Once Again a Bride

Fifteen



Finding Holcombe was simple. Harold Wycliffe had kept a record of where each former servant had gone, partly supplied by the Bow Street Runner. Paying a visit to another man’s valet, as Holcombe now was, was somewhat awkward, but Alec managed it the following afternoon, meeting the man in his new master’s front hall. He didn’t bother with preliminaries. “I have come for the key to my uncle’s bedchamber.”

“Why would I have…?”

“You have it.” Alec was certain he’d kept it. It was the sort of small, sneaking thing the man would do. “You may recall what I told you about taking anything that did not belong to you when you left his house. I can summon a magistrate in a matter of…”

“I forgot about the keys,” Holcombe whined. A blusterer and a bully, he collapsed in the face of opposition, as Alec had expected. “I was distraught over Mr. Wylde’s death.”

“Give it to me.” He held out a hand.

“It’s put away, like…”

“Then go and get it.”

Holcombe twitched and grimaced and finally disappeared up the stairs. Alec had begun to wonder what he would do if the man simply did not come back when he returned and held out a small ring of keys. He dropped it into Alec’s hand. “What else did you steal?”

“Steal?” the valet squeaked. “I didn’t steal…”

“Keeping these keys was a theft. What else?”

“Nothing! I swear it on my mother’s life!”

The oath of an inveterate liar, Alec thought. “If I find that you’ve taken anything else, no matter how tiny, you will find yourself on a transport to Australia before you can…”

“Four neckcloths,” Holcombe blurted. “I didn’t see the harm. She didn’t need them, and they was… were brand new.” With the indignation of a liar lied to, he added, “Mr. Henry promised me he’d left me something in his will.”

The venom in his voice on the word “she” extinguished any sympathy Alec might have felt.

Holcombe took a step toward the stairs. “I’ll get them.” He froze. “One’s at the laundry.”

Alec waved this aside. “Keep them.” He wondered if there was anything else that Jem Hanks had not squeezed from this man.

“You’re not going to let her go through Mr. Henry’s things? He’ll turn in his grave, he will, to think of that chit pawing over his…”

Alec grabbed Holcombe’s shirtfront and twisted it in his fist, jerking the valet onto tiptoe. “Should you ever speak of Mrs. Wylde again—and I see no reason for you to do so—you will speak respectfully. Do you understand me?” He shook the man a little.

Red-faced and choking, Holcombe nodded. Alec held him a moment longer to reinforce his point, then thrust him away. Watching him cough and scrabble at the ruins of his neckcloth, Alec marveled again at the outrages his uncle had allowed, even apparently encouraged. He’d gone far, far beyond the line. Alec felt that old brush of fear. Did mental instability run in his father’s family, thanks to his grandmother?

Outside, Alec started to direct his carriage to Charlotte’s, bearing the key in triumph, as it were. But it was nearly six, and he remembered that she was going out with his Aunt Bella tonight.

Which led to another familial puzzle. Why was his aunt taking such trouble over a young woman with no fortune or position in society? Of course, Charlotte was very pleasant company—much more than pleasant. But Aunt Bella never listened to anyone else’s conversation and cared for nothing but her own social standing. Well, and Edward, he supposed, though signs of that were rare. He’d never known her to do a good deed for its own sake. Did she realize how much it annoyed him? That might explain it.

He really ought to go to this rout party. Alec had no doubt that an invitation was among the teetering pile of cream envelopes on the far corner of his desk. He was considered eminently eligible by the eagle-eyed mamas. In previous seasons, he had sometimes enjoyed being sought after. During his first, he had gotten quite puffed up by it, until a friend pointed out that the attention had nothing to do with his person and everything to do with his fortune. That, and familiarity, and his new responsibilities on his father’s death, had taken much of the savor from society for him. To idle away hours in amusement, with the way things stood in the country… Still, he could tell Charlotte about the key, set a time to visit and open the room. Yes, of course he should do that. She would be wondering.

At home, he found Lizzy hanging about in the front hall and immediately suspected mischief. “What are you doing down here?”

“Waiting for you,” she said. “What have you been doing?”

“Where is Frances?”

“Working on her embroidery in the drawing room.” Lizzy seemed uncharacteristically listless. “And Anne has gone to one of her dancing parties.”

“Ah.”

“We could play chess. I know I said it was boring, but…”

“I’m sorry, Lizzy. I’m going out this evening.”

“Oh.”

Lizzy’s lips turned down in the expression that Alec had always thought of as a sulk. Now, he saw sadness in it as well. “I thought I might speak to Aunt Earnton and arrange for you to meet some girls your own age here in town. Rather like Anne is doing.”

Lizzy considered this as if it were a trick. “Dancing classes?”

“No, not until you are older. Just, ah, tea, perhaps or… walking in the park.” He had no idea what activities his aunt might find appropriate for thirteen-year-old girls. And still less what they would wish to do.

“They’d probably be horrid,” Lizzy objected.

“Then you would fit right in.”

She laughed and stuck out her tongue. “I… would like that… I suppose.”

“Good. Now, I am going to change, and then we’ll have dinner together.”

“Just you and me?”

“And Frances, of course.” Lizzy wrinkled her nose, and he frowned at her.

“It’s just… she’s gotten so… lugubrious.”

“So…?”

“It’s from Dr. Johnson’s dictionary. It means gloomy and dismal.”

“It very well may. However, it is not a term you should apply…”

“Charlotte said if you learn a new word every day, before you know it you have a prodigious vocabulary.”

“Did she?” Alec was struck again at how rapidly a bond had formed between Charlotte and his sisters.

Lizzy nodded. “And you will sound very well educated without having to read a lot of tedious old books.”

“Charlotte said that?”

“Well… not exactly.”

“Your own conclusion?”

Lizzy nodded, giving him her dazzling smile. Then she turned to skip up the stairs, her mood seemingly lightened. Alec watched her go with a mixture of fondness and exasperation.

“I am not in the drawing room working on my embroidery, nor am I lugubrious,” said a voice from the darkened reception room opposite. “I am plotting and planning.”

It startled him. “Frances?”

She emerged in the archway. “I came down for a book I left in the library. After Lizzy spoke…” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to… I’ll say embarrass her, though that is rather difficult to do. At any rate, bravo, Alec!”

“For…?”

“Your splendid idea. I should have thought of it myself. Amelia will be only too happy to find Lizzy some companions, I’m sure. Some lovely, calming companions. She has a stake in it, after all. She will be bringing Lizzy out in a few years and responsible for her conduct in society.”

“I thought it a good plan.” Alec was glad to have her confirmation.

“Well done.”

“It wasn’t my idea, it was C… Mrs. Wylde’s,” he added absently.

“Was it?” Frances took a step closer. “You have made it up with her then? Good!”

“There was nothing to make up. Just a misunderstanding.”

“Ah.” She eyed him. “You were calling on her then?”

“Yes. If you’ll excuse me, I want to write a note to Aunt Earnton before I go out.”

“Of course. What are you doing this evening?”

“Aunt Bella is taking Mrs. Wylde to a rout party, and I thought that I… that is…” It suddenly occurred to Alec that he wished to keep his motives to himself.

“I hope you have a very pleasant time.” Frances gave him a sweet smile; her dark blue eyes sparkled up at him. Alec was again struck by the resemblance to Lizzy, which had somehow eluded him for thirteen years. “What are you plotting and planning?”

Her smile broadened, and she laughed. “That would be telling.”

“I can be trusted,” Alec suggested. He remembered Frances’s inquiries about the house near Butterley. “Are you plotting escape?” he added lightly.

“I would never wish to wholly escape my family,” she replied.

This did not precisely answer the question. What did she mean “wholly”? But Frances walked up the stairs without saying any more. As Alec went off to his bedchamber to change and dispatch the note to his Aunt Earnton, he thought perhaps he should call on her as well. His mother’s sister was a woman of infinite resource, and he felt very much in need of her expertise.

***

There was a sagging bench in the narrow back garden of Henry Wylde’s former home. Unpainted, neglected, stuck in a corner behind a shed, it was like the rest of his place had been—awkward and comfortless. But it was hidden from the windows, and so Lucy used it as a place to hide when she wanted to cry.

She hated her need to weep. It made her feel weak and treacherous. But her resistance didn’t make it go away. Every so often, the lump rose in her throat and her eyes burned; circumstances loomed like a great wave rising over her head, ready to crash down and drown her. She just had to slip away and cry it out. The tears didn’t make her feel better, exactly—just less like she was going to burst into a thousand pieces. Her only comfort was that no one knew of her bouts. She couldn’t have borne the mortification.

On this particular evening, she had tiptoed out after readying Miss Charlotte for her evening party and seeing her off in a cab. The others were busy in the kitchen and probably thought she was still working upstairs. She wiped her eyes with her sodden handkerchief and sniffed. But the storm wasn’t over. Tears welled up again and spilled down her cheeks. Hiccupping sobs escaped her. She struggled to suppress them. Above all, she mustn’t be discovered.

As if the fear had brought it, a figure loomed over her in the growing darkness. At first she thought it was Mr. Trask. She leapt to her feet, groping for an excuse.

“Lucy?”

It was Ethan. Was that better or worse than exposure to his grandfather? Worse, Lucy decided. “What are you doing here?” It came out choked and sullen. But why was he creeping about, sneaking up on people? He didn’t even live here, though you wouldn’t know it half the time.

“You’re crying.” He sounded shocked.

“I’m n-not.” And then of course she was, harder than ever. She turned away. But he was blocking her escape to the house.

Ethan stood there, a great hulking lump, then he took a step forward and enfolded her in his arms.

Lucy froze. Obviously, she should shove him off and give him a blistering earful for his impudence. But the relief of those strong arms around her, the broad shoulder right there, seemingly designed to support her aching head, were so very tempting. And then his hand began to gently stroke her hair. “There now. What is it?”

Ethan held her without stiffness, without intrusion, as if there was nothing in the world he’d rather do. His hand moved softly on her hair, rhythmic and soothing.

Something broke open inside Lucy, and she let go the tears she had been trying to hold in. She didn’t understand what was happening at all. All she knew was—his touch magically made the crying a true release instead of a useless storm of emotion. She couldn’t resist. She gave herself up to the embrace, and leaned on him, and cried. His great, gentle hands held and comforted her. His body felt like a shield against every harm. The part of her that doubted and argued was stilled. Nothing seemed to exist but the two of them in the soft dark.

Some unmeasured time later, Lucy found herself sitting beside Ethan on the bench, his arm encircling her, her body tucked tight against him as if it had always belonged there. “Now, tell me,” he said. “If anybody’s hurt you, I swear I’ll…”

“No. It’s nothing like that. It’s stupid…” Lucy’s embarrassment over her weakness crept back. She had never been a weepy, clinging female, and she wasn’t about to start in.

“No, it isn’t,” Ethan declared.

Unable to help herself, Lucy blurted it out. “I heard your grandparents talking about going home. I didn’t know they were… temporary, like. I mean, if I’d ’a thought for a second. A ’course they want to go back to the country. Anyone would. It’s just I’ll miss them so…” Almost as much as she missed the countryside herself. She broke off, clenching her jaw. She would not cry anymore.

“Ah,” was all Ethan said.

She couldn’t see his expression in the dimness. Suddenly, she was afraid to say any more. She wriggled a little away, but his arm pulled her close again.

“I asked them to come as a favor,” he said. “I couldn’t stand the notion of you all alone here.”

The lump came back in Lucy’s throat.

“But they will be going home, it’s true. They’re not in service anymore, and they deserve their rest. I’ll have to be looking for somebody else.”

“It’s not your job to find…”

“I got to take care of you, Lucy!” The force in his voice stunned her. “I… I love you. I do.”

Lucy stared up at him. Though she could barely see his face, she could feel his sincerity in the hard lines of his body, the tremor in his arm around her shoulders.

Ethan spoke faster, nearly babbling. “I reckon Sir Alexander will give me the forester job. Old Elkins wants me to have it, and there’s no reason he wouldn’t listen to him. Can’t see why Hobbs—he’s the steward—would fight it. Would you marry me, Lucy, and come live in Derbyshire? There’s a cottage, with a garden and all. It’s a right lovely spot.”

Lucy’s head spun. Feelings she’d denied or ignored when she thought Ethan was only flirting broke free, like water from a burst dam. Tenderness, desire, trust, love—yes, love—flooded through her.

“Lucy?” Great hulking Ethan Trask sounded nervous as a boy. “We’d be happy there. I know we would. I’d do my utmost to make sure you had everything you wanted.”

She turned under his arm, gazed up at him. The moon was just peeking over the top edge of the garden wall, and she could make out his face now, despite the growing darkness. He looked scared, and that touched her heart as nothing else could have done. Her arms slid around his neck. Ethan bent his head and pulled her even closer. Their lips met, and the touch vibrated through Lucy’s whole being, set her afire. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced. The kiss paused, and renewed, even more intense. It shook her to the very soul. She gave herself up to him and to her own desire. Ethan’s hands strayed over her, leaving trails of warmth along her skin, bringing more and more of her to pulsing life. Lucy lost herself and the world in his embrace.

At long, long last, they pulled back a little. Lucy gazed up at him, open in all ways. “I’m thinking that’s a yes,” said Ethan, sounding as shaken as she felt.

She laughed, trembling and suffused with heat. She could stay here forever, she thought, encircled by his arms. And then reality came rushing back. “I’d have to leave Miss Charlotte here alone.” Lucy’s elation died. She had cared for Charlotte Rutherford since she was a child who’d just lost her mother. It was more than simple duty. There was a bond between them older than the new one with Ethan. His promise of a different life came at the cost of someone else’s suffering. Lucy couldn’t bear that. Life stretched out bleak before her once more.

“Maybe we could fix that,” Ethan said.

“Fix… what do you mean?”

He hesitated.

“Oh, Ethan, what could we do? I’m trapped and no mistake.” She hated thinking of Miss Charlotte in that way, but the fact was, in this moment, she did. She threw herself back into his arms and huddled there. He held her.

***

Strolling into the rout party, Alec found it like a hundred others. Musicians played unheeded in the largest reception room; in another, young women were taking it in turn to show off their musical talents, and their shapely arms, at the pianoforte. Older guests hunched over their hands in the card room; servants laid out a lavish buffet. And everywhere people talked and talked. He’d often wondered where society found the words night after night to generate this roar of conversation.

He moved through the rooms looking for Charlotte, often obliged to stop and respond to acquaintances’ greetings. He barely avoided having to listen to a deb warble the latest ballad. He glimpsed Aunt Bella and her cronies interrogating some hapless fellow beside a potted palm. God help the man if he was trying to conceal a juicy bit of gossip from them. He’d begun to wonder whether Charlotte had decided not to come when he spotted her sitting with Edward and his friends. As usual, they had established a corner bastion of chairs and coaxed their own supply of champagne from the servants.

Charlotte wore a gown he hadn’t seen before, of some glistening coppery stuff—silk, he thought—that echoed her eyes and hair and made her a gorgeous monotone save for a necklace of green beads. It ought to be emeralds, Alec thought; emeralds to rival the sparkle of her gaze.

He made his way slowly through the crowd, watching Charlotte laugh and sip her champagne. He’d never seen her look this carefree. The realization rankled so sharply that he stopped and took a grip on his reactions. Her smile looked so natural, the tilt of her head so relaxed. She leaned back in her chair, the lines of her body open and enticing. She’d never appeared so happy with him, never listened to him as eagerly as she seemed to one of Edward’s vacuous friends. Was she shallow, after all? And why should that make him angry?

It didn’t. He wasn’t angry. He stepped closer.

“So she brought us all along to see for ourselves that the drawing room was haunted,” one of the men was saying. “And the cloth on a small table was moving in and out, with an eerie buzzing sound, just as she’d said. So Tony walks over and flips up the cloth, and there’s his bulldog, fast asleep underneath.”

“Buster always snored like a steam engine,” said another man—Tony presumably, chiming in on his cue—and was rewarded with peals of laughter.

Alec let it die down before closing the last little distance to the group. “Good evening.” Edward glanced up at him. Alec was sure that he’d been aware of his arrival and ignored it.

“You all know my cousin Alec,” Edward said carelessly. “Alec, I think you’re acquainted with everyone.”

He’d met them. He always forgot their names. He supposed that was as rude as Edward’s careless greeting, but it was difficult to see it that way.

“Oh, except…” Edward gestured toward two girls who didn’t look familiar.

“Mary Simmons and Susan Blake,” supplied one of the women. Elliott, that was it. She was married to the plump man. The other couple was called Billings. He couldn’t recall the names of the remaining two men, the storytellers. Well, one was Tony, obviously. Uninvited, Alec snagged a nearby chair and brought it to their circle. He headed for a place next to Charlotte, but Miss Simmons and Miss Blake quickly moved to make room for him between them, while Edward draped an arm across the back of Charlotte’s seat, clearly refusing to yield the spot. Alec set his jaw, reined in his temper once again, and sat.

“Alec who?” said Miss Simmons, and giggled. “Edward didn’t tell us your last name, the naughty boy.”

“Wylde,” he supplied. Here was a girl whose name his cousin couldn’t recall referring to him as Edward, as if they’d known each other since childhood. It represented all he disliked about his cousin’s set.

“Ooh, and are you?” breathed Miss Blake. She giggled as well.

Someone should take away her champagne for her own good, Alec thought, and then wondered if he was becoming an intolerable prig.

“Practically worthless,” Charlotte said to Edward. She had to be referring to his uncle’s collections.

“You don’t have any champagne,” observed Miss Simmons. “Tony, he has no champagne!”

Alec strained to hear what else Charlotte was saying. Edward leaned toward her and spoke too low to overhear. He became conscious of a desire to throttle his cousin.

“He’ll have to snag himself a glass,” said Tony. “Can’t pour it down his throat.” He waggled the bottle, and the two girls dissolved in giggles.

He should have told her not to tell anyone, or… the truth would discourage robbery, he supposed. And what harm could it do? The real problem was, he hated to see Charlotte in such intimate conversation with… anyone else. He burned to pull her to her feet and take her away from Edward.

This wouldn’t do. He would not be ruled by irrational feelings—still less stage a spectacle for all to see. He could just imagine the turning heads, the whispers. Aunt Bella would be in the front rank; how she would love it if he made a fool of himself. Damn the girl! Why must she laugh that way, with her head thrown back, her lovely throat exposed as if for kisses? Kisses he could almost feel burning on his own…

Alec realized that the plump Mr. Elliott was speaking to him across Miss Simmons. “Believe you were at Eton with my brother,” he repeated.

“Oh, ah, yes?”

“John Elliott. Cricket.”

Translating this laconic statement, Alec remembered playing with his brother on the school eleven. He hadn’t known him well outside the playing fields.

“Alec here was a cracking bowler,” Mr. Elliott told the others. “Mainly thanks to him we trounced Harrow at Lord’s three years running.”

Everyone looked at him. What did one reply to that kind of statement? “Er, how is John?”

“Married, and getting fat, like me,” the man laughed.

“I have never truly understood cricket,” said Miss Simmons, leaning in and breathing champagne in his face. “Do explain it to me.”

Alec managed to refrain from telling her that he would rather slit his throat. “Is this your first Season in London?” he replied instead. Unsurprised by her affirmative, he asked if she was enjoying it. It was like winding a clock; she ran on and on, leaving Alec free to watch Charlotte and plot a kidnapping.

Tony went for more champagne. An older woman came and extricated Miss Blake, looking as if she wanted to take her by the ear. Edward turned to speak to Mrs. Billings on his other side. Alec seized the opportunity. “Some sensible soul has opened a window. Would you care to get some air?” he asked Charlotte.

“It is hot, isn’t it?”

Taking this as agreement, he stood, offered a hand, and urged her to her feet. Maintaining possession, he pulled her arm through his and navigated a path to the open French doors. “You didn’t mention that you were coming tonight,” she said.

“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.” He kept walking—through the doors and out onto a flagstone terrace. Other couples strolled there, taking advantage of the night air. Lanterns made pools of light in the gardens.

“Oh, it’s lovely.” Charlotte raised her eyes. “The moon’s up.” She took a deep breath. “Something in the garden smells wonderful. I’ll have to ask Mr. Trask about planting some of it, now that it’s May. I want lots of fragrant things like this.” She breathed deeply again.

Alec felt the rise and fall of her torso against his arm. Heat brushed his skin like trailing fingers. Without thought, he pressed closer. Charlotte looked up at him and smiled.

A man could fall into those copper eyes, he thought, and never come out again. It would be easy and delicious—and dangerous. He said the first thing that came into his head. “I got the key from Holcombe. He had kept it, as we suspected.”

Charlotte’s smile faded. “Oh… good.”

The enthusiasm had left her voice, and he cursed himself for an idiot. He could have talked about gardens or any other damned thing.

“I suppose you’ll bring it by,” she added tonelessly.

“I thought tomorrow,” he said.

“All right.”

“It would seem to me that…”

“Shall we rejoin the group?”

Alec cursed silently again. “Don’t you find them rather tedious?” Irritation made his voice too sharp. He retained possession of her arm and did not move.

“No. Why would I?”

“Well…” Because they are, was the only reply that occurred to Alec.

“They’re kind and amusing… and restful.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“They never talk about anything… lowering. And they don’t… require anything of me. I don’t have to think about Henry or what I am going to do. They make me laugh.”

Alec got the point. He was the one who reminded her of her problems, and did depress her spirits. But Edward was just as much Henry Wylde’s nephew as he. Why didn’t some of that stigma apply to him? “Edward’s set is rather fast, you know.” He’d planned to talk to her about this at some point, but not in such a self-righteous tone.

Charlotte shrugged.

Alec knew he should stop himself, but he couldn’t. “Their company could damage your reputation. You should take care to…”

“My reputation as a duped and penniless widow?” she interrupted. “With no prospects or real connection to society?”

“You exaggerate…”

“Here as a result of Lady Isabella’s charity?” Her voice had grown sharp. A woman nearby turned to gaze at them.

“I would hardly call it…”

“Am I not entitled to a bit of amusement?” Charlotte broke in again. “I don’t see why you should begrudge me that.”

“I do not!”

She tugged at his arm, forcing him to move toward the open door—or create a scene for the avid eyes around them. “It doesn’t seem too much to ask. I cannot see the harm in a few amusing stories, a… respite from the problems that, yes, must be addressed.” She sounded near tears. Alec felt as if someone had punched him in the chest. He wanted to argue that she was being unfair, and he wanted to sweep her up and remind her that they’d shared a kiss that was far from being a “problem.” Except that it was. He hated this roiling mixture of emotions that tied his tongue.

They stepped through the doors, into the heat and roar of chatter. Charlotte freed her arm; he had to let her.

“I will see you tomorrow. At one, perhaps?” She gave him a stiff nod and turned to walk back to Edward’s group. From across the room, Alec’s cousin smiled in triumph.