Someone to Cherish

by Mary Balogh

  She touched her fingertips to his cheek and kissed him. “Tell me,” she said softly. “It took you two years of recovery after the Battle of Waterloo even before you came home, and then another year or more here. I can remember that when I first came here with Isaiah you were thin and pale.”

  He tried not even to think about it. It was in the past. Another lifetime. But his life belonged to her too now. All of it, even the past. Just as her life belonged to him—including the terrible pain of her first marriage, which she had confided to him earlier.

  “Joining the military seemed to me the obvious thing to do after I lost everything that had given shape and meaning to my life,” he said. “I hated it from the first moment—or perhaps my life was such at that time that anything would have seemed hateful. I wrote cheerful letters home from the Peninsula, telling everyone what a lark and a jolly good time it all was. It was death and blood and mud and mayhem, Lydia. It was dehumanizing. One had to fight constantly to retain one’s humanity. Sometimes it was impossible. It would have been impossible to fight in any pitched battle if one did not allow the energy of the moment to convert one into a savage whose only instinct was to slaughter the enemy. I beg your pardon. This is not the sort of conversation—”

  She set three fingers lightly across his lips. “I asked,” she said. “Tell.”

  “I was wounded more times than I can recount,” he said. “I suppose I ought not even to have been fighting at Waterloo. How I survived it the Lord only knows. I fell from my horse in the end, and the horse fell on me. I had numerous saber cuts and three bullet wounds—one bullet was lodged below my shoulder, close to my heart, and remained there for longer than a year before a surgeon dug it out. I had one broken leg and internal injuries that were probably never fully diagnosed or treated. I knocked myself senseless and had memory lapses for a few years. I had an almost constant fever. Perhaps what made everything worse than it might have been was the treatment. The favorite was bleeding to reduce the fever. Over the two years I spent in hospital I must have had enough blood removed to keep ten men alive. The other favorite was to keep me in bed in a darkened room, feeding on thin gruels and jellies. I would have died there in Paris if I had not eventually insisted upon coming home—and if Gil had not been there to insist for me, and if Avery and Alexander had not come to bring me.”

  One of her hands was smoothing back his hair. She was kissing the underside of his chin.

  “The very worst of it, though,” he said, “was the hopelessness, the lethargy, the conviction that I would never be myself again. The bone-wearying depression. And the memories and the guilt. And the lingering resentment over all that had happened to expose me to the hell of those years. The lingering . . . hatred. Of my father. And of Alexander and Anna. Even sometimes of my mother. But then, after I had been here awhile, I somehow found the will to get better, to make myself better. And the time came, Lydia, when I understood the full miracle of what had happened to me. For somehow, without my even realizing it, Hinsford seeped into my bones. Not just as my home. But as . . . the peace that became the heart of me. The understanding that this—not just this place, but this . . . life—is who I am, who I was always supposed to be. It is hard to put into words. Nothing is static, of course. Lately I have known that peace and contentment, wondrous as they have been, are not sufficient. I have known that I needed something more vivid. Someone. You, in fact.”

  He turned his head to look into her face. She was gazing back.

  “So you see,” he said, “why the nightmares, horrible as they are, are somehow necessary. They are a reminder that I must not live in a cocoon of contentment without remembering the journey that has brought me here. Peace is hard won, and the effort to keep it is ongoing. We must never become complacent in life. We must never feel we have arrived and there is nothing left to do but enjoy.”

  “You have the Earl of Riverdale and the Duchess of Netherby here with you now,” she said, her smile almost mischievous, “as a constant reminder of all you have gone through.”

  “Alexander has grown in dignity in the past ten years,” he said. “He did not want the life he is now leading, but he has put everything that is himself into doing a conscientious job of it, both at Brambledean and in London during parliamentary sessions. He is very obviously happy with Wren and their children. He would not have met or married her if he had not had the title foisted upon him. When I look at him now, I see the Earl of Riverdale. And a cousin of whom I am proud and very fond. The title does not seem part of me any longer. I do not want it. I feel aghast when I realize that if my father had only waited a month or two to marry my mother, the title and all the rest of it would be mine. I would hate the life I started to live after he died. Or at least the man I have become would hate it. I would have been a totally different person if my father had waited, of course, because the past ten years would have unfolded differently and I would have been different as a result. So many differents. Am I making any sense?”

  “Yes, you are,” she said.

  “As for Anna, I have unfinished business with her,” he said. “It must be finished, though. Soon. I have not treated her well. I have not been cruel, except perhaps at the start. I have not been openly unkind either. I have not shunned her or treated her with less civility than I have shown other members of the family.”

  “But . . . ?” she said when he did not proceed.

  “But I have not treated her as I treat Cam and Abby,” he said. “I have not fully accepted her as my sister. Yet I believe it is what she needed and craved more than anything else when she learned of our existence and our relationship to her. I have to put that right.”

  “You said soon,” she said. “Before you leave tomorrow?”

  He gazed at her. “Yes,” he said. “Before I go.”

  She smiled and burrowed her head more comfortably between his shoulder and his neck.

  “Your father may disapprove of me,” he said.

  “Because you are illegitimate?” she asked. “You are also a Westcott, son of the late Earl of Riverdale and of the present Marchioness of Dorchester. You have a ridiculous number of titled relatives.”

  “Ridiculous?” he asked. “You had better not let any of them hear you call them that, Lydia, or you will find yourself cast into outer darkness.”

  “Oh.” She laughed softly. “I took the measure of the Dowager Countess of Riverdale almost the moment I met her. She wants to be seen as the crusty matriarch at the head of the family. In reality she loves you dearly and wants desperately for you to be happy, not to become the victim of a woman who might bring you shame. I suspect she feels the same of all her family.”

  He grinned back at her. “You saw all that in one brief meeting?” he asked. “Even while she was trying to squash you like a bug?”

  “I did,” she said. “I like her. She cares. But, Harry, what my father thinks of you and my marrying you will be his concern. I do believe, though, that he will be happy to know that I have a man again to support and protect me and guide me through all the dangers of life.”

  They smiled at each other and rubbed noses.

  “Well, you know,” he said, “you must allow me if ever you are attacked by bears or wolves to do the manly thing and come roaring to your rescue and tear them limb from limb with my bare hands.”

  “Or force them to their knees and then to attention before apologizing for frightening me,” she said. “You do that awfully well, Harry.”

  “You made me redundant when I tried it, though,” he told her. “You tore young Piper limb from limb without even raising your voice, Lydia. I do not believe, alas, that you are ever going to need me to ride into the lists to your defense.”

  “Thank you anyway,” she said, settling her head against his shoulder again, “for forcing him to his knees.”

  “I will be leaving you to face the gossips alone for two whole days,” he said.
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  “So you will,” she said. “How dreadful. I shall be quite without male protection. I might crumble. I might—”

  He stopped her by settling his mouth over hers.

  “I must go,” he said with a sigh a minute or so later.

  “Yes, you must,” she agreed.

  And he did indeed leave less than twenty minutes later.

  * * *

  * * *

  Dinner at Hinsford was half an hour early that evening and ended with the men leaving the dining room with the women rather than remaining to enjoy their port and their male conversation. Everyone headed for the music room rather than the drawing room.

  The children were to perform a show for their entertainment, organized by Winifred, Elizabeth, and Joel. Sarah and Alice Cunningham, Josephine Archer, and Eve Handrich, dressed in flowing white with floral wreaths in their hair and floral streamers in their hands, danced to accompaniment provided by Elizabeth; Jacob Cunningham and George Handrich in black, and Jonah Archer and Nathan Westcott in white, engaged in a ferocious fencing match with wooden swords to rescue a wilting Rebecca Archer, who was bound with pink silk ribbons and jealously guarded by Robbie Cunningham, who was dressed all in black with matching fingernails that were hooked into claws as he hovered, hissing and panting, over his intended prey. Winifred played a gentle rhythm on the lower keys of the pianoforte while her brother Samuel plonked out an almost-accurate tune on the upper keys. All the children, with the exception of the babies and Andrew, who was deaf, had been conscripted into a choir and sang a few folk songs with lusty good cheer and questionable musicality, to Elizabeth’s accompaniment.

  Andrew disappeared with Joel during the singing and came back afterward carrying a large rock—“which came with us all the way from Bath,” Joel explained with a grimace that turned to a grin when he saw Camille toss a glance at the ceiling. The rock was set carefully down on a small table Colin had placed in front of the pianoforte, and Andrew, smiling broadly at his audience, indicated it with one hand and beckoned with the other. When they all came for a closer look, they could see that the stone enclosed on three sides the chiseled form of a cat—a domestic cat, surely—curled up and contentedly asleep with its head turned to rest on its paws. Yes, contentedly. One could almost hear the cat purr.

  “I have a talented boy here,” Joel said, ruffling his son’s hair while everyone exclaimed with wonder and smiled at the boy or hugged him. “I could not get him interested in drawing or painting. Then I found him one day doing this sort of thing, with a knife he had borrowed—and ruined—from the kitchen.”

  There was more singing and dancing. The show ended with the littlest children—except those who could not yet walk—playing three rounds of ring a ring o’ roses, shrieking with glee every time they all fell down, and looking to parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents for approval.

  Despite the early dinner, the children were late to bed.

  “And very much too overexcited to settle easily,” Anna said when she came into the drawing room after helping settle her own four. “Jonah wants to do it all again tomorrow. I suspect he wants Avery to show him how to be a bit flashier with his swordplay.”

  “But I cannot have my son outshining me,” Avery protested. “Not when he is only five years old.”

  “Come back to the music room with me, Anna?” Harry said, getting to his feet. “I want to have a closer look at Andrew’s cat if it is still there.”

  “It is,” Joel said while Anna looked at Harry in some surprise. “It is on the pianoforte. It is a lazy cat and not likely to have moved from there.”

  Anna preceded Harry from the room while he held the door open, and then took his arm as they made their way back down to the music room. Fortunately it was empty. Harry took a candle in with him from one of the wall sconces outside and lit the candles on the mantel.

  “I can remember the concerts we used to put on as children,” he said. “Some of them right here. We were always so proud of ourselves.”

  He wished he had not said it then, when he turned to look at her. She had not been there to be part of those concerts. She had been at the orphanage in Bath.

  “All children love to perform,” she said. “We did too when I was growing up at the orphanage. This concert tonight was a lovely idea. I believe it was Winifred’s. She has changed so much in the ten years since I taught her in the orphanage school. In what seems like another lifetime. She has grown up, of course. But more than that—she is becoming the person she was always meant to be. And I have to give so much credit to Camille and Joel, who took her from the orphanage, adopted her, and just loved her.”

  The door clicked open, and Harry turned his head in some annoyance to see who it was. Avery stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He looked with raised eyebrows from Harry by the fireplace to Anna closer to the pianoforte and strolled toward the chairs, which were still in rows. He sat down on one at the back.

  “Do not mind me,” he said, and waved one beringed hand as though permitting them to proceed.

  It was too late not to proceed now, Harry thought.

  “Anna,” he said, “I have not been kind to you in the past ten years.”

  She ran one hand along the top of the pianoforte before lifting her head to look at him. “You have not been unkind, Harry,” she said. “I have tried to imagine what it must have felt like for you and Camille and Abigail and Aunt Viola when the whole family—and I—were sitting in that salon at Archer House listening to your solicitor telling us what he had discovered from the inquiries he had made in Bath about the supposedly bastard daughter our father had supported at the orphanage there. I am not sure I have ever succeeded. My life was turned upside down and inside out as a result. But yours was . . . shattered. It was not to be expected that any of you would welcome me with open arms.”

  “I did,” Avery said.

  “Oh, not at first, Avery,” she said crossly, turning her head toward him. “You were horrid.”

  “Was I, my love?” he asked her. “But it was your shoes, you see. They were so . . .” He circled one beringed hand in the air.

  “Ugly?” she suggested.

  “The very word,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “They were my Sunday best,” she protested.

  He smiled at her. One did not often see Avery smile.

  “I think,” Harry said, “you were hurt when none of us would accept your offer to share your fortune four ways.”

  “Ah,” she said, returning her attention to him. “I was. But I approached the matter far too soon and without any tact at all. I was so happy at the thought of our all sharing the great bounty our father had left that it did not occur to me that I would appear condescending, even insulting. And quite insensitive.”

  “No,” Harry said. “You must not take any of the blame upon yourself, Anna. You did absolutely no wrong. Neither did we except to lash out in our pain at a living target rather than a dead one. We could no longer hurt our father. So we hurt you instead. And felt not one whit the better for it. At least I did not. And never have. Will you forgive me?”

  “Harry,” she said, “there is nothing to forgive. Except that your continued stubbornness sometimes drives me to distraction.”

  “Hinsford?” he said.

  “It will be yours eventually,” she said. “Or your children’s, if you should happen to predecease me. Just as the one quarter of our father’s fortune will be yours—with the interest it is gathering.”

  “Will it please you if I take the money now?” he asked.

  Her eyes brightened. “Will you, Harry?” she asked. “Oh, please. Will you?”

  “I will,” he said. “And with it I will purchase Hinsford.”

  “But—”

  He held up a hand. “I must,” he said. “There are four of us, Anna. There would be no fairness about my ending up with more
than anyone else just because I am male.”

  “But it is—”

  “Harry is right,” Avery said, getting to his feet and strolling toward Anna. “It is you, my love, who have always talked of fairness.”

  “But I do not—”

  “I think you must demand a hundred pounds for the property,” he said.

  “One hundred pounds?” Harry said. “That is a joke, Avery.”

  “Too much?” Avery said. “Seventy-five pounds, then. No, make that guineas.”

  “I am serious about this,” Harry protested. “I wish you had stayed—”

  “Sixty guineas,” Anna said loudly and distinctly. “And that is my final word.”

  “Anna—”

  “My final word,” she said.

  Avery tapped her cheek with one finger and strolled back to sit on the same chair in the back row.

  “Anna.” Harry drew a deep breath and let it go on a sigh. “This is really not about money at all, you know. I live very well as I am and can continue to do so even wh— Even if I marry. It is just that I want to set things right with you. You are my sister. Just as Cam is and Abby. I want to be your brother. I mean . . . I always have been. But . . .”

  She came hurrying across the distance between them then and walked into the arms he held open. They closed about her, and he shut his eyes.

  They stood thus for a silent minute or two.

  “If only Cam and Abby would—” he began, but she raised her head from his shoulder and pressed two fingers to his lips.

  “They both have,” she said. “They came to me separately. And now you. And Aunt Viola has had her dowry back with all the interest that would have accrued on it in the years of her supposed marriage to our father.”