Kitabı oku: «Regency Society Collection Part 1», sayfa 38

Chapter Seventeen

Tony woke as the earth tipped out from under him, and he landed face first on the floor of the study.

‘Rise and shine, Smythe.’ Stanton’s voice was disgustingly cheerful as he dropped the wing chair with a crash, next to Tony’s prone body.

‘What the devil…You bastard!’ Light came streaming in the windows as his visitor yanked aside the velvet curtains. The sunlight was blinding, stabbing into his brain, as he tried to focus on the figure in silhouette against the morning sun.

‘And a pleasant good morning to you, as well. You missed our regular appointment. Twice. To prevent your missing it a third time, I have come to you.’ St John stared down at him in bemusement. ‘I have seen better things than you stuck to the bottom of my boot after a night in Whitechapel. And smelled better as well. For God’s sake, man, pull yourself together. There is work to be done.’

‘I resign.’

‘I am not totally sure that that would be permitted. While you have not technically enlisted, I might still find a way to court-martial you. Perhaps not. Thieves in the army are usually flogged or hanged. Do you have a preference?’

‘Why don’t you just shoot me and get it over with?’

‘Very well, then.’ And before Tony could process the action, St John produced a pistol and put a bullet into the wall next to him.

Tony rolled to the left, covering his head with his hands as the sound of the shot echoed in his ears. ‘What the hell are you doing in my house, firing a weapon? Are you mad? The ball missed my head by inches. You could have killed me.’

St John righted the wing chair and sat in it, arms folded. ‘The ball missed you by several feet, just as I intended. I am an excellent shot, especially at such close range. But I am pleased to see you have recovered the will to live.’ He gestured to the wreckage of the room. ‘And the ball in the woodwork is the least of the problems here. Explain this, please.’

Tony looked at the mess he had made of the room. The mirror was broken, and Patrick had not bothered to replace it. It was just as well, for he had a fair idea of what he must look like after who knew how long without a razor or change of linen. He did not need to see his reflection.

Broken glasses littered the cold fireplace, and empty bottles littered the floor. Patrick had continued to bring the bottles for a while, after refusing him glasses, and hiding the windows behind the curtains so as to remove temptation. And now he refused him brandy, hoping to starve him out. It had made Tony so angry that he’d thrown a small table at the head of his retreating servant.

And missed. He glanced at the chipped plaster of the wall and the pieces of broken table on the floor below it. ‘When you came, did I still have a servant to let you in?’

‘Yes. Patrick is most concerned about you. He sent me up alone and told me not to turn my back on you if there was anything left for you to throw. Now tell me, what happened to this room?’

‘A woman,’ Tony said with finality.

‘On the contrary, my man, I think it was you who did it.’

‘A woman happened to me, you idiot. And I happened to the room.’

‘What a relief. I thought it might be serious. Get yourself a bath and a shave and another woman. And then get back to work.’

‘There are no other women. None but her,’ Tony said sourly.

St John sighed. ‘May the good Lord spare me from melodrama. Are we all to suffer for your broken heart? Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Wellford was miles above you, in case you hadn’t noticed. I don’t see why—’

‘How did you know?’ Tony demanded.

‘Let me see.’ St John tapped his chin. ‘Perhaps it is because I am a spy, you moron. I set you to watch her. You were nervous when I suggested it. You have been distraught since the moment the project was completed. And you look like a gaffed flounder whenever I mention her name. As I was saying, the Dowager Duchess? I am most relieved to find that she had no part in any of this. She is a lovely girl. A favourite of my wife’s. What I’d have told Esme if I’d had her friend arrested for treason, I cannot say. And they are both quite angry with me for my part in this, although I expect to find forgiveness in time.

‘Tony…’ his tone became quiet and sympathetic ‘…Constance is charming, pleasant and totally out of your league. Far be it from me to let the cold light of day into your tragic fancy. While you have enough money to support a wife and a brood of little Smythes in sufficient comfort, I would suggest you choose a woman who is not a renowned beauty, accustomed to a thirty-room mansion and a coronet. Unless you wish to spend the rest of your life tossing furniture against the walls of a darkened room.’

Tony sat on the floor, trying not to notice the shambles he’d made of his life. He’d held on to the dream for so long that it had seemed quite natural, when the moment came, to have Connie fall eagerly into his arms. He’d had no trouble believing what he’d wanted to believe, that there was much more to it than there actually had been. He’d been a glamorous diversion, and an answer to so many of her problems, that she had succumbed to temptation, only to regret it later.

Perhaps, if he had taken time to court her, instead of simply seducing her, she’d have taken the whole thing more seriously. Perhaps not. It was a bit late to un-ring that particular bell.

And now Stanton was staring at him, waiting for a response. If he did not think of her, or the last few weeks, or any of the foolish assumptions he’d had over the last thirteen years…If he could focus on the task immediately in front of him, he would be able to move forwards, and put some space between himself and the whole situation.

He pulled himself up to his feet, leaning on the corner of the mantel. He could feel the brandy still fogging his brain and muffling the sound of his last argument with Constance, as it echoed endlessly in his head. Perhaps, if he had something to do with his time and kept very busy, he could ignore it all together.

Perhaps he would fall off an ivy trellis or out of a window somewhere and never have to think of anything again. But he could not stay locked up in his rooms, alone with the knowledge that the dream that had sustained him for many lonely years was over.

He brushed imaginary dust from his stained shirt, and lifted a stubbled chin to his guest. ‘Very well, then. I’ve made an ass of myself, and you have seen it. But the worst of it is over, I think. If you still wish to employ me, then give me time to bathe, shave and change. And then tell me what you want taken.’

St John smiled as if nothing unusual had occurred. ‘Good man.’

‘Susan, you know I don’t take milk in my tea.’

Her maid looked at her with guilty eyes. ‘I thought perhaps, your Grace, you might wish to try something more fortifying. Now that autumn is here, I mean. It wouldn’t do to take a chill.’

‘Fortifying.’ She looked at the tea. It was wretched stuff, but Susan was right. It was probably more nourishing. She took a sip.

Susan added, ‘If you are not feeling well, your Grace, there is a lady in Cheapside that sells certain herbs. And when brewed up in a tea, these tend to clear up the sort of malady that you might be coming down with.’

‘No!’ Her hand went instinctively to cover her belly. She relaxed. ‘I am sorry, Susan. I did not mean to shout so. You were right the first time to put milk in my tea. No matter how I might complain, it is good for me. And perhaps an egg and a bit of dry toast. Could you bring it to my room? I do not feel like going downstairs until I am sure that I will not be sick.’

There was no point in pretending any more with Susan, who knew her cycle almost as well as she did herself. She was two months gone with child.

‘Very good, your Grace. But…’ Susan left the statement open. She dare not ask the question, but she wanted an answer, all the same. Something must be done. They must leave London and retire quietly to the country where she could have the babe in secret. Or she must take the herbs and end it.

‘Please, Susan. A little breakfast, perhaps.’

‘Very good, your Grace.’

Her maid left the room, and she turned to the window, staring out into the garden. The trellis below her was bare, and she could see that it had been as if she had installed a ladder to her bedroom window. The garden gate and wall were still an easy climb, although the garden had less cover than when it had been in full bloom.

She closed her eyes, trying to imagine him making his way across it. It wouldn’t happen, of course. She had seen nothing of him for a month and a half. Even when she had gone out in public, the most she’d heard was someone mentioning that Anthony Smythe had just been in attendance, but had retired early. Or was expected, but seemed to be late.

He was avoiding her. And she could hardly blame him.

Fortunately, other men were not. Endsted had returned, and renewed his attentions with a kind of plodding respectability that rekindled her hopes for the future. And other, more eligible, men were more respectful, now that Barton was no longer warning off suitors and spreading rumours about her.

Of course, in a few short months, everyone would know that the rumours were true. If she wished to marry well, she needed to act quickly to put an end to the pregnancy. It was just as her own mother would have told her to do, had anything stood between her and her goal.

And it was the sensible thing to do, she reminded herself. She had proved her fertility to herself, at least. She could hint to any man who showed serious interest that she had reason to believe the problems getting an heir were her late husband’s and not her own. She could find another peer, and resume her status in society. She could have her comfortable old life back. But this time she might have children, as well as a husband.

She wrapped her arms around her stomach. Or she could go to Tony, and never be content again. She would spend her life alternately terrified by his job, and frustrated by his carefree attitude about the risks and his unwillingness to share everything that was in his heart or his mind. She might never have his full heart, and perhaps some day he would leave her to chase the dream woman he longed for. But when he came to her at night, she would have his undivided attention.

And she would not have a family in the future. She would have the baby she’d always wanted. The one that was growing in her now would be warm in her arms in a few months, smiling up at her, with his father’s smile. And no matter what might happen, she would love them both with her whole heart, for how could she help but do otherwise?

Susan returned with the tray, setting it gently down upon the bed.

‘Thank you, Susan. I am sure that I will feel much better after a little breakfast. And I will not be wanting any herbs.’ She looked at her maid. ‘I have waited too long for this. No matter what, I will not end it.’

Susan looked at her with pity. The poor abandoned duchess and her bastard. How could she explain that it was only pride keeping her from doing what she had promised?

Pride and the whirlwind of emotions that caught at her, every time she looked at the future. She had thought it would be easier to send him away than to keep him close. But life without him was every bit as hard as life with him had been.

She had told him it was over, and she’d regretted it the moment the words had been out of her mouth. She had finally managed to make him angry. He had shouted so. And his words had been so bitter. It was not, as she had expected, the cavalier agreement that the time had come to part. She had cut him to the heart in one stroke.

She’d cut herself as well. She had stood, frozen, watching him go. Wanting to call him back, even as he stepped through the window.

Every night since, she’d thought of him, burning hot and cold, with desire, or remorse, or longing, or the strange sensations coursing through her body that she had come to know as pregnancy.

She was having his child. Even better, their child. She could no more end it than she would end her own life. To be able to have something so precious, a gift that he had not wanted to give her, for fear that it would ruin her. Even then, he’d cared more for her reputation than he did his own pleasure. He’d left a bit of himself behind for her to keep, after vowing that he would protect her, and the babe, if it came to that.

He had never said he loved her. But did she really need to hear the words, if he would behave thus?

How could she have been so blind? He might not love her with the grand passion she wished, but he cared for her in all the ways that mattered.

She loved him, with a dizzying, soul-wrenching intensity that was nothing like the warm glow she had felt for Robert. And doubted that she could bring herself to marry another, no matter what Tony might feel for her.

Constance reached beneath her pillow for the strip of linen, hidden there. A man’s cravat, carefully folded, hidden where she could touch it, when the night was dark and she was feeling most alone. If she could bring herself to admit that she had been wrong, and persuade him to forgive her, she might never be alone again.

‘Susan,’ she called. ‘Lay out my clothes. I am going out.’

Chapter Eighteen

Patrick announced her, and she entered the study more hesitantly than she had the last time she’d needed a favour from him. She was dressed differently as well. Where she had come to seduce before, today she was attired modestly: the low square neck of her bodice filled with a fichu, the skirt of the dress cut so that it revealed nothing of the changes already taking place in her body.

Tony was sitting at his desk, papers spread out in front of him, but he rose as she entered. She thought she detected a rush in the movements, as though he was caught off guard and took a moment to control his actions, before she noticed. ‘Your Grace?’

He gestured her to the chair in front of the desk and then seated himself again. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ There was no trace of irony in his voice. There was no emotion of any kind.

‘Do I really need a reason to visit, after what we have known together?’

He looked at her. ‘In a word, yes. It has taken me several weeks to recover from our last discussion, and I have no wish to be unnecessarily reminded of it.’ He was staring at her body. ‘Unless…’

‘I have come to say that I am sorry.’ She hung her head.

He looked at her with concern. ‘Your Grace, you are white as a sheet. A drink, perhaps?’ He turned to the decanter on the desk and his glass next to it, and sighed. He finished the contents in a gulp. Then he wiped the rim and poured her a small brandy.

She found it an oddly fastidious gesture, from one who had known her so intimately. She took the glass, sniffed at the brandy, and felt her stomach roll. She set it down untasted. ‘I was wrong to leave you with the impression that I viewed your visits as unwelcome, or that I felt them to be a duty or an obligation, or anything that might be construed as a repayment of debt.’

‘Thank you,’ he said softly. ‘That is something, at least.’

‘It was just that, with the threats and the stress of the debts, and not knowing how to go on, I was not myself.’

His gaze was flat and sceptical.

‘I am normally a most proper and respectable person,’ she continued. ‘Although you would not know it by my behaviour when alone with you. Had it not been for circumstances, I am sure I would never have behaved as shamelessly as I had, or as abominably as I did in ending it.’

He rose. ‘And now you have quite undone any good you did before. If you wish to discount your behaviour with me as an aberration, then it is better we remain apart to avoid disappointment. If we are together again, either you will be horrified by your continued deviance, or I will be crushed by the lack of it. Please leave me, now. Unless…’ he stared at her ‘…there is any other reason for you coming here.’

She was afraid to meet his gaze. ‘There is another thing. I know that you made me promise to not trouble you on that account, but I cannot help it. While I am relieved to know that you do not steal for no reason, so much of your life is kept in secret. Have you never considered another career? I knew you would be angry, and that it is hardly a point of pride for me to intercede. But I have gone to my nephew, and enquired after a position for you. He needs a man of business to run his estates and prevent him from being as ninnyhammered as he was when he lost my house. And you are quite the smartest man I know.’ She laid the sheet of parchment in front of him.

He glared up at her. ‘You were enquiring after honest employment for me?’

‘Yes, Tony.’

‘Was there anything in our brief interaction that led you to believe that I might welcome a change of career?’

‘Well, no, Tony.’

‘And did I not specifically request that you never trouble me on the subject, and tell you that I had no intention to change for you or any other?’

She stared at the floor. She had promised. She had sworn to him that it would not matter, and, by asking, she was forswearing herself. She raised her chin to look into his eyes. ‘I understand. I am sorry. It was not my place.’

He stared back at her and she felt her lip begin to tremble. She wished she could turn and run, and not say the rest of the words she would have to say, before this could be over. ‘Tony.’ She tried a small sip of the brandy, but it did nothing to improve her nerves.

He held out a hand for the paperwork. ‘Do not look at me so. Give me the paper. I can at least read it, although I suspect you have heard my final answer on the subject.’

He took the papers away from her and sat back down at the desk, feet flat on the floor. Then he removed a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of his coat, brushed them absently against his lapel to clean them, and put them on. He leaned forward, resting his chin on his elbows, tossing his head to get the hair out of his eyes. ‘No, no. This will never do. You’ll have me counting sheep in the country for your half-witted nephew, so that you can have the comfort of knowing I lead a poor but honest life. It is not going to happen, no matter what your motives.’

And as she stared at him, the memory came flooding back to her. He had done the same in his house, and in hers, in chapel and in the library. She had always seen him thus, from the time he had learned to read, until she had left home and forgotten him. Anywhere that there was something to be read, she was liable to trip over him, polishing his spectacles and muttering over the paper. And some part of her mind assumed, should she go home, he would be there still, sitting under a tree in the garden, conjugating Latin and declaiming in Greek.

The brandy glass slipped from her hand and shattered on the desk. ‘Eustace Smith.’

Without looking up he said, ‘Connie, if you must insist on breaking the glassware, I’ll leave you to explain it to Patrick. And I can assure you that I do not need menial employment, so you can take your offer with you. Or better yet, leave it and I will pass it on to my niece’s new husband. Much more in his line, I think. He has a fine head on his shoulders, unlike your nephew the duke, and will soon have the estate put to right.’

‘Eustace? It is you, isn’t it?’ She stood and planted her hands on the desk in front of him. ‘Little Eustace Smith who used to live next door to me?’

When he looked up into her eyes, he was smiling, the smile of her lover, Tony Smythe. ‘There was nothing little about me, even then.’

She swallowed hard at the memory of him.

‘I have always been six months older than you, although you never noticed the fact. You were too busy dangling after my brothers, or the neighbours, or the duke.’

The words wounded her, for it made her feel like a fortune hunter, or, worse yet, the foolish young girl she had been.

‘You were most interested in anyone else but me, as I remember it,’ he reminded her.

Although the smile hid it, she could hear the pain in his voice, as though the wound was fresh. And perhaps it was, for she had been intimate with him, had loved him, and still not seen him for who he was.

‘Oh, Eustace…’ the name stuck on her tongue and she forced it out ‘…I am so sorry. So very sorry, not to have known it was you.’

He looked at her sharply. ‘I have never favoured the name Eustace, nor has it favoured me.’

‘But…but it is you, isn’t it? To see you sitting there with your head in your hands, you are just as I remember you. Why didn’t you say something?’

‘So that I could listen to you dismiss me as “little Eustace”? Not a memory I needed to renew. Perhaps if you had recognised me. But there seemed to be no risk of that.’

She stared into his face as he peered at her from over his glasses and wondered how she could not have seen it. He looked very like his handsome older brothers. She blushed to remember that she had been quite taken with the older Smiths. ‘You do not wear your glasses any more?’

‘I only ever needed them to read, and that was all I ever did, when you knew me last. Now I do so much of my work in the dark, glasses are really quite useless. It is easier to operate by touch.’

She blushed, remembering how good he was in the dark, when operating by touch. ‘It was a very long time ago. And you are most different than you were.’

He sighed. ‘And you are very much the same as I remember. Every bit as beautiful as when you left home. And still in search of a title. How goes the husband hunt?’

‘Better than it had been, now that Barton is out of the way.’ Her voice was a little tart. ‘I have you to thank, for clearing the way for more honourable men.’

He looked tired. ‘I would have removed Barton, in any case. But it pleases me you benefited from it.’

‘So when you took the deed for me?’

‘I was helping out an old friend.’

‘And I am just an old friend to you?’

He looked at her long and hard. ‘If that is what you wish. But I suspect that you came here for a matter more personal than friendship. Enough nonsense, Connie. I was right in my surmise, was I not? You were not to blame for the barren union at all.’

She shook her head.

‘Have you come to torment me with the knowledge that by removing Barton, I have helped clear the path for some other man? Or do you need me, again? Have you come as you promised to? Come, out with it. What is the truth?’

She nodded. She needed him again, to fix yet another problem. He must be terribly tired of women in distress to look after and change one’s plans for. He had just got free of his sisters, and now he would be saddled with her. And when she opened her mouth to speak, she sobbed.

He rose from behind the desk quickly and caught her in his arms. ‘I am sorry that I spoiled your plans to catch another peer. I know you do not want me, and that I am not nearly good enough for you.’ His voice was rough. ‘But if you are carrying my child, I really must insist.’ He swallowed, and when he spoke his tone was strong and confident again. ‘Let me take care of you.’

‘No.’

He stiffened against her.

‘I am honoured that you will have me. But I am so sorry, Tony. So very, very sorry. I do not want you to have to take care of me, yet again. It is not fair to you, to never have what you want, but to have your future forced upon you by a foolish woman. Once you have married me, you need hardly take care of me at all. I will not be a bother. And I will do my best to take care of you.’ She erupted in a fresh bout of tears.

‘There now, do not cry.’

‘I cannot help it. I cry at every little thing, I am sick in the morning, tired during the day, restless at night.’ She sobbed into the wool of his coat. ‘And I was afraid to come here, but afraid to stay away.’

‘You have nothing to be afraid of, any more.’ He was stroking her hair and holding her tight against him. ‘Everything will be all right, if you will just say yes to me. Everything. I promise.’

‘You warned me this would happen. But I wanted you, and I wanted a baby as well, no matter the consequences. And then I forgot all about the risks and wanted to feel what I felt whenever I was with you. I did not think what it might be like for the poor baby to have such a fool for a mother, or care that you would not want to marry.’

‘When did I ever say that?’

‘You said you loved elsewhere. And you would marry me for the sake of the child. I have been in such a marriage, Tony, and do not want another.’

‘Were you so unhappy with the duke?’ His voice was strange in her ear, shaky and hoarse. ‘I always told myself that you were happy, and had what was best for you. And that I needn’t concern myself.’

‘After a fashion. I was fond of him, and he of me. We did comfortably together. And I did not love him, so it did not hurt so very much when he grew bored with me and visited with other women.’

‘My poor darling.’ He stroked her hair again.

‘Now you will marry me, because you promised to. And I will be happy. I have always wanted children. Always. I will be very happy. And I will be a good mother, and a good wife to you.

‘But some day you will say you are going to your club, but you will not come home. And I will lie alone in my bed, knowing that you have gone to her, and because I love you, but you can love only one woman, I fear it will break my heart.’ She let loose with a fresh batch of tears.

He wrapped his arms even tighter around her, and waited for the sobbing to abate, passing her his handkerchief. ‘You love me that much, do you?’

‘Mnnnhmmm.’

‘And you sent me away because…’

‘It was foolish of me to fall in love with you. I could not keep you, and I could not control myself when you held me in your arms. I only ever felt alive when I was with you. The longer I kept you, the more I wanted you, and the more disgracefully I would behave to keep you with me, and the harder it would be to let you go. And it was already too late.’

The tears were ready to start again, but before they could, he kissed her and, for a moment, she forgot what it was that she was crying about.

‘There, now. No more tears. Lay your head on my other shoulder where it is dry and comfortable, for the coat on the right is cried through to the shirt front.’ He kissed her temple. ‘Better?’

She nodded.

‘Then I have a riddle. If I loved one woman my whole life, which is as long as I’ve known you, but she would look right through me if she saw me on the street, and she is as lovely and as far above me and unattainable as you are yourself, and I have kept myself apart from matrimony, until now, hoping for a miracle, can you not guess the identity of my great undying passion, the love of my life, the woman I would brave oceans and fight lions, and crawl in and out of three-storey windows to steal deeds for?’

She held very still, hoping he would just tell her what she wanted to hear. It couldn’t be. But it must be, for he would never tease her so, if it weren’t.

‘And yet I was terrified to tell you the truth. I could not speak to you when we were children, and I could not speak to you now. There was only ever room in my heart for you, Constance. But if fate had not forced my hand, I might have been fool enough to let you marry someone else.’

She laid her hand on his arm and whispered. ‘Do not think of it, again. Now that I have found you, there can be no other man for me, Anthony Smythe.’ She furrowed her brow. It was not his true name, though she would always think of him thus. She tried again. ‘I mean, Eu—’

He winced and covered her mouth with his fingers. ‘Connie? Before you speak, let me warn you that it will spoil a lifetime of fantasy if you ever again call me by my given name. I did not take you to bed wishing to make you cry “oh, Eustace” loudly enough for the neighbours to hear.’

He had called her Connie. No one called her Connie any more. Not even Robert. But to her true friends she had always been Connie. She snuggled into the warmth of his shoulder, feeling safe, and it made her smile.

‘If we have a boy, I’ll hear no nonsense of naming him after his father. My mother fought to defend my brothers from that fate, but when it came to me, she no longer cared to be bothered, and let my father christen me Eustace Anthony after himself.’

‘We will name him Anthony,’ she murmured. ‘After his father. It is a wonderful name. I am quite fond of it.’

‘Very good.’ He reached behind her knees and scooped her up into his arms. ‘And now we will adjourn to the bedroom, where you can tell me that bit again, about how losing me would break your heart. Not that you ever will, of course.

‘And perhaps later, we might go to Bond Street and choose a ring fitting worthy of a former duchess.’

‘You needn’t, really,’ she whispered. ‘Money is not important. If you truly love me.’

He laughed. ‘I know, darling. And I would be only too happy to live on love, if I have you. But what shall I do with the great stacks of money that I got off Barton? The safe did not contain what I was looking for, but it was full to the top with hundred-pound notes. Why did the fool want to print his own money, when he had a safe full of the stuff?’ He shrugged. ‘If he did not appreciate his wealth, I saw no reason to let him keep it.’

‘You thief,’ she said. But she was laughing.

And she raised her face to his, and let him steal another kiss.