David Lord of Honor

Thirteen




David apparently had enough experience in sickrooms—rooms rife with suffering—that he could be brisk, efficient, and even cheerful, when any sane person would run howling from the scene. His deft hands made short work of Letty’s braid and coronet, and no lady’s maid ever provided more competent assistance.

Maybe this was how soldiers felt going into battle against tight odds. Did they don a false bravado, put on more for one’s comrades than oneself? Did they suddenly become so achingly dear to one another that tears threatened moment by moment? Did they become unable to contemplate anything beyond the looming hours of terror and loss?

David finished with the hooks of Letty’s dress in silence, dropped a kiss on the side of her neck, and withdrew. She felt his absence like the loss of a talisman, a cherished symbol of luck and safety, as when someone had stolen her father’s Book of Common Prayer from his study. She took a last look at herself in the mirror, seeing a lady in better finances and even worse spirits than she’d sported before meeting David.

“You’re simply afraid,” she told her reflection. “Afraid you won’t endure the pain of losing him. Also afraid you will.”

Letty tied a bright red sash about her waist, her ensemble the same one she’d worn one of the first times David had come calling upon her. To know he’d recalled such a detail comforted her, to know she was parting from a man who could recall such a detail devastated.

David was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, smiling slightly, though the expression in his eyes was anything but cheerful.

“You’re going out for a hack,” Letty said, and why must he look particularly fetching in his riding attire? “Fine idea. Your mare will take good care of you.” Though leaving him to the good offices of a mere horse felt wretchedly like abandonment.

“I’ll ride later, perhaps after the heat of the day. I thought we’d take the coach to your house.”

Taking the coach would allow them to sit, touching and holding hands, in relative and quite improper privacy—and it would allow her to cry.

Thoughtful of him, as always.

He led her down the steps and turned to hand her up into the coach, when Letty paused to look back at his house.

“We have been happy here,” David said.

“As happy as two people could be.” And as miserable.

Though the horses were kept to a smooth walk, all too soon the journey ended.

“We are here,” Letty said, needlessly, of course. “Will you come in? I do not want to make my farewells to you in this coach.”

He should not set foot in her house, not ever again. They both knew it. She should not have asked.

“I will come in,” David said, opening the coach door, for the groom apparently knew better than to intrude. “Only for a moment, and no farther than the front parlor.”

Letty allowed him to precede her from the coach and then escort her up her front steps and into the house. He didn’t knock, he simply opened the door and ushered her through, as if they lived there together and had merely been out shopping or making calls.


In the front hallway, David undid the frogs at Letty’s throat, then stepped back as she removed her bonnet and gloves. He took off only his gloves.

“Whatever you’re trying to find the words for,” Letty said, “just say it.”

She expected a swift good-bye, a peck on the cheek, something painful but soon over, like a competent surgery.

“You will note a few changes,” he said, slapping his gloves against his thigh. “When you napped, I needed something to occupy myself, so I replaced the curios and knick-knacks you’d sold, took care of the minor repairs, had the gutters and chimneys cleaned and the windows reglazed. I also took the liberty of adding some books to your parlor shelves, and the larder has been provisioned with what staples and foodstuffs I thought you might need.”

He fell silent, while Letty wondered if he’d ever made such a thorough confession as a boy. A bouquet of roses sat on the table in the front hallway, and the Vermeer hung in discreet pride of place above it. A small silver angel that looked very like a porcelain angel she’d particularly admired at The Pleasure House stood, wings outstretched, beneath the Vermeer.

“It’s lovely of you,” Letty said, though she could not bear to study the angel. “It’s loving.” She looped her hands behind his neck and leaned into him. “Thank you.”

“I hoped you’d understand.” His arms settled around her waist; his cheek rested against her hair. They stood like that, silent, not clinging, but unable to part.

I will miss you so.

“Letty?”

She stepped back at the question in his voice.

“If there’s anything,” David said, “anything at all, that you need or want, or even think you might enjoy, you must send word to me through Jennings, and I will see to it. I am still your friend, and hope you will be mine as well.”

He might manage this friendship-through-Jennings, while Letty dreaded the day Jennings would brusquely let slip that his lordship was negotiating an engagement with some earl’s daughter.

“I will not trespass,” he said, pulling on his gloves. “I fully expect you to sell this house and repair to some rustic cottage, perhaps without even letting me know your direction. But not yet. I still need—”

She put two fingers against his mouth.

“We both need to know, at least for a little while longer, that the other is in familiar surrounds, safe, and not too far away, adequately cared for. I expect I will sell this house, eventually.”

“Not just yet,” David concluded, relief in his eyes.

“Not just yet,” Letty agreed, and maybe, if the ache in her heart grew any worse, never.

A painful silence went by, while Letty tried and failed to find one more scrap of business to transact that might put off David’s leave-taking.

He took her in his arms. “Good-bye, my Elizabeth, my love, my friend.”

She would not cry. For the love of God, she would not cry. This parting was her doing, her last best gift to him and his future, and she would not make it any more miserable for him than it already was. “Good-bye, my David. I love you so,” Letty whispered, clinging just as tightly.

“Don’t watch me leave, Letty.” He brushed a kiss to her cheek and kept his forehead to her temple. “I won’t be able to walk away if I know you are watching me, tears in your eyes, your heart suffering the same agony as my own.”

“Go then. I won’t watch.” But she held him still, for long, long minutes of pain and sorrow and gratitude and love.

“Elizabeth. Farewell, my love.”

When she released him, he turned abruptly, and without pausing to meet her eyes or speak another word, passed through Letty’s door and out of her life. She collapsed against the door, thinking she might just die there, so great was the weight of misery pushing up from her chest, into her throat, and down through her body.

And yet, she had insisted on this separation, not only for herself, but also for David.

That thought had her dashing to the parlor, there to stand behind a lace-curtained window. David had dismissed the coach and walked past the house in the direction of his own dwelling. He didn’t turn to see if he could discern her figure behind the curtains, didn’t stop, as Letty had, to give the place a final glance.

He had the strength to walk away from her, from them. She could not have done it, could not have borne it had she been the one responsible for taking those steps.

Oh, she loved him terribly. She loved him, and she must not fly from the house to beg him to turn around, and love her—have her—on any terms, any terms at all, for just a small while longer.

For she loved others, too, others with no wealth, no consequence, no titled relations to smooth the path, and their well-being was in her hands every bit as much as David’s was.

And then he did turn, pause, and lift a hand to his lips. He blew her a kiss and waved a small, courtly salute before resuming his progress down the street. The gesture brought such a shaft of joy to Letty that laughter welled up through her tears.

He’d known, he’d known, she would disobey and peek, and need that final offering of goodwill and intimate understanding. How it pleased and comforted, to be understood and cared for that way, even in parting.

She flopped down on the sofa and let the tears run their course.

They’d done it, she and David. They had parted, and managed it with love and kindness and even some dignity.

Though she took peculiar pride in that accomplishment, she also wished they hadn’t been quite so determined and successful. Now that the process of separating was under way, she knew she could never ask it of David again. She could not endure a relapse of intimacy, not even a relapse of contact. It would hurt both of them far, far too much.

***

A wise old bishop, over several tots of sherry, had once delicately pointed out to the newly reverend Daniel Banks that his relationship with his own father would likely be the most fertile ground he encountered for learning the true meanings of the scriptures. Daniel, only beginning his theological journey, had been railing against his father’s judgmental, harsh, and intolerant approach to his calling.

The bishop had smiled and settled his considerable fundament into a comfortable chair by a cozy fire. “But young Daniel, do you not now sound as judgmental, harsh, and intolerant?”

And thus, thoroughly chagrined by the bishop’s gentle reproof, Daniel’s real education in his chosen profession had begun.

That education had gone on, day by day, week by week, with insight and wisdom coming from odd places. Daniel gained particular comfort from time spent with the elderly and the ill, for they often demonstrated a courage and peace, even an optimism, that humbled him. His spiritual education was more about his own shortcomings and humanity than about verses of scripture or brilliant sermons.

He had learned that very day, for example, that he was capable of adultery. The realization was disquieting, but not as devastating as it should have been. Oh, he hadn’t committed adultery, but the actual committing of the sin was a technicality compared to the willingness to commit it.

Olivia had been called away to her mother’s bedside. A bout of influenza the winter past had weakened his mama-in-law’s lungs, and she had been failing since.

So Daniel had handed Olivia up into the northbound stagecoach, knowing it would be several weeks until her return, and he’d turned his steps back toward the vicarage with a curious, surprisingly unguilty lightness. The best weeks of summer had stretched before him and Danny, free of strict mealtimes, free of strict bedtimes, free… of so many needless parental rules and consequences. Danny was a bright, well-mannered child, one any father would be proud of.

Olivia, by contrast, was becoming more like Daniel’s father and less like a woman who was grateful she had a child to love and care for in the first place.

Just that afternoon, Danny had gone off to play with the local squire’s sons, and Daniel had used the free time to take Beelzebub for a gallop, one that had them cantering up the track to the widow Ellen FitzEngle’s property. She’d greeted him graciously as always, and strolled her fairy tale flower gardens on his arm with the same friendliness she invariably showed him.

Then, in the shade of her porch, the warm summer air redolent of honeysuckle and petunias, Daniel had kissed her.

And what a soul-gratifying, joyous, heartrendingly lovely thing it had been, to kiss a woman once again with passion. Ellen had responded generously, allowing him every liberty a kiss could encompass, when she should have slapped his face and gone haring off to the bishop.

When Daniel had found the resolve to lift his mouth from hers, she’d remained in his arms for a long moment. He’d held her, his emotions rioting from shock at his own impropriety, to relief that he still could feel passion for a woman, to an absurd urge to laugh and kiss her again.

Ellen had smiled up at him. “So Olivia has gone to Mama’s, and you want to know if you can be naughty with your friend the widow?”

Put like that, Daniel’s urge to laugh, to kiss her again, faded. Ellen must have seen the change in his eyes, for she tucked her face against his chest, sighed, and then turned to take his arm and continue their stroll.


“You don’t want to be naughty,” she concluded as if to herself. “You want to know if you could be. As if you’d found the decanter your papa hid on the top shelf of the pantry, and you want to know you could tipple, though you don’t actually take a sip.”

“I never found a hidden decanter,” Daniel said—inanely. Nor had he hidden one himself.

Ellen’s smile broadened. “The decanter was hidden somewhere, Daniel. Maybe it was an inordinate interest in butterflies, or a taste for gothic novels, but your papa had his guilty pleasures. We all do, and you are entitled to yours.”

She was so calm. That kiss had rocked him physically, emotionally, theologically. Until ten minutes ago, he’d been a virtuous husband, whatever that meant. Now he knew the freckles dusting Ellen’s cheeks were the same cinnamon hue as her hair, and she tasted of peppermint tea.

He found a bench under a huge willow and sat beside her. A stream burbled by a few feet from the willow, and the scent of roses sweetened the air.

“I must apologize, of course. I am not entitled to guilty pleasures at the expense of a lady’s virtue, and you have never led me to believe I would be. I simply…”

She took his hand, the contact reassuring rather than flirtatious.

“One becomes lonely,” she said, “and when the loneliness goes on and on and becomes part of one, it grows roots and can begin to destroy one’s very foundation, like this tree whose shade we enjoy now. You are a lovely, lovely man, Daniel, and I would have to be blind not to see that Olivia neglects you terribly. That you have an occasional lapse of sainthood does not make you wicked.” She laced her fingers through his and squeezed his hand. “It makes you human.”

“You are more than understanding.” Perhaps he’d known she would be.

“Understanding,” she snorted. “Is that the word for it, when you’ve slept alone for five years, and yet you can recall your husband’s intimate affections each and every night as you dream? At least I do sleep alone. I cannot imagine what a torment it must be to share a bed with a spouse who isn’t… receptive to conjugal relations.”

Daniel resigned himself to having a very personal discussion with someone against whom he’d intimately sinned.

“Olivia would humor me, were I to impose on her.” She’d humored him every time he had imposed, beginning with their very wedding night. He’d considered it a mercy the urge to impose had stopped plaguing him years ago—mostly stopped plaguing him.

“Straying would be the easier option, Daniel, and Olivia would be relieved if you did.”

Many men extolled the companionship of widows, and Daniel began to see why. “You are undoubtedly right. She wants me to stray.” And what did it say about the state of a man’s marriage—a vicar’s marriage—that his wife hoped he’d sin?

Ellen leaned forward to pinch off a blue pansy gone droopy in a crockery pot beside their bench. “Mean women enjoy knowing every option before a man is a painful compromise. When you are faithful, she can feel virtuously martyred, because the animal passions are beneath her. If you cheat, to use a vulgar term, then she is righteous, and you are guilty. A better bargain for her.”

Something had changed in the pretty, reserved Widow FitzEngle’s world, or in her view of the world, and Daniel suspected it had to do with making the acquaintance of a certain Mr. Windham who’d come nosing about the shire ostensibly in search of property several weeks past.

“I love my wife. I do.”

“Keep telling yourself that, and you will likely end up even lonelier.”

“Whatever do you mean?” He gazed at her in surprise, not because her words made no sense—they made too much sense—but because of the acerbic tone in which she’d uttered them. Ellen was not an acerbic woman.

While Olivia, in all her quiet and piety, was.

“I do not know the woman you call your wife, Daniel, whom you believe worthy of your love, but Olivia Banks is a narrow-minded, hypocritical, mean-spirited, petty little twit, and I cannot like her or name one person in Little Weldon who does.”

“She is pious,” Daniel reported, bewildered, “and sober, but not without charity or affection or friendly associations.”

“She lords her piety over every other lady of her acquaintance, and her charity is dispensed with such condescension that most people would rather refuse it, though that would hurt your feelings, so they don’t.” Ellen pulled her hand from his and swiped at stray locks that had escaped from her braid. “Her Lady’s Charitable Guild is a pit of vipers, all of the members currying favor with the vicar’s wife, and at one another’s expense.”

Ellen was confident of her words, and her tone left no doubt whatsoever regarding her sentiments.

“I cannot absorb what you are telling me. Olivia is my helpmeet. She visits the sick and those lying in. She has taken the burden of the parish books entirely from my shoulders, and has done so for years without complaining. She tends the household accounts so I might have more time for my parishioners.”

Bad enough for Daniel to harbor regrets about his marriage, but for the entire parish to regret it…?

“You are a good, godly man, Daniel, and I am sorry to offend, but your wife is the cruelest bitch. I would give anything to make that not so.”

“Bitch.” He repeated the word softly, wishing it didn’t resonate with some honest, miserable, long-silent part of him. “Bitch,” he muttered again, more softly. He hadn’t used the word about a human female since going up to university, and before then only when not in his father’s hearing.

While the bees buzzed over the glory of Ellen’s garden in spring, she recited to him a litany of meanness: Olivia belittled her husband, criticizing him for spending his “pittance” of a salary to feed his fancy horse, for his inability to condemn the myriad sinners and slackers about Little Weldon (and the one true, habitual drunk, for that matter), for not providing young Danny with sufficiently firm guidance.

“You are a good man, and Olivia would have her coven believe she married a selfish, spineless, puerile cipher, whose only chance of maintaining the appearance of competence at his calling rests with her selfless devotion.”

Daniel suspected Ellen was being diplomatic. She presented him a picture of a woman who was not merely petty, venal, and frustrated, but hateful.

“I believe you,” he said at length. “I believe, at any rate, that Olivia comports herself when out of my company in a manner that forces you to draw this conclusion about her.”

Bitch. He knew full well the implications of the word, and it struck him with the force of unacknowledged intuition as an accurate epithet for Olivia. She criticized him, subtly, particularly when Letty came to visit, and Olivia had to constantly imply that he was not a competent provider, while insisting that managing the finances was no burden for her. She criticized Danny for not mastering skills that he was too young to even attempt. She criticized the parishioners for their parsimony, their sloth.

But she was a clever bitch, for her criticisms were carefully couched.

“Now, Danny, you mustn’t feel bad if you are slow at these simple sums. That would be arrogant, to assume that because other boys can master them, you can as well…”

“Living at the vicarage,” she’d said to Letty in Daniel’s hearing, “gives one endless opportunities to practice economies and the virtue of self-denial.”

“Isn’t it a shame,” she’d observed the day before her departure, “that George Dalton’s wife must bear him yet another child when he’s too intemperate to provide for the ones she’s presented him already? The poor woman…”

To Daniel, the Daltons were happy enough, and the poor woman seemed quite proud of and contented with her smiling George. But Olivia was full of “Isn’t it a shame…?” and “We must remember to pray that Lorna Hamilton finds some self-discipline…” and “How blessed we are, that unlike Cheevers Miller…”

Beside him, Ellen played with the end of her thick, coppery braid. “Are you very upset?”

“I am disappointed in myself, but reassured, too, for having been… naughty with you, as you put it. And as for Olivia… I have known her lack of warmth was a disappointment to my flock for some time. I didn’t want to admit how much of a disappointment. That, I find, is the more disconcerting lapse.”

Ellen went after more fading pansies. “And you still don’t want to admit what a disappointment she is to you.”

Daniel watched her hands, saw competence in them, and the dirt worked into the creases. Again, he had the thought that this was a different Ellen FitzEngle. One who had always been here; he’d only had to offer her a naughty kiss to waken her.

The idea amused him, which wasn’t polite—or pious—at all.

“Perhaps I can barely begin to comprehend what a disappointment she is to me—and to Danny.” What a difficult pill that was to swallow—little Danny did not choose to be born, and he did not choose his circumstances on this earth.


“You will pray about this,” Ellen observed with some amusement. “Do me one favor.”

“Anything,” Daniel replied, meaning it. The woman could see him defrocked, and instead, she was defending him to his own conscience.

“Do not pray for absolution because you asked a friend for one kiss, a kiss that you could ask for from no other. It was just a kiss, Daniel, a lovely, sweet kiss. I thank you for it, in fact. You meant me no dishonor, probably just the opposite.”

“Not probably. I esteem you greatly.”

“And yourself not enough,” she retorted. “Come.” She rose. “As it appears I will be unable to further corrupt you with my florid charms, let us repair to the cider jug and what comforts simple friendship might avail us. We wouldn’t want Olivia to have any pretext for additional righteousness, and we are, after all, merely lonely.”

Ellen was unconcerned about the kiss itself, and perhaps she was right. Walking along beside her, Daniel realized that while Ellen was dear, lovely, and undoubtedly a woman, she was also convenient and discreet enough that he’d likely kissed her more out of desperation than true sexual attraction.

Interesting. Perhaps he’d been the heedless sleeper awakened by the kiss.

When he left Ellen, he was in surprisingly good spirits for a man who had found himself more capable of breaking commandments than he’d known. He was also more capable of accepting the truth than either he, his wife, or his congregation had thought. On the whole, the visit with Ellen had been time well spent, and really, she was right: one kiss did not a lecher make, and with some truth between Daniel and his wife maybe he and Olivia could reach a more appropriate accommodation.

Then he read the correspondence that had come in on the day’s post, and any hope of such a sanguine outcome fled.

***

“Mrs. Banks is protecting someone,” Douglas Allen concluded, watching Fairly prowl around the library of a town house more elegant than any property Douglas would ever own. “I paid her a call to inform her Guinevere is letting the Newcomb woman go—with a glowing reference and some severance, but good riddance to a lazy baggage.”

All of which might have been conveyed to Mrs. Banks in a note, of course. Fairly did not comment to the same effect—didn’t offer any reply—so Douglas forged on.

“Your Mrs. Banks is thin, her eyes suggest she’s not sleeping enough or very well, and she could not stop herself from inquiring after you. The lady is haunted, my friend. I at first suspected she might be carrying your child.”

Douglas had hoped that very thing, in fact.

Fairly wandered the room, looking tired, gaunt, and preoccupied. “But?” He hadn’t rung for tea, hadn’t inquired if Douglas were hungry or thirsty, though he was neither. Mrs. Banks had insisted he partake of her tea tray, and he hadn’t had the heart to refuse her.

“But Mrs. Banks promised me, and I assume she also promised you, that she wouldn’t conceal your own child from you. And as to that, her help would tell you were there signs of a blessed event in the offing.”

And yet, Douglas had had the strong suspicion the quiet, withdrawn Mrs. Banks was hiding something.

Fairly swiped a small carved elephant from an end table. “Some women have few signs early on.”

Fairly was a physician, and yet he was also a man in love. “You are hoping.” And wasn’t that interesting?

His hopeful lordship buffed the little elephant with his palm. “Letty and I parted only a month ago, and without such foolish hopes, I would lose my reason.”

He lowered himself to the hearth across from where Douglas was comfortably ensconced on the couch. The morning was warm, the windows open, the scent of honeysuckle wafting through the library.

Honeysuckle, which, according to Guinevere, symbolized the bonds of love.

Fairly was apparently focused not on the fragrant breeze, but on mental machinations he wasn’t about to share with even his best friend. “I am nigh certain I know whom she’s protecting, but hearing your suspicions is reassuring.”

Never had a reassured man looked so tired and dolorous. “At the very least, she’s protecting you,” Douglas said. “She’s protecting you from the scandal of having a former madam as your viscountess and the mother of your children.”

Fairly rose and half-tossed the elephant onto the mantel beside a small silver angel.

“I was raised the illegitimate son of an impoverished, bigamous lord, and my eyes are different colors. I have been the butt of Society’s unkind impulses since birth, which I now regard as the greatest possible blessing. If I say I am willing to take the risk of censure on behalf of our children, Letty should believe me. My sisters both married into a wealthy family whose scandals make Letty’s past a mere peccadillo, and I’m convinced that family would receive us.”

“Of course we would, which is why I am all the more convinced other interests weigh on Mrs. Banks’s decision to part from you.”

Fairly scrubbed a hand over a tired countenance. His cuffs were turned back, his cravat limp, and his hair tousled. On the sideboard, a single white rose was beginning to lose its petals.

For the first time in Douglas’s experience, David, Viscount Fairly, looked less than exquisite—also entirely human.

“A fellow in Little Weldon assumed liberties with her,” Fairly said, reciting the exact tale Guinevere had conjectured might apply. “The blighter—a damned curate, no less—then confessed their misdeeds to her father, the vicar. As an attempt to coerce Letty into marriage, that ploy failed. Nonetheless, Letty must have been viewed as the sole malefactor, because this despoiler of innocents now holds the living as vicar in Little Weldon, while Letty ended up in your brother’s bed.”

Tangled webs were tedious in the extreme, and yet Fairly was Douglas’s dear friend, of whom he was prodigiously protective, as was Guinevere, as was, for that matter, Rose.

Douglas had not consulted with Sir George or Mr. Bear on the topic, though they were decent fellows and would likely concur.

“Mrs. Banks would have married this curate if she were in love with him.”

Fairly picked up the fireplace poker and tried to balance the handle end of it against his palm, the way a callow young swain tried to balance his damsel’s parasol.

“Perhaps, had she married him amid scandal, this lusty Christian soldier might have lost his post. Or maybe he was promised to another, or maybe she refused him in a fit of pique then regretted it, too late. I do not have the details from her, but Val Windham went scouting out to Little Weldon. The vicar is esteemed by all, and no hint of scandal attaches to his name.”

The poker tilted, nearly drubbing the viscount on his noggin.

“Could the vicar be blackmailing her?”

Fairly set the poker on the mantel, where it did not belong and might roll off to rap his toes. “In what sense? She ought to be blackmailing him.”

“Maybe she has cousins or a grandmother in the country who are ignorant of her former occupation,” Douglas suggested. “The vicar could be extorting money from Mrs. Banks to keep her confidences.”

“Then the vicar would have to know not only that he himself was indiscreet with Letty several years ago, but also of Letty’s situation with your late brother, and at The Pleasure House.”

“Clergy gossip,” Douglas reminded him. “Where else does one hear the most interesting on dits in a small village, if not in the churchyard? The vicar would hear anything anybody in town came across, sooner or later.”

Some of the distracted quality left Fairly’s eyes. The man was shrewd—even in love and wallowing in heartache, he was possessed of shrewdness. “Where else, indeed? This bears thinking about.”

“You do the thinking,” Douglas said, rising. “Sir Regis and I must return to Surrey. We’ve had too much pleasant weather for it to last much longer.”

“Spoken like a man of the land. I trust all is well with your family?”

Small talk, now? Douglas paused at the door, because before he could return to Guinevere’s side, one more salient point remained to be made.

“When I called on Mrs. Banks, she was at first reluctant to admit me to her domicile,” Douglas said. “It occurred to her, as it must with every man who even smiles at her, that I might have been interested in getting under her skirts. Guinevere was wounded like that, and it… it breaks something in a man, to see a woman he cares about unable to live fully because other men have stolen her confidence and self-respect.”

Plainer than that, he could not be when sober, so Douglas made it his exit line, though Fairly accompanied him through the house.

“Gwen lives fully now,” Fairly said, “and even abundantly. My God, she let me deliver her child, and that had to have been terrifying for her.”

She had allowed Fairly to attend the delivery of her child, but Mrs. Banks had provided the greater assistance.

“The child’s arrival was terrifying.” And not only for Guinevere. “But you’re right. She is recovering from difficult years, and recovering beautifully.”

“Because you love her, even when it seemed she turned from you, you loved her.”


Finally. “And you love Letty Banks. Love like that should be tenacious as hell. You are tenacious as hell. Slay her demons, even if you don’t marry her. Hell, slay her demons, and then try to keep her from marrying you.”

Fairly might have offered a deft rejoinder—he excelled at the deft rejoinder. Instead, he handed Douglas his hat, gloves, and riding crop.

“I must first discover what those demons are.”