Like No Other Lover

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Like No Other Lover Page 31

by Julie Anne Long


  He found his sister alone at the breakfast table, her chin propped on her fist. She looked up, saw him, frowned—perhaps at the beard—and gave him a baldly succinct report.

  “Cynthia has gone.” She sounded subdued and, truth be told, a trifle envious. “She’s nowhere. Argosy is in a bit of a state. She left him a note. Jonathan is comforting him. Georgina has not yet come down to breakfast, as I am earlier than usual. Oh, and Mama and Papa are home.”

  And at first it was like the angels had descended to sing a celestial chorus. The day was brilliant. Cynthia wasn’t engaged! She wouldn’t marry Argosy! She—

  His heart skidded to a sickening halt. “Gone?” he repeated with near funereal calm.

  “She left a letter for him. Slid under his door! It said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He’s feeling quite thwarted.” Violet was wry. And disconsolate. “He’s having his valet pack his things.”

  “Gone?” Miles had forgotten every other word he knew.

  No note or letter for him? “Gone” meant not knowing where she would be, or with whom she would be, or whether she was safe and well. Gone meant possibly never seeing her again.

  Gone might mean gone in the way Lyon was gone. He knew a moment of complete paralysis.

  “Miles…” Violet was scrutinizing him in that way she had that wasn’t entirely sympathetic. “Why are you in a state?”

  “I’m not in a state.” The denial was a reflex. Repeating her words saved him from having to think of other words to say.

  Violet tipped her head. “I do believe you are,” she persisted.

  He ignored her. “Where do you suppose she went?”

  He’d hoped the words sounded casual. Unfortunately, they emerged sounding like a military command.

  His sister was frowning darkly now. Her hand went up to smooth it out. The frown remained. “Why do you want to know?” she demanded.

  “For the love of God, Violet,” he said very, very slowly—punishingly slowly, as though she were a backward child. “Do you know where she went?”

  His sister froze, eyes round as wagon wheels. Her mouth dropped, brows dipped. And for a beat she stared at him, just like that, and did nothing to prevent a frown from encroaching.

  “Miles!” Her gasp nearly blew back his hair. “Oh, good heavens! You! Cynthia Brightly!”

  “Violet—” He growled the word. He was pacing. It was as if he kept moving, he would somehow get closer to where Cynthia might have gone. “Please.”

  “You and Cynthia Brightly! Cynthia Brightly! You!”

  Oh, now he’d done it. He’d addled Violet, and for the rest of her days she’d repeat those two things like a demented parrot.

  He stopped pacing. “Do you want me to shake you by the scruff, Violet? Is that what you want? I can still do it, and I have no compunctions about it. Tell me where she might have gone…that is, please,” he added as an afterthought, an absurd attempt to return the conversation to normality.

  “You haven’t been rude and strange because you were feeling ill. You were feeling…Cynthia!”

  “Oh, God. Violet. You must stop.”

  Clearly Violet’s fascination was buffering her from the very real threat of being shaken or boxed about the ears. She was still staring at her brother in a way that had begun to make him feel distinctly exposed.

  And then her expression softened into awe.

  “Good heavens, Miles. How very sweet that you—you!—have a tendre for Cynthia Brightly and oh dear God in heaven Papa will disown you!”

  A sentence that had begun in wonderment ended in shrill alarm.

  “He won’t disown me.” Miles said this rather by rote, as he wasn’t at all convinced of it. He was, in fact, certain the consequences would be grave.

  “No. Miles, you cannot do it,” Violet said firmly. “You cannot go after her. I can’t bear losing you, too, Miles, and Papa will cast you out. He nearly made a meal of Lyon. Surely whatever you think you feel for Cynthia is only—”

  “It’s not ‘only,’ Violet.”

  He said it quietly, but with such Miles-like finality that it stopped her as surely as though he’d clapped a hand over her mouth.

  He gave a short, humorless laugh at her stunned expression.

  “Nothing about Cynthia is ‘only.’” He hated confessing this. Nothing had ever made him feel more…foolish. More vulnerable.

  More human.

  Violet was quiet now. In her world, Miles behaved in certain ways, always. He held their worlds together. And what could it mean if Miles, of all people, were just as human as the rest of them?

  He wasn’t certain what to expect: a tantrum? Storming from the room? More stubborn silence?

  She dipped her hand into the pocket of her pelisse, fished around a bit, extended her palm. Something glinted from the center of it.

  “This is yours, isn’t it?”

  He looked down at his missing silver button.

  Then looked up at Violet, the answer on his face.

  “I found it near the bench yesterday. Where I found Cynthia in the garden. She was sitting alone and she looked…quite pink in the face.” Violet touched her nose by way of illustration. “She’d been crying. I told her she looked…” Violet paused. Just as she’d stumbled across Cynthia yesterday, she was stumbling across a realization now. “…she looked heartbroken. Miles…Oh. She was heartbroken. She wanted you. She wanted you.”

  Her hand went up to her mouth. Violet’s face went pale and pinched, as surely as though she felt the heartbreak herself.

  Miles thought of Cynthia yesterday: weeping and trying to disguise it. He’d known how that must have felt for her. Then turning her face up to him, so he would know for certain everything she felt.

  Last night. Her generosity and beauty and oh God…her gift for passion.

  It had been a blessed interlude of forgetting, a reckless respite from thought and sense. It had seemed terribly right, terribly necessary.

  He, so like a man, simply hadn’t considered what the morning might bring.

  “I just…I just never imagined she’d leave.”

  He was barely conscious of having said the words aloud; the sentence was a finish to the run of his thoughts. He never suspected there was pain in his voice. He didn’t hear it.

  But his sister heard it.

  Violet watched him, trying not to frown. She rubbed his silver button between her fingers thoughtfully, because he hadn’t taken it from her.

  Poor Violet. Once again she was confronting upheaval and change and realization, but perhaps she needed to. The Redmond family, so serene and elegant and dignified and impenetrable on the surface, buffeted this way and that by that capricious thing called love, shaped by it despite the fact that they would prefer to be above it. Shaped by it the way the elements shape mountains and valleys.

  He wouldn’t blame Violet if she decided to retire to a convent.

  The very idea of this—the havoc she would immediately wreak in any convent—distracted him, and almost cheered him up.

  “Miles?” She made his name sound like a question. Interestingly, she also sounded like their father: coolly in command of what she was about to say. She’d come to some conclusion, then. “I cannot bear the thought of losing you. But I also find the idea of you with a broken heart makes me dreadfully unhappy. And I have decided that I should like you to be happy more than anything.”

  He managed a faint smile at this. “How very mature of you, Violet.”

  “I invited her to the party. It’s all my fault.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, smiling a little ruefully. “It most certainly is not all your fault, as much as I would like to credit you with it.”

  She was quiet—for Violet, anyhow—and subdued for a moment.

  “Violet, I promise you this: you will never lose me. Never. No matter what happens.”

  Implying, of course, that something was about to happen.

  Neither he nor Violet had any idea how he would be able to keep that promise.
For that matter, neither he nor Violet had any way of predicting what their father might do, only that it was a certainty he would do something.

  But the force of Miles’s conviction seemed to cheer Violet, as it always had.

  She simply sighed.

  “No matter what, Violet, you should know that I will do anything at all to find her. It doesn’t matter whether you tell me or not.”

  “She said something about an irritable old woman in a bath chair. Mrs. Mundi-Dickson. In Northumberland. She will be a companion.”

  This seemed an entirely unlikely occupation for Cynthia Brightly. He wondered what manner of trouble she would manage to get into as the paid companion to an irritable woman in a bath chair.

  “Where?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know. Northumberland is all I know.”

  It was enough. Really, a single fact posed no difficulty for Miles, who was trained to follow facts to wherever they might lead next, to ruthlessly unravel mysteries.

  He turned swiftly to leave. He hesitated.

  “Did you tell Argosy about Mrs. Mundi-Dickson?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Tell him,” Miles said. “I want him to know.”

  Because no matter what, he wanted Cynthia to be able to choose. Despite what he thought he knew about how she felt and what she wanted, he wanted to be chosen.

  And if Argosy had sufficient wherewithal, if Argosy was driven by need and passion to track her down, then he ought to have the right to do it.

  Miles wanted everything to be cricket.

  He seized his sister and kissed her on both cheeks, surprising her perhaps permanently speechless.

  He would find Cynthia. But there was something he needed to do first, because Miles Redmond always strove to do the right thing.

  With the enthusiasm with which he’d landed on an island populated by cannibals, he went in search of his father.

  His father was having a perfectly pleasant, ordinary morning, from the looks of things. He was replacing a book on a shelf in his great meeting room, and turned when Miles entered.

  “Miles. How did the house party—”

  “Good morning, sir. I thought I should tell you that I intend to propose to Miss Cynthia Brightly.”

  His father’s entire body—his face, his hands, everything—went alarmingly still.

  Miles waited. He wondered whether this what it looked like when one’s internal organs congealed in shock.

  He was about to step forward to touch his father, to make sure he was still alive and not just about to tip over face first onto the carpet, when Isaiah suddenly moved. Quite fluidly, as though the alarming frozen second had never occurred.

  He’d absorbed the shock and formulated a response. His breathing resumed. His father was extraordinary, really.

  “Well, this wasn’t precisely what we’d planned, is it, Miles?”

  Cold, wry and detached, calculated to intimidate: ah, the Redmond aplomb. They all had it in one form or another, but no one demonstrated it more profoundly than his father. He’d had decades to hone it. “What of Lady Georgina? The daughter of a very wealthy man and dear friend of this family? The man who will happily fund your expedition?”

  “I shall find my own funding for the expedition. I imagine Lady Georgina is taking breakfast at this very moment. She’s a lovely girl.”

  He’d done very badly by Georgina. Still, they never would have suited. He would find it in himself to feel ashamed later. Other things seemed urgent now.

  “She is that. And yet you…you couldn’t manage…” His father couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Miles was resolved. “I should like you to know that I don’t take any particular pleasure in shocking or disappointing you, sir.”

  “Such a relief to hear.” No alteration in tone accompanied those words.

  “I have no choice with regards to Miss Brightly.”

  “You have no choice?” Isaiah’s voice was contemptuous and incredulous now. “For God’s sake, Miles. Did you get the wench with child? Are you doing this out of honor? She scarcely warrants such extremity of reaction. A little money ought to—”

  “Not a wench.”

  Quiet, implacable, sinister as a garrote, his words. Miles had never felt such black anger.

  Isaiah’s head went back a little with the force of the shock. No one ever spoke to him that way.

  He studied his son. Green eyes glass hard.

  “I beg your pardon, Miles?” the words were silky and dangerous.

  Miles got the words out through a jaw that threatened to lock from tension.

  “To clarify, Father: I must insist that you never again refer to Cynthia as a ‘wench.’ I intend to make her my wife.”

  “You’re…insisting?” His father’s voice had gone deadly. The s’s hissed with impressive snakelike sibilance.

  Interestingly, his father’s disdain merely gave Miles strength. It banked his anger and resolve. “Yes. I’m insisting. I intend to make her a Redmond. As such, I cannot allow anyone to refer to her with anything other than respect in my presence, and I best not hear of anyone referring to her with anything other than respect outside of my presence. Are we understood?”

  His father’s stare was arctic. And then he smiled, and the smile was miniature and nasty.

  He said nothing for a time.

  “Where is the…” The pause was deliberately insulting, implying that if he couldn’t call her a wench, there were simply no other words available to describe her. “…she…now?”

  “Gone,” Miles said simply.

  His father clearly hadn’t expected this answer. He watched Miles. “Why?” he asked after a moment.

  Miles thought about this. “Honor, I believe.”

  Isaiah gave his head a shake. This clarified nothing. “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know.” Miles felt pressure welling in his chest, urging him to be off, to go. The longer this conversation took, the longer she would be gone.

  “Then how are you going to—”

  He stopped when Miles made an impatient noise.

  He stared at his son, puzzled. “Didn’t she have Lord Argosy on the line?”

  Well, then. Imagine his father knowing such a thing. More likely, he’d been informed, by his mother, who had probably been informed by a servant. His mother loved almost nothing more than gossip, unless it was fashion and her children.

  Miles was silent. He wondered what Argosy’s lip looked like today.

  “She sank her line for a lord, and came up with a Redmond instead?” His father’s voice was still quietly contemptuous. “Is that what you mean by honor? She decided to leave because she cuckolded Argosy?”

  He supposed he’d learned cold, cold silence from his father. But he was only now learning how very effective it was. And it prevented him from doing the unthinkable, and losing his temper with his father.

  Isaiah was finding Miles’s silence difficult to penetrate. It was rather like doing battle with one’s reflection.

  “And what will you do now? Go after her?” He made this sound like Miles intended to mount a broomstick and fly, or spin straw from gold: as though it were ridiculous and fanciful.

  His father was brilliantly testing him. Little did Isaiah know that Miles was enjoying his own fury and finding it downright nourishing.

  “Yes.” A clipped word. Miles gave it no intonation. “I have accomplished every single thing I’ve ever set out to do. I can’t imagine how this will pose any difficulty.”

  Miles noticed then that his father was holding his own body very still.

  He had been dealt a blow, Miles reminded himself. And Isaiah Redmond was attempting to come to terms with it. But he was still coping with the consequences. His father wasn’t young.

  “What happened, Miles?”

  It was Miles’s turn to greet his father with incredulous, furious silence.

  “Oh, for God’s sake. That isn’t what I meant. I don’t want details. I’ve
seen the girl. It’s not as though she hasn’t the goods to cause any red-blooded—”

  “You’d best not finish that sentence…sir.”

  His father wasn’t the only one who could make a point with an insulting, insinuating pause.

  A fleeting, black fury darkened his father’s face, and his hand twitched, as though he would have enjoyed laying the flat of it against his son’s cheek. But Miles had to admire the control. It was gone then, the emotion. Isaiah’s face cleared again.

  And then he looked at his son.

  Really looked at his son. Green eyes studying him.

  There was another silence. If he could have fallen in love with Lady Georgina, Miles thought, he would have willingly done it. If he’d never met Cynthia Brightly, his life would be different today. But he knew he could not undo anything.

  He’d spoken truly: he took no pleasure in disappointing his father. He took no pleasure in creating a fissure. He suffered. But he knew what was right. And now that he knew what love was, what it did to his world, he could never, never give it up.

  Miles quieted his voice.

  “I understand your anger, Father. I don’t question your right to it, and I don’t take pleasure or pride in it. I can assure you this is something I never set out to do, but I have never in my life done anything rashly. I speak truly: I feel I have no choice. But I can also assure you that if you come to know her, you’ll see that Miss Brightly will only be a credit to the family. She has spine and wit and intelligence and pride and integrity and…”

  When he was young, his father routinely used his brilliant green eyes as flints to strike fear from the hearts of his misbehaving children. Miles was used to the stare; he’d found it quite effective when he was younger, and had never been on the receiving end of it as an adult.

  But it wasn’t the stare that gave him pause.

  It was the fact that at some point his father had stopped listening to his words. And was instead absorbing all that his words contained.

  And before Miles’s eyes, something seemed to ease out of his father’s posture. Out of his face, out of his eyes. And he saw there something like…peace?

  “All of that, is she?” His father’s voice was inexplicably gentle. He sounded amused. And—if he wasn’t mistaken—

 

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