by Brooke, Meg
But at the end of it, she would still have to choose. Being wooed by him might be romantic, but could she really sacrifice every promise she had made to herself if she lost her heart to him? She felt as though she was standing at the bottom of a deep hole, with no notion of how she had gotten there. How had it come to this? She was faced with two equally repugnant choices: either she could marry him and save her reputation but not her soul, or she could leave her father’s house and take her chances in the wide world alone. Cynthia had always considered her powers of reasoning and logic to be exceptional, but she found herself at an impasse now.
Six days.
She had six days to make an impossible choice. She had bought herself time, but not the ability to decide, and she suspected that the choice would only be harder when the six days were up.
But she had made an agreement, and she would not now go back on her word. She might be risking her heart and her soul, but at least she could keep her honor. “But what good is that,” she said to the empty room, “when your belly and purse are both empty?”
She heaved a sigh, went out into the hall, and told Mallory to call a hackney.
Twenty minutes later she was standing on the street in Belgrave Square, looking down the drive to Stowe House. It was an impressive building, but that was not what gave Cynthia pause. The stately mansion was also the scene of one of the worst nights of her life—the night when she had revealed the terrible truth to Clarissa.
Cynthia walked up the drive, trying to still her rapidly beating heart. When she reached the door she almost lost her nerve, but she made herself knock, and when the butler answered she handed him her card. She waited for what felt like an eternity in the spacious foyer, and then Clarissa herself appeared on the landing above, looking rather flushed and smiling broadly as she brushed the wrinkles out of her skirts. She had been on the floor, Cynthia realized, playing with her twins.
“Cynthia!” she cried. “Do come up, dear, and meet the children!”
Feeling as though she were treading ankle-deep in water, Cynthia climbed the stairs. When she reached Clarissa, however, the other woman’s expression changed from one of joy to one of concern. “What’s happened?” she demanded.
This was precisely why Cynthia had come, to be asked this question, but now that she was facing it she felt a sudden urge to retreat. But Clarissa grabbed her hand and pulled her into the first room, which was set up as a study with two desks placed back to back before the windows. Clarissa guided her towards one, taking the seat behind it only after dragging over another chair for Cynthia.
“We work here together during the session,” Clarissa said, “but Anders is in the nursery now, and we shan’t be disturbed.”
Cynthia looked around again at the space where Clarissa shared her husband’s work. It was a cozy room, and it spoke to her of shared opinions, of respectful, thoughtful discussions, of two heads bent to a singular purpose. But there was something more, something about those two desk pushed so close together that two people sitting at them could probably reach across and touch each other. Perhaps they did.
“You love your husband, don’t you?” she asked.
A strange, faraway look came over Clarissa’s face, as though she were looking through the walls into the nursery. She looked so different from the serious, single-minded child she had been that she was almost unrecognizable. Where had this dreamy woman come from? “Very much,” she said softly.
Clarissa had found something very rare in her marriage. Cynthia wondered now if the duke would be the same sort of spouse as the Earl of Stowe. It did not matter, one part of her mind argued. But there was another part of her that cried out that she was wrong, that there was merit in his proposal. “Oh, Clarissa,” she said, “I am so sorry for barging in on you like this...”
“Nonsense,” Clarissa said. “I only wish you had come earlier. How you have managed to endure all this on your own I have no idea. Now, please tell me what has happened.”
“You were right,” Cynthia began. “He did propose.”
Clarissa smiled. “I am delighted to hear it,” she said, “though my knowledge of your character tells me that that is not the end of it.”
Cynthia laughed bitterly. “You know me better than perhaps anyone else on this earth,” she said. “You are right, of course. I have refused him, or tried to at any rate.”
“Tried to?”
“He and I have come to an...agreement.” And she told Clarissa about their bargain, about her father’s angry words—about almost everything except that sudden, surprising kiss.
“Oh, dear,” Clarissa said when she had finished. “This sounds dangerous.”
“Why do you say that? Don’t you trust my ability to withstand his charms?”
Clarissa laughed. “Not for a minute. And you know, I once made a similar wager with Anders.”
“How did it end?”
Clarissa held up her hands in a sweeping gesture that encompassed everything: the house, her husband, her life. “I think we both won,” she said.
“Something tells me my story may not have quite such a happy ending.”
“You might be surprised. Perhaps you will both get what you want.”
“What I want is to be free,” Cynthia insisted, “to be completely independent.”
“No it isn’t,” Clarissa said. “And it’s not what you need, either.”
“What?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said. What did it mean?”
“I meant that you have never wanted to be independent. You have been a liberated woman your whole life, Cynthia. You have always made your own choices. But none of them have ever made the man you call father happy, have they? Nothing you have ever done has brought a smile to his face or made him proud. What you want, Cynthia, is to be wanted. And that’s all well and good. Being wanted feels wonderful, and if you chose, I think you could make the duke want you in a heartbeat. Roger Endersby saw to that, the monster. But it’s not enough. Having what we want doesn’t make us happy. Remember your Rousseau.”
“‘We may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered once it is lost’?” Cynthia quoted.
Clarissa shot her a withering look. “‘We always seek our own good, but we do not always see what it is’,” she said. “You cannot see the forest for the trees, Cynthia.”
“Tell me then, oh philosopher-queen,” Cynthia shot back, “what is it I need?”
“Love.”
Cynthia almost laughed, or cried; she wasn’t quite sure which. “Love?” she finally managed to ask.
“Yes. Name me one person in this world who has ever truly loved you, and who you loved in return.”
“You, Clarissa.”
Her friend reached out and took her hand. Suddenly there were tears sparkling in her eyes. “Oh, Cynthia. Of course I love you. We are bound together, you and I, by an invisible tie that can never be cut. Our fates will always be linked. Our love for each other made us strong, strong enough to withstand even the terrible things that happened to us. Yet you seem to think that falling in love would make you weak. You run from it. Why?”
Cynthia could not answer her. She glanced away, and her eyes fell on the mantle clock. It was almost two. “I must go,” she said, and she rose, but Clarissa kept hold of her hand.
“Promise me you will try, Cynthia. Not for me, but for you.”
Cynthia had to think for a moment. Could she really make such a promise? “I will,” she said, and she meant it.
At six minutes past two, Charles heard the door. A few moments later, Partridge appeared with Miss Endersby in tow. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, looking rather flustered as she rushed in.
“Not at all,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “I have completed the assigned reading,” he added, pulling out a chair for her. She sat.
“Good,” she said. “Shall we begin with the earliest?”
“No,” he replied. “I think I’d rather begin with th
e Rousseau.”
She looked at him so strangely that he almost asked if he had mispronounced the name. But if there was one thing he had excelled at, it was languages. His French accent was impeccable. It was something else that troubled her, but after a pause she said brightly, “Very well. What did you think of his social contract theory?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t understand it at all,” he groaned. It was true. He had muddled his way through all three of the books she had selected, but he had not been able to make sense of them. Perhaps it was because his mind had been otherwise occupied.
“Then I see why you wished to start with Rousseau,” she said, “since he is the simplest of the three.”
“Simple?” he demanded. “All that babbling about suffering and innocence and life being nasty, brutish and short?”
“I see you read the Hobbes as well,” she said. “It’s not babbling. The social contract is a vehicle for a larger discussion of human nature and the purpose of society. Why do human beings come together in groups? Why do we make laws? These are the questions these three hoped to answer.”
“And did they?” he asked, for he was certain he still didn’t know the answers to those questions, and he really had read all three books cover to cover.
“In their own ways. Thomas Hobbes, as you probably discovered, felt that humans were inherently bad and had to be controlled by a firm, absolute monarch. But he was writing during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, when everything was uncertain. There were many great thinkers who felt that it was a dangerous business to dispose of a king, and even worse to have no one to put in his place.”
“Yet witness our current system. The king has virtually no power compared to Parliament,” he said, and when she smiled at him he knew she was pleased.
“Thus John Locke. He wrote later, when things had calmed considerably, which likely influenced his view that man is naturally good, that we will try to do our best for each other but fail because we lack the social constructs to succeed. So we form societies and make laws to protect the weak and innocent.”
“I suppose every Whig worth his salt has read this,” he said, picking up the book and waving it at her.
“You really aren’t convinced you made the right choice in joining them, are you?” she asked. Her question cut so close to the quick that for a moment he was not sure how to answer. But she saved him by picking up the third book. “Now, what does Monsieur Rousseau say about the matter?” she asked.
He thought for a moment. “I believe his argument is that it doesn’t matter what our nature is. Whatever our wants and dreams, society expunges them to preserve order.”
“That is one way to read it, I suppose.”
“How do you see it, then?” he asked.
“We make sacrifices,” she said, “in order to show each other that we have value. But once we do, we transform that self-worth into a hierarchy, a tiered system where some are worth more than others. Men are superior to women, adults to children—”
“Dukes to commoners,” he said.
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Would you be so reluctant to marry me if I weren’t a duke?” He was straying from the subject, but the question had been at the back of his mind since their interview a few hours earlier.
She looked levelly at him. “It has nothing to do with your being a duke or not,” she said, but then immediately, “no, that’s not true. Your being a duke certainly influences my choice.”
“But not in the way I would hope, I think.”
She laughed. “Perhaps not, but also not for the reasons you think.”
“Then what is the reason?”
She looked down at her hands. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me,” he said.
She stared at him for a long while, clearly considering. But then she picked up the book again. “Now, what does Rousseau have to say about inequality?”
She had almost told him. For the barest instant she had been convinced that he would accept it, that he wouldn’t mind when she explained that she was nothing more than an experiment, an unwanted, useless castoff from a great exercise in social theory. But then she had wondered if telling him she was worthless would make him see her that way, too. If she told him how little her father wanted her, would he cease to want her as well?
She could not bear it, not yet. She would tell him later in the week, when she was more certain what his reaction would be. Then she could be in control, could gauge the timing of her revelation for when it would have the most effect.
Now, as he told her about his meeting with Lord Brougham, she was asking herself what effect she wanted her story to have. Did she want him to be disgusted by her, to wish all connection between them severed? Foolishly, she found herself wishing for more time to make this decision.
“...but then I said that I thought we should also be considering the educational opportunities available—”
“I’m sorry?” she asked, realizing that she hadn’t been listening at all.
“I told Lord Brougham that I thought there should be provisions in the Poor Laws for greater educational opportunities for the poor and indigent, that children should not be denied learning to read and write simply because their parents cannot afford to pay for their schooling.”
“You did?” Why did her heart flutter like that when he talked about education for poor children? Was this what happened to other women?
“Yes. He agreed to look into it.”
“Well, I am glad to hear that,” she said. “I think, however, that our time is up for today, Your Grace.” She tried to keep any trace of relief from her voice as she rose from her chair. He rose as well, taking her hand to help her up. But then he kept it, looking down at her fingers.
She almost pulled away. She knew she ought to. But then he said, “Do you think, under the circumstances, that you might...that you might call me Charles, just when we are alone?” He was still looking at their joined hands, so she could not read his expression, but his voice sounded so plaintive that she was inclined to agree.
“Not Bain?” she asked.
Now he looked up. “I hate that name,” he said, his expression dark and unreadable. “I only let the people I wish to think I am a rake call me by it.”
She nodded. “Charles, then,” she agreed. It was such a comfortable, ordinary name for a man who was neither of those things, and yet somehow it suited him.
“And may I call you Cynthia?”
She was aware that he was moving closer. Stop this, Cynthia, she said to herself. Stop it now. But she didn’t. “I should like that, Charles,” she said.
Now his gloomy expression shifted slightly. His hazel eyes seemed to darken, and she felt the heat of his stare to her very core. “Say it again,” he said, very softly. His other hand was sliding around her waist.
“Charles,” she whispered, just before his lips came down upon hers. For a moment he held her very still, pressing against her, but then a low moan escaped his lips and he kissed her harder, his mouth teasing hers until she opened to him, and then his tongue was inside her, probing in an obvious mimicry of a far more scandalous act. Cynthia found herself responding eagerly, going up on her toes, her hands sliding up to his shoulders as he pulled her closer. She could feel the heat of his body through her clothes and his. Then he broke the kiss, but instead of pulling away as she expected he feathered his lips along her jaw until he reached her earlobe. Then he took the tender skin in his mouth and sucked gently. “Oh, Charles,” she breathed.
“Again,” he said, kissing her neck as his fingers slid along the neckline of her gown and then under it, finding the edge of her chemise and then the smooth skin of her breast. When they brushed her nipple, she let out a little shriek.
“Charles!”
He laughed, his breath hot against her skin. “I thought you were an enlightened woman,” he murmured, kissing the spot where her neck and shoulder met, then dipping lower to run his tongue along
her collarbone.
She put her hands out and shoved at him. “Not that enlightened,” she said.
There was a knock at the door. They flew apart, though Cynthia was certain her skin was still flushed as Lady Imogen strode in. She smiled. “Cynthia,” she said. “It is so good to see you again.” Then she nodded coolly to her brother. “Charles. I was wondering if Miss Endersby shouldn’t be getting home, since we will be dining in just a few hours.”
“Yes, of course,” Cynthia said.
“You are invited to dinner, of course, Miss Endersby,” Lady Imogen said warmly. “Did my scapegrace of a brother forget to ask you? And we are to attend the theatre afterwards. Please say you’ll join us.”
Cynthia made a point of not looking at Charles as she said, “I should be delighted, Lady Imogen.”
“Excellent,” Lady Imogen said, though Cynthia did not miss the reproachful look she shot her brother. “Well, we must get you home, then.” And she swept Cynthia out of the library, leaving Charles to stare after them.
ELEVEN
When Imogen returned from escorting Cynthia out, she sat down across the table from Charles and glared at him. He pretended to read Hobbes’s Leviathan for a few moments before looking up at her.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Well what?”
“Have you proposed?”
“I have.”
“And?”
“She refused.”
Imogen groaned and glanced back at the door as if she could see Miss Endersby driving away in the carriage. “Then what was she doing here? Why did she accept my invitation?”
Charles turned a page. “Miss Endersby and I have come to an...agreement, of sorts.”
“What agreement?” Charles told her. “Oh, my,” Imogen said when he had finished. “And you expect me to plan a week’s worth of entertainments for you and the girl whose reputation you have not-quite-ruined, so that you may appear to be seriously courting her?”