“Is Father working at the house today?” Victoria tucked a springy curl behind her ear.
“He is in his study,” Garrick said vaguely. Sir Hawkins was secretive and tight-lipped, and even Garrick never knew what to expect from day to day. He’d learned to think on his feet and be prepared for anything.
“I suppose you know we have been invited to a yuletide house party by Mr. and Mrs. Barclay at their manor in Bedfordshire. Will you be accompanying us?”
“I should think not.” While he’d spent years in Hawkins’s household, he wasn’t part of the family. Yet he wasn’t a servant either. Much like his old tutor, Garrick was caught between worlds.
Sir Hawkins had made sure Garrick’s education was well-rounded and in depth, covering mathematics, history, and weaponry. Not altruistically, of course. Sir Hawkins had reaped the rewards of Garrick’s skills many times over since war with France had broken out.
A crinkle appeared between Victoria’s eyes. “Please tell me Father is not sending you off somewhere distant and dangerous.”
“I don’t believe so, but…” Garrick shrugged. If Sir Hawkins had plans for him, he wasn’t aware of them.
“I worry one day you won’t come home.” Victoria bit the fullness of her lower lip and met his gaze squarely.
It wasn’t unusual for Garrick to return from missions a bit bruised and the worse for wear, but he hadn’t known Victoria noticed. A vulnerability and awareness of their difference in station hit him like a punch to the chest. “This isn’t my home.”
A puzzled look crossed her face. Of course Victoria was aware he’d been orphaned, but he’d never discussed his parents. His life was defined as before and after the tragedy, and even though years had gone by, the loss had the ability to eviscerate his lungs and make it difficult to draw a steady breath.
“But where will you spend the yuletide?”
“I expect I’ll remain in London.”
“Have you… friends in town to make merry with?” The slight hitch in her voice was a chink in her usual confidence.
“Of course.” Lies. He couldn’t name a single person he would feel comfortable calling upon socially. Agents of the Crown made for terrible friends. None of them trusted one another. It was difficult to make merry when constantly on guard against a double cross.
“I see.” Her gaze skated away from him.
What did she see? He wanted to take her by the shoulders and force her to look at him, to strip away the polite, slightly distant facade they’d erected two years ago. Ever since— No, he couldn’t allow himself to revisit their brief moment of madness.
At least not while standing within arm’s length of her. The temptation to engage in another bout of madness was all too strong. He would only allow himself to relive every glorious, agonizing second at night in bed. Alone.
He couldn’t afford entanglements of any kind. His solitary existence was a necessary part of his job. Emotional ties could be manipulated and twisted until desperate choices were forced to be made.
By comparison, Victoria’s social circle was extensive. All manner of ladies came to call in the afternoons, young and old, peeresses and cits. Victoria was the sun, drawing others into her orbit like planets. She could converse on fashion and politics with equal insight. Ladies tripped over themselves to have her ear. It was unfortunate Sir Hawkins didn’t possess his daughter’s charm to coax secrets directly from their sources.
“I’m looking forward to leaving London for the country air. I’m tired of choking on coal smoke,” Victoria said, her own tone turning as brisk and cool as the winter’s wind.
“Won’t you miss the merriments of town?”
A shadow darkened her features before her lips quirked in a small, wry smile. “I will welcome the change in scenery and hopefully find some peace. I confess, even in December, I find London exhausting.”
The hairs on his nape wavered. His natural instincts had been honed by years of confronting subterfuge. What—or who—was she looking to escape? “Is there something amiss?”
“Of course not.” Once more, she avoided meeting his eyes.
She was lying. Or at least not being entirely forthcoming. That Victoria enjoyed a bit of subterfuge was no secret to him, but her sojourns to bookshops and museums in the disguise of a plump, veiled widow in black were harmless. Or was she more like her father than Garrick wanted to believe? Was she dallying in more serious deceptions? He did not enjoy the off-balance feeling the thought gave him.
Lady Hawkins poked her head around the morning room door. While she was petite and delicate-looking, she had ambition and intellect to rival her husband. At the moment, her focus was centered on matching Victoria with a peer in hopes of their family rising another rung in society, and he had no doubt she would succeed. Lady Hawkins and Garrick got on like a hen tolerating a mutt as long as he kept the foxes at bay.
“Come and have tea while it’s hot, Victoria. We have an appointment with the modiste in an hour. How are you this morning, Garrick?” Lady Hawkins asked in a way that indicated polite disinterest.
“It’s a fine, brisk day, ma’am, with bright blue skies.” Garrick inclined his head. “And how are you?”
“Tolerably well.” A smile didn’t mar the stern lines of Lady Hawkins’s face, and her nod was perfunctory. “You take care of yourself and Sir Hawkins too.”
“You can count on me, ma’am.”
Lady Hawkins made a harrumphing sound, but the lines etched along her forehead smoothed. She retreated but left the morning room door cracked.
If anything happened to Sir Hawkins, Britain would be at a great disadvantage in the chess game of war. It was Sir Hawkins, and not Wellington, who deserved the accolades, but the world at large would never know his name.
Instead of rushing to do her mother’s biding, Victoria tarried with Garrick. The undercurrents between them ruffled his calm like a hand rubbing a dog’s fur the wrong direction. “What’s amiss?” he asked again, this time with more vehemence.
Her lips moved slightly, as if words were desperate to form themselves into a confession. She finally shook her head and smiled a bright, sunny smile that didn’t banish the shadows in her eyes, and her voice took on a falsely blithe lilt. “What on earth could be amiss? I’m to get a new frock this morning.”
With that, she glided away. But before she disappeared into the morning room, she glanced over her shoulder, and their gazes clashed like flint. Fingers of sensation tiptoed down his spine as she disappeared.
Still looking over her shoulder at Thomas, Victoria tripped over the rug and caught herself on the small breakfast table set for two. The bump made the china cups clatter in their saucers. Her mother shot her a glance over the top of the morning paper but returned to reading without commenting on Victoria’s unusual clumsiness.
Victoria had almost told Thomas about her complication. No, it had been a complication a fortnight ago. Now it was bordering on a full-fledged catastrophe. Why had she involved herself in someone else’s love affair?
It was easier to blame her penchant for novels than her naivety. It had seemed romantic and harmless to be the go-between with letters and notes to and from Lady Eleanor Stanfield and Lord Berkwith. Yes, Eleanor’s parents had forbidden the match, but Victoria thought Lord Berkwith charming, not unattractive or old, and in love with her friend. She had been happy to help nurture the tendresse.
Victoria hadn’t expected the tendresse to progress to talk of an elopement. Second—and third and fourth—thoughts had sprouted after subtle questioning had revealed Lord Berkwith had amassed a large debt gambling. Victoria couldn’t fathom how that much could be lost in a single year. Was the gleam in Lord Beckwith’s eyes when they alit upon Eleanor true love or avarice?
Victoria drank her tea and pushed the runny yolk of her egg around her plate with a triangle of toast. Her stomach was a mass of nerves, and not all of them could be attributed to Eleanor’s romantic entanglements. An unholy number of them were becau
se of the man standing outside her father’s study only a few feet away.
Thomas Garrick. The man was a cipher. He exuded a raw physicality some found intimidating but she found darkly attractive. He was nothing like the gentlemen who danced attendance on her at London’s social gatherings, because he wasn’t a gentleman. His solid grip on her arm was evidence of that. She rubbed the place he had touched, her skin still tingling.
His dark eyes were calculating yet kind. And his voice… The deep silk was luxurious and mesmerizing and invited her to confess all her secrets. Secrets that went beyond promises made to a friend. Secrets like dreams where she woke tangled in her sheets, her body longing for Thomas to escort her through the door he’d cracked open with his kiss. The memory was nearly two years old, but heat still flushed through her until she wished for a fan in December.
At the time, she’d hoped it would be the start of something. Instead, her hopes had been cruelly dashed. Despair scuttled over her like clouds muting the sun. He would never kiss her again. A terrible mistake, he had called it. A moment of weakness from a man who was never weak.
She was twenty. It was time to leave her childish fantasies and dreams behind and choose someone suitable. Her mother was pushing her to marry into the ton. An heir to a title was out of her reach, but a second or third son would be a coup. Her father, on the other hand, would prefer her to choose a well-connected man with political aspirations.
As for herself… She wanted the one man she could never have.
“What were you and Garrick discussing so intently?” Her mother eyed her over the paper as if she could see straight into the maelstrom of Victoria’s thoughts.
“Nothing.” The knee-jerk response came out like a defensive jab. Victoria cleared her throat, dropped a sugar cube into her tea, and stirred. “That is to say, nothing of import. Only our plans for yuletide. I asked Thomas where he planned to bide his time.”
Her mother’s mouth tightened as if readying a lecture on the improper use of Garrick’s given name. It was an old argument, and one Victoria had long ago won. Her mother snapped the paper in annoyance but only said, “Harold probably has some errand for the boy. I’m sure he prefers to stay busy seeing as he has no family to speak of.”
“He has us,” Victoria said hotly.
Too hotly based on her mother’s glare. “Your father acquired Garrick to fill a position. He should be grateful he was not forced into manual labor or worse.”
Victoria bit her tongue. Her mother had always been sensitive to Thomas’s position. If Lady Hawkins had provided her husband with a son, Thomas would not have played such a prominent role in their household. It was a wound that pained her mother and manifested as a muted resentment toward Thomas.
Victoria regarded her mother over the rim of her teacup. “Perhaps he would have been better off doing an honest day’s work instead of the skullduggery Father requires.”
While they engaged in a tacit agreement not to discuss Sir Hawkins’s duties, Victoria was not dense. Men—and sometimes women—with the same hard edge as Thomas arrived at all hours during the day and night bearing messages. Thomas occasionally disappeared and returned battered and bruised, a haunted, hunted look reflecting from the obsidian depths of his eyes.
“Garrick is better educated than any man of his station. He was lucky your father recognized his potential.” Her mother folded the paper and did not meet Victoria’s eyes, which said more than the platitude she offered.
Victoria supposed there was some truth to it. Thomas had come to them as a tall, gangly, underfed fourteen-year-old clutching a sackcloth of meager possessions. She’d been eleven, pudgy and fearless, yet lonely as an only child.
Thomas had done his best to ignore her, concentrating on excelling in his studies with a desperation she didn’t understand then. His disinterest in her hadn’t mattered. She had been smitten. Thomas had imprinted on her at a precarious time and awakened something inside of her that could never be caged again.
A sudden thought made her heart catch. Did he have a special friend to spend the yuletide holiday with? A lady friend?
“Victoria.” The admonishing way her name was spoken made Victoria look up like a hare hearing the bark of a hunting dog. Had her mother guessed the bent of her thoughts? “We need to discuss your future.”
“Do we?” Nerves sizzled in her stomach.
“Your second season ended without an offer.”
“It did indeed,” Victoria said with trepidation. It was a fact she couldn’t dispute.
“You have many boon companions that come to call, your dance card is always full, yet no gentleman has caught your attention or earned your encouragement.”
“No, I suppose not.” The direction of the conversation felt dire. “Are you growing impatient to have me settled in my own household?”
Her mother’s sigh was more than slightly frustrated. “Don’t you want your own household? Don’t you dream of having children?”
Victoria imagined herself waiting for her husband to return from his ventures while mending his socks. It seemed dreadfully dull. And children? She’d never spent much time in their company, but from her observations while walking in the park, they were loud and usually on the grubby side of cleanliness. Not the stuff of dreams.
However, she couldn’t fault her mother’s line of questioning. It was reasonable considering her age and the amount of money her parents had spent on presenting her to London’s finest citizens. No, the trouble with her mother’s question was Victoria couldn’t picture a husband.
The gentlemen she’d met over the past two seasons had not inspired any sort of passion. In fact, the wide-eyed romanticism instilled by her reading was slowly but surely transforming into a more jaded view of men. The longer she was on the marriage mart, the more she felt like cattle. Instead of a dance card, presenting her breeding credentials and her dowry to the ha’penny would save everyone time.
“Of course I would like to marry and have my own household?” False enthusiasm turned her answer into a question. She should be a better liar, considering her father was an artist in the medium. Something to ponder another time. “To be honest, I haven’t met a gentleman who stirs my senses.”
“Your senses?” Her mother tipped her head and regarded Victoria for a long moment like a scientific experiment gone wrong. “You should not rely on your senses to choose a husband. Your senses will betray you. Marriage is a structure that will provide you and your children security. If you choose wisely.”
“What about love?”
Her mother’s smile held a ghostly sadness that lived in a past Victoria wasn’t privy to. “Love is fleeting. Love won’t keep you warm and fed and comfortable.”
Had her mother’s heart ever skipped a beat and her breath caught when her father entered a room? “Did—do—you and Father love one another?”
“Your father and I rub along well enough.” Her mother rose, and Victoria did the same, leaving them facing off over an audience of kippers. “I want you to become serious about seeking a husband, Victoria. That was my point of this conversation. The Barclay’s house party will be an opportunity for you to make a choice.”
“You want me to pick a husband during a week-long house party?”
“Several suitable men you are already acquainted with will be attending. Lord Crenshaw, for instance. Although he is only a baron, his holdings are respectable, and he has an interest in politics.”
“Lord Crenshaw is an insufferable popinjay who is twenty years older than I. We would never suit.” All the excitement of the house party was being stomped to bits.
Her mother’s gaze dropped to look the kippers in the eye instead of Victoria. “If not him, what about Lord Percival? He’s not much older than you. A third son, but I’ve heard he will receive a generous living.”
“He’s nice enough, I suppose.” Victoria couldn’t imagine facing off with Lord Percival over the breakfast table every morning. He was as bland and boring as a wate
r biscuit. Palatable, but not tempting in any way unless nursing an upset tummy.
“Such a match would offer you a future and protect you. Your father is in agreement.”
“Father wants me gone? He believes I need protection?” Her father had never voiced an opinion on who did or did not court her. In fact, her father rarely accompanied them on social occasions, and when he did, he often departed early. He had hitherto shown no interest in her marriage prospects beyond providing a modest dowry and coin enough for a suitable wardrobe.
Her mother leaned over the table. “You are strong willed and independent.”
“You speak as if those are not admirable traits.”
Her mother’s face could only be described as exasperated. “Gentlemen prefer docile, agreeable wives.”
“Perhaps I shouldn’t marry a gentleman then.” Victoria crossed her arms, her mood nearing an all-out sulk. “You aren’t a docile, agreeable wife, and Father doesn’t seem to mind.”
While it wasn’t the nicest of phrasing, it was perfectly truthful. In contrast to her delicate frame, her mother had a stalwart personality and tended to run roughshod over anyone who disagreed with her.
Her mother cleared her throat and tried a smile that did nothing to assuage the dread settling on Victoria’s shoulders like a shawl weaved of maternal expectations and crushed dreams.
“Let’s not argue. We have an appointment to keep. I’ll call for the carriage.” Her mother swept out of the room.
The ticking of the clock was a grim accounting. How much time did she have before her life was at the mercy of a husband she would have little say over choosing? A knife of resentment was at her throat.
Despite her reservations, she promised herself to do whatever it took to help her friend Eleanor attain the happiness that felt out of reach for herself.
Chapter 2
Garrick nodded at the man who slipped out of Sir Hawkins’s study like a wraith. It was the only acknowledgment given or received. Names meant nothing to the agents who came and went. They could be slipped on and off like a hat.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Scandal: a Christmas collection of Historical Romance (Have Yourself a Merry Little... Book 1) Page 130