by Jade Lee
“I like your hair down,” he said. “It’s pretty that way. Gives a man all sorts of ideas,” he said with a waggle of his brows. “But I can’t say that I care for the clothes.”
She ran her hand over her hair again, then looked down at her clothing. It was her man’s attire, cheap, gray, and shapeless. She allowed herself to slump in her seat. It didn’t much matter if she sat like a lady in this clothing, so why bother? And she had a crick in her neck from how she’d been lying with her head dropped to the side.
“We had quite the afternoon, didn’t we?” he continued as he refilled his glass. “Been thinking on it all day. And if I didn’t want to think on it, there were all my friends . . .” He sneered the word. “Overflowing with ideas on how to help me.”
She stood up. She had to get her mind working! Crossing to the water basin, she washed her face and hands. He watched her, of course. And then he must have seen the crumpled blue dress in the corner.
“You were pretty as could be in that dress, Scher. No man could expect a prettier . . . wife.”
She winced at the sleight hesitation before that last word. Her mind was clearing enough that she finally understood why he was here. It was time to break their engagement. She’d known from the moment Charles Barr had stepped into the tea that her engagement was over. At least Kit was kind enough to tell her in person.
“I suppose . . .” Her voice was thick and coarse. She had to clear her throat and try again. “I suppose it was inevitable that you’d meet Charles. But I cannot forgive the countess for what she did.”
“Lily’s a witch, to be sure. Ice cold and shrewd. Miss Sampson called it bad ton, which is rather deplorable in a countess.”
“Miss Sampson is the one who told Lily about Charles,” Scher snapped. “Only the people who knew me back then would know his name. And she is the only one who could hope to run in the countess’s circle.”
Kit didn’t answer except to grunt. She wasn’t sure exactly what the sound meant, so she settled for her own heavy sigh. “I’m so sorry about all this, Kit. I should never have let things go this far, but I wanted—”
“I’ve been thinking a lot, Scher,” he said, interrupting her words. “Had to take refuge in the lending library to do it. No one goes there but spinsters and nannies, so it was quiet. Paid them a guinea just so I could sit there like you were doing. Staring out the window and thinking. Your boy only found me when I went home.”
“My boy?” she asked.
“Joey. Perhaps it was Seth who sent him. Anyway, the boy insisted I come here. Said it was urgent. Then when I got here, Seth pushed the bottle into my hand and pointed me upstairs. You know, for a mute, he expresses himself very well.”
She had no argument against that. Only sadness that she couldn’t find a way to make their marriage work. She didn’t know if the fault lay with them or the world in which they lived. Either way, marrying Kit would only bring unhappiness. “Kit . . .” she began, but he waved her off.
“Been thinking I’m done with society for a while. What’s to be done but gossip and tea parties? Had my fill of them! Don’t like dancing. Don’t like theater. Well, not the Royal stuff.”
She held up her hand, trying to sort through his disjoined ramblings. As he was draining his glass, she had a moment to think. “I thought you wanted the playhouse to be just like the Royal.”
He snorted as he poured himself more wine. “Well, that’s what sent me to the lending library, don’t you know. Been using my friends.” Again he sneered the word. “Asked them to set us by way of a royal seal so that the playhouse could be more than a tavern act. Explained about my plans.”
“Kit—” she began, but he waved her off.
“Got visited by a fellow. The God damned under secretary to the under secretary to somebody. Don’t remember who. Doesn’t matter. Told me in no uncertain terms that the Crown has determined that no other house of entertainment . . .” He sneered the words. “Like we were some damn bawdy house. House of entertainment. Bah!”
She swallowed. He had asked for a royal seal? Had he really expected it to succeed? “He said no.”
“He said my tart had drunk too much gin and was leading me around by my balls. So, no, Scher, there will be no royal seal for the Tavern Playhouse.”
She closed her eyes, the unfairness of it all hitting her hard. It was no more than she expected, but it hurt. It had been Kit’s idea, but she was the one accused of stupidity. She was the gin sot who had Kit by the balls.
“I punched him, Scher. I punched him hard, but he was a quick little shit and dodged. Then I was obliged to leave my new club, which is when I saw the lending library. Quiet in there, but no drink.” He lifted his refilled glass. “Have you got any cheese?”
She shook her head. It was hurting abominably now and she rested it back against the wall. She wanted her bed. She wanted Pappy. She wanted to sink into a gin-soaked haze for real. Except that she’d never really liked the taste of gin.
Kit grunted and drank more of the wine. “So I thought there in the library, I don’t like society very much anymore. Maybe Scotland. Do you like Scotland, Scher? Or maybe the colonies. I hear that real aristocrats are quite the rage over there.”
She hardly had to tell him that she wasn’t a real aristocrat. Of course, neither was he when it came right down to it. As a younger son, he was nothing more than a regular gentleman. And a soon-to-be drunk one at that.
“I think you will feel better in a week, Kit,” she said to the ceiling. “I think my head hurts and I want to go to bed. And I think you have drunk enough wine.”
“Have I?” he said as he lifted the half-filled bottle. “I suppose on top of the brandy I had at home, this is rather much.”
She lifted her head to look closer at him. His eyes were indeed owlish and bloodshot. His clothes were unusually rumpled as well as his hair. If she hadn’t been so groggy, she might have noticed that earlier.
“Oh, Kit,” she said. “We can’t leave London. The money is here. And we can’t live happily with everyone against us.” She took a deep breath and forced herself to say the words. “We can’t get married, Kit. It’s just too hard.”
This time he was the one who blinked, and his mouth went slack. Then he straightened in his chair, forcibly setting aside his glass. Thankfully it was both empty and strong, so it didn’t break or slosh onto her table. “You’re crying off? After everything we’ve been through, you’re crying off now?”
“I’m so sorry, Kit. I should never have accepted.”
“Of course you should have! Thought about it all demmed day. It was a good decision. One of my best.”
She let his statement hang in the air. She repeated it in her thoughts and held it close to her heart, but it didn’t change the truth. They were not meant for each other. “How can you still want to marry me?”
“Nobody else will have me now!” he said with a chortle. “’Cept that Miss Sampson and I’ve decided I don’t like her now.”
Scher leaned forward, bracing one hand on the table. “Kit, no.”
“Yes!” he said with a drunken wave of his hand. “I’m in love with you, right? Said so when I proposed.”
Was he? She could hardly believe it. “But why? I mean . . . how do you know?”
He smiled, his expression warming as he wet his lips. “’Cause you’re pretty and smart. And I like the way you smell.” He abruptly leaned forward and grabbed her arm, yanking her toward him. She had no balance to resist, and no feet beneath her for stability. She fell forward across the table. And as she was still gasping from surprise, he wrapped his hands around her ribcage and hauled her on top of him.
“Give me a kiss, Scher love.” His thumb moved up and around, reaching for her nipple. It missed by a good two inches. “A kiss, my sweet. And then you can lead me around by my balls.”
She smiled. Her head still hurt. Her mind was still thick and muddled. And she still had to end her engagement to Kit. But he did make her smile, and s
o she tried to hold him upright while she struggled to look him in the eye. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in the least bit interested in just looking.
Chapter 17
Kit was quicker than Scher expected. He found her lips despite her attempts to avoid him. But at the first press of his mouth to hers, she realized two things. The first was that she didn’t want to kiss him. Not after what she had done this afternoon with Brandon. If nothing else, that one thought told her she had made the right decision. She could not marry Kit.
The second thing she noticed was how very hot Kit was. The drink, obviously, but she was surprised his skin didn’t crackle.
She pulled away with a gasp, but he was stronger than she expected. And more unsteady. Their foreheads bumped, jarring her headache, but she tried not to notice. She gripped his shoulders, trying to hold him back. He must have mistook that for a sign of need. He immediately dropped his hands to the bottom of her man’s shirt, brunching it up so he could work his hands underneath. The shock of his hands on her skin was alarming.
Again his heat struck her as abnormal. Then she couldn’t think as his weight tumbled her fully off the table. He kept her from dropping onto her face, which was very nice, and he steadied her as she settled onto her knees before him.
“Kit, stop,” she said.
“Don’t struggle!” he said with a laugh. “Ain’t so steady right now.”
Then, faster than she expected, he swooped down and swept her feet out from under her. It was a grand gesture and one that should have set her firmly in his arms. But she was surprised. She grabbed his shoulders as the only things at hand. But it must have been too much for him. He was filled with drink. They never had the right balance.
Compared to their earlier tussle, their fall was graceful. She noticed his blood-shot eyes bugging out with shock. She felt her weight raise up as he lifted, then drop and continue to drop as he could not support her. Her arms were about his shoulders, but they did not halt her descent. Instead, she pulled him down on top of her.
Down onto the table which splintered beneath her. Down then onto the floor while she hunched her back in a vain attempt to protect herself. Her head bounced painfully on the ground and she felt a splinter dig into her shoulder. Then there was a thud that was not the table breaking or her own head hitting the hard floor. It was Kit as he cracked some part of him somewhere. She lay flat on the ground, her head throbbing like the very devil. Kit was sprawled on top of her, and she was dimly aware of wet as the wine likely spilled all over everything.
“Ung,” she managed as she tried to move. Kit pinned her too severely. “Kit.” She pushed his arm off her nose. She poked him in the side. “Kit!”
He didn’t move. And then she became aware of an odd smell in the room. It wasn’t a wine smell at all. And the wet, she realized, was not from the bottle. Blood. She smelled blood. And she was pretty sure it wasn’t her own.
“Kit!”
“He’s not dead is he?” Brandon couldn’t credit the idea that vibrant, young, stupid, young Kit could be gone. But he had seen it enough to know that youth was no guarantee of immortality. “He just fell down?”
Scher nodded, her eyes wide and her face pale. She had come to his room just before dawn, looking as if she hadn’t slept in a week. And he smelled a variety of wines on her. But what terrified him was the look of haunted panic in her eyes. And the way she wrung her hands in front and didn’t step farther into the room than just inside the door.
“He knocked his head on my table,” she said to the floorboards. “Or what’s left of it. But he’s not dead. No, not dead. Just . . . asleep.” She shuddered. “And there was so much blood!”
“Head wounds bleed like the very devil, but that doesn’t mean they are serious. What did the doctor say?”
“The same, and it was a surgeon. He stitched it up, said to keep him warm, and . . .” She shrugged, her eyes rising to his while embarrassment colored her cheeks. “And to feed him something other than cheap wine when he woke.”
Ah, so there was the truth, Brandon realized. The boy had gotten himself drunk and fell down in Scher’s chamber. He studied her face, unwilling to speculate why the boy was in her room and more unwilling to press her.
She was obviously shaken and on uncertain ground. So was he. There were so many unanswered questions. Not only about the nature of Kit’s injury, but about Scher herself. Why, for example, was she here with him rather than at the playhouse nursing Kit? After the way they had parted before, he had thought she would never come to see him again. While he, on the other hand, had spent every moment of the last day dreaming of ways to get her back in his bed. If only she would let him explain, but she had refused to hear.
“Was he still asleep when you left?” he asked gently.
She nodded. “He has a fever, Brandon. I don’t want to move him. It might reopen the wound and make things worse. But I can’t keep him in my bed! His mother would have a fit.” She released an anxious laugh. “How is it that I have come to hide away you both?”
“Bad luck?” he offered. He wished she would come closer. Wished she would let him touch her. Instead, she just sighed and closed her eyes, rubbing the back of her neck. “Scher, what is it? Why have you come to me?”
She raised her gaze and looked at him. There was no covering her feelings, no polite mask on her features. He looked at her and saw such weariness. It was as if the restlessness of before had been replaced with exhaustion and a creeping sadness. It wouldn’t take much, he realized, for it to slide into despair.
“Let me help you, Scher. Let me—”
“I have come to ask you to return to your home. I cannot spend all my time nursing Kit. I have responsibilities at the playhouse that I have been neglecting. Martha is the one I go to for help with these sorts of things—”
“But not if she is here nursing me. Of course, Scher. I had not meant to burden her or you.”
She shook her head, and her words continued in a nervous rush. “I do not mean to pry into your matters. It is none of my business why you chose to hide out from your family here. They were getting concerned, you recall. But if you wish to remain—”
“For you, Scher,” he interrupted. “I stayed because you visited me here as you could never do at my home.”
She paused, her breath suspended as she absorbed his words. Then she looked down at her hands, which she’d clasped again before her. “Perhaps it would be best all around if you went home and allowed your wife to nurse you.”
“My wife cannot see me as it makes her condition worse.” He looked up at the ceiling and wondered if ever there were a more damnable situation. He had tried to explain things to her. “If you but understood how this came about.”
“It doesn’t matter how it came about, Brandon!” she snapped. “You are married. And I am still engaged to Kit.” She threw up her hands in disgust. “He doesn’t know yet that it is over. I tried to tell him, but he was so drunk. He would not listen!”
He could see the frustration in her, and a bone-deep weariness. “How can I help you? Anything you need—”
She looked at him, her expression pleading. “Just go, Brandon, and let me sort things out.”
“Let me help.”
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “No,” she said behind her arms. “It’s too confusing, right now. I cannot think with you around.”
He nodded. “I will wait in my apartments. You have only to send me a message—”
“No!” She bellowed the word with such force that he was taken aback. And when she dropped her arms, he saw such misery in her eyes. “I won’t send a message. I won’t contact you. I don’t want to be a mistress!”
His jaw tightened. His hands were already fisted in the sheets, but it did not stop him from seeing the absolute truth. Her engagement to Kit was at an end, but that did not destroy her dream of becoming a wife and mother. She still longed for the respectability of a marriage. And only a cad would deny her such a dream.
He loved Scher. Of that he was certain. So certain, in fact, that he could do nothing but accede to her wishes no matter that it tore his heart out. Though the very thought made him want to stab himself anew, he knew now that he could never have her.
“You may take Martha,” he forced out. “Send Hank to me. I shall remove myself within the hour.”
“You do not—”
“Within the hour, Scher! I will not discomfort you further.” He pushed himself up until he was seated fully upright. But then he had to wait as the pain washed over him. He welcomed it. If he focused exclusively on that, then it washed away his other thoughts.
“I will send Hank to you,” she said. She hesitated, hovering next to the door until he looked up, pain making his lips curl into a snarl.
“I must get dressed, Scher. Leave now or you shall see more of me than you want.”
She blanched, then he saw a flash of anger on her tired features. Lifting her chin, she sketched a mocking curtsey. “As you wish, my lord.” Then she departed, calling for Martha and Hank as she left.
Pain. Blessed pain. It never lasted long enough.
Chapter 18
Brandon groaned, clutched his handkerchief to his sweating face, and prayed that he didn’t get sick in his own carriage. Smelling that for the entire trip would really put a cap on his misery. The carriage hit a rut and his left hand clutched the squabs reflexively. His hand was already cramping, but he hardly cared. If he focused exclusively on that single, steady note of muscle pain, then perhaps he would forget the rolling in his stomach. He should not have attempted the seventy-minute drive to Pottersfarm near Greenwich. Not without some sort of drink to knock him unconscious.
Another rut, this one deep enough to jostle his stomach wound. Pain exploded into his misery, and he cried out. Enough! He had to stop! Gathering his strength, he rapped on the carriage ceiling, then collapsed backward against the cushions.
