by Edith Layton
“But Arden taught me by example what decent men, as well as real gentlemen, were about,” she continued, “for all I had to slip out to see him, he was my real brother and friend, and I want only the best for him, you see.”
“I do, and so do I,” Francesca hurriedly assured her, as Lady Millicent, surely the most unsure and inept lady she’d ever met, went on to beg her forgiveness and entreat her to keep her conversation secret. The late earl, Francesca thought angrily again, had sown a strange harvest with all his license.
“If there is anything you ever need…” Lady Millicent said when Arden came back to tell her that her coach was waiting. But knowing that the only thing she needed was something the lady could not give her, and as perhaps the lady knew the same, they merely smiled and without warning, or knowing who began it, they embraced, with much embarrassment as well as pleasure on both ladies’ sides, and then Lady Millicent was off and on her long way home again.
“She would have taken you back to live with her as a daughter, or a friend, or whatever you’d wish,” Arden said slowly, looking after his sister, and then he looked down into Francesca’s worried brown eyes as he said, “But I didn’t even ask her,” with such wonder in his slow deep voice that her heart picked up. And then, shrugging his great shoulders, he laughed, and then, still laughing, was carried off into the crowd of his relatives again.
*
The good-byes could well have taken a week to be done with, Arden said, and so he did them all in a night. The last two he did alone, and when they were done he rode back to the inn late in the night, pensive and weary, but well-pleased. Because as he informed Julian and the two ladies at breakfast the next morning, his legitimate brothers had at last been made to see that living together and pulling together was their only hope for keeping their stately old home together, for their fortune was almost gone. And, he added reasonably, with the old earl gone as well, it might just be that they could learn to live with each other again.
And his farewells to John Dahl, he thought as he swung up on his horse as the coach prepared to leave again after that breakfast, had been best done in private, nor were they necessary to discuss afterward. Unlike his true father, John Dahl wouldn’t be the sort to send for a son to hot foot across the land when he was given notice to quit. John Dahl was a private man, who would take the end of his life with the same calm control with which he’d taken the rest of it, in the manner he’d taught his stepson the way of. Now, at the old fellow’s age, any farewell might well be the last one, so it had to be thorough. Respecting that stoicism and needing it for himself as well, Arden had saved that good-bye for last, and had given it quietly, there in the front yard, and whatever emotion had been involved had been easier for both men to keep close even from each other there in the dark.
Now, he had to express his thoughts, and quickly, as he looked up from his memories to see which road the coach he followed was taking, and startled, reined in his horse even as he bellowed, “Julian, to the left, to the left, we’re off to London, not Mecca!”
“To London—via Arundel, my friend,” Julian called back, his clear voice ringing in the cool spring morning. “I’ve a mind to see Elmwood Court—my home. All this visiting, you know,” he said in a lower voice as Arden rode up to him, “set me to remembering. But don’t worry, it’s only a little detour tomorrow, and there are no hordes of relatives to delay us there. I’ve no family left, nothing but the old Court, and some pensioners I’ve got living in the old place, keeping it up for me. And it is on the way…in a roundabout way,” he added more slowly, with a hint of embarrassment that betrayed his casual air.
“I’d like to see it,” Arden said at once. “I’ve been about building a home for myself, by proxy, messenger, and post, for three years now, you know, and can use any ideas I can steal for the place. It’s to be a monument to my taste and success, you see,” he said, as Julian laughed and his face cleared to its usual blinding serene beauty, and so Arden didn’t mention that the house had been finished this past month or more, and instead only stored up this new lie in his memory so that he’d never contradict himself about it.
“Funerals stir up the damnedest memories and emotions,” was all he said before he kneed his mount onward again, “so take care! There’s a family of ceremonies lurking, don’t forget. Weddings,” he warned on a giant grin, “are second cousins to funerals, and I won’t even mention christenings!”
Roxanne had been on fire to go to London, but during luncheon on the road, when Julian mentioned their new destination, she only widened her eyes and then declared herself enchanted.
“Do you mind the delay?” Arden asked Francesca as he walked her back to the coach.
But as she’d not the slightest idea of what was being delayed just now, and as any day she traveled with him was only another day given to her that she hadn’t expected, she smiled and professed herself delighted as well.
“For anyone would want to see his own home,” she explained, before she fell silent, thinking that wasn’t strictly true, since she’d never had a home to want to see, unless one counted boarding schools or the occasional rented house that she’d come to visit. Even Arden, for all he’d been uneager to share his childhood home with his friends, had at least a home to return to. Yes, she thought as she climbed back into the coach, it would be lovely to ache and long for something real and remembered, rather than something only dreamed upon.
*
“This is splendid!” Roxanne laughed, swirling around in an impromptu pirouette in the front hall. “We must stay here tonight, Julian, we simply must!”
“We must not,” he said distinctly, although he was clearly pleased at her reaction, at all their reactions to his home.
But Elmwood Court was a large and gracious home and would have been difficult to fault. Even with most of the furniture in holland covers, it was plainly a gentleman’s comfortable country estate made for living and working, and never pretentious or an architectural folly. Its drawing rooms and salons were filled with light, the bedrooms were large and equipped with sufficient fireplaces to keep winter at bay. It even had a tolerable ballroom, and a kitchen commodious enough to withstand any siege of visitors. Only its music room, lovely as it was, showed any pretensions, and that, Julian explained as he showed his guests around, was only because the third viscount had had a wife who thought her voice her greatest attribute, and to judge from the fair-haired beauty’s portrait which still adorned the room, it must have been lovely indeed.
Francesca gazed up at the ornate ceiling above them. She’d made out the curious sight of a great many ox skulls in among the swirling designs, and asking Julian if that emblem was on his coat of arms.
“No,” he said, gazing up with her. “Actually, it’s the architect’s own coat of arms and symbol. Mr. Adam liked to include his own signature on everything he did, you see. I’ll admit they bothered me as a child, and I didn’t know why my mother was so proud of them. I was very proud of our name, I think, and couldn’t understand why my ancestor wanted our home adorned with someone else’s mark.”
“Well, why would he?” Francesca asked.
“How else would anyone know how much money he spent?” Julian asked her, smiling at her incomprehension. “Adam was a very expensive chap to haul cross-country just to do a music room, and they were proud of it.”
“But that’s foolish,” Francesca protested. “It would be like wearing a famous dressmaker’s signature upon one’s gown. There are some arts that should speak for themselves…why, see the fellow advertises himself forever this way.”
“Precisely,” Julian laughed, “and how much he charged for the treat, as well. That’s the whole point of it. One look, and all the neighbors, even the ones who didn’t know a cornice from a column, fell into transports of envy, without a word having to be spoken.”
“What a good idea!’ Arden said enthusiastically. “I think I’ll go one better and have my architects set their names in the tiles on my floors a
nd chisel their bills on my walls—for those of my neighbors who are a bit dim, do you think?”
They laughed at the thought, and had some sport with the idea of famous gardeners trimming their portraits into the topiary hedges, and had gone onto wonder about chefs piping their initials into the crusts of their pies, and might have gone on so for hours, had not Julian checked his watch and announced that speaking of pies had made him hungry, so they ought to start out once again.
“But, Julian,” Roxanne protested again, “it’s late, and you’ve so many bedrooms, although,” she added on a low laugh, “we only need three, so let’s stay. Oh, come, Julian, what fun! I’m tired of riding in the coach, and we’re already here…” As she kept on pleading, Arden took Francesca’s arm, and opening a long glass door that led to the gardens, strolled out-of-doors with her.
“Domestic squabbles,” he explained as he walked her over a garden path, “and the best place for a guest to be during them is gone.”
They walked in a comfortable silence for a while, down winding shell paths past herb and flower gardens, and everywhere about them bright daffodils and tulips nodded over primrose and violets sheltering beneath their more blatant beauty.
“Julian’s pensioners are keen gardeners, I see,” Arden said as they strolled on. “The place is well-kept-up—he’s every right to be proud of it.”
Before Francesca could answer, Arden sighed, and while still looking at a bank blushing with cerise flowers, said quite plainly, or else she mightn’t have believed her ears, “It’s not too late. You can still go back to Warwick, or I can put you in a coach and get you to my sister Millicent before you’ve had time to think of three excuses for not bothering her. I was going to take you on to London, it seemed a good idea at the time, there are things you ought to see there if you are to believe me as to my monumental unsuitability for you, but now, knowing what you do, it would be quite all right to end the charade at once.”
“Knowing…what?” was all she managed to ask. His mood had turned so quickly she’d difficulty fathoming it. And too, although he’d said he’d keep her with him so that she could judge him for herself, she imagined that to be a ruse, because, and she’d worked this out in one long night, as she came to know more of all his talents and abilities, it made far more sense that he was going on with her so that he could make up his mind as to her suitability for him. Evidently now he had, she thought miserably. She looked up into his stern face and never knew that her own confusion and disquiet were so clear upon her own countenance that he had to look everywhere but at her.
“I am a bastard, got of a nobleman or not,” he explained, watching a cloud with the shape of a torn beast as it drifted by beyond the budding beech tree behind her shoulder.
“Oh, and that matters greatly,” she said.
“It ought,” he said, “my dear the Honorable Miss Carlisle.”
“Oh, yes. Of course. Absolutely, the Honorable Miss Carlisle, with her honorable mother who married two men at the same time to save time, no doubt, and so died birthing another bastard babe of her own, and her honorable father who would have been pleased to dice for the pennies they put on his wife’s eyes, no doubt—if he’d thought of her at all when she died, that is,” she said, not knowing that she could speak so well through clenched teeth, so angry that she was trembling.
“I love the way you speak,” he said, looking at her with mock ardor, his eyes brimming with laughter, “but why are you so angry?” he asked, his voice gentling. “Is it at my presumption?”
“At you, yes!” she raged. “At your presumption, yes! At your presumption of your unworthiness, when all about you are far worse, and when you are so very good—”
“No,” he said, sobering, “that I’m not, you’ll see.”
But as he looked down and watched her shuddering with the effort of controlling herself, he quite naturally, without any other intentions, reached out to console her. But at the feel of her delicately boned shoulders shaking beneath his hand, and at the look she gave him then, half-invitation, half-alarm, he lost his own control. He drew her close, and as she didn’t protest, he kissed her, marveling at the warmth and taste of her mouth, so moved by it that he took his lips from hers at once and only held her close—that much control, thank God, he thought, he still had.
When he realized that holding her so was achieving the precise opposite effect upon himself that he desired, he stepped a pace back and stared down into her eyes.
She thought he’d apologize, or speak of love, or talk of their foolishness, or jest so they’d forget it. But again she found she couldn’t predict him.
“Sometimes,” he said wonderingly, brushing a large finger so lightly against her cheek that she felt it no more than she might the wing of some small flying creature skimming past her, “sometimes,” he breathed, gazing at her finely textured lightly gilded skin, and at the blushing mouth he’d just touched with his own, “I’m afraid that when I touch you I’ll rub some of the gold off on my fingers, and so when I do, and then I dare look at you again, and find you still unblemished, I can’t quite believe it.”
She was still staring at his firm, wide, unsmiling mouth and wished that however beautifully he spoke, he’d use his lips again as he’d done before he spoke, and so she could say nothing.
But he only took in a long breath and let it out to ask her back to the house with him.
Julian was standing, restlessly looking through a book on a table as they entered the music room again, and Roxanne, at the other end of the room, was looking decidely put-out. But there’d been no valid explanation he could give her, Julian thought as he thumbed through pages that went unseen, or at least none he could offer that, reasonable or not, wouldn’t have wounded her. Because reasonable or not when she’d asked, he’d known at once that he didn’t want her in his bed in this house. Not this house. It made far less sense to him than it would to her, because she’d doubtless take it as the insult it was not.
It wasn’t because of their lovemaking, nor because of her position as his mistress either. They were alone here, after all, to all intents and purposes, at least with no one to judge them. And they’d made love often enough before. But he was always alone in some fashion, and when alone with himself, he judged himself constantly. And this was his childhood home, and his father’s childhood home before him, and so on back in time to the good old king who’d made a forefather a viscount for some service, giving him enough reward along with the title to build this old house. And he’d never had a woman beneath this roof, day or night, and would not, he expected, unless she had his name as well as his love.
So he’d told her it was because Arden was anxious to get to London, and he’d explained it was because he’d not ample servants for such a stay, and he’d mentioned that it was because Francesca might be shocked at the situation and feel compromised by their solitude and intimacy. All of which was true, but as all of it was given as reason all at once, Roxanne knew none of it was the real reason, of course.
Julian was glad to take up the reins again, and as he started the coach and headed for a nearby inn for the night, he decided that though he could probably convince her of his continued favor most easily between the sheets, he’d still book separate accommodations for himself and Roxie again, so as to give credence to some of his excuses. This mistress, he told himself ruefully, was fast teaching him why he’d never had one before. She was amusing in bed, and amusing outside of it when she chose to be, but taking on the responsibility for a female wasn’t at all as easy or pleasant as meeting one on her own terms for an affair, or taking her on for a merry night. In fact, now that he had a mistress, he didn’t know why having one was such a popular diversion.
He was pleased to be sitting on his high coachman’s seat, and not the least of it was that he didn’t have to exchange so much as a word with the former coachman who sat beside him. In fact, he thought, still musing about his mistress brooding in the coach he drove, having such an arrangement wit
h a female had all the disadvantages of wedlock, and didn’t even give a fellow the freedom to be honest in his boredom or occasional distemper, as he might be if he were lucky in his choice of wedded wife.
Most of all, he realized suddenly, thinking of his friends Warwick and Arden, the one wallowing in domestic bliss, the other tossed on the horns of love and desire: if one were even luckier, of course, there was that other element to some marriages that was supposed to make it all worthwhile, that ingredient that was singularly missing from his arrangement with Roxanne—love.
Arden, riding lost in thought beside the coach, was also pondering relationships and rooms. There’d been a time when he’d been loath to return to London, for the good reason of not wishing to be reminded of certain activities he’d been engaged in there, or having others reminded of certain evidence subsequently laid against him for it there. But now he’d heard the wind blew from other quarters, and two years was a literal lifetime in yet other quarters, and too, he’d become a different man. No, what he’d feared most recently had been the judgment of those matters by the lady in the coach he rode beside. At the moment he was even more worried about her proximity, for now he was thinking that separate rooms in London might not be enough.