can kick us halfway to Dorset too,” Thomas said. “Vicars should be little old fellows who fall asleep over their tea.”

  “I miss our governess,” Frank said. “I miss her a lot.”

  “Miss her all you please,” Matthias retorted, standing and brushing hay off his breeches. “I’m off to catch a half-dozen warty toads. Who’s with me?”

  Digby had no choice but to tramp along with them, though catching toads was muddy, stinky work. Then what exactly did a fellow do with a little, helpless, blinking creature who hopped about and made funny noises all night?

  Much less with six of them?

  Ten

  “Mr. Banks,” Kirsten said, honestly staring at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  Of all the empty condolences, awkward platitudes, and useless promises of prayer Daniel Banks might have proffered, Kirsten could not, in her most fevered dreams, have imagined Mr. Banks commiserating with her.

  “This was the part my papa didn’t know,” Mr. Banks said, folding his handkerchief and tucking it away. “Might we sit for a moment?”

  Not the blue sofa, where Nicholas cavorted and cuddled with his countess.

  Not the sofa before the fire, where Kirsten had come upon Mr. Banks dreaming of forbidden pleasures.

  Well, yes, the sofa before the fire, despite its memories. Daniel sat beside her again, a mere inch away but not touching.

  Damn and blast.

  “You will explain yourself, Mr. Banks, for I was under the impression a reproductive fault could only be attributed to women.”

  He stared at the hearth, which, for the first time in months, had no fire. “Some expert told you only women can be thus afflicted?”

  Kirsten hadn’t had the nerve to ask any save her sister Nita, who wasn’t a real physician.

  “Papa wanted to send me to an expert in Switzerland, but Mama pointed out that all of Polite Society would know of my travels. No lady of marriageable age ever summers in Switzerland because she enjoys perfect health. Then Mama wanted to consult a French midwife.”

  “What did you want?”

  A bold question, but Daniel Banks was fierce in ways a woman could not anticipate.

  Kirsten wished she’d thought to place a huge bouquet of flowers before the empty hearth, as her mother often had. Cheerful, bright, fragrant, doomed flowers.

  “I wanted to die,” she said. “A young lady of good birth is raised to understand that her value lies, ultimately, in her ability to pass along her blue blood. This I cannot do. I’m destined to become an object of pity, if not scorn, a relic tolerated by my family.”

  A country vicar might want children; a woman in Kirsten’s position needed them.

  “I had measles,” Mr. Banks said, as easily as a man might convey that he sings tenor rather than baritone. “A serious case, shortly before I wed. The herb woman in our village said measles can render a man unable to procreate, though the illness does nothing to interfere with the mechanics.”

  Daniel wasn’t even blushing, and neither was Kirsten. “You discussed this with her?”

  “I had my heart set on marriage, Lady Kirsten. Do you know of any childless vicars?”

  No, she did not. Vicars had large families; bishops’ families were often enormous. King George, nominal head of the Church of England, had sired fifteen legitimate children.

  “Have you mentioned your situation to any physicians?” she asked. Daniel would suffer that indignity at least once for the sake of children.

  “One. Fairly was equivocal, presumably out of kindness, which I took for endorsement of the herb woman’s opinion. She was very old and had seen much. I married Olivia at least in part because Olivia was willing to overlook my possible procreative failings. To her I seemed healthy, and she dismissed my disclosures easily.”

  The same woman had easily dismissed her very marriage vows.

  Kirsten longed to take Daniel’s hand, because this conversation transcended any intimacies she’d shared with others. This was not an exchange of rutting passion on one side and beleaguered modesty on the other, as she’d tolerated with Sedgewick and Morton. This exchange wasn’t about her own desire, either.

  These confidences were the stuff of a friendship closer than Kirsten shared with even her siblings, though she and Daniel weren’t even touching.

  “I had a female problem when I was fifteen,” Kirsten said, her gaze straying to the painting over the blue sofa. Flowers, of course. White roses, some of them blown, all of them lovely, none of them real.

  “The problem went away after plaguing me for months,” she went on, “but my biology has remained unpredictable, and my own mother, who’d delivered many babies, assured me that combination was cause for serious concern.”

  “For grief,” Daniel said.

  The eight-day clock ticked placidly along, the scent of old coal fires and older books hung in the air. Just another prosaic silence in a library made for silence.

  Without touching Daniel, Kirsten shared a variety of sad moments with him she hadn’t ever thought to share with anybody, moments that brought a measure of sanity to the rage fueled by her grief. Somebody else’s dreams had been struck down by cruel, celestial whim. Somebody else had been left with a sense of hopeless inadequacy.

  “You told Sedgewick and Morton, didn’t you?” Daniel asked.

  “Of course I told them, and my parents were wroth with me. Papa insisted nobody could ever prove a lack of heirs was my fault. Mama allowed that health matters are the most frequent subject of miracles.”

  “But you could not lie to a man who’d meet you at the altar.” While Daniel’s spouse had apparently done nothing but lie to and mislead him.

  Maybe worse heartaches could befall the innocent than an inability to have children.

  “Don’t attribute any great virtue to me,” Kirsten said. “Both men wanted to anticipate the vows, which is common enough. I could not allow them that privilege without explaining the risks they took. I would not have cried off had I given a man my virtue.”r />
  Memory assailed her, of the sturdy blue sofa and Arthur Morton’s hot breath against her neck as he swore vilely and battled with her skirts to get his breeches re-buttoned.

  Daniel rose but went only a few feet, to stand by the empty hearth, his elbow braced against the mantel. Must he look so handsome and dear?

  “Why are you smiling, Lady Kirsten?”

  “The timing of my disclosure to Viscount Morton wanted finesse—or maybe my timing was exquisite.” Though Kirsten’s timing with Daniel Banks remained one set of vows too late. “You have Danny,” she said, not an accusation so much as an insight. “He’s the one child you’ve been given, and thus your attachment to him is like a king with one royal heir.”

  Danny was to rejoin the vicar’s household, or join the vicar’s herd of reprobate young scholars. Della had passed that along not an hour ago.

  “Danny needs to learn to sin,” the Vicar of Haddondale said, nudging a chunk of charred kindling back into the hearth with the toe of his boot. “With Olivia for a mother and me for a father, Danny became a perfect boy. He would not offend her, because she could be cruel. He would never offend me, because though I was ignorant of her true nature, I was his sole refuge from her carping. The corrupting influence of other boys will spare him a world of self-loathing and useless reproaches as he matures.”

  “I wish I could shake you, Daniel Banks.” Kirsten also wished she could smooth his hair back, hug him, comfort him.

  And kiss him, damn it. She resisted the urge to sit on her hands.

  “I’m slow to accept certain insights, Lady Kirsten, but I can assure you, my own store of self-loathing and useless reproaches is ebbing the longer I remain in Haddondale.”

  Daniel gave her a smile, a sweet, confiding blessing of a smile. A regret of a smile that yet connected them in their miseries and their fierceness.

  “I came in here to tell you that you’re safe from me,” Kirsten said, lest, like an idiot, she remain beaming back at him until summer.

  He settled in, so he was nearly slouching against the mantel, and abruptly, handsome and dear were joined by mischievous. Devilish, even. Kirsten tucked her palms under her thighs, as a small boy did in the presence of forbidden sweets.