Someone Wanton His Way Comes

by Caldwell, Christi

  He glanced down at the top of her brownish-blonde curls; the early-morn glow of the sun again played with her tresses, highlighting traces he’d never before noticed there. How could he be guilty of such an oversight? Clayton made himself focus on her question. What did he wish for in a wife? “She’ll be kind to my family.” Which wasn’t and hadn’t always been the case where his mother and sisters were concerned. “And we’ll be faithful to one another.”

  “And love, of course.”

  It wasn’t so much a question, but more of a statement from Sylvia. “Absolutely not.” That was the last thing he would allow himself or the woman he eventually married.

  Sylvia’s head came flying up from that page, and he squirmed under the intensity of her frown. “You’re jesting.”

  “I’m deadly serious.” It was his pathetic attempt at humor, one she would not gather unless she knew all the details about the curse that followed his family. Which she didn’t . . . And now, because of the agreement they’d struck, he had to share all. Less than eager to have that conversation, he shifted the course of their discussion. “And . . . this is something you want for yourself? Love.” Because she deserved that. Because he’d always desperately wanted that for her. With her.

  “I did,” she said softly, her gaze falling briefly to the notes she’d made. “I don’t . . . not anymore.”

  Clayton waited for her to say something else. To confide in him about her marriage.

  “We’re talking about you.”

  “Yes, but I’d rather talk about you.”

  A sharp little bark of laughter escaped her lips, and she nudged her shoulder against his in the same way she had when they’d stood keeping one another company on the side of ballroom floors. And he let her to the belief that he’d been speaking to her in jest. Her levity faded. “Of course you want a loving marriage.”

  Yes, it was what he wanted. But not what he could have. “No. I”—need—“want a partnership with a woman whom I respect and who respects me in turn.”

  Eris’s laughter trilled in the distance, and he searched and found her racing over a slight rise with Vallen following suit. The boy paused and did a sweep of his surroundings; he stopped, his gaze landing on Sylvia.

  Her son waved his fingers frantically, and Sylvia returned that acknowledgment, shaking both her palms in an overeager hello before blowing him a kiss.

  Vallen shot a hand up, and closed his fist. Then he pressed his hand against his cheek as if he were planting the kiss there. The little boy raced off once more.

  A wave of melancholy swept over Clayton. He was blessed to have the moments he did with his youngest sister. But he wanted to know children of his own. He wanted to know the close bond he saw play out daily between his mother and siblings. And the one Sylvia shared with her son. And he didn’t want his time with that child cut short.

  “You don’t really mean you don’t want love . . . Clayton,” she said when she returned her focus to him, as though they hadn’t even missed a beat.

  “I am serious.”

  “But . . . but . . . you speak about having a real relationship with whomever you marry. You talk about a partnership, one that is not built on anything more.” Sylvia tossed her book aside, forgotten. And it was then he knew her questioning had ceased to be about her role as matchmaker and came instead from a friend. “Is it that you don’t believe in love?”

  Clayton scooped up a handful of gravel and rock at the edge of the blanket, and sifted through the remnants. “Oh, no. Quite the opposite, really.” He settled on a particularly flat stone, and from where he sat, he skipped it upon the otherwise serene Serpentine. The little missile skipped four times upon the surface, rippling the river. “I very much believe in it. I come from a long line of ancestors, my parents included, who either married for love or came to find it in their matches.” Clayton skipped another stone, this one making five jumps before sinking under the water. He selected another, and held it out for Sylvia.

  She ignored the offering. “But . . . it doesn’t make any sense, then. If you believe in love, then why would you not want it for yourself?”

  “Oh, I would want it very much,” he said, and skipped the stone she’d passed over.

  Sylvia tossed up her hands. “Then why wouldn’t you seek it for yourself?”

  “I’m going to die.” Clayton let another stone fly, and this one sank with a dreary little plunk.

  Her knee jolted against his as if her entire body had been dealt a shock to the system. “What?” she whispered. There was such horror and terror in that query, he looked over . . . and found the sentiments reflected back in her eyes. “You’re sick.”

  And the sight of that, her palpable concern for him, caused something to shift in his chest.

  “No.” He grimaced. “Or at least I don’t think I am. Not yet anyway.” His late aunt Barbara had perished of a wasting illness . . . at twenty-eight years old. And as a small boy, paying his respects to his father’s beloved sister, Clayton had tucked his hands behind his back, crossed his fingers, and said a prayer that his fate wasn’t hers. He sighed. “I’m cursed.”

  Society often spoke of the Kearsleys’ “rotted luck.” And given that Sylvia had never been one to gossip, it came as no surprise that she didn’t know that detail about his family.

  Sylvia’s features remained a study of confusion. “I don’t . . . understand. Are you making a jest?” she ventured hesitantly.

  “Oh, no. Rather wish I was.” What would his future and hers have been then? Could he have wooed her and won her as Norfolk had? Or had she always been an illusion just beyond his grasp? “I’m going to die young.” And probably a miserable death, at that. He kept himself from adding that particular detail. “Or, if not very young, live a shortened life . . . Yes. I do believe it.

  “The Kearsleys, my father’s family, are notoriously cursed. From my understanding, it goes back nearly two centuries. One of the earlier St. John viscounts, John Kearsley, was visiting his Scottish properties on the Isle of Arran. He had a fascination with archaeology, and went digging in a field of stones. That field of stones also happened to be ancient burial chambers. From that moment on, the Kearsleys were cursed.”

  “Surely . . . not all of them,” she asked skeptically.

  “John Kearsley was journeying back to England when he was set upon by bandits and killed with the very point of the stones he’d stolen, and all his loot went with those bandits, too. His son went back to fetch him, and when he was sailing over, his ship went down. He was never found.”

  Sylvia’s eyes rounded. “I’ll allow you, that is bad luck.”

  “His grandson reached the age of twenty-one. Possessed of the same fascination with fossils, he launched a search for those pieces his father had taken . . . and snuck inside the household rumored to have them. And he was shot for his efforts.”

  She gasped. “There . . . is more.”

  “Oh, there is more. There was a great-great-nephew whose household caught fire while he slept. A beam fell across the doorway, barring any servants from helping to free him.” Clayton continued with his telling, and with every tragic ancestor revealed, Sylvia’s expression grew more and more bereft. “And then there was my father . . . who choked on a plum pit not even three years ago.” Old enough to know six of his children, but denied the gift of knowing Eris beyond just eighteen months of her life.

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I . . . had been so very preoccupied with . . .” He waited for her to say more. To cast further light upon what those years with her husband had been like. But she didn’t. Instead, sadness wreathed her features.

  “It’s fine.” Now. At the time, there’d been only devastation over the loss of the father he had so loved. The pain had dulled with time.

  “I should have known. You were my friend.” Her hand slid over his, covering his knuckles with her palm. “You are my friend.”

  And how much he’d always wanted for there to be more.

&nbs
p; “But, Clayton,” she said softly, “all people inevitably die. Surely you believe we make our own fate?”

  “I do . . . until we don’t.” His gaze moved out once again to the children happily at play.

  “Well, I think it is cowardly,” Sylvia blurted.

  He stiffened.

  She spoke on a rush. “No offense intended.”

  “None taken,” he said dryly, tossing the remaining stones in his hand at the Serpentine. They rained down in offbeat plunks as they hit the surface. Of anything he’d thought she’d say or expected her to say, that certainly hadn’t been it.

  “It is just . . . by your own admission, you are going through life wanting love but denying yourself the possibility of it out of fear that it won’t be long enough?”

  “This from a woman who doesn’t even believe in love.” As soon as the words left him, he wanted to call them back. He didn’t want to hurt her. He shook his head. “Sylvia,” he said, regret hoarsening his voice. “I am sor—”

  “Don’t.” Sylvia touched a finger to his lips, ending the remainder of his apology. “That is fair,” she allowed when she let her hand fall back to her lap. “Do you know what I was to my husband?”

  He knew what she hadn’t been—loved as she deserved—and Clayton hated it. And even more, he hated that she knew it.

  “I was a responsibility, Clayton.”

  And it wrenched even more inside.

  “I was a responsibility. An obligation.” Each of those words ripped from her with an intensity that may as well have come from deep within her soul. Sylvia’s eyes held his, and they were ravaged. “I was nothing more than that to my husband. I don’t ever want to be that again.” She shook her head. “Not to anyone.” Sylvia glanced away, out at the Serpentine, and when she again spoke, she did so with a renewed calm. “I might not have the grand love that everyone dreams of and deserves, but at least I can say I tried my hand at it, Clayton. I gave myself completely to it.” Tears glazed her eyes, making a lie of her attempt at matter-of-factness, and the sight of those drops hit him square in the chest. “And I lost.” With jerky, almost angry movements, she brushed the backs of her hands over her eyes, and it was too much. He’d never be able to just sit silent and inactive as she faced her grief.

  “Here,” he murmured, and snapping his handkerchief, he wound the corner of it around his thumb and brushed a drop free.

  Sylvia brought her hand up and cupped it around Clayton’s, freezing his efforts and commanding his full attention. “You cannot say the same, though, Clayton. You can only say that you’ve shut yourself away in the fear of what might happen.”

  “Will.” He implored her to understand. He wasn’t speaking about possibilities and hypotheticals. “What will happen.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, tenacious in her denial, “but perhaps not, Clayton.” A light breeze toyed with a loose curl that hung artfully at her shoulder. Sylvia brushed it back distractedly. “You deserve love, Clayton.” She went up on her knees beside him so their eyes were level. “You find a woman who is good. And you steal whatever moments you can together. No one is promised another day.”

  “Mama!”

  They both looked over, the moment between them ended as Vallen came hurtling forward. Gathering her skirts, Sylvia jumped up and went rushing off to meet the boy.

  Clayton came more slowly to his feet. As he did, he stared on at the tableau of mother and child together, Sylvia scooping him up and holding him close as she did, spinning in a dizzying circle. All the while, her words lingered, remaining there with him.

  And he couldn’t let himself think that perhaps she had been correct. Because that would mean the sacrifice he’d made, the decision to not pursue anything more, had been for naught. And that all these years he’d spent pining for her, in actuality, they could have been together.

  No, it was best not to think of any of that.

  Rather, he intended to enjoy being in the only place he wanted to be . . . here with her.

  Alas, the moment appeared to be short-lived.

  Over the rise, Anwen came hurtling, waving her arms as she went, brandishing a little scrap of paper.

  What in hell?

  Clayton started for the eldest of his sisters.

  The moment they met, Anwen sagged, dropping her hands upon her knees and gasping for breath.

  “What—?”

  “A letter arrived.” She spoke in little spurts. “From Lord Landon. His servant indicated it was a matter of some urgency.” Anwen pressed the letter into Clayton’s palm. “Mother sent me to watch after Eris so that you might go.”

  Clayton unfolded the note.

  St.

  Meet me at GJ. Urgent business.

  L

  That was it.

  He stole one last glance over to where Sylvia was now playing with her son and Clayton’s sister.

  “Go,” Anwen ordered, her tone strident. “I shall tell Sylvia a matter of importance came up that you had to see to.”

  “It might not be,” he said in an attempt to alleviate some of her worry. “With Landon, more often than not, it’s hardly a matter of seriousness.” She had been the one who had brought him a note about Norfolk’s death that day. From that moment on, whenever a missive came, she responded with the level of urgency that she did now.

  Anwen gave him an impressively sturdy shove between the shoulder blades.

  And he proved to be a bastard because, as he took his leave, the only place he wanted to be was here with Sylvia.

  Chapter 20

  13 Old Bond Street

  God, how he despised this place.

  There was no place he hated more. For the memories here. For the guilt. The resentment. And for the reminder of that one fateful day when life had been irrevocably changed.

  “Shocking to see you here,” Lord Landon called from where he stood alongside Scarsdale at the back of Gentleman Jackson’s.

  Yes, Clayton went out of his way to avoid this place whenever he could. The only exceptions he made were when Landon sent ’round some vague, cryptic note requesting Clayton’s company. Experience had come to show that invariably there was nothing of any real urgency behind those notes. But the friend and person within him waiting for the next worst thing to happen never ignored those summons for fear that the one day he did would be the one day he was really needed.

  Clayton stopped before the pair, presently checking their hand fastenings. “Is it really something of a shock, when you called for me?”

  Landon’s eyebrows both went flying up. “What’s this now? Sarcasm, I do detect? From the affable, always agreeable Saint St. John?” His childhood friend staggered back with his hands to his chest in exaggerated shock. “Impossible.”

  “Go to hell,” Clayton muttered.

  “And cursing?” Scarsdale nudged the marquess with his elbow. “The scandal.”

  “And you can go to hell, too, Scarsdale,” Clayton added for good measure. Though he was happy to see the other man in his usual spirits, Clayton rather wished it weren’t at his own expense.

  “So this is what they are teaching at the Mismatch Club.”

  “I’ve told you,” he said with a concerted effort that had come only from being a brother to six unruly sisters. “It is a society . . .”

  Both men erupted into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

  He consulted his timepiece. “And I have another meeting coming up shortly.”

  His friends only laughed all the harder.

  Clayton started to go, and Landon sobered up immediately and called out after him. “Come back. We do need to talk.”

  This time, there was an unexpected seriousness to Landon’s words that stayed Clayton and brought him back to the pair.

  “Tell him,” the marquess said to Scarsdale when he reached their side.

  “What?” Clayton asked, unease tripping along his spine as he looked back and forth between his friends. “Tell me what?” he prodded when neither man was quick enough t
o respond.

  Scarsdale was the one to answer. “Gentlemen have begun remarking upon your joining the Mismatch Society. And . . .”

  “And?” Clayton snapped when no further information was forthcoming.

  “And people have noted that you’ve been attending the Mismatch meetings,” Landon said.

  “Yes, Scarsdale just said as much.” Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. Talk of his attending them had been inevitable. That had also been Sylvia’s reason for issuing the invitation in the first place. He caught the look both men exchanged. “What now?”

  “Well,” Scarsdale went on, “it is, of course, that people are naturally curious and wondering as to why you were attending them.”

  “There have been wagers placed at White’s,” Landon clarified. “Some believe it is motivated by your desire to keep a careful eye on your sisters.” The marquess brightened. “Which is entirely noble and fits with your character.”

  “Spying on my sisters?” Clayton asked dryly.

  “Ohhhh, it’s all semantics, really. You call it ‘spying,’ while every other man would call it ‘looking after.’”

  Indeed.

  “And in a way, it kind of is spying, though. They just have it wrong as to which woman it is,” Scarsdale pointed out as he fiddled with his hand wrappings once more.

  “Shh,” Clayton demanded, frantically looking about him. Fortunately, at the early hour, there was just one other pair of boxers, and they were in the midst of a lesson with Gentleman Jackson. “And I’m not . . . spying on the lady. I’m . . . I’m . . .”

  “Looking after her?” Landon supplied with a smirk. “Which was precisely my point, thank you for making it, old chum.”

  Clayton opened his mouth to counter the point, and yet . . .

  Was Landon really wrong? Hadn’t the whole reason Clayton had accepted Sylvia’s invitation and begun attending the meetings been so that he might look after her?

  Landon tossed an arm around his shoulders. “Come now, St. John,” he said. “We know your motives and actions are honorable. We were just making light.”