Martha took a reluctant step forward, touching her gaze on the space. The full moon’s glow cast a bright light over the conservatory, dousing it with a brightness greater than any candles.
“It is… lovely,” Martha finally said. And it was. The nine-bay symmetrical façade divided by composite pilasters bordered the duke’s wooded properties.
“I’ve always preferred this room,” Lady Emilia murmured, rubbing her gloved fingers back and forth, as if bringing warmth into chilled digits. Also serving to bring Martha’s attention to the satin articles embroidered with gold metallic yarns and spangles. Not even a week earlier, Martha had had to her name but two pairs of gloves, both tattered. Lady Emilia’s were fine enough that they likely cost more than all the garments she and her son had, combined, after her late husband’s passing.
That observation, coupled with the woman’s exquisite beauty, sent pain shooting to her chest. She was to have wed Graham. Had Graham’s mother and father had their way of it, the pair would be married even now… in a match both the duke and duchess approved of. Unlike Martha. And what was more, Lady Emilia’s honest admission just served as an unwanted reminder of the familiarity between Graham and this woman. Unable to meet the lady’s lovely blue-eyed stare, Martha glanced around the conservatory; taking in the blooming trees and bright flowering plants so at odds with the winter-covered landscape beyond the glass panels.
Her chest tightened painfully. Do not… You are stronger than that now.
Graham had helped her to see her own worth. She was not lesser than this woman because of her station or appearance. “I trust you’ve not brought me here to speak about the duke and duchess’ conservatory?” Martha noted as the lady drifted over.
“It is actually an orangery,” Lady Emilia acknowledged in animated tones. “And… oh. Yes. Right. Our… meeting. I confess it was no coincidence that I… came upon you and Lord Whitworth in the corridor earlier.” The lady’s cheeks pinkened, a pretty blush and not like the usual splotches of color whenever Martha’s went hot in a like manner. “I have been waiting to seek you out since you arrived. Since before you arrived.”
Warning bells went off. No doubt she’d sought her out to speak about Graham. Martha curled her toes in her slippers. Refusing to give in to any questions, she waited.
As if they met in a parlor owned by the lady herself, Lady Emilia motioned to the two white wrought-iron chairs nearest to her. The other woman didn’t continue speaking until both she and Martha sat. “There are rumors circulating among the guests about… about…”
“You and my husband?” she asked bluntly. Her days of carefully tiptoeing about what she really wished to say were at an end.
Lady Emilia’s blush deepened. “There are those, thanks to my mother’s loose tongue. But there are also thoughts about…” She gestured between them, the movement sending the crystals that dangled from her glove dancing. “Us. Polite Society expects that I dislike you and that you’ll feel antipathy for me because of”—her face pulled—“circumstances that a pair of other women sought to orchestrate. Circumstances that never really had anything to do with you or I, or even Lord Whitworth.” Her lips formed a hard line. “But the world as a rule generally doesn’t care what a woman wants.” The woman spoke with a staggering directness, about their relationship and Society and women’s perceived place in the world, in ways Martha had never expected a lady of the ton might. Nay, she spoke… as a woman who knew all too well the injustices that faced all women—nor was that injustice reserved to one’s station.
“Too often, family, Society, they care more about what they believe we want.”
The lady’s eyes glimmered. “Precisely. As such, I felt… a connection to you before you arrived.” Lady Emilia smiled. And despite the reservations she’d felt for the woman, based on nothing more than her own unfounded jealousies, Martha found herself smiling. “And it is my hope that we might… be friends.” Lady Emilia leaned closer. “And it is not just to confuse the duke and duchess’ guests, though that will be a delicious by-product,” she said in a loud whisper, startling a laugh from Martha.
Lady Emilia joined in.
When their amusement ebbed, the other woman held her fingers out.
Martha shook her hand, the limerick gloves Graham had given her exquisitely soft, and yet, understated against Lady Emilia’s. Only… that difference didn’t matter. She knew that now. “I should like very much to be friends.”
Lady Emilia beamed. “Splendid. One always needs good friends about.” Her smile faded on a sigh. “Alas, I’ve skirted the evening’s festivities enough that everyone will be speaking. And though I don’t give a jot for the duke’s guests, I do worry about the lecture I’ll have to suffer through from my mother,” she said, coming to her feet. “Parlor games with the duchess’ company is a small sacrifice compared to that.”
Martha hopped up. “Lady Emilia, it was a pleasure,” she murmured, meaning those words. How wrong she’d been about the other woman.
Lady Emilia’s face pulled. “Oh, pishposh. There’ll be none of that. Friends do not go about referring to one another by titles and such.” She lifted a finger. “Or they shouldn’t. Some do.” Her cheeks dimpled from the breadth of her smile. “I would prefer not to. Alas…” She sighed. “I must rejoin the others. Martha,” she said, bowing her head.
Martha followed the regal woman’s retreat, the crystals adorning her skirts tinkling slightly. Until she was gone.
After she’d discovered her first husband’s treachery, Martha had formed an opinion about Polite Society. Because of the treachery of that blackhearted monster and then the failures of the gentleman at the Home Office who’d promised to help her and her children after the viscount’s death, Martha had come to believe all members of the peerage were ruthless devils.
Until Graham had entered her life. Oh, he’d entered her life initially on a lie. But in time, she had come to see the goodness in his soul.
And the kindness from his mother, who’d welcomed Martha this holiday season.
And now Lady Emilia.
They had all helped her to see how wrong she’d been to categorize an entire people because of their rank.
“Tsk-tsk. Hiding in the orangery, love.”
With a gasp, she whipped her gaze to the entryway. Her heart did its familiar leap at the sight of him. Her husband lounged with one shoulder propped against the mahogany frame. Devastating. Not a single man on the whole of God’s green earth should possess the dangerous beauty of Graham Whitworth. It wasn’t fair for a woman’s heart. “Are you spying on me, Graham Whitworth?”
He flashed a devilish half grin. “If I were spying, I wouldn’t be caught,” he said with a cocksure arrogance that raised a laugh.
“You’re impossibly full of yourself, dear husband.”
Graham waggled his dark brows. “Oh, undoubtedly so.”
And then she noted that which had previously escaped her notice. Her husband was dressed in his cloak and top hat and heavy leather gloves, and over his arm hung her own recently purchased by him velvet-trimmed wool cloak. At his side, he dangled her boots by their laces. Her stomach pitched. They were leaving. It could only mean he’d come to blows with his father. “What happened?” No doubt the quarrel this time would have been over her.
“Ah, my pessimist of a wife,” he gently reprimanded. Meeting her across the room in several long strides, he brought her cloak about her shoulders. “Who determined that anything has to be wrong?”
“Because of where we are. Because of your father’s role in trying to separate us. Because—” He kissed the remainder of the list from her lips.
“Fair points. All of them,” he conceded. “Here, sit.” Graham urged her onto the wrought-iron bench she’d occupied earlier. “This time, there is no conflict. Or at least, not yet,” he said with a wink.
“You are incorrigible and not funny.”
He gave her a hurt look.
“Not in this instant anyway.”
Graham dropped to a knee and lifted her skirts. “You wound me, love.” The cooler air brushed her skin. “What…” He slid off one slipper and then set it down. The other followed. “What are you doing?”
Reaching for her gleaming brown leather boot, Graham loosened the laces, widening it so he could more easily slide her foot in. “I’m helping you into your boots.” He quickly laced up the article and tied the laces into a neat bow.
A smile twitched at her lips. “I see that. I meant… for what purpose are you putting my boots on?”
“You’ll see, love.” His husky baritone wrapped her in a warmth, and as he drew her other boot on, Martha stared at his bent head, the thick tendrils of his dark hair.
“You met with Lady Emilia,” he said suddenly, a statement more than anything.
When she didn’t answer, he looked up from his task. Martha gave him a bemused smile. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
“I observed Lady Emilia taking her leave down the opposite corridor.”
It was an unneeded reminder that his work with the Home Office required him to be observant of every last detail. His life and the country’s secrets were reliant upon it.
And I hate it…
She bit the inside of her cheek, staggered by the realization she’d not allowed herself to admit until now.
She hated the work he did. She hated that soon another assignment would come, and he’d be taken away from her. Each leaving would present the possibility that she’d never see him again. Tears pricked her lashes. “It was fine,” she whispered, blinking them back.
His expression darkened. “What did she say?”
“Nothing.” Nay, the other woman’s words had not been “nothing.” Martha stepped out of her husband’s arms and made an angry swipe at her tears. “She was only kind and warm and offered me friendship.”
He cocked his head. “That has you upset?” he asked in the tones of one trying to sort through a complex puzzle.
Martha let out a sound of frustration. “No. That has me happy. You…” Except… it wasn’t Graham, but rather, his work.
“Martha,” he said quietly. “What is it?”
I hate your work. I hate that soon you’ll leave. I hate that every time you do might mark the last time I ever do see you…
Except… how did she bring herself to say as much? How, when he served the Home Office and took pride in the work he did?
“I’m simply wondering what you are up to, Graham Whitworth, that you’ve fetched my cloak and are now putting on my boots.”
And mayhap he didn’t want to walk the path of reality and the troubled questions between them either, for he finished tying her other boot. “Very well.” Jumping up, he took her by the hand and guided her through the orangery until they reached a narrow hall that emptied out of the orangery. Drawing the door open, he motioned for her to exit, and Martha picked her way down the hall until she reached another pair of glass doors. He pressed the handle of one, and a gust of cold air whipped through the hall.
Her husband again took her by the hand and led her outside. “Wh-what are we… doing?” she asked, her teeth chattering in the cold.
A fresh dusting of snow covered the stone terrace, crunching under her boots as they continued out farther, toward the balustrade overlooking the duke’s properties.
Then Graham stopped. “When I met you, Martha, I was captivated at first sight,” he said into the winter still. Despite the small clouds of white formed by his breath as he spoke, Graham gave no indication that he either felt the cold or that it bothered him in any way. “You walked into that tavern and challenged the entire lot of small-minded villagers, and I was yours.”
Her lips trembled. “And I was yours,” she whispered. She just hadn’t realized it. She’d fought the magnetic pull that had crackled between them from the start.
“And soon, all I knew,” he went on, palming her cheek, and she leaned into that tender touch, “was that I wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to smile. Do you remember the first moment you laughed with me?”
She searched her mind. All the darkness of her past marriage and all that had come to pass, he’d replaced in a short time with love and happiness that muted those blackest of memories. “You were ou-outside with Frederick,” she remembered, huddling deeper within the folds of her cloak.
“We were playing in the snow.”
“Throwing snowballs.” Their voices rolled together from the joy of that shared memory.
“And you joined in.”
“I did,” she said with a smile, when until that moment her whole life had been laundering tattered garments and attending the livestock and stables.
“But then you stopped laughing.”
Because she’d believed she hadn’t been deserving of that joy. She’d sent her daughters off to finishing school so they could be free of Martha and the scandal she’d inadvertently visited upon them. Graham had opened her eyes to the fact that she didn’t have to punish herself for crimes that weren’t her fault. He’d taught her that regardless of what came to pass, she and Creda and Iris and Frederick, with Graham at their side, were a family.
“You taught me to smile, Graham Whitworth. That is a gift you gave me.” One of so many.”
He wandered away, and then he stopped with his back to her, staring out at the snow-covered landscape.
And then he turned around.
Her gaze snagged on the snowball in his hands just as he launched it.
With a laugh, she darted sideways, and his shot found its mark on her right shoulder, splattering her cloak with snow. “You do not p-play fair,” she called, in between breathless laughter.
He replied by hastily assembling another snowball.
Martha quickly built her own, and then with a battle cry to rival Frederick’s, she launched her snow-packed missile. It hit Graham square in the chest.
Both of them froze.
Her shoulders shaking with mirth, Martha stifled her laugh behind her palm. “I see my aim is better than yours, Lord Whitworth.”
He slowly picked his head up until their gazes met. “War has been declared, love,” he said on a silky whisper, and letting out a cry, Martha took off running.
As she darted around the Duke and Duchess of Sutton’s terrace, fighting in the snow with her husband, Martha turned herself over to the beauty of laughing once more.
Chapter 7
He was not hiding.
Samuel Whitworth, the Duke of Sutton, was working.
All right, he was hiding… somewhat.
He’d rather turn over his title than admit as much. The world after all had certain expectations of him. And he had an image. And said image, under no circumstances, did not include the Duke of Sutton, in possession of one of the oldest titles, eight properties, and hundreds upon hundreds of acres, doing anything so plebian as… hiding.
In his own home, no less.
Seated at his desk, Samuel examined immaculate column after immaculate column. Such was the problem with the standards he’d held himself to over the years: There wasn’t even a single error in his accounting to serve as a damned distraction.
And a distraction was what he needed… always at this time of the season. This particular year, however, the need was even greater.
Samuel made to toss down his pen.
You will one day be a duke. Hold your pen like one. Hold yourself like one… at all times.
His late father’s brusque command ringing in his head, Samuel returned his pen to the crystal inkwell. That tray, centered on his desk, was perfectly framed by the floor-to-ceiling windows directly across from his desk.
This space over the years had proved to be one of his favorite places to be. At this vantage point within the Whitworth Palace, he was afforded a clear view of the expansive countryside. Situated upon the highest point of the property, his office overlooked rolling hills and thick forests, grounds that were blanketed in snow.
Now, this space looked out
on the scene of the greatest mistake he’d made and the deepest regrets he carried—and would carry until he drew his last breath.
Closing his eyes, Samuel let the memory in.
“You summoned me, Father?”
“Your brother is struggling again, Lawrence. It is riding.” This time. There was nothing Sheldon didn’t struggle with. Why could nothing be easy for the boy? “One of the boys at Eton beat him badly in a race. Humiliated him for it.” No one would mock his son. Any of them. The world would see them as the best… because they were. Even Sheldon with his struggles.
“But, Father…” Samuel glanced up from his work at the boy standing on the other side of his desk. With his build, strong jaw, and golden hair, he was a blend of both Samuel and Caroline. “I’ve not finished my reading. Can Heath not race him?”
“Heath’s tried unsuccessfully to motivate him.” Lawrence would be gentler with the boy. Gentler when Samuel himself could not be. Hadn’t ever been. “You can finish after you help your brother. Go race.”
Samuel forced his eyes open, staring blankly at the windows now lightly frosted.
Go race.
With that command, Samuel had glanced down and returned to his work, Lawrence forgotten.
Had his son sought to protest after that? Had he lingered? Samuel had dismissed him so quickly outright that he’d failed to miss the precious last details before his oldest son had done his bidding and gone off… to do a job that should have been Samuel’s.
There was a light rap at his door. “En—” The command hadn’t fully left his mouth before the panel swung wide, and his wife swept in.
His wife, the hostess of the house party, who by her appearance here had gone and left their guests unattended. Oh, bloody hell. This was indeed bad.
Caroline stalked over. “Well?” she demanded.
“I’ll be along shortly to join the parlor games.”
Narrowing her eyes, she pressed her palms on the edge of his desk and leaned down. “Is that what you think this is about?” she countered, a warning in her tone.
That absolute strength had made him fall in love with her as a young man.
'Tis the Season: Regency Yuletide Short Stories Page 15