by Brianna York
“The servants have grown lax in my absence,” Emmeline informed him waspishly after he had opened the door.
Matthew closed his eyes for a moment, curbing his tongue. “I sent them to bed already, mother. There is no need for them to wait up when I am quite capable of letting you and Jules in.”
The Dowager Duchess just harrumphed at that, shoving her wrap into her eldest son’s hands. Matthew stared at it a moment, then with deep resignation, reached out and hung it by the door. Turning, he made to return to the library, when his mother’s voice halted him in his tracks.
“I almost forgot, Matthew,” she said, pleasure heavy in her voice. “The Baron shall be visiting you on the morrow with the happy tidings of his engagement to Alexandra.”
Matthew’s mind refused to work its way around her words at first. Finally he said, “Baron Tyndale?”
Emmeline smiled tolerantly at him as if he were simple. “Why of course, dear. Come, Julian. It is late and I am done in.”
Julian looked as if he wished to protest this command, but when he glanced at his brother in search of support, Matthew was still staring at the Dowager Duchess in confusion. Resignedly, Julian started up the stairs after his mother.
“Wait a moment, Mother!” Matthew called then. “How have you come by such knowledge before any of the rest of us?” He felt a thread of apprehension curling in his stomach. It meant nothing good if Emmeline knew of this engagement before Matthew and the rest of his friends.
Emmeline smiled thinly at Matthew, but he read triumph in her eyes. “I was simply in the right place at the proper time, dear. Now, goodnight.”
Matthew let his mother and brother go, his thoughts in chaos. His quick mind kept coming back to the same conclusion and rejecting it as impossible. Finally, knowing that he would not sleep a wink until he knew the truth of the matter, he bounded up the stairs. His booted feet sank silently and deeply into the carpeted hallway. He halted a moment before Alex’s door, drew a breath, then knocked lightly.
“Alex?” he called softly. The silence that greeted his words stretched out for so long that he decided to knock a second time. “Alex? Can I have a word with you?” He supposed that she might be asleep, but every fiber of his being knew that she would not be.
“Oh, if you must, Matthew.” The voice sounded blurry and rough and only vaguely like his sister’s. He heard footsteps make their way up to the door before it opened to reveal Alex, wrapped in a patchwork quilt that had been given to her by their father. Her hair was mussed and her eyes were red from crying, but her chin was held at an imperious angle, as if challenging him to make comment on her appearance.
“I fear that I must,” Matthew answered her, stepping into the room and pushing the door closed. Placing his hands firmly on her shoulders, he steered her over to the bed. “Sit,” he ordered her. She looked mutinous for a moment, but did as he had bade her.
Crossing the room, Matthew collected his sister’s silver-handled hair brush before joining her on the bed. He held silent, knowing that she would speak to him when she was ready, and busied himself with gently untangling the sloppy braid that she had woven into her waist-length titian hair. He had worked the last knots of braiding out and started carefully brushing the ends of her hair before she finally spoke.
“When you were a little boy, Matthew, did you ever imagine your future and see it as a glorious gift that you had only to earn and then enjoy?”
Her words reminded him uncannily of his thoughts when he had been kissing Tess in the gazebo. “Often.”
“This is not the glorious gift that I imagined it would be,” she said softly, her voice breaking on the last two words.
Abandoning her hair, Matthew gently turned Alex to face him. Silent tears coursed down her pale cheeks, but her eyes were very clear and very wounded. Matthew felt her hurt as tangibly as if it was his own, and he pulled her into a comforting hug. “Tell me what happened tonight.”
Folded in her brother’s strong arms, Alex did not feel so completely without hope, and she sniffed and tried to decide how best to tell her brother what had happened. She recognized that some distant part of her did not want Matthew to be angry at Forrest, and she smiled for a rueful moment at her own generosity. “Forrest and I went out onto the balcony because he said that he wanted to discuss something with me. Emmeline happened upon us in what I think she termed a ‘compromising position’.” Alex sniffed again, willing herself not to cry again. “She ordered us to marry.”
Her voice had been so quiet that Matthew had been forced to strain to hear her words, but they merely confirmed his worst fears. He thought with sudden insight that it would have been much easier for Forrest and Alex to be in this position if they did not really love one another. Sighing, he gathered Alex closer and pressed a fatherly kiss to her hair. “I am sorry, Alex.” He felt her nod in reply before he forced her to sit up and look at him. “Is it really so terrible though? You said that you loved him.”
She exhaled tightly and worried the edge of the frayed quilt with her fingers. “It is just not at all how I would have chosen things to happen, Matthew. Besides, I do not know if he loves me. And I do not wish to be married to a man that would prefer not to be attached to me.”
Matthew smiled fondly at his sister as he said, “And it infuriates you to have to do my mother’s bidding.” She stilled, then nodded tensely. Matthew’s smile deepened. “Wouldn’t it spite my mother well and truly if you two made things right?”
Alex attempted a smile that was watery, but credible. “You make it sound possible.”
Matthew gathered her into another hug, then made her turn around so that he could finish tidying her hair. “It will all be as it should be, Alex,” he told her his tone communicating that he was certain of his words. As Matthew re-braided her long hair, Alex found herself wishing that she felt as certain as her brother sounded.
∞∞∞
Forrest shivered. Despite the warmth of his greatcoat, he was chilled to the bone. He supposed that catching his death of cold wandering about the city when he should have been returning to Matthew’s house was a bit foolish. What did he hope to accomplish out here in the dark, all alone?
For the first time since he had met Matthew, Forrest did not know that he could go to the other man for advice. The feeling that he was entirely without advice or even a sympathetic ear was a bit daunting. Certainly he had imagined that he would manage to win Alex over and be able to convince her to accept his proposal of marriage. In no way had he ever dreamt that the choice would be forced upon her like this, however.
He sighed as he skirted a deep puddle in the road. No sense in getting run over in the street, he decided. Nothing for it but to go back to the house and attempt to ask Matthew properly for his sister’s hand in marriage. Perhaps something could be done about the haste with which the Dowager Duchess wished them to marry. Why could nothing ever work to his advantage? Must everything that mattered most to him go so horribly awry?
Fourteen
M
atthew was returning from his ride the next morning when he met Alex in the hall. He smiled fondly at her, pleased that she looked tired but no longer distraught.
“Good morning!” He greeted her. “Feel up to a trip to the bookshop?”
Alex, who was a confirmed bluestocking, smiled a bit at that, her eyes bright. “I am always up to a trip to the bookshop,” she returned.
“You are feeling better,” Matthew teased her, placing one hand on the small of her back and directing her toward the house.
“I need to change into something less horsey,” he told her as they stepped into the welcoming warmth of the breakfast room.
“Anyone else interested in a trip to the bookshop?” Alex inquired of the rest of the room in general as she collected the items she wished to eat.
“Not I,” Rob answered.
“You always were a terrible bluestocking,” her stepmother said in an accusatory voice to Alex by way of a reply before marc
hing up the stairs to her rooms. Alex watched her go and shook her head.
“Might I come along?” Julian inquired a bit hesitantly.
Alex turned to her stepbrother with a smile. “Of course you may, Jules.”
I shall go and change my clothes then,” Matthew said to the room at large as he gulped down a cup of steaming coffee. “I shall be down in a trice,” he told them as he exited the room. He bounded up the steps two at a time, Sampson loping easily along beside him and barking.
“Shush,” Matthew bade the dog as he hurried down the hall and pushed open the doors to his room.
“Dobbs?” he called.
“Yes, Your Grace?” Dobbs answered, emerging from Matthew’s dressing room with a fresh set of clothes on his arms.
“One step ahead of me, as usual, I see,” Matthew joked, sitting down and beginning the arduous task of removing his boots.
“Just doing my job, Matthew,” Dobbs said, setting down the jacket and pressed white shirt in his arms and helping Matthew with his boots.
“You probably have no idea how I suffer when you are not around,” Matthew told his valet. “The person who designed boots must never have worn a pair. If he had, he would never have foisted the blasted things on all of us.”
Dobbs smiled faintly, shaking his head at the mud stains and other various abuses that marred the surface of the top-boots he had helped Matthew out of. “You complain rather vehemently for a man that doesn’t own a single pair of pumps, Your Grace.”
Matthew couldn’t be angry at an observation as correct as that one. “Yes, well, let’s get me cleaned up a bit, shall we?”
“I have a question that you may find impertinent,” Dobbs said as he helped Matthew into a light blue tailcoat. “But I feel that I must ask it.”
“You are never impertinent, Dobbs. You are more along the order of inquisitive,” Matthew replied, working the buttons on his coat, straightening the cloth over his broad shoulders before tipping his chin up to allow Dobbs to tie his cravat.
“Yes, well...” Dobbs agreed carefully, unsure of what to make of that statement. “I must ask, are you contemplating marriage, Your Grace?”
Matthew chuckled a bit, causing his Adam’s apple to collide with his valet’s busy fingers. “I wish that I knew, Dobbs.”
Dobbs hesitated a moment, then continued with his work. “That is not very definitive, Your Grace.”
“No, it isn’t,” Matthew returned easily.
“Oh,” Dobbs said with obvious displeasure as he finished the elaborate knot. “How unfortunate.”
“Yes,” Matthew could not repress a grin. “It’s really too bad.” He paused on his way out to admire his reflection in the cheval glass hung over his bureau. “Have I ever told you that you are quite possibly the best valet in all of England, Dobbs?”
Dobbs nodded. “Yes, Your Grace. Quite frequently, actually.”
“Well, in that case,” Matthew replied, pushing a recalcitrant curl back into place. “Remind me to give you a raise this quarter.”
“I shall do that, Your Grace,” Dobbs answered crisply as his employer exited the room at a brisk pace. He shook his head a bit and smiled fondly to himself as he began tidying up his employer’s room.
Matthew passed Alex in the hallway en route to get her gloves and wrap. “I shall be back downstairs shortly,” she told him as she slipped into her room. She gathered her clothes with her usual speed, and managed to make her way downstairs within a minute. She did not see Matthew in the foyer but she decided it was likely he would be in the library. She had just reached out to push open the doors into the room when suddenly they swung inward to reveal Forrest. She rather hoped that her own expression did not mirror the one of uneasily bridled tension mixed with regret on Forrest’s face as he caught sight of her.
Realizing that Forrest would likely stare stonily at her all day if she did not do something to remedy the situation, she drew in a deep breath and then said, “Good morning, Forrest.”
Forrest’s wary expression softened somewhat, but his eyes remained distant and unfamiliar, as if he had removed himself from the situation for his own safety. “Alex,” he said politely, sounding as if he did not know her at all and inclining his head.
“Might I enter the library?” she asked him stiffly, annoyed by his tone and his coolness. She began to regret making the effort to put him at ease.
He stared at her for another moment, then stepped aside to allow her to pass by him. “Actually,” he said to her as she swept by him with a rustle of skirts, “There is something that I wish to discuss with you.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, steeling herself. “I suppose that now is as good a time as any other, Forrest.”
If she had been looking at him, she would have seen the spasm of pain that contorted his features for a moment before disappearing. He felt horribly guilty about the situation as it now stood, but he had never been one for shirking punishment if he deserved it. Shrugging his shoulders back, he stepped farther into the room. “I have arranged for a special license, so all we have to do is set a date.”
Alex felt a momentary spasm of shock at those words. She still felt distantly as if the events of the night before were simply some nightmare that she could not quite forget. However, when confronted with the harsh reality of setting the date of her own marriage, she could not deny that it was no nightmare. Gathering herself, she turned around and looked at Forrest across the room. The way in which she had always imagined the manner of her engagement swam before her eyes for a moment, and it was so out of tune with the current situation that she felt almost dizzy. “I suppose that the sooner we set the date for, the better,” she said quietly, proud that her voice held steady in spite of the tumult of her emotions.
This time she did see the subtle hint of discomfort pass across Forrest’s rigidly-composed face. She was not sure if the emotion was actually regret, but it looked very much like a cousin to it. “In a week then?” he inquired, his voice flat and lifeless.
Alex shook her head immediately. A week was far too long to have such a thing looming over her head. “Four days,” she said firmly.
Forrest’s countenance became so rigid that his lips went slightly white. “If that is what you wish.” He stirred, then crossed the room a bit stiffly. Alex watched him close the distance between them and knew that, in spite of herself and the awkwardness of the situation, she still loved him. Even as composed as a butler, he was still overwhelmingly, essentially male and lethally graceful. She found his anger perhaps even more becoming than his normal aspect. “I believe that it is my duty to present this to you now,” he said to her, slipping his hand into his coat and drawing out a slender golden band. He held out one long-fingered hand in silent command.
Alex stared at the beautiful masculine hand in front of her for a moment as if she had never seen a man’s hand before. Finally, with a shudderingly deep breath, she reached out and placed her left hand in his, her fingers feeling at home in his cool and powerful grip. She saw the sudden light in his slate blue eyes as her fingers tightened on his and felt a return of some hope, but then he appeared to shutter his eyes, blocking out the light of a living response to her person and hiding it from her sight once again. Feeling as if a cold wind had blown across her, Alex shivered as he slid the tiny golden band onto her finger. It fit perfectly and she thought to herself that she was now inextricably bound to Forrest, for good or for ill. The thought was not comforting.
“Alex?” The voice was Matthew’s, and Alex felt a surge of relief. She tore her eyes from the gold band around her finger as Matthew stepped into the room, smiling brightly. “Alex, are you r.....” His smile faded as he took in the scene before him. “I am sorry. I shall be in the study when you are ready to leave,” he told Alex, turning to exit the room.
“No Matthew. I am ready now,” she assured her brother. She glanced up at Forrest’s shuttered face once more, allowing the serenity that Matthew’s presence had communicated to her
to glow in her eyes. She had been hoping for some response from him, but his face remained implacable, unreadable and drawn tightly shut against her scrutiny. Feeling chilled again, she turned away and crossed the room to take her brother’s arm. Matthew threw a questioning glance at Forrest, his eyes troubled.
“I should like a moment to speak with you late today, if possible,” Forrest said tersely, his shoulders rigid.
Matthew nodded. “Of course,” he replied, knowing that Forrest would be wanting to get Matthew’s approval of Forrest’s engagement to Alex. “We shall return before the end of the afternoon.” He reached out a placed a firm hand on Forrest’s shoulder for a moment, then turned away.
When they were gone, Forrest closed his eyes and blew out the breath that he had not realized he had been holding while he spoke with Alex. He stood for a moment with his eyes closed, willing the anger coiling through him to still. He knew that one did not propose to one’s only love as he had just done, but how else could he have managed things? He did not wish to hurt her any more than he already had, and yet he seemed only to succeed in pushing her farther away with everything that he did. He whirled around and crossed the room to look out the window at the alley below. He saw Matthew and Alex emerge from the house, trailed by Julian. As they crossed to Matthew’s waiting carriage, Matthew said something to his sister that made her laugh aloud and he watched the expressive display of pure enjoyment with some envy, but more pleasure. Lord but she was beautiful!
Growling a curse under his breath, he spun around and leaned wearily against the wall. He shoved a hand into his hair and tried to gather himself. He must make things right with her, but he had no idea how. After a few moments, he straightened away from the wall, brushed at his lapels, and left the room.