by Liz Tyner
‘Do you usually drink spirits, on those Sundays when you are doing the ledgers?’ she asked.
He waited a heartbeat before answering. ‘Yes. Usually. I like the routine of my Sundays. I put away the ledgers when I’m brought a glass of brandy late in the afternoon. I make my notes for the next week. The events I wish to attend and the people I need to meet with. Sometimes I have a second glass, while I strategise my week. At night, if I cannot work out how to solve a problem, I get a cheroot and step out under the stars to think about what needs to be done.’
Her father had once had two glasses as well when he drank, except sometimes he didn’t notice when the second glass had been replaced with a third or fourth. He would mix his words and think it grand. The more he drank, the more he laughed, until he became angry and shut himself in his room to drink more.
‘I want to dance,’ she said. ‘Just go to dances. I know I should have loftier ambitions, but I want to swirl around the floor as if everything is light-hearted and all that matters is the laughter, and the music, and the dance. I thought I’d never be able to do such a thing and I want to.’
She swept her hand over the words on the window pane, erasing them. ‘That sounds so frivolous, but I know I wasn’t meant to march in wars or pursue ambitions of such things. I’m satisfied with that. I know I was meant to marry and I’m not satisfied with that.’
‘A ruined lady does not garner many invitations.’
‘I’ll get Father to hire musicians. I’ll get a dancing teacher. Because I am going to dance. I am going to have music. Laughter will be around me. It may only be mine, but I will have laughter. I’ll dance in Bath and perhaps in Scotland. I’ll dance in the places I’ve dreamed of.’
She let out a long breath. ‘I thought I was to be forced to marry. Marriage does not seem so important to me when I compare it to being alive.’
She twisted around to speak directly to him. ‘Alexandria is not such an innocent and that has not kept her from dancing. She wanted me to be ruined and you to be forced into marriage. I will not have it.’
She had thought she had no choice but marriage before. Now she had an option.
She thought of the darkness of Rothwilde’s estate. The coldness of Everleigh’s father. The Book of Martyrs and the other books in the library, each one almost seeming alone in the space.
Everleigh’s town house had rooms just as sombre.
To have a kiss was one thing, but she had been living in the shadows long enough. She didn’t want to remain in them.
‘I have a choice: to be forced into spinsterhood, or to be forced into marriage. I plan to smile, to live and to embrace life...not a husband.’
She would dance and put the last years behind her, and enjoy quadrilles and reels and life.
She would never let her heart and her spirit wither away again and she would seek out others who needed laughter. She would make certain that if someone were too frail, they would be able to count on her for a moment of joy. A respite from their pains and something other than four walls and sadness.
Her mother and Mavis, and even the maids, had provided lightness when Vivian was ill. They’d given her respite over and over again.
She would do that for others. She would find joy in life and pull people around her into the merriment.
If there was to be a time for everything under the sun, then there would be a time for everything under the stars. Laughter soothed pain better than poultices and she would distribute happiness. Only the people receiving would never know what had happened.
‘I will let your parents know.’ He left the room. The door remained open behind him.
Her father’s oath shattered the air.
Then everything was silent as her mother murmured placating words. Her father grumbled.
The voices moved away and a door was shut. Her future was being discussed.
Everleigh’s kisses—those she would miss. But a kiss was so fleeting. It made her feel alive, but didn’t keep her alive.
Soft footsteps sounded behind her. Her mother came into view.
She’d not realised how close she and her mother were in size. Nor had she realised how pale her mother was. Her mother seemed different. Puffy. Wan. Momentarily Vivian was distracted. ‘Are you ill?’
Her mother laughed. ‘No. Not at all. I will stand with you on whatever you decide. Right now, it will only make your father feel I am goading him if I say so and I am so trying to keep all the best parts of our marriage. But you need to know, Vivian, that I don’t care whether you marry or not.’ She dusted her hands together. ‘I’ve heard tales of Everleigh’s maternal grandfather. The man happily married his daughter off to get that title in the family. No one should be bartered so.’
Her mother walked out of the room. ‘Unless, of course,’ she mumbled, ‘Everleigh might take your father in addition to you. Right now, that could cause me to change my mind.’
Vivian waited, listening for Everleigh to leave, wondering if he might come into the room to bid her goodbye.
* * *
She didn’t know if it was a quarter or half an hour later when she heard footfalls on the stairs. She couldn’t see him from the window as he departed. All she could see were the grey colours tinting everything beyond the window pane.
She imagined the cold hues surrounding her and being locked inside them for ever. She imagined Everleigh, never loving, but holding her heart captive.
Sitting at the table, she put her elbow on the wood, and rested her forehead in her palm. Something inside her felt lost, abandoned, and more alone than she’d ever been—yet she could change nothing of her decision not to marry him.
The seasons would change. Over and over. Spring would arrive again and it would be followed by summer, and autumn, and then winter—perhaps a winter colder than she’d ever seen before.
But never colder than the depths she’d felt inside Everleigh.
* * *
Everleigh gave his hat and gloves to the butler. Then he moved up the stairs, stopping midway.
Vivian’s father wanted Everleigh as a son-in-law. They had discussed that after Everleigh had written the words of proposal on the window pane and then left Vivian alone in the room.
Darius had been angry to have his daughter ruined. Only one thing would solve that...a marriage. To Everleigh. He’d insisted that Vivian would have no choice, eventually, but to wed.
After all, Darius would not fund foolish ventures where Vivian might travel, and fall into trouble, or into the waters of Bath. He would see that she married Everleigh. The chance to marry an earl’s heir did not happen every day.
Everleigh had listened and it had been rather like a negotiation, he supposed, of centuries before when one ruler wanted to make an alliance with another country. A discussion of the benefits of alliance. The heritage of the Baron aligned with the heritage Everleigh carried.
Negotiations had begun, with Vivian at the centre. He wondered if his father and grandfather had had the same conversation.
It had seemed odd having the discussion without Vivian in the room, and pointless. Talking with her father had made the idea of marriage less appealing.
Then her father had grumbled that he’d not even known Everleigh was in Vivian’s mind until the soirée when she’d invited the architects. He’d been so surprised because she’d never once mentioned Everleigh to him.
Her father had told Everleigh that Vivian had never stopped speaking of the fortune hunter who had once courted her, until she found out the settlement the man had been promised for every month she lived past the wedding.
Then she refused to consider anyone.
Everleigh went to his room, shrugged off the coat, and threw it over the back of a chair.
He could not blame Vivian.
Not at all. He didn’t want to marry.
Neither did Vivian
.
She wanted to dance and he understood her wanting such a thing. He’d never wanted to dance. Life was too short for such nonsense. There was so much work to be done.
Everleigh had insisted the negotiations stop.
He didn’t encourage projects that wasted time.
* * *
Later that night, he heard the clump of footsteps on the stairs and the tapping noise of his father’s cane.
He raised his face in time to see his father step into the room, chortling. ‘What is this I hear about two women fighting over you in the streets?’
Everleigh stared around the room. The stories had already started. Vivian was at the centre of them.
‘A mishap. With idle chatter taking it out of proportion.’
‘It’s said shots were fired.’
Everleigh put his elbows on the desk and rested his face in his hands. ‘Alexandria did not take well to my rejection.’
‘Are you going to marry the other one?’
‘We have no plans to wed.’
His father’s cane crashed into the floor. ‘You did not propose? The men at the club told me it is Baron Darius’s daughter. She would make a fine wife for you.’ The tip of the cane kept rattling against the floor.
‘You also told me Alexandria would make a fine wife for me.’
‘Well, she was breathing, and would have passable offspring.’ Another slap of the cane on the floor.
Silence.
‘I cannot fathom how I raised you. You know your duty. How long do marriage vows take? Less than an hour. A matter of hours beforehand to get the special licence. A few hours,’ he sputtered. ‘A few hours of your life and you cannot spare them.’
More silence.
‘I cannot believe that.’ He rushed down the stairs as fast as he could, shouting to a servant, ‘Tell them not to unhitch the carriage.’
Everleigh raised his head and walked to the window, watching a servant run for the carriage. Thankfully, his father would go back to the estate. At least the house would be peaceful.
His father walked to the street and stood, tapping the cane.
When the carriage pulled up, the driver stepped down to help him in. His father gesticulated wildly with the cane. Realisation flashed in Everleigh’s mind. His father wasn’t telling the driver to return to Wildewood. He was pointing in another direction.
Chapter Fourteen
The carriage trundled along to Rothwilde’s estate. Vivian noticed the vibrancy of her skin. She’d been so much thinner on her first trip into the countryside.
She glanced at her father and her mother beside him, both with backs straight, lips in a line, arms crossed. Both wore grim expressions as they alternated between observing her and sharing stern glances.
She supposed even the horses were irritated because the driver kept shouting to them.
When the vehicle stopped at Rothwilde’s house, Vivian looked at the dark entrance. ‘I’m not going to marry him.’
‘I understand,’ her mother said. ‘It’s unseemly for us to be out here chasing after him. If he can’t come to you...’
‘We are not chasing after him.’ Darius scowled. ‘We were invited. By his father. The man was apologetic, and far more understanding than I expected. He said his son isn’t even here at the moment. That he is alone here and would like visitors. He suggested we become better acquainted.’
‘Did he suggest a chance for your daughter to become a countess some day?’ her mother asked.
‘Nothing wrong with that,’ he said, descending the steps and turning to help his wife. ‘As long as Vivian’s future husband, whoever he may be, never has to take a long carriage ride with the two of you, I would think it might be a satisfactory marriage.’
Her mother pulled her pelisse closer with a twist of the wrist, causing it to billow out. ‘I suppose it would also depend on whether she has to put up with him criticising everything she does.’
As her father mumbled a retort, her mother reassured herself by inspecting Vivian. ‘Are you sure you are feeling well?’
Vivian nodded, staring at the windows and the trees surrounding the house. Their limbs stretched like arms warding off visitors. It was no more welcoming than the first time she’d seen it.
‘Cheery place,’ her mother commented. ‘I’m sure it’s nicer inside.’
‘Come along.’ Her father reached for her mother’s arm.
They walked into the entrance hall. Rothwilde greeted them. ‘Sadly, my son isn’t here.’ His face belied his words. ‘But who knows if he may arrive later or not?’
He guided them to the drawing room.
Again, Vivian studied the portrait of the Countess of Rothwilde. The portrait dominated the room. But Vivian felt uneasy when she observed it, saddened by the knowledge someone would deface a work of art and that the woman had had a short life, and an uneasy marriage.
Rothwilde walked into the room and observed the portrait as if he’d never seen it before. ‘My late wife. Painted before we married. It would have been hard to miss her,’ Rothwilde admitted. ‘The painting doesn’t do her justice.’
The housekeeper appeared in the doorway, scowling. Vivian wondered if she’d decorated the house. Her clothes matched it.
‘Would you like refreshments?’ she asked.
Rothwilde flinched, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have, but then he shrugged. ‘Yes.’
After they were seated, Vivian could tell that Rothwilde and her father talked as if they were going to become family members. Her mother said almost nothing.
Then Rothwilde offered to show them the new carriage house he was having built and her mother forced a smile.
* * *
They were all examining timbers when the sound of another arrival reached their ears.
‘Probably my son,’ Rothwilde said, offhandedly to Darius. ‘He might be in a foul mood. I wrote him that the expenses on the carriage house were running much higher than expected. I also told him another structure on the estate would be needed so I could have more visitors and the wagers would come to me. My own private gambling hell. I hoped his architect friends could be of assistance.’
He spoke to Vivian and her mother. ‘Let’s go inside and see how he is faring.’
* * *
Everleigh walked into the house, reached for the top button on his coat and slipped the fastenings open.
His father was punishing him in the only way available to him, or so he believed. The man would try to beggar Everleigh. Well, it would not happen. He would make certain of that.
The grey mouse of a housekeeper stepped into the room. His father’s mistress.
‘I’ll take your coat,’ she said.
He slipped the garment from his shoulders, not acknowledging her by name.
‘Rothwilde has visitors.’
His movements froze, his hand still grasping the wool. His father rarely entertained. ‘Who?’
‘The Baron, his wife...’
Everleigh waited.
‘And their daughter.’ She took the coat. ‘I thought you should know.’
* * *
He paced into the drawing room. Plans for the carriage house were sprawled across the sofa. His jaw tensed. Apparently Rothwilde had been showing them to Darius. He lifted the papers, shuffling through them. Nothing had changed. No scribbles on the side, or mention of any other structure.
Everleigh lifted the pages and rolled them into place, the paper rustling as he twisted it into a roll. He propped them in the corner.
His father had sent him an invitation that he’d known Everleigh could not refuse. He’d walked into it as easily as he might have walked into a spider’s web on a dark night. His father was the only person who could gauge Everleigh so easily.
Voices alerted him.
‘Roth
wilde,’ Everleigh greeted his father.
‘Son.’ He moved out of the way, leaning on his cane. ‘How pleasant that you’ve arrived just when we have visitors.’
‘How fortunate, indeed.’ Everleigh watched as Darius walked into the room, followed by Lady Darius and, lastly, Vivian.
Anger at his father drained from his body. Anger at himself replaced it. He shouldn’t be so happy to see Vivian.
Then she glanced at him and that anger faded as well. He’d been surrounded by machinations his whole life. One more wouldn’t hurt. He would take care around Vivian. She had little choice in the matter, he was certain.
Besides, her cheeks were flushed with radiance and seeing her eased the irritations of his day.
But it wouldn’t do to let the others be aware that he was pleased. He scowled at his father, who appeared oblivious to anything but the goodwill he and Darius shared.
So be it. He didn’t want to make Vivian uncomfortable. ‘It’s always pleasant when Father invites guests to the estate.’ That would mostly leave the last decade—all the years since his mother had died—out of the equation, but only he and his father knew that.
His father gripped the cane. ‘I agree.’
Everleigh saw three expectant expressions and one tense one. He wanted to reassure her. ‘I hope the carriage trip to the estate was less eventful than the previous journey.’
‘Much,’ she admitted.
Her father let out a deep sigh. ‘I have to be thankful that Alexandria was not more daft than she was.’
‘We all do,’ Lady Darius said. ‘What’s important—really important—is that neither of our children was injured. My daughter is healthy and your son wasn’t hurt.’
‘True,’ Rothwilde said. He thumped his son on the back. ‘I’d not really thought of it that way before. My son seems invincible to me. I’d be lost without him.’