Another moment of silence.
“I didn’t mean it,” she tried.
“You did mean it.”
She sighed. “Very well. I did mean it.”
And they were quiet together, remembering that evening.
She asked the question he’d already once asked himself. That terrible question: “And if we had danced that evening Miles…if we had spoken, or been introduced?”
“This is what I know now, Cynthia,” he said decisively, because he did know it, and she sounded so afraid. “It would not have made one bit of difference. Even if we had danced, you would not have truly seen me. And I would not have truly seen you. We were different people then, and we are different people now”
Because of each other, he didn’t say.
Her gaze dropped. He noticed worn toes on her slippers as well as worn heels. Her circumstances touched chill fingers to the back of his neck, and made him feel restless.
He wanted her eyes back on his face, so he said, “You’re correct, Cynthia. I suppose I am proud. The Redmond heritage, and all that. I imagine I didn’t enjoy being overlooked. And I suppose my pride is in part what made me lie to you about Goodkind. I wanted to prove a point.”
She looked up again. Blue, blue eyes. My heart is blue, he thought absurdly.
“But your pride is what made you kiss me the very first day of my stay here,” she said softly.
Ah, clever girl.
The word “kiss” arrived, like a waft of opium. They both drifted on possibility for a moment. He could close the inches between them by simply bending his head, touching his lips to her soft lips. He’d cup her beautiful kitten’s face in his hands, and with his mouth and tongue and hands, he would make her forget everything. He would slide his lips to her throat, drag his hands around to cup her soft breasts inside that soft and warm muslin…
“Are you sorry that I did?” he asked, his voice hoarse with emotion now.
His grip tightened on her. He saw her pulse beating in her throat, felt it beating in her wrists. She looked stricken.
He didn’t know why he’d asked the question. No answer could possibly satisfy either of them.
So he gently released her wrists. Slowly.
She took them back as if he’d given her a gift. She touched her fingers absently to where he’d touched her.
“Did I hurt you?” Her hand went out as she asked, as if to smooth his chest where she’d thumped her fist; she stopped it before it could touch him. It was an echo of the first time he’d kissed her. That hovering uncertainty. He remembered the wrenching pain that came with thinking she might push him away.
Her hand dropped back to her side.
“You did,” he said, bemused. “A little.” He put his hand over where his heart beat for her. Because she couldn’t touch him. Because she wouldn’t now, and shouldn’t now.
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Good.”
They were quiet together. Standing just a foot, but now an eternity, apart.
“Cynthia. I’m sorry about Goodkind. I swear to you I’ll make it right.”
“Well, it’s rather too late to make it right with regards to Mr. Goodkind,” she said practically. “He…said things…and fled. Don’t smile,” she warned.
“You really aren’t going to tell me what you said?”
She sighed. “Oh, very well. I might have said something about how I am sympathetic to dramatic differences between people in physical needs, shall we say, and that I was not averse to sharing my wardrobe with a man, should he take a fancy to something in it. I might have mentioned that I would happily sew a large garter. You may smile now.”
Miles already was. “Did you mean it?”
“Why shouldn’t I be sympathetic, provided he’s discreet?” she said, sounding puzzled.
He paused. “Of course. Why shouldn’t you?” he repeated softly. She probably would have been sympathetic. Or at the very least, pragmatic. She wasn’t the sort to collapse in the fit of the vapors if she caught her husband attempting to slide one of her satin garters up his own thigh or trying on one of her bonnets. They would have sat down and discussed it.
A tropical jungle would pose no real challenge for Miss Brightly.
“If you must know, it was very funny,” she conceded. “I wouldn’t have thought you capable of the inspiration.”
He gave a shallow nod. “You were my muse.”
She smiled genuinely at this. Color of the healthy sort was returning to her face.
Oh, but he was in hell. Discussing the men who would have her for the rest of her days seemed too much to ask of him. His hands had gone cold and numb; in the pit of his stomach was a strangely familiar hollow feeling.
She wasn’t to know it. He would never let her know it. He would do anything to take away her fear, to restore the color to her face, to ensure that she slept peacefully at night and never wanted for anything for the rest of her days. And he wouldn’t allow her to regret it.
“Argosy!” Fear crept back into her voice. “Have you—did you—”
“No. No. I swear to you. I’ve not tampered with the facts there,” he told her. “Everything I’ve said about him is true.”
“But the Gypsy girl told Argosy I was a minx, and shouted something about pistols and blood. And ever since then I think he’s been uncertain about me.”
“Hard to see why.”
She laughed. “She’s unnerving. Martha, her name is. Her mother, Leonora…now, she said I’d marry very soon.”
“Helpful of her.”
“I thought so.”
“If you had to choose between Milthorpe and Argosy, Cynthia, who would it be?”
He managed to say this calmly. It was like swallowing knives.
Her hands twisted nervously in her skirt. “Argosy, I suppose.”
“Consider it done.”
“Miles—”
“You know you can trust me.” The words brought back the night before. He’d meant them to, which was unfair, but it was how she knew she could trust him.
She jerked back and stared up at him.
“Trust me, Cynthia,” he repeated softly, when she remained silent, her cheeks hot, her eyes dark with memory. “I have never in my life failed to do what I set out to do.”
“Very well. I trust you.”
The words were a gift: her trust.
And there was nothing else to say, and yet there was everything. And Miles found he couldn’t allow her to leave just yet, because there was something he needed to say. And yet he had no vocabulary for what had happened to him since he’d met her. He faltered; he tried.
“I want you to know…that you’re wrong on one count, Cynthia. I have a heart. I have only…recently discovered this. Ironic, isn’t it? Given that I’ve made rather a life out of discovery. And I wish to God I had a choice. I wish to God I could…because if I could…”
“Don’t.” She bit off the word. She backed away from him. Her face was white again. “That…that…isn’t cricket. And you know it.”
She turned so quickly her dress whipped her ankles, and she was rushing from the stables on her worn slippers.
Chapter 19
Miles made it right.
Cynthia might have said that this—the business of snaring a husband—wasn’t a game to her. But viewing it as a game was the only way he could make good on his promise to make it right. It ensured that his intellect was fully engaged. It gave him permission to bluff or lie.
And to do all of this, he reminded himself that he was a man who could view with fascinated detachment a rodent-eating plant the height of his younger brother. He would wonder at its genus, its history, its diet, and draw it, in detail and never fear it or exalt it. Everything, he reminded himself—awe, fear—had component parts and an origin. Could be understood when examined, demystified.
Feelings needn’t enter into the equation at all.
No one need ever learn that he’d discovered he had a heart. He wasn’t about to deliv
er a paper to the Royal Society about that particular discovery, after all.
No objective in his life ever felt more urgent, and he had scarcely a week to accomplish it.
Then again, as he’d said before, there was nothing he had failed to do once he set out to do it.
He started his campaign that very evening.
“Didn’t you have your fortunes told by the Rom while they were here?” he asked Jonathan and Argosy idly over billiards.
They were surprised, but pleased enough, to have him about.
“Why, yes, we did,” Argosy told him. “Eerie, it was. They know things, those Gypsies.”
Jonathan snorted. “Ten children!” he muttered resentfully. “Poppycock. A man would have to be mad. I paid good money for that dukkering, too.”
“I paid good money for that,” Argosy corrected idly. “Take your shot, Redmond.”
“You’re going to have ten children, Jonathan?” Miles was genuinely surprised by this.
“No!” His brother was appalled.
“Was Mrs. Heron’s looby of a daughter present?” Miles asked as he stood by the table, waiting for his brother to shoot.
Argosy turned to him a bit defensively. Then again, Miles was something of an authority on all things as far as the younger men were concerned, and so he hesitated to object too strongly.
“I’m not certain at all she was a looby, old man. She seemed to know a good deal that seemed true.”
Miles snorted. “Oh? Tell me, did she happen to shout something about a ‘duck’?”
Argosy’s face was a wonder to behold. Brilliant with astonishment. “How did you hear? Did someone tell you?”
Miles was all amusement. “She always bellows that when her mother reads fortunes. From what I’ve heard from those in Pennyroyal Green, anyway. I’m not certain she can control the impulse. It’s something that comes right out of her. She’s touched in the head.”
“Does she always shout that?” Argosy was both disappointed and relieved. “‘Duck,’ is it? But she said the duck was empty.” He made an emphatic gesture with the last word. This seemed to be meaningful to Argosy.
Cynthia had said nothing about an empty duck. Miles realized he would have to improvise.
“Precisely,” he said, and took his shot, a clean and true one.
The ball smacked so hard Jonathan and Argosy winced.
“An empty duck,” he continued. “When I first heard her say it, I thought it had something to do with a hunting decoy. Very odd. But then one must be sympathetic to the ravings of a madwoman. Her mother, on the other hand…her mother sends chills up my spine with the accuracy of her readings.”
Jonathan was staring at his brother as though he was the looby.
“How much have you had to drink, Miles?” he asked suspiciously. Dukkering wasn’t something that would interest Miles at all, apart from its potential to be mocked, or its anthropological appeal. “And haven’t you known Mrs. Heron and her daughter for years?”
“I’ve naught to drink.” Miles yawned indolently. “Which reminds me. Where is the brandy, anyway? What did Mrs. Heron tell you, Argosy? Now, anything she might say I would entertain quite seriously. She told me I’d go on a long voyage.”
She’d done nothing of the sort, but this impressed Argosy. As Miles most certainly had gone on a long voyage.
“She told me that I would be wed soon. To a charming girl with many admirers. And that I…I’d best act quickly lest I miss my destiny.” He actually flushed.
He feels something for Cynthia, Miles thought suddenly. For some reason, the realization struck him like a billiard cue in the solar plexus.
But why shouldn’t he feel for her? She was remarkable. Argosy just would never be able to truly know her.
“Interesting.” Miles enunciated every syllable drawlingly. He fixed Argosy with his see-everything look.
And then he found the brandy decanter, turned his back and poured. “Where’s Milthorpe got to?” he said while his back was turned. “I wanted to have a word with him about my next expedition.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t say, old man,” Argosy said idly.
There was a pock as a shot was taken. “Ah. Now I recall.” Miles held up a finger in recollection. “He is having a chat with Miss Brightly in the salon. I believe they have come to a decision regarding what manner of dog she might have. I do think Milthorpe might want to have his palm read as well. I believe I heard he was looking for a wife. Seems everyone is in the market for a wife. Most of us at the house party, anyhow.”
Argosy went rigid with alarm. He had probably never seriously entertained Milthorpe as a rival, and was suddenly reviewing him in a different light entirely.
“She’ll be gone from Sussex in a few days, too. Miss Brightly. So I’m told. By Milthorpe.”
Argosy was distracted from that point on and lost badly at billiards, which meant Jonathan and Miles won a good deal of money from him.
Trust me, he’d said.
Cynthia had decided she would. And the day after he’d asked her to do precisely that, Argosy had become ardency personified. A miraculous evolution, indeed. It required a bit of adjustment, but she was nothing if not resilient, and allowed herself to savor just the tiniest bit of ease, and to enjoy the attention, and to try not to feel guilty.
She only shook her reticule once that day.
And she, like Miles, refused to think of anything that had happened before, refused to think of what could not be. She focused on the needs of the present.
Two days later something extraordinary happened while she waited in the salon for Argosy, who had begged permission to take her walking—alone!—in the garden.
“Miss Brightly, I wonder if I may beg a word?”
Cynthia turned very slowly.
It was Lady Georgina. Sun blazed in the big windows of the salon, and on the shady end of it, Violet sat with Jonathan and Lady Windermere. The safety of other people seemed acres away.
Bloody hell. No escape.
Cynthia eyed Georgina cautiously. She hadn’t sounded accusatory. She had sounded…diffident. In fact, as though she were indeed begging a word.
“Of course,” Cynthia said warmly. Meaning precisely the opposite.
Cynthia settled into the chair next to Georgina, and the bright daylight pouring in the window contrived to wash Georgina nearly free of color entirely, apart from her hair, which was, as usual, wound up smoothly and neatly and glowed like a halo.
“I don’t quite know how to begin…” Georgina’s hands worked nervously together.
Again, Cynthia studied the girl for signs of irony or innuendo. “Please feel free to be open with me, Georgina,” she said kindly, though her stomach felt as though it were turning on a spit.
Georgina whirled on her impulsively. “Very well! It’s this. Well, you’re so very charming.”
“Am…am I?” Cynthia was suddenly very nervous.
“Yes. Everyone can see it, you know. You quite sparkle,” she insisted.
It was tremendously odd to hear these words from Lady Georgina. She’d never dreamed flattery could also be strangely terrifying. And yet, she reminded herself, Lady Georgina communicated primarily by admiring people, and didn’t need to isolate her specifically to compliment her.
She really is a nice person, Cynthia thought desperately. And I’m horrible, horrible.
“You’re too kind, Georgina.” Which was at least the proper response to most compliments.
Georgina’s hands went still in her lap. Pretty, smooth hands. Nary a freckle, kitten scratch, or scar.
She cleared her throat. “Here is the thing, Miss Brightly. I wonder if…I wonder if you might know what it is I ought to be doing to charm Miles Redmond?”
Cynthia couldn’t help it. She felt her mouth drop open. She closed it quickly, but not before Georgina had gone scarlet in the face.
But the girl straightened her spine, and added in a determined rush, “Since you know how to charm people, and since I cann
ot quite seem to do it. I can’t charm him, anyway.”
“Since I know how to…charm?” Cynthia was baffled.
“Everyone is quite taken with you.”
Ah. Now this sounded like something of an accusation. Though it was true.
“Mr. Redmond likes you very much, Lady Georgina,” Cynthia offered. Well, he liked her, anyhow.
“Do you think so?” Georgina sounded desperate. “He is so very kind, and he teases me sometimes, which is pleasant, but I never know quite what to say, so I become very shy and he must ever carry the burden of conversation. I feel so gauche around him Miss Brightly, and I ought not, as I am well out of the schoolroom, and I am an heiress, for heaven’s sake. And yet he is…” She paused, picturing Miles, perhaps. Tiny white teeth sank into her neat lower lip. “I feel he is somewhere else when he speaks to me. I do not engage his interest. And I think that you know how to engage the interest of a man.”
The generalization was a trifle uncomfortable. Imagine Lady Georgina arriving at these conclusions.
Cynthia studied her face for signs of subtle meanings, or warnings. No: she meant it. Georgina thought, somehow, that she could impart the secret of charm.
Charm, my dear, Cynthia wanted to tell her, is not learned, it is innate. And it is honed by desperation and need and sharpened by application. If you want the truth, that is.
It might be entertaining to confuse and unnerve the girl by saying those things, but she knew it would be unkind.
“You are fond of Mr. Redmond, then?” Cynthia said slowly, her voice a little faint.
“I have been in love with Mr. Redmond since I was eight years old.”
Cynthia froze.
Georgina’s intonation had been fervent and factual, and her expression scarcely changed, which might be the fault of her pale lashes and brows. But her eyes held misty torments.
“You are in…in love with Mr. Redmond?”
“He is beautiful. Don’t you think? So very quiet and calm! So large and dark and wise. His eyes…his…” Words clearly failed her. “He has always been so pleasant to me.”
Cynthia couldn’t stop gaping at Georgina. Pleasant? And this was love?
Like No Other Lover Page 26