Kiss Me After

by Cecilia Gray

  He nodded, humbled. “War makes brothers of us all.”

  “What brings you to our home?” Dominic asked, ignoring his comment.

  “I had hoped an audience with you, Mr. Belle.”

  Dinah shot to her feet. “I’m feeling tired. I do believe I’ll lie down.” She cleared her throat. “Won’t you accompany me, sisters?”

  The man’s expression betrayed nothing. He sat stone-faced as his daughters each kissed his head and then quickly left. If he noticed the look that passed between Alice and Robert, he said nothing of it. Once they were alone, he sat in silence for a beat.

  “I met my wife at your age,” Dominic said. “I did not have a company at that time, only an idea. Mary’s eldest sister, Margaret, had married and become Lady Newton. Lord Newton, rest his soul, was fascinated with maritime matters and came to one of my presentations on utilizing natural ocean currents to plan future ports. He brought his wife and her sister, Mary, and afterward, she spoke to me and asked how I intended to capitalize on the idea. Can you imagine?” Dominic shook his head. “At your age, I had no wife, no company, just an idea. A gleam in my mind. Quite similar to the one I see in you now. So tell me, Mr. Crawford, what kind of idea have you got into your head?”

  Robert had to give Dominic credit for putting him at ease and discomfiting him at the same time. “I would like your permission to court Miss Belle.”

  “That is quite an idea. You wouldn’t be the first man to sit in that chair and share such an idea with me regarding my Alice.”

  “I believe it is a good idea, as over the years, I have come very much to respect and admire her. I cannot offer her any more financial means than she already has—I imagine no one can—but I can promise you that her happiness will be my paramount concern, and that happiness includes ensuring that she feels you and her mother would have been happy with her choice in husband. To that end, while I normally do not seek to exploit my war service, I had petitioned the Prince Regent who has granted me land for services rendered. The arrangement has been formalized, thus, while I have no title, I am a landed gentleman.”

  In the silence that followed, Robert swore he could hear the leaves rustling in the trees outside. The chirping of birds from a block away. The last call of the baker for fresh bread from the neighboring town.

  “Land,” Dominic said. “In what part of England?”

  Robert told him the plot just north of Leeds, but not quite at the north tip of England.

  “Ah yes. That is quite far. Is there crop there?”

  “Wheat, I believe.”

  “Always a good crop but hard on the land.”

  “It will necessitate cleaning when the fall harvest is complete. With all due respect to your inquiry into my farming acumen, sir, might I have your answer?”

  “An answer necessitates a question.”

  It was a fair enough point. “May I court your daughter Alice?”

  * * *

  “You’ll pace through the floor,” Dinah warned.

  Alice bit on her knuckle, hard. She managed to stand still but her tapping foot seemed tied to the beat of her heart. She and her sisters were huddled in the library, which adjoined the parlor. Bridget was already distracted, her head in a book, but Dinah and Charlotte pressed their ears to the wall the room shared with the parlor in the hopes of overhearing. Only Sera sat serenely in an armchair.

  “Have faith,” Sera said. Of all the sisters, she had reacted the most positively to Alice’s confession of having developed a tendre for Mr. Crawford. “He is most like you,” Sera had said. “He takes care of those around him.”

  As much as she cared for her sisters’ opinions, at the moment, only one opinion mattered, and it was not even her own. After years of dismissing one another’s candidates, what made her hope that her father would receive Mr. Crawford any differently? Unlike the other men she had considered for marriage to fulfill her mother’s dying wish, Robert mattered.

  “Father hasn’t yelled yet,” Charlotte said. “That’s a positive sign.”

  “Or a negative one,” Dinah said. “His silence isn’t any more encouraging, is it?”

  “Shush, both of you.” Alice started toward the door. She couldn’t—and shouldn’t—leave Mr. Crawford to face her father alone, as she had done with her other suitors. Robert was different, and her father should know it. With her hand on the knob, she froze. Hearty laughter came from the next room.

  Laughter? From Dominic Belle?

  Charlotte’s eyes rounded. “That may be the most terrifying sound of all.”

  Footsteps followed to the foyer.

  “Should I go to them?” Alice asked.

  Her sisters shrugged. Even Bridget set down her book.

  Then the doorknob turned in her hand. She released it and stepped back into the library. Her sisters stood at her sides, forming a line of support.

  Their father opened the door and stepped inside. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and clasped his hands behind his back. “Reading anything of interest?”

  Sera tsked and laid her hand on her father’s arm. “No teasing.”

  “No teasing?” He sighed. “Whyever not? I should be free to tease my daughters when they tease me in return. Who put poor Mr. Crawford up to this?”

  Alice’s fingers curled into fists. “Father, what did you say to him?”

  “Just that there was no need for him to be persuaded by the likes of my girls to tease me. I appreciate humor as much as the next man but to bring in strangers for playacting? I’ve sent him away and informed him not to be persuaded to participate in any of your future antics.”

  Alice’s jaw dropped as her father chuckled to himself and walked out of the room.

  * * *

  R.,

  I must apologize for your appalling reception.

  A.

  * * *

  A.,

  It is I who must apologize. To not even be taken seriously? I must have erred grievously.

  Yours,

  R.

  * * *

  R.,

  I would not blame you if you had a change of heart.

  A.

  * * *

  A.,

  I believe matters of the heart are unchangeable. Unfortunately, I must leave for Leeds tomorrow at Roberta’s request (insistence?). I hope to return a man renewed. Your father is a most worthy foe.

  Yours,

  R.

  * * *

  My dear Alice,

  I have just been given the news of your family’s tragedy. I am traveling to London from Leeds immediately. I am sure it will fall to you to arrange the funeral, but please know you may count on me in this time of grief.

  Your servant,

  R.

  * * *

  R.,

  Thank you for your kind words. My family is quite in despair.

  A.

  Chapter Eight

  A funeral

  March 12, 1820

  London, England

  Alice Belle needed a duke for a husband. Being a woman of good sense and expediency, not to mention being in an incredible hurry, she intended to find one at this funeral. Particularly because the funeral was what had expedited her search for a husband in the first place.

  She tugged at her black lace collar as she surveyed the eligible men in attendance. Guests squeezed into every inch of the Duke of Rivington’s parlor. Pressed bodies heated the space and hushed conversation spilled out into rooms and corridors. Despite the strained whispers and solemn occasion, the house was as full as it had been during any ball.

  Meanwhile August Abernathy, Duke of Rivington, and his eldest son, poor, dear Tom, were recently deceased. Of course, that meant Benjamin was the new Duke of Rivington, although he had snapped at anyone who had taken to calling him that as his father and Tom were barely in their funerary caskets. The former duke would likely have been overjoyed at this extravagant display of popularity. In life, the duke had not been popular. He had been too ol
d, too greedy, and too political for that. It was a stroke of tragedy—or luck, in the case of the funeral’s smashing success—that he had died in an uncharacteristically heroic manner that, unfortunately, also claimed the life of his heir, leaving Sera a widow at an age before many were even married.

  In a year that had also seen the deaths of King George and Prince Edward, it was saying a lot that this gathering was still considered the funeral event of the century. Dukes died often, but a duke and his heir together? In such a fashion? Never before. It was such delectable fodder for gossip that it was easy for everyone to forget how tragic it all was. Everyone except the Abernathys and the Belles.

  Alice felt horribly selfish for also realizing that her own dream of being Mrs. Robert Crawford had been snuffed out in the same instant. Her father had said as much while not saying it all. “I am returning to London immediately. Until then, it will be up to you,” he’d written from Boston upon receiving the news. It was always up to her.

  Tom’s death had thus rendered all the Belles unmarried—an unacceptable state of affairs in need of immediate remedy in their father’s eyes.

  Anxiety clenched her jaw as she joined Bridget, Charlotte, and Dinah, who stood side by side, wringing their hands as they sought solace from condolences in a back corner of the parlor, away from any windows. Their black dresses nearly camouflaged them with the recently replaced tapestry.

  “Has Sera said anything to any of you?” Alice asked.

  All eyes darted through the open parlor door to the front entry, where Sera received waves of mourners. Even under her veil, her ghostly crown of hair shone like a beacon against her dark, drab clothes and attracted guests like moths to a flame, not only because she was the widow but because she always had that effect. Effortlessly flawless and infinitely ethereal, Sera’s beauty—rumored to render babies silent and wide-eyed—was on full display even at a time when she wanted nothing more than to disappear.

  “Has she said anything beyond the usual lie that she is perfectly well, you mean?” Dinah asked.

  Four heads shook in a resounding no.

  Charlotte pulled at the black netting she had pinned over her red tresses. “Maybe Father can pull her from her shell.”

  “What good will Father do for Sera?” Dinah said. “He’ll have her dragged down another aisle before her tears have fallen to the floor.”

  “We’ll all have to marry now,” Bridget said. “Once he returns from Boston, Father will have us auctioned like cattle to the highest bidder.” She sighed. “I’ll never find love . . . What if our husbands are cruel?”

  “Or boring?” Dinah added.

  “How selfish can you be to care for your own concerns at a time like this?” Charlotte pressed a fist to her lips, as if that would lessen the censure in her tone. “Sera’s husband is not even in the ground.”

  Dinah rolled her eyes. “We already feel awful. There’s no need to add guilt to the mountain of emotions. Being forced to marry is barbaric. We shouldn’t indulge Father.”

  Alice pressed her fingertips to her head as a pounding settled behind her temples. “Father means well. He means the best. He always has.” Alice turned to her sisters and took Dinah’s hand in her own. “I am the eldest. It is my responsibility.”

  “But,” Charlotte said, “what of Mr. Cr—”

  “Never mind that now,” Alice interrupted. “I will make arrangements with our father.”

  “What arrangements?” Charlotte asked.

  Dinah pulled back her hands to rest on her hips and regarded Alice suspiciously. “You would lay yourself to the sacrificial altar? What of your desires? Your needs? Aunt Margaret has said it before: the way he clings to Mother’s memory must be addressed. It is not acceptable any longer.”

  “You can’t,” Bridget said. “You can see how Mother’s death still affects him.”

  “He has had years to be sad. Enough is enough,” Dinah reiterated.

  Bridget’s face screwed up into a scowl. “You can’t even remember Mother. What would you know about how much time we need to mourn?”

  Bridget and Dinah huffed away from each other to opposite ends of the parlor. Charlotte glanced between them, clearly torn as to whom she should follow.

  Alice squeezed Charlotte’s hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry.”

  “You know Father. He’ll be desperate, just as he was before Sera married.”

  Alice remembered those days grimly. They were trussed up, dressed, deposited embarrassingly at every ball, and paraded before every lord with no regard to age or suitability. Her eyes narrowed in determination. “I have a plan. I will marry someone so titled, so respectable, so rich, that Father will be placated.”

  “Wasn’t that Sera’s plan? It didn’t work out so well, did it?” Charlotte sighed and walked away, heading toward Bridget. Probably a sound choice, as Dinah would have shrugged off any attempt to ease her feelings.

  Alice turned her attention back to the black throng of mourners. Her eyes passed over weak jaws, aquiline noses, and puffy cravats. She paid special attention to the tall ones, as few were taller than she was. Not that height mattered to her current plot. Her father would be satisfied by anyone with a title at this point.

  She knew this decision was about more than marrying a lord, though. The flaw in Sera’s plan was that she had not yet conceived a child. Alice had a sneaking suspicion that if she could grant her father a grandchild who would forever belong to the peerage, who would earn them the respectability her father so craved for them. Then he might relent and let her sisters marry for reasons of their own. Or choose not to marry at all, in Dinah’s case.

  Her gaze swung back to Sera, whose eyes fluttered shut as she momentarily went boneless. Alice parted the crowd, slicing through, but before she reached her sister, Benjamin, who was standing next to Sera, placed a discreet hand at her back and steadied her.

  Alice released her breath. Thank goodness for him. She briefly entertained marrying Benjamin or his brother, Graham. Both Abernathy men were single, both taller than her near six feet. They towered over Sera, though, as they stood solemnly on each side of her. Even the youngest Abernathy, Gray, who had been estranged from the family, returned to the flock on this solemn day and stood behind his brothers. Dark hair swept over their red eyes and numbed expressions. They were attractive, rich, and titled. And she liked them, too.

  Unfortunately, she had to become engaged, married, and impregnated sooner rather than later, and the period of mourning, coupled with her sisterly feelings toward them, made the whole idea distasteful. The poor dears. They all looked so lost. When was the last time they’d eaten? She didn’t remember them taking more than a bite at dinner, and they hadn’t shown up for breakfast—not that she’d expected them to—but the trays that she had sent up had been returned mostly untouched.

  If Alice had thought any of the Abernathys would die before their time, she would have put her money squarely on one of those two—Benjamin or Graham—who seemed just as stunned to be the ones left alive. Rumor had it that Benjamin and Graham had seen their fair share of action—on the battlefield and in the brothels. They lived lives of speculation and risk, whereas their elder brother and father had done little more than eat well. But the deceased, God rest their souls, had also both followed a woman’s hat into the Thames—a gentlemanly act that had cost both of them their lives.

  An empty silver serving tray moved into her line of vision. No, that wouldn’t do at all. Alice went straight to the kitchen and breathed in the cinnamon and caramelized sugar of the mourning biscuits, which had been baked earlier in the day. Each biscuit had been placed in wax paper and sealed with the duke’s coat of arms in black wax, but dozens were cracked and strewn across the floor.

  “Sorry, miss,” one of the kitchen maids said. “Three of the trays toppled over. We’ve lost quite a few.”

  “Melt more wax,” she directed. “I’ll have the seal sent back down. The extra dough I had stored in the cold cupboard? Start thawing
it.”

  “Right away.”

  Alice ran upstairs to find an available maid to take care of the wax. By the time she joined the guests back in the main parlor, sweat was trickling down her temples. She found her spot in the dark, quiet, unoccupied corner and fanned her neck. What she wouldn’t give to let herself just blend into the tapestry behind her.

  “You needn’t labor so hard. You have a servant for that.”

  She knew that voice . . .

  She swung to her right and offered a curtsy, ignoring the impropriety of Robert’s address. Ignoring the swell of her heart. Ignoring everything she felt about him.

  He raised an eyebrow at her and smiled. Surely he knew now that their previous plans were moot.

  “I release you from your service,” she said, just to be certain. “You are a free man, Mr. Crawford.”

  “But what if I do not want to be free?” His gloved hand reached out as if he might wipe her damp brow. Her heart quickened as the heat of his palm passed over her face, but he flexed his fingers and pulled away. He procured a handkerchief from his front pocket and offered it to her.

  “I’m afraid no one ever wants a situation such as this.” She accepted the cloth and blotted her temples but resisted the urge to smooth back her hair where a few dark strands had sprung free. Instead, she returned the handkerchief, which he pocketed once more.

  She inclined her head toward the Abernathy brothers. “How are they?”

  Robert leaned against the tapestry with a sigh and crossed his arms over his chest. His gaze darted through the opening to his two best friends and the widowed Lady Rivington, her Sera. “Benjamin and Graham will heal in time. But I’m not sure about your sister. Do you know what the gossipmongers are already saying?” He paused. She knew he was speaking of the news that her sister had suffered a nervous breakdown. “But never mind them. They’re the same insignificants who pegged her married at ten.”

  She frowned. “This time the rumors are true . . .”

  His mouth parted in surprise, and he ran both hands through his blond hair, ruffling the silky-looking strands at his ears. “She dove in after them?”