Heartless

by Mary Balogh

  A small child had found a chink in his armor this morning and had blown it apart. But he felt naked without it and afraid. And not at all sure he did not want to drag it about himself again and reserve his newfound capacity to love for his child.

  • • •

  Luke excused himself after drinking tea with his family in the drawing room and went upstairs to his wife’s room. There was a sliver of light visible beneath the door. He tapped lightly on it and waited until her maid opened it.

  “You may go and have dinner with the other servants, Penny,” he said.

  She bobbed a curtsy and left as he stepped into the room, quietly in case his wife and his daughter slept. But Anna was propped up in bed against a bank of pillows and she had the child to her breast. She flushed and smiled at him as he crossed the room toward her and sat down carefully on the bed. His eyes lowered from her face.

  And love constricted his breathing again.

  “She was fussing,” Anna said. “I thought perhaps she was hungry, but I do not believe she is.”

  His daughter’s mouth was about Anna’s nipple, but she was not sucking. “She is quiet,” he said.

  “I believe she likes the comfort of being here,” she said. “Luke, I am sorry you came at such a moment. You are looking so grand. You are wearing the clothes you wore when I first saw you.”

  Though no one had remarked on his appearance at dinner, he knew that several of them had looked askance at him for wearing the most splendid of his evening clothes for a family dinner. They had not understood, perhaps, why he had felt constrained to wear his best. Indeed, he had only just resisted applying his cosmetics. He had had to make some small concessions to country living, alas.

  “While I am . . . like this,” Anna said with an apologetic laugh.

  “You appeared beautiful to me in your green and gold ballgown on that evening, madam,” he said. “Tonight you appear ten times more lovely.”

  “Oh.” She laughed again, delight in the sound. “Where did you learn such gallantry, your grace? Do you hear your papa flatter your mama, Joy?”

  Their daughter gave no sign of having done so. She appeared too content to be where she was.

  “The church bells rang in the village for half an hour this afternoon,” he said. “The servants are drinking wine with their dinner in the servants’ hall this evening. Invitations will be sent tomorrow to our absent family members and to your godmother to attend the christening. And I donned my scarlet coat and gold waistcoat. ’Tis not every day that one becomes a father for the first time.”

  She rested her head back against the pillows and smiled at him. “Luke,” she said. She drew breath to say more, but merely shook her head slightly and smiled again.

  “May I?” He reached out hands that trembled slightly, as they had not done, surprisingly, the first time, and took the baby into his own arms. He held her in the crook of his arm and gazed down at her. And smiled.

  “Her skin has lost some of the red patches,” Anna said.

  “Has it?” He continued to smile. “She looks just as beautiful to me as she did earlier.”

  Anna, resting against her pillows, raised her eyes from the baby to his face. She kept them there, gazing at him in wonder and with some wistfulness.

  He was smiling.

  • • •

  Laurence Colby had not been happy since Luke’s return to Bowden Abbey. For five years he had had almost a free hand in the running of the estate, during the first three of those because George, Duke of Harndon, had been an unhappy man and had shown little interest in the day-to-day workings of his inheritance, and during the last two years because Lucas, Duke of Harndon, was living in Paris and seemed totally unconcerned with his home or his lands.

  It was difficult to adjust to the homecoming of the duke and to the unexpected fact that he took a keen interest in the affairs of Bowden and had his own very distinctive and very unshakable ideas on how things should be run. Ideas that involved the spending of money that had been carefully hoarded over the past years. Ideas that involved improvements that would profit the tenants far more than the duchy itself.

  Colby was an honest man, but he had been a disgruntled one for almost a year. When an opportunity presented itself to him in the form of the offer of employment fifty miles away, he took it though it offered no improvement in his salary. Money did not mean everything to Bowden’s steward. Control did. And so he left with no more than a week’s notice, in the middle of March, just when spring was coming and with it one of the busiest times of the year on the farms.

  Luke was at a loss. Although he had concerned himself since his return with the workings of his estate, in truth he knew little about the business aspects of it. He walked into his office one morning and grimaced. He had had all the books and ledgers brought over from Colby’s and stacked on his desk and on the floor beside it. He scarcely knew where to start. What he really needed was a new and experienced steward. But where was one to be found at a moment’s notice? He should ride over to Wycherly, perhaps, and see if Will could suggest someone. Will seemed to know everything there was to know about farming.

  But his thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of his wife in the room.

  “She is sleeping?” she asked.

  “What?” he said and then looked down at the child he held cradled in his arms. His family and servants had been confounded by the fact that he often carried his daughter about with him. Apparently fathers were under no obligation to see their children for more than a few minutes a day, if that—or so his mother had explained to him after he had received visitors one afternoon while holding Joy. “Ah, yes. She must have nodded off from boredom when I forgot to continue conversing with her. Have you ever in your life seen such a mess, Anna?” He frowned at his desk and the floor beside it.

  She took the child from his arms. “I’ll take her up to the nursery,” she said. “You know what Mother says about spoiling children by holding them too much.” She smiled at him. “Poor Luke. It was very bad of Mr. Colby to leave so abruptly. Have you thought of Ashley?”

  “Ashley?” He frowned blankly at her.

  “Doris told me that he used to trail about after Mr. Colby during his holidays after you went away,” she said. “And you know that he spends a great deal of his time with William.”

  He knew no such thing. And how the devil had she got Doris to tell her that?

  “You suggest that I call on my brother for help?” he asked.

  “What is family for?” she said.

  But this was no normal family. Not like hers. How could he ask Ashley of all people for help? And yet perhaps it was the very opening he had been looking for for months now. And in the three weeks since Joy’s birth he and Ashley had been warily circling about each other, figuratively speaking. Luke could not forget the way his younger brother had grinned at him on the evening of her birth and reminded him that he still had an heir. And the next day Ashley had shaken his hand more warmly than he had done the day before and told him he was truly happy for him.

  “He will not do anything to help me,” he told Anna now.

  “Perhaps not,” she said, lifting the baby to her shoulder and rubbing one hand gently over her back. “But you will not know if you do not ask, Luke. Ask him. Please?”

  He might have known that she was going to do this to him—act as his conscience, wheedle him into doing things that he had no particular wish to do. She was quite as bad as Theo.

  He found Ashley outside, walking across the lawn from the woods with Emily. He was holding one of her hands. In her other she held a bunch of daffodils. They were both laughing, Emily in her strangely appealing though ungainly way.

  “I would talk with Ashley,” Luke said when Emily was close enough to listen to his lips. “You may go up and see the baby before Anna leaves her, if you wish.”

  She gave him
her wide, happy smile and went running off toward the house.

  Ashley was looking at him warily. “What have I done?” he asked. “You look grim. Are you sure you would not prefer to be seated behind your desk with me standing on the other side, Luke?”

  “I would not be able to see you over the stack of Colby’s ledgers,” Luke said. “I need your help, Ash.”

  His brother raised his eyebrows. “Egad,” he said, “I have not been called that sooty name for a long time.” And then he frowned. “What sort of help?”

  “Have you ever fancied yourself as a steward?” Luke asked.

  “You want me to take Colby’s place,” Ashley said, surprise in his voice.

  “If you think you can do it,” Luke said, “and if you want to do it. You are under no obligation to me.”

  “That is the trouble with my whole bloody life,” Ashley said. “I am under no obligation to anyone. Everyone is obliged to look after me. Sometimes I think it would be as well to put a gun to my temple.”

  “Don’t,” Luke said curtly.

  “I suppose,” Ashley said, “I should have settled for the church or the army when they were suggested to me.”

  “Not if they do not suit you,” Luke said. “We must talk about it, Ash, and find something that really will suit you and give you a sense of purpose. In the meantime, will you help me out until I can get someone to take Colby’s place?”

  Ashley nodded slowly. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I have always had an interest in business, Luke. I mentioned the East India Company to Papa once and he exploded in my face. No son of his . . . You can guess the rest. I fancied going to India.”

  Luke looked keenly at him. “Past tense?” he said.

  Ashley shrugged.

  “Then ’tis an idea we must explore without further delay,” Luke said. “If ’tis what you really want, Ash. But will you help me while we wait for some answers?” He raised his eyebrows.

  Ashley grinned. “Everything is on your desk?” he asked. “I’ll take a look. I used to get Colby to explain everything to me, you know. Yes, I’ll do it for you, Luke.”

  Luke reached out his right hand and his brother took it after a moment’s hesitation. They clasped hands firmly and warmly.

  “Ash,” Luke said, “I have made a devil of a mess of several things since my return. Give me a second chance?”

  Ashley laughed. “If it had been Papa last year,” he said, “or even George, I would have been bent over the nearest desk and soundly walloped. And I would have deserved every stroke. Your contempt was worse in a way because it was so unexpected, but it had its effect, Luke, as the walloping might not have. Give me a second chance?”

  Luke clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, this very minute,” he said. “In my office, my dear. Sorry—in my office, brother.”

  20

  IT seemed to Anna during the two months following the birth of her child that she lived almost with bated breath. They were a busy two months and a happy two months.

  And there were no letters.

  Perhaps he had grown tired of taunting her, she thought. Perhaps he had admitted defeat, knowing that she was to have Luke’s child. Perhaps he realized that he had lost her.

  She did not believe it for a moment.

  But she tried, she pretended to believe it. And sometimes she almost succeeded.

  Agnes’s wedding was to take place one week after Joy’s christening. It had been arranged thus so that the guests who had traveled some distance for the one event would be able to stay for the other. Anna looked forward to seeing Victor and Constance again, and Charlotte and her husband, and Aunt Marjorie. And Lord Quinn, Luke’s uncle.

  But it was not just the busy preparations and the absence of letters that accounted for her happiness. The long and terrible estrangement from Luke seemed to be at an end. Their child brought them together. Often when she went to the nursery to feed Joy, she found him there before her, playing with the child or vainly trying to soothe her if she was very hungry. Once—to the nurse’s obvious consternation—he was changing the baby’s nappy. Almost always he stayed to watch his daughter being fed.

  He loved their daughter. Anna ached with the happiness of knowing that it was so, but at the same time she felt a certain wistfulness. If only he would look at her as he looked at Joy.

  And yet there was happiness. He talked to her more than he had ever done before. He talked about more than just trivialities. She wondered sometimes if he realized that he was treating her more like a wife than he used to do.

  He talked about Doris’s going back to London with the dowager after the christening and about his efforts to find a new steward so that Ashley could join the East India Company. And on one magical afternoon he took her and Joy for a walk to the falls and sat with them there telling Anna about his childhood.

  “We were always up to mischief here,” he said. “We were strictly forbidden to go near the water, so of course we had to wade in it to see if we could descend the falls without losing our footing. I used to encourage Ashley to do it when I was old enough to know better.”

  “And George encouraged you?” she asked.

  There was a short silence. “I suppose so,” he said.

  She had noticed that he never spoke of his elder brother.

  “They were happy days,” he said quietly. “I would have our children as happy, Anna.”

  She hugged the words to herself almost as if they were a declaration of love, almost as if they guaranteed her a future. And then he got to his feet, set the baby in Anna’s arms, and strolled away to gather a bouquet of daffodils.

  “Madam.” He bowed formally though he was dressed in an informal frock coat and breeches and his hair was unpowdered. “The blooms almost match the sunshine of your smile.” He set them along her free arm and took Joy from her again.

  “Your grace.” She set a hand over her heart. “You flatter me.” She laughed lightly, but in truth her heart was crying with pleasure.

  It was an afternoon she hated to see come to an end.

  • • •

  Luke enjoyed the hectic days surrounding the christening of his daughter and the wedding of his sister-in-law and Will. Anna’s brother and his wife and her sister and her husband arrived together one day, Lady Sterne and his uncle on the following day. The house seemed suddenly filled with laughter and raised voices.

  It surprised Luke that he enjoyed it all. It was true that he had been much in society in Paris and had always chosen the most glittering, most crowded entertainments. But he had enjoyed it all in a somewhat detached manner. His heart and his very being had never been involved.

  But now he was with his family and his wife’s family and he was enjoying the sense of involvement. The sense that he was part of it all, that he belonged.

  “Pox on it, lad,” his uncle said the first time they were alone together, slapping him on the shoulder, “but I am proud of you. I always knew you would come back here with a little encouragement and do your duty.”

  “There are those, my dear,” Luke said, taking a pinch of snuff and sniffing it delicately up each nostril, “who would say it was lamentably undutiful of me to beget a daughter as my firstborn.”

  Lord Quinn laughed heartily. “Nay, but it takes practice like all else,” he said. “A gel this time and a boy next. There is time, lad.”

  Luke felt rather as if he had lost his daughter. She was always in some female’s arms being cooed over while other females crowded about awaiting their turn. But only he—and Anna, it was true—was able to make her smile. It was merely wind, his mother told him when he was unwise enough to boast of the fact. But he knew—and Anna knew—that their daughter smiled for her mama and papa.

  Sometimes Luke looked back on his Parisian self and wondered if he could possibly be the same person.

  He spent his time—as
fathers were expected to do, it seemed, when there were enough aunts and great-aunts available to amuse their children—either at work or with his brother and brothers-in-law and uncle. And with Will, who was looking these days rather as if his cravat was always tied too tightly.

  There was one meeting with Henrietta a couple of days before the christening. She met him on the bridge when he was returning from some business beyond the village. She was standing gazing into the water, making a pretty and rather melancholy picture. He felt obliged to dismount from his horse and speak to her. She seemed to have been depressed for some time. He supposed the birth of Joy would have reminded her of the stillbirth of her own son.

  He felt sorry for Henrietta and a little guilty that he had returned to make her unhappiness more acute. He stood talking with her for a few minutes and plucked a single daffodil for her from the bank of the river and gave it to her before proceeding on his way.

  He wondered if he would have continued loving her if all that business with George had not happened. Perhaps he would have.

  • • •

  Henrietta stood looking after Luke. She crushed the bloom of the daffodil in one hand, not looking down at it.

  There was only one bright point in her life at the moment. And even that was small comfort enough. She was fiercely glad that the child was a girl. Anna had failed. And perhaps there would be no next time. Perhaps before she could conceive again . . .

  But Henrietta’s highwayman had disappeared several months ago, as suddenly and mysteriously as he had come. They had met and made love as usual one week and had made a tryst for the following week. But he had not come, though she had waited longer than an hour. She had neither seen nor heard from him since.

  And Anna was still here. And still mistress of Bowden.

  Luke was still distant and polite.

  But she refused to go to London for the Season with Doris and her mother-in-law, though Luke had suggested it. Would he not love it if she married someone else, she thought bitterly. No, she belonged at Bowden. Bowden was hers. It always had been.