Darting a glance at the men, William sighed, took up Rena’s hand, and led her with startling abruptness to the dance floor. “And what do you think they are saying about us now?” he challenged, pulling her toward him as he inclined his head to the murmuring men.
William did not let her answer. In perfect time with the other dancers, he spun her around. Rena stiffened, feeling oddly brittle, as if the sun had dried up her bones.
“Dance with me,” Edric had said to her once. He had spent two weeks teaching her the steps to his favorite dances, insisting she accompany him to one of the military balls. Oh, how people had stared at them. His comrades had called him a brazen fool for bringing his Indian wife to such a place. The English women who had come to India seeking British husbands of their own—memsahibs as her people called them—had watched her with clear disdain, spitting epithets to one another as she and Edric had passed them. Did those women think she had stolen a prospect from them? Did they think he was under her spell? But Edric had pressed Rena’s hand, silencing her thoughts as he murmured, “They’re just jealous of your beauty. Dance with me.”
She shook away the whisper of Edric’s ghost when she realized William was watching her.
“If you don’t think I’m worth the trouble,” she said, circling around him and taking his outstretched hand. “Why have you given us your cottage?”
“I just want to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.” William leaned closer so she could still hear him over the raucous music. “Barric’s a good man, the kind who can take care of himself, but as with any man he’s also the kind who could get a young woman into trouble.”
“For a steward, you sure have a lot to say about your master.” She heard in her defensive tone the words of a spoiled aristo, latching onto rank and twisting it to her advantage.
William did not seem angered by her reply. His hand parted from hers just long enough for her to catch hands with the man adjacent to them. The other man spun her quickly, his fingers barely touching hers, as if afraid her skin might burn him. As she and William met in the middle, William replied, “Our fathers died within a few years of each other. You might say Barric and I both returned to finish what they started, and I do not wish for anything to impede that end.”
Rena nodded, her throat constricting. “It is difficult,” she agreed, “to pick up after the dead.”
Sometimes, when Rena teetered on the verge of sleep, she still felt like she was spinning, faster and faster in Edric’s hold as he led her through the next unfamiliar dance. Sometimes she awakened dizzy and needed a moment to settle her eyes on something steadfast. Now Rena wore a strange red dress and danced with a young man she barely knew, her steps heavy and awkward.
“This husband of yours,” William began, then frowned as if already regretting his prodding question. “Would he have wanted you to come to England?”
Edric had always talked about England and how desperately he wanted to bring her there, though neither of them could have guessed she would return without him. Sorrow rose up, the familiar beast, and choked her. Rena dropped her gaze. She did not wish to speak about Edric. She wanted to feel weightless again, to spin herself dizzy as she had two years ago in her husband’s arms.
“Never mind,” William whispered, his hand tightening around hers. “Don’t answer. Just dance.”
William led her through one more reel. They didn’t speak again, and Rena almost enjoyed herself. William was a confident dancer with a reserved smile that slipped its guard now and then and ended in genuine laughter. Rena followed his lead, though the steps of the second dance were mostly unfamiliar to her. Still, it was relieving, in a small way, to race against her own heartbeat, to feel noise and chatter and lose herself within it. At one point, she forgot which way was right and which way was left and tripped against him, laughing for the first time in many, many months.
At last the music beat like rapid wings to a steady close. With a reluctant smile of approval, William stepped back to bow. Rena curtsied, then moved to take up her previous post at the floor’s perimeter and wait for Alice’s return. Before she’d made it three paces, however, cool fingers locked around her forearm and pulled her half a step off balance. “I believe I have the next dance.”
Rena turned at the waist and found Thomas waiting behind her. Each lock of his black hair was swept carefully over his brow and his mustache impeccably trimmed. He might have been handsome, in an angular way, if only his eyes weren’t so uncomfortably cold. He dashed her a swooping bow and tipped his head in obvious question. William’s lips tightened as he glanced sharply at Rena. “You don’t have to dance with him,” he said with a baleful glance at Thomas.
Thomas sighed dramatically. He still hadn’t released Rena’s arm. “You don’t have to play watchdog for Barric,” he rebuked. “I promise he is not watching.”
“It’s fine,” Rena said, refusing to be shaken by someone who obviously wanted to watch her cringe. She smiled faintly at William, though her throat felt unbearably tight. “It’s just one dance.”
Without another glance at William, Thomas led Rena to her place in line with the other ladies. With unnerving focus, he stared at her across the aisle, waiting for the music to begin. The fiddle pitched to life, and as the other couples moved across the floor, Rena was obliged to cross to Thomas, to hold her hand out toward him. At the first chance he had, Thomas pulled her tightly against him and lowered his eyes to her saffron-colored dress. “It would seem you have come out of mourning,” he observed, and smiled again.
Rena made no answer but followed the motions as he danced her down the line, past other men and women who watched their progress with uncertain expressions. His heavy cologne stung her nostrils as it had that first night on the road, and she ticked down the seconds until the dance would end and she could at last escape him.
“I almost envy Barric,” he continued as she returned to her place beside him. His arm locked around her waist as he dropped the words in her ear, “He must enjoy the pretty vision of you slaving in his fields—how especially if you were to wear that dress as you begged.”
She clenched her teeth, relieved when he released her. She switched places with the lady beside her and was allowed three seconds respite before her hands were again joined with Thomas’s.
“We don’t have to talk,” she commented frostily, snatching her hand back as soon as she was able.
“Prefer a man of few words, do you?” He smirked, his eyes markedly pointed in Lord Barric’s direction.
She tried not to react to his needling, but her fingers clenched briefly against his coat sleeve, betraying her frustration. She already knew what people thought of her. Trollop, they called her, and her short stay at the Gilded Crown had certainly not helped matters. Would people think, because of this dance, she was somehow involved with Thomas? She frowned at his glinting eyes.
“You needn’t play so coy with me,” Thomas goaded. “You’d think Barric would show more discretion. Oh, his brother has kept many mistresses too. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were from your neck of the woods. Barric and Charlie have always had a liking for dark-haired beauties….”
She kept her expression loose and unaffected, refusing to rise to his taunts. Clearly, Thomas wanted to anger her, but she would not willingly hand him words he could twist against her later. When it was clear she wouldn’t answer, Thomas’s fingers tightened.
“Perhaps he is not the only one who could loosen your tongue,” he whispered in her ear, pulling her to an abrupt halt. “I might not be an earl, but I’d still be better business than what you had at the Gilded Crown.”
Rena lost her footing. Lurching back from Thomas, she brought up her arm to strike him as hard across the face as she could, but her hand was caught at once from behind.
Thomas saw him before she did.
“Ah, Barric!” he greeted with a sly expression which was razored at the edges. “We were just speaking of you.”
Rena’s h
and was shaking in Lord Barric’s. He released her at once and stepped back. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Had he heard? Had he heard the vile words his cousin had said to her?
“She dances rather well for a heathen,” Thomas purred. “Don’t you think so, Barric?”
Rena did not wait for Lord Barric’s reply. Without another word, she turned and fled the dance floor.
Rena heard Barric calling out her name, a brash sound against the hollow drum of her ears. She moved faster, ignoring him. She made it several yards past the festival’s edge, passing into a small thicket, where the music’s beat was reduced to dead thuds beneath her tired feet. After spending time in noisy chaos, every other sound pealed louder as she hurried home. The wind felt like deafening shrieks. The pitch of crickets was as shrill as fingernails on tin.
When twigs snapped several steps behind her, she whirled around to find Lord Barric standing before her. His skin matched the moonlight gleam for gleam, and his red hair was that mysterious shade of firelight which felt familiar and foreign to her all at once.
“What did he say to you?” He was slightly out of breath from running after her, but his words were iron tight in his throat.
“Nothing I care to repeat,” she replied, trembling slightly from anger and her own useless sprint.
He nodded grimly, perhaps guessing easily enough what his cousin might have said. Of course he could guess. They were family, after all. Might not Barric have been raised to entertain the same thoughts as Thomas, the same arrogance, even if he treated her with more kindness? Even William had warned her, hadn’t he? Barric was the kind of man who could get a young woman like her into trouble. And now here he was, standing right in front of her.
She loosed a humorless laugh, a tired breath that rattled—a rusty sound. Barric’s expression creased slightly. He stepped closer, still a few paces away, and paused. His eyes felt too hard against hers, so she shifted to the side and looked back at the glinting fires still blazing like watchful eyes in the distance. Covering the last few steps separating them, Barric’s eyes drifted across her face as he clasped a tendril of her black hair between two of his fingers.
“Barric and Charlie have always had a liking for dark-haired beauties…”
She shoved back against the intrusion of Thomas’s voice in her mind, not wanting to believe his words but also not sure she had a reason to doubt them. She snapped her mouth tightly closed and pictured Lord Barric standing on the other side of the fire, surrounded by girls as bright as midnight tapers. And he had smiled at those girls, his face a fiery mask of shadow and reflected flame.
She opened her mouth but couldn’t force a word up her faltering throat. He smelled like campfire, the smoke still thick on his coat, seeming so casual and ordinary in the thicket as if torn from his powerful world like a page from a book.
A few tendrils of hair had escaped the net at the back of her neck, and Barric swept them away from her shoulders. Nell had told her to keep both eyes open around him, to tread carefully because they weren’t entirely sure what kind of man he was. Rena thought she knew, but then Lord Barric tipped her chin, searching her face.
“I should go.” The words barely registered in her own ears; she half wondered if she had spoken them at all. His head dipped down, closer, and his touch was soft, like the grain that brushed her skin when she worked in his fields. As he shifted his hand to cup the side of her neck, his fingers accidentally brushed the thin cord still hanging there.
Edric.
Barric’s touch to the necklace hit her like a physical blow, curdling her blood in an instant. With a sharp gasp, her hand flew to her chest, where the vial of sand still dangled beside Edric’s signet ring. Barric noticed the frantic movement, his eyes creasing when he read whatever pained expression had crossed her face.
He brushed her hand aside, lifting the cord carefully to examine the two trinkets. Rena wanted to jerk back, flustered by his nearness, but she felt pinned in place by a strange mix of embarrassment and sorrow. And so she waited as he inspected the vial of sand, closely, as if peering through a magic glass into another world. His lips tightened. Then his attention shifted, his fingers taking hold of Edric’s ring. There it was. Edric’s initials. His crest. Another man’s legacy curved into a simple circle of gleaming gold. Rena choked back a sob as every memory of Edric began splitting behind her eyes, until the man seemed to stand between her and Barric, an impenetrable wall.
Closing his eyes, Barric severed the connection by dropping the ring, letting the cord fall back heavily against her chest. Rena seized the vial and the ring in her palm, staring down at the ground with a pounding shame. He’d been about to kiss her, and she’d been about to let him.
“I shouldn’t have done that.” Barric’s tone was overly formal, his jaw so tight the words seemed forced from him at knifepoint. “I’ve had too much wine, I think.”
Rena was still shaking her head when he’d finished speaking. “I can’t,” she whispered, pleading. “I won’t be your—”
She broke off, horrified by what she’d been about to let slip. But Barric caught the words before she could retract them, his eyes pausing suspiciously on her face. “Won’t be my what?” He spoke slowly, drawing her out. Shaking her head, Rena garbled out an apology, but he snatched her hand. “Won’t be my what?” he repeated.
“I won’t be your mistress.” She tried to sound blunt, as Thomas had been when he’d brought up the topic in the first place, but her throat closed at the last moment, clenching the sound.
For a moment, Barric’s expression flashed with a stab of unmistakable shock, his mouth parted slightly, his eyes a stunned shade of shadowed green. But then, like thunder following the lightning, his expression darkened into tightly held rage, his hands fisting at his sides as his eyes narrowed on her face. “My…mistress?” He practically choked on the word. He scuffed his heel backward through the dirt, nearly laughing until the harsh sound betrayed his black mood. “I let you take from my fields. Offer you housing. Protection. Eventually, he’ll come to collect. Is that what you think?” He stalked a few steps away from her.
“I only thought, because of your brother—”
Those were the wrong words to say too, and Rena knew it as soon as she’d begun. Lord Barric rounded hard, grabbing her arm to keep her from stepping back. When he spoke, the words rumbled in his throat. “What about my brother?”
“I’ve heard he has…many. Mistresses.” Her eyes fell from his as she repeated what she’d heard. “In France. And that you—”
“You know, for someone who despises gossip so much, it certainly falls readily enough from your willing tongue.” His accusation cost Rena the last few scraps of control she held. Her mouth flew open to protest, indignant, but the words caught in her chest when she realized he was right. She was holding gossip against a man who had shown her nothing but kindness—gossip she’d heard from Thomas no less. Shame kept her from replying.
“But you see, I can be just as direct as you. Yes, Mrs. Hawley, my brother has bedded many eager women. And when he tires of them, I pay them for their trouble, along with his debts. And there will be many more to warm his bed, I’m sure. My brother is a very charming man.”
Rena stared carefully at his knotted cravat, refusing to meet his eyes. Lord Barric had been very direct, indeed, had said things which ought to have made a decent lady blush. But then she thought about those poor women, discarded one after the other, and she shook the silence away. “Do you believe these women love him?”
His sharp expression slackened, confused, perhaps even surprised by her sudden change in direction. He dropped her arm and shrugged as if he’d never considered the possibility. “Some do, I’m sure.”
“Do not pay them. Let your brother see how cheaply he has used their love—he ought to see the true price of a heart.”
Lord Barric’s gaze dropped again to Edric’s ring. Uncomfortable, Rena tucked the necklace back beneath her neckline. Barric gave her
a tentative look, but he didn’t speak. Feeling as though they had both mortified each other enough for one meeting, she sketched a quick curtsy—a pathetic semblance of formality—and turned to continue her path toward home.
“Where are you going?” His voice sounded uneven. Unsure.
Again, she turned and said, “I do not belong here.”
As though to punctuate her statement, drunken laughter sounded through the trees, unnervingly close. Shaking her head, Rena stepped farther back from him. What would people think if they found her there in the trees, alone with Lord Barric? Just like his brother, people might say of him. Or worse, that Rena had seduced him.
“I must go,” she whispered urgently. “Now, my lord. Think what people will say if they discover us here together.”
He took a step closer to her. “Dance with me before you go.”
Still slightly untrusting, Rena made no reply.
“What’s wrong?” He tilted his head to glimpse her downcast eyes. “Afraid I might actually make you smile?”
Rena sighed, feeling the same traitorous pull she’d felt when they’d spoken outside the stable, when he had smiled so broadly as she had not seen before or since.
“Yes,” she answered truthfully and turned again, away from him.
Barric returned to the festival in a stormier mood, his hands and jaw clenched tight with irritation. He had surprised himself in the thicket, embracing a woman who clearly needed time to grieve, making advances on her without a thought for her wishes or reputation. Such was not the behavior of a gentleman. Even Rena must have thought poorly of him, trusted him so little she thought his generosity was merely a guise for taking her to bed.
Now he marched back to the other revelers, his temper slipping its stronghold. He was sick of watching the way she was forced to take the town’s barbed whispers, with head bent down and muted eyes, as if she were taking a beating. He could only imagine what his cousin had said to her, words awful enough that she nearly struck him, right there in front of everyone. Barric half wished he hadn’t intervened, that he’d let her leave an angry mark on Thomas’s deserving cheek. But he had stepped in, caught her strike lest Thomas return the blow, and Rena had run from them both, suspecting Barric was little better than those with whom he shared blood.
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