True Pretenses: Lively St. Lemeston, Book 2

by Rose Lerner

  Mr. Cahill came and stood beside her—not touching her or speaking to her or doing anything that required a response, only silently offering anything she might need. Lydia almost burst into tears at how splendid a feeling it was to have someone focused on her and not the other way round. Someone paying attention to her not because he wanted anything, but because he thought she might want something from him and wished to be on the spot to provide it. Of course that was his profession, but she didn’t care; she nestled against him, and he put an arm around her and kissed the top of her head. She wished miserably that she could have this for real.

  “I hope you’ll like each other,” Lydia said to Jamie, and let the almost-crying show in her voice.

  Jamie looked poleaxed. “Lydia, can I—can I speak to you a moment? Mr. Cahill, Aunt Packham, if you will excuse us?” When they were two rooms away, he hissed, “What is this?” Lydia hoped the servants couldn’t hear.

  She tried not to think or plan. She had to be in love with Mr. Cahill and eager to marry him. “I don’t know what you mean,” she snapped.

  “This charade. We both know you’re doing this to get at your money. Or maybe to blackmail me into agreeing to follow in Father’s footsteps, in exchange for a longer engagement.”

  She found herself giving him a teasingly speculative look. “Would that work?”

  “No,” he growled.

  “Then give me credit for more strategy.”

  “Lydia.” He took several steps towards her. “Please tell me the truth. The timing is too coincidental to be accident. You find yourself in need of money, and a husband appears?”

  It was folly to feel stung by the truth, and yet she did. “Is it so impossible to imagine I might have fallen in love?” she asked quietly. “Do you think me so cold?”

  He threw his hands in the air. “Those martyred eyes might have everyone else wrapped around your finger, but I’ve been watching you do that for twenty-one years and it isn’t going to work on me.”

  That stung a hundred times worse. “I beg your pardon? I have never tried to martyred-eye anyone into anything!”

  Jamie rolled his eyes. “Every time you disagreed with Father about anything, out they’d come—the sad, stoic face and ‘Very well, Father’ and he’d crumple like cheap paper.”

  “If you mean how I got him to extend your school holidays, believe me, I tried begging and it didn’t work.” It had never been an act—not mostly an act. She didn’t think it had been. The decision had been her father’s to make, so she had gone along with it. Everything had been her father’s decision, always.

  So she hadn’t been able to hide her disappointment, as a girl barely out of the schoolroom! Had she been supposed to act happy about sending Jamie away early because Lord Wheatcroft chose to imagine the boy longed to reunite with his friends? Jamie had dreaded going back to school those first few years.

  Then she had begun to feel as if he couldn’t wait to leave, as if he only came home to be polite. She’d put effort into acting happy, after that.

  Jamie’s lower lip crept forward. “Lydia, you have always been very good to me. You’ve always been very good to everyone. I won’t let you throw yourself away like this because you feel some kind of obligation to Father’s legacy. Let it go. You can do as you like, now. You deserve that.”

  “This is as I like.” It would do no good to tell him how much it hurt her to see him let their father’s legacy go so easily. It would be unkind. “And Jamie, I—” She tried to think of something she could say to her little brother about Mr. Cahill that would not make them both blush. “Mr. Cahill—”

  “I can’t decide if he’s a fortune hunter, or your unfortunate dupe.”

  Lydia was diverted by this idea of herself as a ruthless Delilah duping poor besotted Mr. Cahill into marriage. “Please don’t be rude to him,” she said, more calmly than she’d managed yet. Words piled up in her throat: I’ve never even been tempted before, and now I can’t wait to be married, and If you offered right now to take charge of the Pink-and-Whites if I gave him up, I’d have to talk myself into accepting, and You’re right, I do want something just for me, and it’s him.

  If she were really, uncomplicatedly making a love match, she would be too self-conscious, too English to say any of those things. She was too self-conscious now. “Please, Jamie. He’s had a difficult life and I want—I want him to be happy here.”

  “I’ve asked you to call me James.” Jamie gave her a narrow-eyed look. “I won’t be rude. But I’m not signing any settlements.”

  “He doesn’t even want my money. He only wants a few thousand pounds to set his brother up respectably. He’s absolutely refused anything more than that.”

  “What more does he need? He’ll be living off you.”

  Lydia’s fist clenched. “If I don’t mind that, why should anybody else? Ugh, I can’t abide odious remarks about men with less money than their wives, as if it were some grotesque overturning of the natural order of things. Why shouldn’t a woman have money? Why shouldn’t a man like her anyway?”

  Jamie blinked. “I didn’t mean anything like that. Plenty of men have liked you, Lydia. Which is why I find it so suspect that you’ve waited until now to succumb, when it’s so very convenient.”

  She took a deep breath. “Do you mean to make me ask your permission to spend my own money for the rest of my life? You can’t. Jamie—James—I’m a grown woman.” She’d bought him his first pair of trousers when he was breeched, for God’s sake. She’d supplemented his pocket money his entire childhood. If she were to read over the letters she’d saved from Eton, hardly a one ended without cajoling her to send him money on top of what he got from Papa, for things he needed, positively couldn’t live without, marbles and parakeets and a new species of cactus for his collection. “James, please.”

  He looked as uncomfortable as she felt. “It isn’t your money, Lydia. It’s Mama’s money. It’s for your children some day. I can’t give it to you free and clear when I know charity-mongers will wheedle you out of the principal by next Christmas.”

  Lydia’s jaw dropped. “You can’t really think I’m that bad a manager! I’ve been running this household since I was out of the schoolroom.” She couldn’t bring herself to touch that scornful charity-mongers.

  He gave her a sheepish smile. “I wouldn’t have to fuss if you’d take care of yourself,” he said, repeating her own words back to her. It was sweet of him, really.

  Later, she might feel grateful. “I am taking care of myself. I love the work I do. Why can’t you believe that? You’d love it too, if you’d give it a chance.”

  He looked at her and didn’t say anything. What was he thinking? She squirmed inwardly at the idea that he saw something about her that she couldn’t guess at.

  “I wish you’d be honest with me,” he said at last, sadly.

  Lydia tried to imagine telling him that Mr. Cahill was really Mr. Cohen, and that he’d grown up thieving in the East End. Even in fantasy, she couldn’t find the words. God only knew what Jamie would do with that information.

  God only knew if he could ever hold her in esteem again. He would think she had lost all respect for himself, that his sister was trading herself for money in the meanest commercial fashion. He wouldn’t understand that it didn’t feel that way.

  Even if it did, she thought suddenly. Even if I didn’t like Mr. Cahill so very much, and I had offered him a plain business proposition of a home and some cash and free use of my body in exchange for thirty thousand pounds, why shouldn’t I, if I thought it worth my while?

  God would not approve. Her parents would not approve. But why should this one thing be so sacred, when money bought everything else? She could see no reason except that God had said it, and that gentlemen liked ladies to be the repository of their daydreams of innocence and virtue.

  She could never say that to Jamie, or to a
ny of her friends. But it wouldn’t shock Mr. Cahill. He had doubtless considered the matter himself and had some opinion on it. Did that mean he had corrupted her?

  Jamie would think so.

  I wish I could be honest with you too, she thought, and smiled at him. “I am being honest with you. I know I never showed much interest in matrimony, but…I hadn’t met Mr. Cahill then.”

  Jamie’s frown didn’t dissipate. “It isn’t…it isn’t that you think this isn’t your home any longer, now that Father’s dead, is it? You know I don’t plan to marry.” He said it awkwardly and a little defiantly. “I’d be glad, more than glad, to have you here forever.”

  “Oh, Jamie.” She hurled herself at him, and he folded his arms around her. He was unbearably young. How could he talk about forever? How could he know how he would feel in five years?

  Lydia felt better about everything, suddenly. Who cared if the townsfolk knew he had given up politics? No one would hold that against him, if he chose to pick up the reins five years from now. They would understand that he had been a grieving boy. By the time he was forty no one would remember anything about it at all. So long as she maintained the interest in the meantime, this inheritance would still be his.

  “I would be glad to live here with you forever too,” she said. “But I’ll be right down the drive. It will be almost as if I hadn’t left.” When Mr. Cahill went away, perhaps she could even be Jamie’s hostess. She rubbed at the stubborn crease between Jamie’s brows. “You’ll give yourself wrinkles. Everything is all right, truly. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so,” Jamie said, sounding unalterably unconvinced.

  “Please get to know him. You’ll like him.”

  He sighed. “At least postpone the wedding.”

  It would only upset Jamie to point out that she had spent enough time alone with Mr. Cahill now that her reputation would be in tatters if she didn’t marry him. “I’m sorry, Jamie, but no.”

  “Why not?” he demanded. “But wait, I know. It’s because you can’t wait to get your hands on your money.”

  She hesitated.

  “You can’t deny it, can you?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “I thought it would embarrass you if I admitted it was because I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Mr. Cahill.”

  “Lydia!”

  “Well, it’s the truth. Don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answers to.”

  With a squeamish, defeated look, he offered her his arm to go back to the others.

  In the saloon, Aunt Packham was blooming under Mr. Cahill’s attention. When they were called in to dinner, he offered Aunt Packham his arm and let Lydia go with Jamie. He was full of small kindnesses, and if they were calculated, she didn’t think that made them less kind.

  For a moment Lydia was furious with Jamie—with anyone who would say she ought to give this up, who would look down on Mr. Cahill if they knew the truth.

  It would have been a stretch to say Jamie was polite. He had no knack for skating pleasantly on the surface of a conversation, and he could find nothing cordial to say to either of them. Mr. Cahill, with the tact she was beginning to find actually arousing, refrained from filling the silence, deferring to Lydia.

  But her own conversational gifts deserted her painfully and embarrassingly. If she spoke of her work, Jamie would think she talked of nothing else. Gossip seemed frivolous, informing him which servants she meant to take to the Dower House would be dull, she had read no books since she saw him. Her brother replied in obstinate monosyllables to all her questions and to the few ventured by Mr. Cahill—good questions, referencing things about Jamie she had forgotten mentioning to him.

  She couldn’t bear that Mr. Cahill was witnessing this. Usually Jamie and I can talk for hours, she wanted to protest.

  “I love your greenhouse,” Mr. Cahill said after a particularly long pause.

  Lydia flushed scarlet.

  Mr. Cahill did not look at her. “What do you think of the new fad for glass roofs? When I was at Barnsley Park, I saw a greenhouse designed by Mr. Nash that is almost all glass, except for the stone columns and the latticework.”

  “When you were at Barnsley Park?” Jamie’s skeptical tone dared Mr. Cahill to presume any acquaintance with the proprietors of such a fine place. Lydia blushed again, this time for Jamie’s manners.

  Mr. Cahill laughed—not even as if he were unaware of the insult, but as if he thought it rather witty. That half-inch of throat above his collar would be the death of Lydia yet. “I wasn’t a guest. We visited the house to see the paintings, and the greenhouse is just behind, so we peered in. I chatted with one of the gardeners a bit, and he told me for truly tropical plants, a glass roof can’t be beat.”

  “Some collectors swear by them,” Jamie said shortly, clearly intending to leave it at that. But half a minute later, he burst out, “The difficulty is keeping out drafts,” and then, “and keeping the more delicate plants out of direct sunlight,” and by the time he said, “Of course, most greenhouse glass has a greenish tinge to it, to protect the plants,” the Reeve passion for accuracy and complete information had taken over. Jamie embarked on an explanation of fish-scale glazing, cast-iron, and the difficulty of housing citrus and succulents in the same house.

  He was louder and more halting than usual, which meant he was nervous, and his suspicious looks said, I know you aren’t really interested, you’re just conniving. But he talked, and Mr. Cahill patently was interested. By the end of the evening Jamie had extended an extremely grudging invitation to re-pot an ailing orange tree the following morning.

  “Do you mean it?” Mr. Cahill leaned so far forward in his chair that Lydia—whom gardening made sore and muddy and not much else—suspected him of sarcasm herself.

  Jamie frowned.

  Mr. Cahill sat back. “I’m sorry—I collect other people’s enthusiasms. Someone who really loves a subject can make anything fascinating.”

  “I found the same with the dons at Oxford.” Jamie paused. “Where were you at school, sir?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lydia tensed, then wished she hadn’t. Mr. Cahill showed no sign that this was dangerous ground.

  “Not Oxford,” he said ruefully. “I never had the staying power to prosper at school. I think my brother would have done well at Edinburgh, if I could have afforded to send him.” Lydia wondered if that were true, or if Mr. Cahill had somehow guessed at an old grievance, which was about to be aired. The University of Edinburgh didn’t mind so much about the classics, emphasizing the practical sciences instead.

  On cue, Jamie said, “I would have liked to attend Edinburgh. They teach botany and agriculture there. But all the Reeves go to Oxford.”

  Lydia didn’t want to go over this bitter ground again. University in Scotland held few advantages for a Ministerialist political heir, and that had been that. “Jamie, will you stay for the wedding, or will you be going back to the Whitworth-Percevals?”

  Jamie frowned at Mr. Cahill. “I’ll stay.”

  For the first time in her life, she was not wholly happy to hear Jamie say that. She didn’t like the feeling.

  It had been a long evening, Ash thought as he walked back into Lively St. Lemeston. A long evening of swindling on his own, for when it came to dealing with her brother, Miss Reeve didn’t have the faintest idea what to do. He understood that: brothers were difficult. Ash would have to handle it, that was all.

  The invitation to re-pot a tree was a Godsend, because Lydia wouldn’t be there. It had taken far too much of Ash’s energy tonight to be glad for her that her brother had come to see her, and not envious.

  Ash couldn’t remember ever being so envious of anyone.

  But he was lucky, really. He’d lost Rafe, yes; but while he’d had him, Rafe had been the best brother possible, worlds better than anyone else’s. Jamie was a nice boy, and Ash liked hi
m, but he would be no fun at all to tramp across England with and worse than useless in a swindle. He couldn’t even pretend to be polite for five minutes at a time.

  When the ladies left them alone after dinner, the young man had fidgeted silently, misery all over his chubby, good-looking English face. When Ash said, I must admit I’ve never much cared for port or cigars, Jamie had shot up out of his chair in relief. How could he share the cast of Miss Reeve’s features and her porcelain-doll coloring and entirely lack her finesse?

  Shy people could be swindled, but it took longer, and pressing them was never shrewd practice. Maybe Ash should suggest postponing the wedding again.

  He didn’t want to. He couldn’t sleep in the solitary silence of empty streets and thick interior walls. He’d been catching a few hours’ rest in the early morning, when carts started moving in the road below. He wished he liked to read, so he’d have something to do all night, instead of wasting a candle playing patience with a deck of cards he and Rafe had used for piquet, or lying awake looking for faces in the knots on the ceiling and wondering whether he should have told Rafe the truth sooner, or never told him at all.

  For all Ash knew, he and Miss Reeve would have separate rooms even when they were married. How many rooms did the Dower House have? How rich did you have to be, exactly, before you didn’t share a bed with your wife? Miss Reeve had probably never shared a bed in her life. What if she hated it?

  He put his hand up to his breast, feeling the reassuring crinkle of paper in his inner coat pocket. He hadn’t yet opened the letter she had written him.

  It was a simple trick, but an effective one. He’d used it as a child, keeping a boiled sweet in his pocket and telling himself he’d eat it when he was really hungry. As long as he had the willpower not to eat that licorice drop, he knew the pangs he was feeling must be bearable, and so he could bear them. Besides, it had given him a treat to look forward to.