“I am not so desperate, Captain, that I am willing to marry a man with this sort of temper.”
Mr Henshaw, who had been occupied at the other end of the room, now reached Charlie’s side and took him firmly by the shoulders. “Time to go home, Charlie, old boy.”
“Wait!” said Grace, holding up a finger. “This man has behaved badly, after all. Reparations must be made.”
Henshaw blinked at her in astonishment. “A duel’s really not the thing, Miss Rivers –”
“An apology, however,” Grace countered, “is absolutely necessary.” She turned to the man whom Charlie had accused. “What is your name, sir?”
He admitted to the name of Ashley Yarrow.
“Mr Yarrow, you will please oblige me by making a sincere apology for your actions.”
Mr Yarrow thrust his hands into his pockets and looked as though he were about to argue. A growl from Charlie, still held tightly in Henshaw’s hands, was enough to jerk him back to his senses. “I am most terribly sorry for – for any way in which I have wronged you,” he said, in the most begrudging tones. He looked to Grace. “Will that suffice, ma’am?”
“I suppose it’s the best we can hope for,” Grace sniffed. She turned away from Mr Yarrow as though she were a duchess dismissing a serving boy, and offered her arm to Charlie. “I feel the need for some fresh air, Captain Everly. Won’t you escort me outside?”
The Henshaws followed them out, and with the swiftest of bows to their outraged host, they were standing in the lamplit courtyard.
“You’ve had quite enough fun for one night, I think,” said Henshaw, and went to see about getting their carriage. Charlie’s arm was still clasped firmly in Grace’s, and she could feel how he thrummed with the injustice of it all. She hardly dared look at him, not wishing to know whether that reckless anger was still clouding his face.
“Charlie!” gasped Alison, still quite overcome with shock. “How could you behave so poorly?”
“Yarrow cheated me,” said Charlie stubbornly. “What’s a man to do? Sit there and let him bleed me dry?”
“A better way to behave would be to simply leave the card table and snub him in future,” said Grace. “At the very most, you were within your rights to demand an apology. After all, you do not know what dire circumstances must drive a man to cheating. Mr Yarrow must be in sorry straits indeed!”
“I hadn’t thought of that!” said Charlie, brightening a little. Grace withdrew her hand from his arm.
“It would suit you better not to revel in his misfortune. He has been thoroughly shamed in front of most of Whitby – is that not enough for you?”
“You’re right! I don’t know how he’ll show his face about town now. That was a masterstroke, Grace, making him apologise in front of everybody!” A transformative smile broke across Charlie’s features, his anger forgotten. “Though I suppose he only did it to avoid pistols at dawn with me!”
“And lucky for you he did,” said Grace, “for I meant what I said.”
Charlie’s eyes met hers, wide with alarm. “You would break off an engagement over – over Ashley Yarrow?”
“Haven’t you heard?” asked Grace, a touch sourly. “I have broken off engagements under lesser provocation, according to local wisdom.”
Charlie seized her hand and squeezed it almost painfully tight. “Never say that – never! As though I should care for town gossip!”
Grace could not be pleased with these words. She knew it was impossible that Charlie meant he cared for her. It only served to remind her of the sheer number of unknowns which hung over their swift engagement.
“Grace!” roared her father’s voice, making any form of sad contemplation impossible. On instinct, Grace jerked her hand back from Charlie’s.
“Yes, father?”
“You have made a spectacle of yourself!” Mr Rivers growled. The hapless Mrs Williams stood frowning beside him. “To think I imagined you had learnt something of the fragility of a good reputation! I had a good mind not to let you attend the ball this evening – and this is how you repay my generosity!” He had removed his tricorn hat and was twisting it fiercely in his hands.
“That’s too much, sir!” Charlie cried, springing forwards to prevent Mr Rivers bearing down on Grace. “If it weren’t for Grace, I’d likely be bruising my knuckles on Yarrow’s jaw this very moment!”
“Do you imagine that speaks well of you?” asked Mr Rivers coldly. Grace knew that tone well enough to be afraid of it – but Charlie had faced down gun barrels all over Europe, and he did not back down.
“I know that it speaks well of Grace,” he returned doggedly. Mr Rivers looked furious, twisted his hat until it was likely to tear, but did not argue.
“Come with me, Grace,” he said. “I have called for our carriage.”
As Grace went to stand at her father’s side, Charlie shot her a look of such sympathy and warmth that she realised, little as she knew him, and rough as he was, she would infinitely rather be leaving the ball with him instead of her father.
5
The cool waters of a friendly river closed over Charlie’s head. Sound was muted; sunlight a distant glimmer through his closed eyes. The day was hot, but the fast-flowing waters had not warmed. He lay on his back, arms and legs spread-eagled, feet bare and shirt soaked through, and let the river carry him along until his legs nudged a sandbank and he came to a stop, floating in the middle of the river.
Every tug of the current on his body felt as intimate as the caress of an old lover. Here, in this river, he had learned to swim. He had fished in it as soon as he was old enough to hold a rod. He had searched the banks for toads, which he carried carefully back to the house and hid in the bedroom of an unsuspecting Alison. The trees which lined its banks had been his childhood castles, every branch a grand tower. He had fought many fierce battles beside the river, long before he knew what it was to have an enemy at the end of his gun.
In the water’s cool embrace, he could almost forget that this was no longer his home. He had come walking through the Greenfields lands uninvited and unannounced. The river was no longer his to swim in; the land was no longer his to roam.
An odd sound in the water brought Charlie back to his senses. He opened his eyes, seeing nothing but treetops and blue sky. There it was again! A deep plunking sound – the noise of a rock breaking the water’s surface and sinking.
Charlie raised his head and looked towards the bank, where Grace Rivers was sitting in a pale green dress, eyeing up another pebble. Charlie kicked up a great splash by way of welcome and flipped onto his stomach, swimming across the current until his feet found the bottom.
“I thought I had better check you were not dead,” said Grace, still hefting her pebble. “You were lying quite still.”
“Would you have come wading in to rescue me?” asked Charlie, grinning. He shook the water from his hair, filling the air with dazzling droplets. Grace drew her legs back out of the way of the shower.
“You seem capable enough of rescuing yourself,” she said primly. Charlie reached a sopping hand towards her. Grace shook her head, smiling. “No. You won’t tempt me to ruin my dress.”
“I’d have thought a London Miss like yourself would have more dresses than she knew what to do with,” said Charlie, heaving himself up onto the bank beside her. The muddy grass left a long, green stain down his shirt that would surely make Alison groan. Grace laughed and shrank back from the water dripping from his clothes. He might have imagined it, but her gaze seemed to hover for a moment on the places where the wet fabric clung to his strong arms.
“I daresay I have more than enough dresses – but this one is a favourite.”
Charlie turned his attention to this dress deemed worthy of such an honour. He knew little about women’s clothing, and the fact that the green sprigged muslin was exceptionally fine was lost on him. He saw only how it clung to her figure and brought out the hints of green in her grey eyes. “I like it,” he declared.
&nbs
p; “It’s not proper to comment on –”
“We don’t need to be proper with one another. We’ll be married soon. And I like the dress. It suits you.” He leapt to his feet and extended a hand. “So, if you hold it above your ankles, it won’t be ruined if you come for a paddle.”
“I couldn’t,” said Grace, but she was eyeing the water with longing.
“Nothing better than a dip in the river on a hot day,” Charlie urged her. “Here, I’ll help you down so you don’t get muddy. It’s very shallow in this part, here. No-one will ever know.”
Grace hesitated a moment longer, then gathered her skirts up in one hand and took Charlie’s with the other. She was wearing palm-length gloves – the sort ladies used for gardening. Charlie thought of her hands tugging the weeds in the little flower garden outside Greenfields House with a mixture of pleasure and pain.
Even if his plan came to fruition, and Grace inherited Greenfields as his wife, would it come soon enough to unwind the damage caused by Mr Rivers’ unloving guardianship? Charlie had such a perfect image of Greenfields as it should be that the idea of any improvement or change horrified him. The old place was perfect as it was – it ought to be left that way forever, a monument to an ideal childhood and an ideal way of life.
At the river’s edge, Grace took off her half boots and rolled down her silk stockings, revealing several inches of each slim leg as she did. Charlie had never been a man for fine ankles, but he had to admit to a certain curiosity about the woman he intended to marry. Her ankles were, indeed, very fine. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, aware that a true gentleman would look away.
When Grace was ready, her skirts bunched up and lifted to her knees, she took Charlie’s hand again and let him lead her out into the water. The cold made her squeal at first. Charlie resisted the temptation to kick up a splash and give her something to really shout about.
“It’s cold!” she gasped, wiggling her toes.
“It’s just the thing,” Charlie insisted.
“Yes, but – are there fish?”
“Oh, huge ones. Great man-eating trout.”
Grace kicked her foot towards him, sending a splash of water up his already-sodden trouser leg. “You won’t scare me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Charlie flung himself back onto the bank, leaning up on his elbows to watch as Grace waded on. She was mostly concerned with watching the riverbed for sharp stones, but every so often she shot a glance up at him filled with such curiosity that he could not resist asking her what lay behind it.
“I am trying to make out your character,” Grace admitted, not noticing that the hem of her skirt had touched the water.
“Am I such a difficult study?”
“You are an impossibility.” Grace stepped neatly over a rock and came to sit on the bank beside him, choosing a dry piece of grass. “The few moments we have spoken alone together, you have been nothing but charming. But your actions – your rash behaviour – that speaks of a different, more difficult man. I want to know the sort of person I am going to marry, and I’m afraid I don’t know you – not yet.”
“I have always had a streak of wildness in me,” Charlie admitted. “When it rears its head, when my temper rises, I give in to it too often. It was easier in the army. Following orders and leading my men kept me well-occupied.”
“But you have no desire to rejoin?”
“I have other considerations at hand. My father’s money was left to me – what remained of it. My duty now is to the next generation of Everlys.”
Grace was frowning. “Is that why you want to marry me? Are there no girls you know better, who might suit you more?”
Charlie’s hand darted out before he could check it, and brushed Grace’s cheek. “But none half as pretty, Grace.”
She ducked away from the compliment. “That is no foundation for a marriage.”
“Well, let’s set about building one.” Charlie rolled onto his stomach to let the sun dry his back. “You had better tell me the truth behind this broken engagement business.”
Grace sighed so heavily that he wished he had not spoken. “I suppose you have a right to know,” she said, tugging at the grass. “Very well. It’s a simple enough story. Vincent – Mr Seabury – and I were engaged for two months. It was…not exactly a love match, but not far from it. I held him in very high esteem, and I had every reason to believe he thought of me just as highly. In any case, he was extremely eligible, with an independent fortune, and well-known in society. I was happy – Mama was happy – perhaps even my father was happy, though he rarely shows it. And then, one night, at the Vauxhall Gardens…”
“The scoundrel was unfaithful to you!” Charlie guessed. Grace looked at him in alarm. “I can see it in your eyes. My poor Grace! Spare me the details, I’ve no wish to hurt you.”
“I’m afraid there was rather a public scene,” said Grace. “When I discovered Vincent kissing that – that woman – I ended our engagement at once. But he chased after me, and made such a vile fuss over things, and insisted that we would be married regardless.” She closed her eyes, but continued. “People saw. People heard – but what they heard, I cannot say. I was in such a state of shock! I had no inkling of the true damage until Mama went visiting and found that every fashionable drawing-room in London was full of it.” She swallowed, her delicate throat tightening. “I never wished for notoriety of any sort, and there I found myself – whispered about in every corner! Mama says it will blow over in time, but there was nothing for it – I had to leave London at once. Father was not pleased at all. He approved of Mr Seabury, after all, and as for his views on marital happiness….” Her eyes opened again at last and turned pleadingly on Charlie. “There are many things my father and I do not have in common. You cannot have failed to notice that I have lived these past years in London, with Mama, while Father stayed in Whitby.”
“I knew that,” Charlie admitted, “but I’ll admit I’m such a clot that I never thought anything of it.” He sighed and ran a hand through his damp hair, a habit Alison was always trying to break him of. “I’m afraid you will find me reckless, outspoken, and too often thoughtless. These are flaws which I am well aware of, but every time I try to break them, I find myself dragged into some fresh scrape on account of my own heedlessness. But I don’t think our marriage is destined to misery. I have made a success of myself on the battlefield – why not in a marriage?” He turned to Grace with a face for once devoid of all frivolity. “My first duty will be to make you happy.”
“I am sure you will,” said Grace.
Charlie was beginning to understand that his new fiancée was well-practised in saying all the proper things, without truly feeling them. He made a note of the reservation in her cool grey eyes, and said nothing of it. Time would show her that he was a man of his word.
6
The afternoon on the river bank was the first moment that Grace began to think there might be more for her in this marriage than a rescue from embarrassment. Charlie seemed to be honest above all things. Honest - and outraged when the world was found to be false, such as when he had almost come to blows with Mr Yarrow. She could not help but admire this earnestness, even as his wildness gave her some concern.
But there was very little that was wild about Charlie in the weeks that followed. If Grace could have believed it, she would have thought he had summoned a London beau to tutor him in the art of courtship. He called at her house nearly every day, subjecting himself to hours of conversation with her father. If he had some opinion on the fitting of the new fireplace in the master bedroom or the modern water closet, he kept it to himself. For Grace, who had never outgrown a childish fear of her cold and distant father, it was a revelation to see Charlie talking so easily with him, as though they were equals. Even when Mr Rivers’s tongue ran to harshness, Charlie simply changed the subject with unexpected ease.
In addition to offering for Grace, one of Charlie’s first actions on arriving at Whitby-on-the-Wat
er was to spend a little of his inheritance on a smart new curricle and a matching pair of greys. Grace soon found that she liked nothing better than to zip around the countryside atop this rather precarious vehicle. Charlie insisted that she take her turn at driving the horses, and though it took some persuading and patient tutelage, Grace grew so confident at managing them that she was able to drive the curricle through the centre of Whitby without fear of the horses running away from her. How she would have liked to try out her skills at the fashionable hour in Hyde Park!
Charlie’s incident with Mr Yarrow was the chief object of gossip for some weeks, until a scuffle between two young men over the baker’s dimpled daughter supplanted it in everybody’s minds. To her relief, Grace found that she no longer drew looks of suspicion when she walked through Whitby. Some of her new acquaintances from the ball had even taken to calling on her. It was nothing compared to her set of London friends, but it was a start.
Particular among all her new friends was Alison Henshaw, who had treated Grace with sisterly warmth from the start. Alison was a kind, sensible woman, a little too highly-strung to manage Charlie’s mischief with equanimity, but none the worse for that. Alison did not call on Grace in Greenfields, which Grace implicitly understood, but rarely did the space of three days go by when Grace could not be found in the kitchen in the Henshaws’ little cottage, up to her arms in flour as Alison taught her to knead bread, or chasing the chickens back into their coop in the back garden, or mixing and matching her old ribbons with Alison’s to create, by the interchange, a new set of trimmings for both their bonnets.
She soon felt more at home with Charlie and the Henshaws than she ever had in the infinitely more comfortable, yet empty, rooms at Greenfields. Privately, Grace wondered how Charlie could possibly hold the place in such high esteem. But she was learning that he had a distinctly romantic streak, and that, all in all, was no bad thing.
The Duke, the Earl and the Captain Page 8