Of Moths and Butterflies

CHAPTER twenty-four





OU'VE MET MR. HAMILTON before?” Roger asked Imogen when once they had secured some relative privacy.

Imogen looked up at him, but it took her a moment before she realised he had spoken, and only then did she observe his brow lowered in puzzlement and something like alarm in his eyes.

“Yes,” she answered, uncertain just how much to tell him. Uncertain how much he’d been told already. “I met him while I was away.”

“In Kent?”

“Yes,” she said, and found it difficult to hear or concentrate on the matter at hand while her head spun and her heart pounded in her ears. A quarter of an hour ago, all she could think about was Roger. Now she could hardly think at all.

“Tell me, will you, in what way you spent your time there? Where did you live? What did you do?”

“It can’t matter now, Roger.”

“I want to know. You said you took employment.”

She found she could not look at him as he struggled to hold her gaze.

“Come,” he said. “We can’t talk here.”

He led her out onto the veranda, where he immediately began closing the gallery of doors between themselves and the guests within. He turned to her, folding his arms across his chest.

“Tell me,” he said. “I want to know it all.”

“I ran away. Foolishly. I was recovered and now I am back. Can we not leave it at that?”

“No,” he said, his frustration mounting, and with a gesture of his hand towards the ballroom, and those who occupied it, he added, “I could have received the same answer from any guest here.”

Still she was silent.

“You won’t tell me?”

She would not look at him and so, taking her chin in his hand, he turned her to face him.

“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me you did not go to a small village in Kent and hire yourself out as a servant.”

She remained silent, but in her eyes he could see the answer. He released her.

“Do you have any idea of the danger in which you might have put yourself? Sir Edmund Barry is only a slight improvement over your uncle. And to think of Archer Hamilton making his rounds of the help, and entertaining the idea that you might be next… I can barely stomach it!”

“It wasn’t like that, Roger! He was rarely there. I spoke to him perhaps half a dozen times. No more.”

He examined her face very carefully and did not like what he saw there. “Are you in love with him?” he asked with more breath than voice.

Her face grew very red and he began to fear her answer.

“I was a servant in his house, Roger,” she said almost angrily. “Just how base do you think me?”

“It would not have been base of you,” he ground out. “It would have been base of him. And I have every reason to believe it was. Great day!” He raised a hand to rub at his throbbing temple.

“Roger,” she said, calling him back from his dark thoughts.

He turned to her, and as she smiled repentantly, his anger began to crumble and melt. He let out a heavy sigh. “Have I told you how I’ve missed you?”

“Yes,” she laughed. “Thrice now, to be exact.”

“I don’t think I can say it enough.”

“I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to see of each other,” she said.

“Not much if your aunt has her way. She’s done her part, I imagine, to dissuade you from keeping me company?”

“She says you have prospects. And that I am not to get in the way.”

“She has been hard at work.”

“Is it true?”

“There doesn’t have to be anyone but you, you know.”

Imogen lifted one eyebrow as she looked up at him. “Julia is not discouraging you, I think.”

“She believes my attending you will prove you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. If you had run away…with someone—that’s what they’re saying—then how could I welcome you back so openly?”

“Because we’re family,” she answered softly. “Because we are friends.”

“Because my loving you as I do would make it a mighty difficult thing to do,” he said. “If it were true.”

“Some would call it a convenient match, you and I.”

“Convenient to whom?”

“To you. To Julia.”

His look became dark again. “Is my manner toward you different now than it has ever been?”

“No. You’ve never changed toward me, Roger.”

“And do you believe it will? That it ever can?”

She didn’t answer.

“Will you listen to me? I mean, really listen? I love you. I have always loved you. I can’t stand to see you unhappy. Won’t you let me try to change that?”

Imogen took a deep breath and released it.

She wasn’t stopping him. He could hardly believe it.

“It’s not impossible that we might be happy together. We are at least very good friends. Even my fumbling petitions must seem preferable to remaining where you are. Better, I hope, than running away?” He stopped then, and looked at her very intently. “You broke my heart, Imogen. Do you understand that?”

She didn’t answer just at first. She only looked up at him with those blue eyes of hers. “Think, Roger, of the sacrifice you make.”

“I don’t care about the gossips. You ought to know that well enough.”

“That’s not what I meant. When you realise that I am what I am and cannot be redeemed, when you become bored and turn back to your former ways, what then?”

Roger held her hands in his and, lowering his voice, spoke more seriously than he had ever done before.

“These past seven years, Imogen, have we not been the best of friends? Without you, I cannot account for what I might become. But with you, I might be anything. And if you think, for a moment, that I would lay to waste what we have already, then you don’t know me at all. If I were to hurt you, I would destroy the best part of me.”

She closed her eyes and turned from him.

“Think about it pragmatically,” he said, seeing that a different tack was in order. She never could stand a love speech. “You would be free. The money is yours. I won’t touch it. And if, when you tire of me, you regret the match, then I will release you, as far as it is in my power to do. I don’t believe any better offer can be made you than that. Will you consider what I have said?”

She hesitated for half a minute more. A ripple of something—was it regret?—crossed her brow and then her features became suddenly fixed, perhaps hopeful, at least determined. “Yes, Roger. I’ll consider.”

He squeezed her hand and looked at her earnestly. “I want very much to see you happy. If I can make you so, Imogen, I would make any sacrifice to do it.”

She smiled.

“You will consider?”

“I said I would.”

He kissed her cheek once more and moved away.

“Where are you going?”

“To speak to a gentleman about his penchant for roguery amongst the hired staff.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said, almost desperately and taking a step forward.

But he had opened the door and was through it before she could offer anything further in the way of objection.

* * *

Archer Hamilton, anxiously awaiting his turn to speak with Miss Everard, found himself smartly clapped on the back.

“A word?” Roger said.

With a nod, Archer agreed and the two stole off to search for a vacant room.

“What in the devil’s name do you think you’re up to?” Roger said, rounding on him the moment their privacy had been secured.

“I’m sorry?”

“Running around after the servants, are you? And my cousin no less!”

“Now hold on there, Barrett. I never chased after anybody. And it was you, if you remember, who suggested I should. It wasn’t even an hour ago that you told me you were disappointed that you were not to have all the ‘sordid details’.”

Roger looked for the moment as though he might strike him.

Archer was unimpressed. “You’re the one who encouraged me to pursue it.”

“And did you?”

“Of course not. Granted, I might have done, had she not made it clear she was not game.”

“Then you gave her cause to do it!”

“Perhaps I did,” he answered flatly. “Can you blame me?”

“Great day! To think on it makes me sick.” He seemed to calm a little then. “A servant?” he asked as though he thought Archer might have the explanation for his cousin’s irrational behaviour.

“To her good fortune, no one truly believed it. But you are right to fear she was not best placed at the Abbey. She was not safe there.”

“From you?”

Archer, in all honesty could not answer this. “I would not have harmed her. My cousin meant to raise her up.”

“Your cousin!”

“She was prepared to hire Miss Shaw— Miss Everard,” he corrected, “as her companion.”

Roger seemed slightly relieved for this. But only slightly.

“Will you tell me what it was she was hiding from? Not from you?”

Roger turned and gave him a warning look.

“I’d like to know she’s better off having returned to family than at the Abbey.”

“She will be, Hamilton,” Barrett said and crossed to the door. “I’ve just put the question to her. And this time she’ll accept me.”

The door closed and Archer was alone, leaving him to wonder if his question had been truly answered. Certainly not to satisfaction.