‘I did not mean to leave you,’ he said. ‘I went to your brother as soon as we had parted. After what we had done, I thought a speedy marriage might be necessary.’
‘You told him?’ she said, mortified.
‘I would not be alive if I had. He would not have bothered with a duel. He would have shot me before I could finish my offer. And I would have most heartily deserved it.’
‘You offered for me?’ Now she was the one who was shocked.
He nodded. ‘I gave him no indication of what had happened. I simply told him that I had loved you since we were children and asked for your hand.’
‘And he refused you,’ she said, as suddenly everything became clear. ‘It is so nice to know, after all this time, that you intended to do your duty by me.’
‘It was not duty,’ he insisted. ‘It was...’ Then he stopped as if he could not quite manage to say the word ‘love’ a second time. It was just as well. They both knew it was far too late for such an admission.
‘Your reason for offering does not matter,’ she said brusquely. ‘Fred said nothing of meeting with you.’ But now, at least, she knew the subject of the argument that her brother had just recently admitted to and his desire to do right by Jack if the war had damaged his spirit.
‘He told me that you were too young and I was too irresponsible to take care of you,’ Jack replied.
‘I’d have run away with you, had you asked,’ she reminded him. An elopement would have proved her brother right. As time had passed, she had realised that neither of them had been ready for marriage. It was probably for the best he had left her. But that did not change how she’d felt, at the time.
‘Fred said I was too wild,’ he muttered, like the sullen boy he had been. ‘He did not trust me with you.’
‘It was a bit late for him to come to such a conclusion,’ she said with a laugh. ‘We had known each other all our lives and he had made no effort to keep me safe from you. In fact, he always thought your outrageous behaviour to be excellent fun.’
‘Not always,’ Jack said. ‘Apparently, such things are not nearly so amusing in a brother-in-law as they are in a friend.’ He scuffed the toe of his boot on the rug and she saw the other side of him, the handsome, young imp who had stolen her heart. Without meaning to, she put her hand out to touch his sleeve, then dropped it away again as she remembered the risk of getting too close to him.
‘But why did you leave me without explanation?’ she whispered.
‘You did not know that, either?’ He looked up at her sharply, surprised.
She shook her head.
‘I left him a letter to give to you. When I did not get an answer...’ His voice fell away just as her hand had earlier.
‘What did you say?’
‘That, if we did not marry, I could no longer trust myself in your presence.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps not the right words to leave in a missive that was probably read the moment I left the room. But I made no mention of what had gone before.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I made it very clear that I did not trust myself with you outside of the sanctity of marriage and that I meant to return, when you were older, and I had made my fortune, or at least after I could assure Fred that I had settled sufficiently to be worthy of you.’
She let out the breath she had been holding in a slow sigh.
‘I asked you to write to me, if you needed me,’ he said with a significant raise of an eyebrow. ‘And even if you did not, I begged you to tell me that you were willing to wait for me.’
‘I was angry that you’d left without word,’ she said.
‘So, of course, you did not write,’ he said with understanding, but no emotion at all.
‘But I did wait,’ she reminded him.
‘And I did not,’ he said gruffly. ‘I gave up hoping.’ The look he was giving her now said that the past was the past and that anything between them was finished.
But it didn’t have to be. If he wanted her, she was still free, as was he. For the first time in ages, hope fluttered in her breast and she imagined a future quite different from the orderly marriage and life of service that awaited her as a vicar’s wife.
It might hurt William’s pride, should she decide against him. But his wooing thus far had smacked of expediency, not ardour. His heart would be undamaged if she called an end to their courting. And hers would breathe a sigh of relief.
But the man in front of her seemed to have nothing more to say on the subject of love, either. Apparently, she would have to prod him to life. ‘These stories of the past are all very enlightening,’ she said. ‘But it is the present we must contend with. And the future,’ she added with significance.
‘Indeed,’ he agreed. ‘Your brother says you are near to making a match with Mr Thoroughgood.’
‘So it would appear,’ she agreed.
‘I spoke with him briefly. He is a most serious and learned fellow...’
‘I will relay your compliments to him,’ she said, praying that there was more to the sentence.
‘But I do not think he is right for you.’
She knew that as well. But she had waited for Jack until her options were limited, hoping for love. When Waterloo had come and gone with no sign of his homecoming, she had settled.
But now he was home. She smiled, realising that they still stood in the doorway, under the mistletoe. ‘Do you have someone in mind that would suit me better?’
Perhaps she was being too obvious in her questions. But she wanted some hint that he had come to make things right between them and he was playing far too coy.
She was not expecting the answer she received. ‘I know no one who will suit. But I know you well enough to think that you need a man with spirit and a sense of humour, and someone who will appreciate those qualities in you. Thoroughgood is wrong on all counts.’
‘What?’ It was all she could manage, for the answer he had given rendered her near to incoherence.
He gave her a firm and somewhat puzzled smile, as if he felt he had been perfectly clear before and should not have to repeat himself. ‘I would not offer advice on the matter, if your choice seemed more appropriate. But I have known you so long that I cannot help but be concerned for your future happiness. I fear you would make an abominable vicar’s wife and would make yourself miserable by trying.’
She shook her head, amazed. ‘You return after all this time and have nothing more to say than that?’
‘If you were expecting something more—’ his brow furrowed ‘—then I must remind you that it has been five years,’ he said. ‘Things have changed.’
‘“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”’ She touched her cheek, wondering if she was really so different from the girl he had once wanted. ‘If they are so easily forgotten, then the feelings you claimed for me were not as deep as you claimed.’ It made her feel all the bigger fool for succumbing to him then.
‘It is not you,’ he said, hurriedly. ‘You are every bit as lovely as you were on the day I left and just as hard to resist. It is I who have changed.’
‘Of course you have,’ she laughed. ‘You are a war hero now. If I am to believe what I have heard, you are quite well off and no longer dependent on an allowance from your brother to cover your bills.’
‘I have changed for the worse,’ he argued. ‘Ignore the nonsense about my being an officer and a gentleman. One cannot be a good soldier and remain untouched by the brutality of the profession.’ He turned away again, staring into the fire, and his hand gripped the mantel until his fingers went white.
‘But that is over. You are home now,’ she reminded him.
He smiled sadly. ‘Would that a change of location was all it took to return to the man I was.’
‘Time will help,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘It will not change what I have already done. And
the man who could behave in such a way is not a man worthy of your affection. Now, if you will excuse me, I must wash for dinner.’ And he left the room, walking beneath the kissing bow without even looking up.
Chapter Five
Dinner at the Clifton table was much the way he remembered it from childhood, when the house had been his refuge against the capricious affections of his own family. He had spent most summers and Christmases at the neighbouring estate belonging to his grandfather, Sir Henry Gascoyne, but since the family seldom bothered to come along, it was more exile than holiday.
But once the Cliftons took note of the boy living largely unsupervised next door, his loneliness ended. He became an honorary member of their family, playmate of the children and doted on by parents and servants alike. Now, apparently, Fred had notified the cook that Master Gascoyne had come home, for a fricassee of chicken and mushrooms had been set on his end of the table and he helped himself to a liberal portion. The recipe was too simple for a holiday meal, but since the night he had mentioned it was his favourite, no Clifton meal was complete without it.
Tonight, this gesture of welcome was warm, but undeserved. He was too unsettled to enjoy any of the delicious foods on the table. He had broken his promise to Lucy, who had been foolishly loyal and waited for him. Though he’d thought that there would be nothing worse in his life than battle, greeting his lover this afternoon had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. It was also the cruellest.
He had not realised that she would look even more beautiful than she had when he’d left her. She’d felt right when he had kissed her and even better when he’d put his hands on her waist. It was like finding a lost part of his soul. For a moment, he had forgotten his plan to remain aloof from her. He’d wanted to be her last kiss as he had been her first.
Then he’d turned from her, called her sister and pretended it meant nothing. She had been angry when she’d confronted him later. But there had been a dangerous undercurrent beneath it. She had been searching for a reason to forgive him. She’d acted as if it should be easy to cast off his sins and come back to her, to be what they had been to each other.
A return to Lucy was impossible. She was too pure, too good. If she learned of the things he had done in the name of King and country, she would flinch from him in disgust. He would not taint the memories of the past by trying to rekindle something that could never again be as sweet as he’d remembered it.
* * *
After dinner, he mingled with the other visitors, feeling the same out-of-place sensation he’d had in London these last few months. On one side of the room, a group of guests were playing charades. On the other, he could hear another crowd gathered around the pianoforte singing ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’. Neither occupation interested him, nor did the Buffy-Gruffy game or playing Hunt the Slipper with Miss Forsythe and the other young ladies.
Everything was by turns too loud or too quiet. The laughter seemed forced and inappropriate. He wanted to shout at them that there was no reason to celebrate when good men had died while they’d stayed safe at home.
But death and dying was the lot of a soldier. He’d known it when he had gone to war. Yet he had not understood how wrong it would feel to have survived. It seemed he would spend the rest of his life starting at loud noises and shadows and waking in the middle of the night unable to sleep because of the battle he was convinced must wait him in the morning.
To steady his nerves, he decided to share the activity that Fred had chosen: honour guard to the punchbowl. He stayed on one end of the table, while his friend manned the ladle, both of them imbibing liberally.
He’d drunk far too much since Waterloo, trying to numb his mind to peacefulness. But it was strange to see someone who was supposed to be celebrating his engagement dipping so deep and it made Jack wonder if there could be something wrong between the pair. But the days where he could ask personal questions of Fred were long gone, so he held out his glass to be refilled and they sat in silence.
Nearby, a group of children were taking turns at the snapdragon bowl, pulling raisins from the burning brandy and shrieking as they singed their fingers. The younger of the two girls was leaning too far forward, her curls bouncing just out of reach of the flames. At any moment, there was likely to be an accident that would spoil the evening.
Without waiting for permission, Jack rose from his chair and crossed behind the girl, pulling her back out of danger. Then he explained patiently of the risk she had been in and showed her that proximity was not the key to the game by rolling up his shirt cuff and snatching a fruit himself.
He returned to the table to find Fred smiling fondly as he poured himself another cup. ‘My friend, you are truly a changed man. Remember the Christmas you leaned too far over the bowl and burnt off your eyebrows?’
‘I burned my cheek as well,’ he admitted. ‘There is still a patch that my valet swears cannot grow a whisker.
Fred laughed heartily at the memory. Jack had no right to be annoyed by the fact, for he had laughed as well on the day it had happened, far too drunk to feel the pain.
‘If you had not had the damnedest luck, it would have been far worse. You walked away from accidents that maimed other men. Remember the time you rolled my curricle on the road to Basingstoke?’
‘It was the horses who were lucky,’ Jack said, wincing at the memory. ‘You threatened to trounce me to make up for the loss of them, but they escaped without so much as a bruised flank.’
‘I’d have hit you for destroying the carriage,’ Fred said. ‘But I was too busy popping your shoulder back into place.’
‘Then I brought up my accounts all over your best coat,’ Jack concluded, his guilt turning to dread as he looked back on what a reckless cad he had been when Fred had refused to hear his offer. The stories told so far were hardly the worst of what he had done.
Fred grew more sombre. ‘When you said that you would change your character and make your fortune, I had little hopes that we would see you again. A man’s luck can only go so far and you had used up more lives than a dozen cats.’
‘It turned out I had a talent for staying alive,’ he replied.
‘And you have come back with the money as well,’ Fred said with an approving nod. ‘The pickings on the battlefield must have been good, for I understand you have purchased a fine house in Grosvenor Square.’
‘When I left, I had hardly enough money to keep myself alive,’ Jack added. With grandfather and parents dead, he’d had to beg his brother for the money to buy a commission, but had paid it back threefold after just a year.
‘When I heard that you had returned and were as yet unmarried...’ There was a long pause as his old friend tried to collect his thoughts. ‘I worried that we might have a similar argument to the one that I feared had ended our friendship.’ He reached out and touched Jack’s shoulder in a gesture of apology for words that had not even been said. ‘I cannot tell you how it delights me to be proven wrong. Since you have been here, I have seen the improvements in your character. In fact, compared to the layabout you used to be, you are almost too serious.’
Jack tipped back his glass and drained it to prove that some of his bad habits had not completely disappeared. ‘If that was meant to be a compliment, it is not a very good one.’
Fred shrugged, embarrassed. ‘It is just that I am both pleased and concerned. If there is anything that you need to ease your homecoming, you have but to ask.’
‘This visit was enough,’ Jack said, wishing that this awkward conversation could end. But in truth, being in this place with old friends had made him feel a little more human.
‘And, should you wish to ask me about Lucy’s future?’ Fred said, watching closely for his reaction. ‘Know that my answer now would be quite different than it was the last time.’
He favoured Fred with a blank look and silence.
‘You were always quite fond of
her,’ Fred added, pausing as if hoping Jack would comment. ‘And, at least until we hear something out of Thoroughgood, she is still free.’
‘And old enough to make decisions without your permission,’ Jack added.
‘True,’ Fred replied. ‘But that does not stop my interest in what becomes of her.’
‘Then do not try to push her on to me, as an alternative to the Vicar,’ Jack said, abruptly.
‘I did not think you would find it a hardship,’ Fred replied, indignant.
‘I would not,’ he snapped. ‘But she should not be tied to the sort of man who had planned to celebrate Christmas by putting a ball through his brain.’
‘You would not...’ Fred said, shocked.
‘Left to my own devices, it was a distinct possibility.’ Jack sighed. ‘And that is why I do not think myself a fit husband for your sister.’
He set his punch cup aside, no longer thirsty. When he looked up, he was staring into the eyes of Lucy Clifton. She was several yards away from him, too far to speak without shouting over the din of the other, laughing guests. But words had never been necessary to understand each other. That, at least, had not changed with time.
He shrugged back at her, still unsure what it was that she saw in him that held her interest, other than the ghost of his former self.
She gave a sigh of disappointment at the doubtful look he had given her. Then, with a flash of her blue eyes, she glanced above her.
Mistletoe.
The kissing bough was not as impressive as the ones he remembered from the Clifton Hall of his youth. But the barest scrap of leaves and berries would serve the purpose if he dared to steal a kiss. Lucy was willing, waiting, radiant in the candlelight, her eyes sparkling in invitation, her cheeks glowing red from the effects of the punch and carols.
And despite what he had just told her brother, he was tempted. There was no harm in a quick buss between old friends. It was the height of foolhardiness. But then, she had always brought out his desire to throw caution to the wind.
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