Rakes and Roses (Proper Romance Regency)

by Josi S. Kilpack

  “What is—Lady Sabrina?” He looked between Harry and Sabrina, who were both red-faced, and then to the glass all over the floor. The room reeked of brandy.

  Therese appeared behind Joshua and took in the scene. “Gracious,” she said in a tone of both shock and concern. “What has happened?”

  Mr. Stillman hung his head petulantly. “I only meant to stave off the worst of the misery.”

  Pathetic ingrate! “Who got it for you, Mr. Stillman? I will have a name,” Sabrina demanded.

  “I thought I could manage. I only—”

  “Who brought it?” she said between clenched teeth. Then she turned to Therese. “I want every member of the staff called here right now. We will find the culprit, and so help me, I shall turn them out and—”

  “Ward,” Mr. Stillman finally said like a cry.

  Sabrina spun back toward him. When she’d met Mr. Ward before she had left for London, he had been all smiles and gracious thanks. But he was the only friend Mr. Stillman had left, which meant she should have realized he would have been a scoundrel himself. She had been so distracted by her fear that he might reveal their situation that she had not considered how he might compromise Mr. Stillman’s care.

  “When?” she demanded.

  “O-on S-Sunday.”

  Sabrina looked at the shards of glass left from the bottle. Mr. Ward had smuggled in the bottle?

  Therese cleared her throat. “Lady Sabrina,” she said carefully. “Mr. Ward brought Mr. Stillman’s trunk when he came on Sunday, and they requested privacy to sort it together before turning the clothing over to me to have it laundered. I hadn’t even thought he would have brought drink into the house. I should have been more attentive.”

  “This is certainly not upon your shoulders, Therese.” Sabrina glared at Mr. Stillman. The trunk! How could she not have anticipated such deception? “You trusted that Mr. Stillman and Mr. Ward would be as determined about his recovery as we have been, yet it seems that neither of them has half the consideration for what it means to be respectable.”

  Mr. Stillman held his face in his hands and began to cry like a child.

  Sabrina remained unmoved, her hands clenched into fists at her side.

  “Joshua,” Sabrina said through tight teeth. “Search this room. If there is more liquor here, Mr. Stillman will watch all of it meet the same fate as this bottle has.”

  Mr. Stillman’s head snapped up, and the panic on his face confirmed Sabrina’s suspicions that one bottle was not enough to have sustained him this well for this long.

  Joshua threw open the wardrobe doors, the creaking hinges echoing in the otherwise quiet room.

  “It is here,” Mr. Stillman said quietly.

  Sabrina spun from watching Joshua, her chest heaving with indignation. “What?”

  Mr. Stillman swallowed and then threw back the covers of his bed, revealing his well-muscled legs, which he tried to cover by pulling down the hem of his nightshirt, which reached his knees. Even his modesty was infuriating.

  Sabrina strode toward him and pulled the covers down the rest of the way, hanging them off the footboard and exposing two bottles at the base of the bed. Each bottle had a string tied around the neck that was then tucked beneath the pillows at the head. The strings would allow Mr. Stillman to pull the bottles up from their hiding place, though she didn’t know how he got them back down. Clever. And so very disappointing. A quick inspection revealed that one bottle was empty and one full.

  “Joshua,” she said, her voice calm.

  The footman peered from behind the door of the wardrobe, then came to her as she held the full bottle toward him.

  “Smash it on the hearth, just as I did the other.”

  “Ma’am?” he said, sounding pained.

  She turned her look on him, and he snapped into action. He took the bottle and crossed to the hearth. Lifting it, he looked first at Sabrina, then at his mother, who stood near the door, her eyes wide and her hands clasped tightly in front of her.

  “Do as she says, of course,” Therese said, and while it bothered Sabrina that Joshua hadn’t obeyed her orders, she understood why. The boy held half a year’s wages in his hands.

  Joshua lifted the bottle higher.

  “Wait,” she said, a sudden idea occurring to her.

  Joshua fumbled to stop himself, pulling the bottle close to his chest to keep from dropping it.

  “Go to Fordman’s pub instead, Joshua,” she said, “and ask Mr. Fordman if he would be willing to buy that bottle. If he offers a decent price, I want you to sell it. You and Therese will each get a quarter of the proceeds, and the other half will be split between the staff who have also taken on the responsibility of Mr. Stillman’s care this last week.”

  She stared at Mr. Stillman, who was pulling the covers up as though that might protect him from her anger. He was bent over like an old man, shoulders curved in.

  “At least that will give some benefit to these people for the care they have given you, Mr. Stillman. All of them will be starting over with the worst of it come morning when you once again will be denied the liquor that is killing you.”

  He did not look up at her. “I am so sorry. I just could not—”

  “An apology followed by a justification is no apology at all! But you will have plenty of time to feel the error of your choice. You will have nothing going forward. No ale. No sherry.”

  She watched him swallow. She lifted the empty bottle and crossed to the mantel, glass crunching beneath her shoes. She placed the bottle dead center, pleased with the way Mr. Stillman stared at it. She hoped that every time he saw it, he was assaulted with a fresh wave of longing.

  He turned frightened eyes to her. “Are you going to turn me out?”

  “And to whom would you go, Mr. Stillman? Your family, who will have nothing to do with you? Your friend, Mr. Ward, who would rather put you in the gutter himself than support your care? You are in the household of a stranger because you have created a life empty of anyone who would come to your aid!”

  She could see the barbs of her words cutting through him, and she evened her tone, wanting to deliver her message as directly and surely as she possibly could. If all he heard was her anger, he would learn nothing. “I brought you to my home and bid my staff to care for you as I would a member of my own family, and you repay us this way.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  Surprisingly, she believed him. A sincere apology did not undo what he’d done, however. “Should you defy my orders again, you will be taken to the nearest church and left to their mercy. I can promise you that, while their hearts might be bigger than mine, their capacity to help you will not be.”

  He raised his hands to his face, and his shoulders began to shake.

  She held herself hard against his crying, knowing she could not trust it as sincere, and turned to Joshua, whose eyes were huge in his round face. She had never lost her temper in front of her staff, and she hated how much like Richard she likely appeared to them right now.

  “You may go to Fordman’s now, Joshua. Bring what you can get for the bottle to my study when you return.” She turned to Therese. “I want Mr. Stillman left alone for the next hour. After that, you may bring him a glass of warm milk. Constance can come with you to clean up the mess of the brandy and the broken bottle after he’s had plenty of time to smell it.”

  Joshua and Therese nodded their agreement to her orders and left the room, the door standing open behind them.

  Sabrina turned back to Mr. Stillman. “Have you anything to say, sir?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, still crying behind his hands. “I just . . . I just c-can’t do this. I am n-not a s-strong man.”

  “You can do this, Mr. Stillman. Whether or not you will do it, however, shall ultimately be up to you. I shall write to Mr. Ward my exact thoughts on his part in this and make it clear that he is not welcome if he is not willing to obey my rules. One more step out of line from either of you and I will be finished with y
ou, is that understood?”

  He finally lowered his hands, the redness of his face competing with the lingering yellows and greens of his bruises. “Do not blame Mr. Ward. He was trying to help me.”

  “That either of you thinks liquor will help you shows both of you as the idiots you are.”

  He nodded pathetically, his shoulders drooping as he looked at his hands in his lap.

  Sabrina squelched the sympathy rising up in her as his body curled inward and his head fell forward. The other men she had helped turn their lives around had faced their demons far away from her. She followed their progress through Mr. Gordon, who would receive letters from time to time. Seeing the difficulty up close made the struggle these men faced in changing their lives much more real.

  If she could relay her sympathy without obstructing the process Mr. Stillman had to endure to achieve the wellness he needed, she’d have done it. But she needed to keep her authority in hand, so she turned on her heel and stormed from the room, slamming the door behind her hard enough to shake the entire room.

  Harry’s misery began anew the next morning. The monkeys were back, his belly burned, he both sweated and froze beneath the covers, and he wished he was dead all over again. Through it all, he took turns cursing Lady Sabrina and Ward but mostly his own pathetic weakness. Neither of the people he cursed came to see him, and he vacillated between fighting Therese’s ministrations when she tended to him and thanking her through gracious tears. She remained steady and calm and hummed what he thought were hymns that lulled him to sleep.

  The endless days of misery allowed him to ask himself how he had come to this, and it was as if he had lifted the lid of a very ugly box, the hinges corroded and bent as though to keep it closed.

  Once the lid was open, however, remembrances of his life began to filter into his mind—things he had not thought on for years. He thought of the way his father’s eyes would darken without warning before he would harangue Harry as worthless and stupid and a pathetic son. “What have I done to be saddled with such a son as you?”

  Harry would run to his mother for comfort, and she coddled and cooed over him. Then his parents would fight—loud and long and horrible—and he knew it was his fault, and he would promise never to put his mother in that position again. Until next time.

  As Harry got older, his father got meaner, and Harry grew to hate anyone in authority over him. His rebelliousness led to punishment at school, which only spurred on his defiance—a power in itself. Other boys were drawn to what looked like strength, and he reveled in the attention.

  When necessary, however, he could be docile and attentive, which helped in his relations with the fairer sex. What a lovely distraction women had turned out to be, further drowning out his father’s voice, which had kept up a steady berating in the back of his mind all of his life.

  Harry stopped coming home on school holidays, going with friends instead and raising Cain wherever they ended up. He was young and full of furious energy and determined to be noticed.

  Father died just in time for Harry to use his inheritance to fuel a raucous campaign through London—women and brawls, drink and gaming tables. The memories swirled like fire in Harry’s head, faces of old friends who fell by the wayside when some scrape or another pushed their parents’ patience to the brink. How many girls of fine family had he seduced in dark corners? How many women of low family had he never even looked in the eye? How many friends had he humiliated in one way or another, left behind when he had no use for them, or poked and kicked at until they left him for good?

  Have I ever done a good thing? he wondered as scene after scene played out more pathetically than the last. Have I ever been a benefit to anyone who trusted me?

  What if he continued to live the way he’d lived his life thus far? What if ten years from now he was still exactly here—friendless, hopeless, homeless, broken, alone? He had no doubt that was exactly what would happen if he didn’t do what Lady Sabrina had told him to do—commit to make different choices. Every day. Lord Damion had believed in him enough to rescue him from utter ruin, and Lady Sabrina believed he could use the beating as a place to grow from. Be better. Do better. He had an opportunity right now to be what he’d never been before.

  “The only people who cannot change are those who are unwilling to face the pain behind the poor choices they have made. Certainly, there are those people. You, however, are not one of them.”

  Lady Sabrina’s words became a mantra. If he was the only person who could change himself, then he alone had to be different. He had to be fair. Honest. Trustworthy. He had to think of more than just his desires. He needed positive relationships. He needed accomplishments he could take pride in.

  He had to find a different way to drown out the words of his father. It had been so long ago; why had he not outgrown the fear that he was exactly what his father had said he was? Lady Sabrina had said something about how pain drove him to live in such excess, and it was not difficult to admit how those childhood memories faded when he was drunk or flirting or gaming.

  What if instead of running from that voice, he could prove it wrong? What if instead of being angry and hurt at the words, he lived a life that proved himself otherwise?

  There was power in that. A new power. A power that drew him from the muck of his history until the thought of another drink sickened him. The image of another loose woman smiling at him made his blood run cold with shame. Cards would always be set against him. Friends he made in dark corners were there because of the darkness within themselves, just like him.

  “Asking the right questions will lead you to the answers that most men do not really want to find.”

  “Dear God in Heaven,” he whispered into the dark on a night that had blended and blurred with all the other nights until he did not know if there had been two or twenty. “Help me ask the right questions. Help me be a better man.”

  Lady Sabrina thought he could do it. Lord Damion thought he could do it. What if he believed them instead of his father, who had never actually known him and who had been driven by a darkness that Harry logically knew had nothing to do with him? What if the biggest step was wanting to be different, better, more?

  Help me.

  Help me.

  Help me.

  In the early morning, Harry woke up in a nightshirt not soaked with sweat in time to watch the sun rise through the open window. Therese believed the natural light was good for him.

  First the sky turned from gray to peach, then pink, then a color he could not name. Orange, maybe, but still pink. And purple too. The birds began to praise the dawn, and he watched as the first brush of sunlight changed the sky to gold. The first day. The start of a new life.

  Harry thought of Falconridge, his childhood home. He did not know when he’d last seen a sunrise in Falconridge, but he knew he’d admired more than one in his past. His memories of any other sunrise could not compete with witnessing this event afresh, however. The gauzy reverence of the experience washed through him with every breath, and when a hawk, or some such similar bird, came into view, and the morning sunlight reflected off its wings, Harry felt as near a spiritual epiphany as he’d ever felt in his life.

  There was beauty to be seen if one simply took the time to behold it.

  The past was not greater than the present.

  Who he had been was not stronger than who he was now.

  Who he could be in the future would grow from who he chose to be today.

  He watched the morning light grow until the sun was a ball of fire that possessed the sky, forcing him to move his gaze to the ceiling so as not to be blinded. The way the sun bathed him in light felt like a sacrament.

  He took a breath, stretched his fingers and toes and appreciated the parts of his body that still ached from the beating. His mind felt better than it ever had. Than he could ever remember.

  “I will not forget this,” he said to the ceiling and to the God he wanted to believe was above it. “O Lord, thou has
t brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.”

  He did not know where he remembered the psalm from—he’d never been a churchgoing man—but the words of it felt seared into his mind and into his chest. Another phrase followed the first: “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

  He felt tears in his eyes at the realization that he was not completely alone. Not yet. Perhaps it required his invitation for this God he’d never quite believed in to reveal Himself.

  When Therese brought him toast for breakfast, Harry dared to eat it and asked if he might also have eggs. For lunch he had soup, then he slept through the afternoon and woke up feeling even better than he had that morning.

  Hopeful. Alive. Strong.

  Forgiven?

  Therese brought him tea, and he was able to pull himself to a seated position, his splinted leg hurting only a little. Performing the task by himself made the discomfort worthwhile.

  “Thank you, Therese.” His mouth watered as she set the tea tray over his lap. He lifted the thick slice of bread spread with butter and took a bite, relishing the taste of salty butter that filled his mouth and slid down his throat. He felt so much more aware of everything—the colors of sunrise, the smoothness of butter, the kindness of Therese.

  “You are welcome, Mr. Stillman.” She watched him with a wariness he understood. He’d lost the trust of all these people. He hoped he would be able to earn back some portion of it.

  He watched Therese move about the room, setting out a clean nightshirt—she always helped him dress in a fresh one before bed—and straightening the room. She was humming again. Servants in Harry’s life had always been silent creatures who attended to his needs without his awareness most of the time. The only servant from his youth he remembered by name was Mrs. Horace, a cook whom he could charm into giving him an extra chicken leg now and again. The rest were faceless forms who moved out of a room when he came into it, fetching trays and clearing linens.