“No. And in the intervening years, we became more like brother and sister than a pair of possible lovers.” The last word tasted of rank mendacity. He hurried to pile other, blander words upon it. “I suspect that’s not uncommon, where habits of proximity do away with all the mystery a lady might have for a gentleman, and he for her. At all events, I look forward to one day celebrating her excellent match, and I’m sure she’ll be just as happy for me on the day I tell her about the worthy lady who’s won my heart.”
“That sounds an admirable sort of friendship. You’re fortunate.”
Indeed it was an admirable sort of friendship, and indeed he was fortunate, or had been until everything had spun out of control for those scant few minutes in the Astleys’ library.
She’d been so dreadfully uncomfortable when he’d tried to speak to her or even look at her today. He might, after all, have done irreparable damage to their connection. And for the first time the thought occurred to him: if she did succeed in marrying Lord Barclay, he might have to avoid them both.
He picked up his hat and tapped it over the straw again, just to have an outlet for a flare of desperate energy. He could never take a post as Barclay’s secretary, in that case. He’d worked and waited so long for an opportunity like this one, and he might really have thrown it all away for the sake of an ill-considered kiss.
For the remainder of the journey to the Inns of Court they spoke of politics. And every sensible opinion the baron expressed—every proof of what good work a man who partnered with him might be involved in—drove further and further home the possible cost of his fleeting indulgence in a darkened room.
HE SEEMED to have stepped into some spiral of dire complications, and the next day brought another: an invitation to a ball at Lord Cathcart’s house in Grosvenor Square.
Ostensibly the invitation issued from Lady Cathcart, who’d barely said a dozen words to him over the years of their slight acquaintance. However, the message scrawled upon it came in the viscount’s slanting, careless hand.
Now you’ve shown yourself at one party, you cannot in decency decline to appear at another.… Don’t tell me you’ll have no one with whom to converse; my wife has neatly preempted that objection by inviting your Lord Fox Grey Holland Barclay, that the two of you may stupefy your unsuspecting dance partners with talk of reform.… Lady C. has also sent an invitation to your pretty Miss W., whose parents will no doubt wish to condition her attendance upon your own again, and I can scarce imagine you’d really like to disappoint—
Nick pushed the invitation away and got up from his desk to pace to the window that looked down on Brick Court. A lady sat on the bench near the sundial, probably waiting for a barrister to come down and speak to her, or to recruit a suitable chaperone with whom she could go upstairs. Unaccompanied women didn’t venture into gentlemen’s chambers, unless on errands of a most particular nature. Mrs. Simcox had come up sometimes, and Mrs. Marbury, too, though neither of them very recently.
He sighed and turned his back to the window, raking his fingers through his hair. No doubt Cathcart meant well. Perhaps he even thought to hasten the rehabilitation of the Blackshear name by setting the example—indeed, by prevailing on his wife to set the example—of acknowledging Nick. And if he was right, if even one respectable person in attendance should decide it was time to follow the Cathcarts’ lead, and cease holding all Blackshears accountable for the transgressions of one, that would not only benefit Nick’s own circumstances but might be a first step toward repairing the damage Andrew and Kitty had sustained. His elder brother and sister might begin to gradually replace the many connections they’d lost. By the time their respective children were old enough to marry, they might have a few decent prospects after all.
He folded his arms, resting his back against the strip of wall between the room’s two windows. All Blackshears accountable for the transgressions of one, indeed. The truth was that he hadn’t been able to think of Will, since the events of Tuesday night, without a suffocating sense of his own hypocrisy. His brother, at least, had not laid hands upon an innocent. Will hadn’t taken advantage of a lady’s feverish response to her first taste of passion.
You didn’t do more than kiss her. And you stopped. You caught yourself in time, when you might have given her far more to regret than a kiss. Oh, but he hated the part of his brain that wanted to offer these pathetic self-acquittals. He’d never try anything so mealymouthed in a courtroom. The prisoner may indeed have stolen the accuser’s purse, Your Honor, but I beg you to base his punishment upon the fact that he didn’t then follow her home and take all the money she had there as well.
He pushed off the wall and went back to his desk, where he picked up the invitation. Little doubt of what reply he must make, but he needn’t make it this instant. He pulled out the drawer in which he always stored documents that didn’t require immediate attention, and found himself confronted by a paper that had languished there for some months.
Not that the paper took him by surprise. He hadn’t forgotten about its existence. Why he hadn’t thrown it away, when Martha had first sat down at this desk and made free with his pen and ink, he couldn’t precisely say.
Proper ladies did sometimes venture alone into a barrister’s chambers, after all. A sister given to imposing her will, for instance, might take it upon herself to call on her brother and prepare such an impertinent document.
He set down the invitation and lifted out the paper, which bore but two lines in his sister’s hand, the greater part of the page being taken up by a rudimentary map. She’d drawn a set of tiny waves in the broad ribbon that curved left to right through her diagram, to identify it as the river—though the docks she’d sketched, protruding into that same ribbon, surely resolved the matter of identification without any need for waves.
He traced them with his smallest finger, the downward arcs and upward peaks meant to stand for moving water. They seemed such an odd embellishment, such a frivolity, so unlike the sister he’d known for all but the first five years of his life. But then, this wasn’t the first thing she’d done that confounded all his expectations.
Nick sat back in his chair, palms resting on the desktop’s edge, and closed his eyes. He didn’t often permit himself the stillness to examine such matters, but … how, exactly, did he justify keeping the connection with Martha when he’d shut out Will? Oh, the superficial answer came readily enough: she and her husband had acted discreetly, committing their malfeasance in a quiet Sussex parish beyond the range of any ton gossips and then patching it over with a speedy marriage and besotted newlywed manners.
They’d brought no scandal to the family. The fact nevertheless remained that their first child, a daughter, had been conceived out of wedlock. Deliberately so. Martha couldn’t claim to have been seduced, when she’d hired Mr. Mirkwood for the express purpose of impregnating her.
Granted, Nick had made his disapproval plain. But a man of integrity would have cut their acquaintance. Or perhaps not cut Will’s. A man of integrity would have done so many things differently from how he’d done them, it seemed of late.
He opened his eyes. In the middle of the map, she’d drawn an arrow pointing to a location on one of the docks, presumably the same site named at the top of the page.
There was no reason he couldn’t go walking that way. He might just look about the area, so he’d have a picture of where Will spent much of his time. He needn’t present himself at the establishment’s door, and he certainly needn’t prepare any words to say to his brother, or even make up his mind as to whether they ought to speak again. He could simply walk and ponder.
He rose, swiping up Martha’s document and making a straight line to where his coat hung, that he might be out the door before he could think of a compelling reason to stay home. A word to Kersey across the hall, who agreed to take down the business of any callers in his absence, and he was free to walk out, past the sundial, past the now-empty bench where the lady had sat, out into the street
and down toward the river.
I’ve had cause, in recent days, to give more thought to the questions of right and wrong behavior. Did he want to say that? Did he want to say anything? I’ve done something of which I’m ashamed. I’ve jeopardized a connection—more than one connection—I’d be sorry to lose. And I cannot speak of it to anyone without imperiling a lady’s reputation.
He could, perhaps, speak of it to someone who lived beyond the bounds of the respectable world in which Miss Westbrook hoped to make her way. Not that he would allow himself to go to Will on so selfish an errand. If rapprochement between himself and his brother was possible, or even desirable—and really, a half dozen circumstances argued against it—then they would have a deal of talking to do on other subjects before he could indulge in the luxury of confessing himself.
So he hadn’t the first idea, when he finally stood on the mapped-out dock, studying from a distance the weathered facade of what seemed to be the right office, what he ought to say or even quite why he was there. Only he’d walked all this way, following the directions his sister had set down, and to go back again after a mere bit of silent skulking felt like cowardice, of a sudden.
He shoved himself forward, hands in his coat pockets, one clutching Martha’s folded-up map while the other tightened into a fist. Past a stack of crates that two men were passing down one by one to another two men in a wherry, past a clutch of seagulls squabbling over some rubbish they’d found on the dock, through the steady two-way traffic of people who had legitimate business there, he cut a path, heart protesting this decision with a series of dull thudding beats, until he’d set a hand on the door handle and, at more of a loss than ever for what to say, pulled the door open.
The office was a small one, and a good deal dimmer than the day-lit outdoors. A single lamp combined with the window in the building’s facade to afford what illumination there was. And what illumination there was revealed at once that Will was not here.
Then, after a second or two of Nick’s eyes adjusting, it revealed the three people who were here, and a more curious assemblage of three people he’d never seen in his life.
At his left, behind a table atop which he was arranging miscellaneous small items as he unpacked them from a crate, stood a brown-skinned man well over six feet tall. Straight ahead, with a pen in her hand and a ledger open on the desk before her, sat a fearsome-looking woman with a prominent nose. And to the right, his desk pushed up against the window and his visage thus flooded with unforgiving daylight, sat a figure who made the others look like exemplars of benign normalcy.
This man must have barely survived an encounter with fire, or possibly lye. Thick scars made up most of his face, from the scalp on down until they disappeared into his coat collar. His mouth sagged at both corners. He had but one complete ear, and very little in the way of hair.
Nick glanced away quickly, so as not to look as if he was staring, even as it dawned on him that this must be the man in charge. The advantageously located desk argued for it, as did a certain energy in the room that suggested the other two persons were waiting for that man to respond to this unexpected visitor. Indeed the brown-skinned giant had shifted his attention to his scarred compatriot. The woman kept her steady gaze on Nick, pen suspended an inch above her ink pot.
He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure I’ve come to the right place.” He could look at the burned man now, since he was addressing him, without fear of seeming rude. “I’m looking for a William Blackshear. I was told he works here, or perhaps in one of the neighboring offices?” That Martha could have omitted any mention of their brother toiling alongside such an extraordinary collection of people seemed improbable, though not altogether outside the realm of possibility. It might be one of those things she judged to be of no consequence.
“Your skills of navigation haven’t failed you, but you’re unlucky in the time of your visit.” The man sounded good-humored. It was difficult to tell, when his face gave no hint of his mood. “He’s out aboard the ship at present, and we don’t expect him back for another hour or so. Is it a matter with which someone else might be able to assist you?”
“No, no thank you. It’s not to do with business.” He’d pulled the door shut behind him, on entering, but hadn’t let go the handle. His fingers flexed on it now, prepared to make a brisk withdrawal and leave these people to the industry he’d interrupted.
“Would you like to write a message for him?” The scarred man pushed up from his desk, waving a hand at the paper, pen, and ink there. “We’ll see that he has it as soon as he returns.”
“Oh, no, that won’t be necessary. I’m sure I shall …” He made some vague gesture with the hand that wasn’t gripping the door handle; something they might read for I’m sure to encounter him soon enough, because his scrupulous barrister’s tongue was refusing to deliver that lie.
“Is something the matter?” That was the woman. She hadn’t gone back to her writing, nor, from what he could tell, taken her gaze from him but for the span of an occasional blink. “Has something happened about which he ought to know?” She eyed him with an almost unsettling intensity, and as he set tongue to teeth to deliver yet another no, she added, “Something within the family? You’re one of his brothers, I think.”
“Yes.” How the devil did you know? “That is, no, nothing’s the matter. But yes, I am his brother.” The words seemed to come out in the right order, for all that she’d taken him so by surprise.
There were two strains of Blackshear physiognomy, and he and Will came from opposite sides. New and slight acquaintances never drew a family connection between his light hair and his brother’s dark; his symmetrical smile and Will’s crooked; the composed features of one and the ready expressiveness of the other. Indeed the only thing that marked them as siblings was—
“You have the same eyes.” She seemed to be reading his thoughts, though he could not make the slightest guess at hers. “Mrs. Mirkwood as well. You and she are very like.” Abruptly she looked away, to the pen still poised above its ink pot. Perhaps she felt she’d said too much. Or perhaps she’d said all she had to say and now found no further use for him. She dipped her pen and tapped it with a forefinger over the jar.
He could feel the keen attention of the other two men in the room, and a glance either way showed them to be watching him with their respective aspects of curiosity—the scarred man’s symptom being that he’d stayed half risen from his desk.
A thought occurred. It was scarcely conceivable, and yet conceive it he did. Only to dismiss it at once, because Martha would surely not have considered that to be of no consequence, would she?
He ventured another look at the woman with the pen, and the thought struggled back from its dismissal, even as a terribly ungallant part of him protested, She couldn’t have been anyone’s mistress; she’s not pretty enough.
Self-disgust went swirling through his veins. He was as shallow as he was hypocritical. He, who liked to think he knew how to value a woman as a whole person instead of a pretty face and form.
He cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon, Miss. Madam.” Her pen lifted from the paper and she raised her head just enough to catch his eye. “Is it possible—” This could be remarkably awkward, even more awkward than it already was, if he proved to be wrong. Nevertheless he let go the door and took a step forward. “That is … might you perhaps be my sister?” Warmth crept up his throat to his cheeks. At the left and right peripheries the two men were watching, silent and still.
She straightened, fixing him with the full force of her gaze. “I’m Will Blackshear’s wife,” she said. “If I’m anything to you, that’s more than we’ve been told.” Without waiting for reply, she bowed her head to her work again, pen taking up where it had left off.
Her rudeness took his breath away. Literally, for a moment it seemed his lungs would not work, as he stood there, one step advanced into this room where he was not welcome, the warmth in his cheeks fanned to a raging heat that raced al
l the way up to his hairline. It was—and wasn’t this rich!—strikingly similar to how he’d felt when Miss Mary Watson had addressed him before onlookers in the hallway at the Old Bailey, negligently invoking the subject of this same woman who sat before him now.
He glanced left and right, to find both men impassive—or the tall man impassive, at any rate. The other, for all he knew, might be thinking sympathetic thoughts that made no impression on the wrecked canvas of his face. But no, count him for impassive, too. Everyone here was loyal to Will. No one felt charitably toward this brother who’d cast him off. Why in God’s name would they?
He found himself without the smallest desire to make answer to the woman’s rudeness. She’d merely given voice to the self-dissatisfaction he’d been carrying about with him ever since the day he’d last spoken to Will. He might as well have conjured her for the purpose.
He stepped backward, feeling behind him for the door handle. He had to fumble for a second to find his grip. “Thank you for your time.” His voice sounded like someone else’s. “Good day to you all.” Through the pounding of blood in his ears, and the creak of the door as he pushed it open, he couldn’t hear whether anyone wished him good day in return. Not that it mattered. He got himself outside, swung the door shut, and left the place behind him, fists in his pockets, Martha’s map wadded and crumpled until it took up almost no room at all.
“IT DOES seem to be the viscountess’s hand. She’s stingy with the tails on her small P’s and G’s. You can scarcely tell them from an A or an O, but for knowing already what word she’s spelling.” Lady Harringdon sat in her corner of the sofa, Kate’s invitation in one hand and her own invitation in another, to scrutinize them side by side. “Still, I suspect some prank on the part of her husband. He promoted you to her notice, didn’t he, by having you girls sit with him at supper. He must have omitted any mention of your station. I expect she’ll be none too pleased with him when she discovers she sent an invitation to a lady’s companion.”
Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] Page 17