Faith

by Deneane Clark

  “Of course, I very quietly left the room. He always pretends he was in the nursery for some completely different reason if he knows I’ve seen him.” Amanda smiled happily. “It’s all rather endearing. But please,” she said as her friends nodded in agreement, “you must tell me what is going on in Town. It feels as though it’s been years since I’ve heard any gossip!”

  “Well—,” Faith began, but was interrupted by a commotion in the foyer, which caused Amanda to excuse herself and walk toward the door.

  “I beg your pardon, ladies,” came a warm male voice. “Amanda, is Jon in?”

  Grace was seated facing the doorway, and her eyes suddenly grew very wide. Faith, who had her back to the door, turned at once to see who was there, but she was unable to see around Amanda into the foyer. She listened to her friend direct the unknown man to Jonathon’s study and caught a glimpse of dusty riding clothes and a slightly familiar, very tanned face before it disappeared and Amanda returned to sit down.

  “Good heavens, Amanda. Wasn’t that Gareth?” asked Grace. He’d looked so serious—almost grim—in the brief moment she’d seen him, which was at odds with the lighthearted man she’d known the previous year. “I hadn’t heard he was back in London.”

  Faith looked back at the empty doorway with a frown. “Didn’t you say he was in the country, renovating his new estate?”

  “Yes, but he had Jon close a deal for him on a town house in Upper Brook Street, and he’s come to sign the papers. He’ll spend the night tonight, but he’s going right back out to Rothmere early in the morning.”

  “He’s changed a great deal since my wedding,” remarked Grace thoughtfully. “He seems…older.”

  Amanda raised her eyebrows. “He’s been rather preoccupied with getting settled just now. I don’t think he’s changed too much, but Jon has mentioned how well he has adapted to the responsibilities of his new title.”

  Faith looked skeptical. “It’s probably all rather like a new toy to him—a toy in which he’ll eventually lose interest.”

  Grace looked at her sister in surprise, for Faith rarely gave voice to her opinions, and almost never spoke of anyone in a negative way. “Why would you say that, Faith?”

  “It’s evident from his actions and reputation,” she replied. “He’s certainly made no attempt to hide his many love affairs, and he has a history of making ridiculously impulsive decisions with no regard for the way they might affect the lives of others.”

  Amanda looked troubled. “You’re wrong,” she said, her brow furrowed. “You haven’t known Gareth as I have. You’ve only seen the side he presents to Society. I’ve always wondered why he allows the impression that he is nothing but frivolous…” She trailed off, lost in thought.

  Faith, already regretting her uncharacteristically impulsive speech, looked uncertainly at Grace, who shrugged.

  Amanda shook off her reverie, glanced at the door, and leaned closer to her friends, her voice lowered. “We almost lost him a couple years ago, you know.”

  Grace shook her head. “I had no idea. Was he sick?”

  “No. Jonathon and Gareth have long disagreed on nearly everything, though the bond between them is strong. Jon raised him, you see, after their father and Gareth’s mother died in an accident. And Jon was a little…” She bit her lip. “Well, he was rather strict. Gareth wasn’t reared in the same manner as Jon. Gareth’s mother was a lovely thing, much younger than their father, with a lighthearted spirit and very different ideas than most of Society on the way children should be raised. There were no governesses for Gareth, no overbearing tutors who punished mistakes rather than praising accomplishments. His mother wanted him to enjoy his childhood, and she didn’t want to miss a single second of it.”

  Grace leaned forward, rapt, but Faith sat still, her expression carefully blank. Nonetheless, her heart was softening. It sounded like the sort of marriage of which she’d always dreamed, the way she’d pictured things as a little girl playing tea party with dolls as guests in her imagined home. But she firmly pushed aside the romantic train of thought. Thus far, she’d heard nothing that excused Gareth’s adult behavior.

  “Gareth was eight when his mother and the earl died. Jon, as I said, was raised quite differently. There was the title to consider, and their father, though indulgent with his second wife, had been distant from his first. I’m not sure Jon’s mother and father actually ever interacted with one another after he was born. She’d fulfilled her requirement. She sickened and died when Jon was an infant. Utterly at a loss as to how to raise a child, the old earl hired a strict nanny, followed by strict governesses and strict tutors. By the time his father remarried, Jon was away, first at Eton, and then at Cambridge.”

  Faith felt her heart wrench a little for Jonathon and the lonely existence Amanda described. It helped explain the outward aloofness he presented. She thought about how differently she and Grace, also motherless, had been raised. Warmth had pervaded their home, and laughter. Love and light. Her heart softened, and she nodded, listening.

  Another quick glance at the doorway assured Amanda they were still alone, and she continued. “Jon had no example before him, other than the childhood he’d experienced. He stepped into the title with ease, but found the task of raising a child as irrepressible as Gareth a far larger challenge than the intricacies of running the estate and representing the title. Tutor after tutor failed. Governesses wouldn’t stay. Jon was mystified, and the gulf between the two brothers widened as Gareth grew older. By the time I married Jonathon, they’d slipped into a pattern of Gareth taunting, Jon disapproving, and neither willing to budge an inch toward compromise. I did what I could, but it was a very short time before they had a disagreement that escalated into a full-fledged shouting match that almost shook the walls. The things they said to one another were horrible. In the end, Gareth left the house, got roaringly drunk, and joined the army.”

  Faith shook her head at what she considered yet another impulsive act of sublime stupidity, one that only enhanced the opinion she already had of him, but Grace looked fascinated. “Good gracious! Gareth in the army? I can’t quite reconcile such an image.”

  Amanda nodded. “And he didn’t even purchase a commission. He joined and went to fight on the Continent, just like any other man. By the time we realized what he’d done, he was long gone. Jon hired Bow Street runners to find him, and they eventually did.” She stopped and swallowed hard. “They came and told him Gareth was in France, that he had been gravely wounded, that his prognosis was questionable and that he could not be moved.”

  Her friends stared at her. Even Faith forgot her decided disapproval of Gareth and was spellbound. To their knowledge, none of this story had ever been discussed; certainly they’d not previously heard of Gareth’s military connection.

  “Jon went, ensured Gareth had the best of care, satisfied himself that he would recover, and came home. I don’t think Gareth even knows to this day that his brother was there at all. But when Gareth recovered enough to come home, he did so as though he hadn’t a care in the world. He and Jon still disagree on most things, but there is a tentative, unspoken truce between them, as if they’ve each silently agreed never to let things go that far again.

  “And now he has something new upon which to focus, something entirely his own,” Amanda finished with a smile. “Perhaps it will be the making of him. Now you and the rest of the ton will learn to see him as I always have: as a kind but conflicted young man who is trying to find his way.”

  Faith’s eyes returned to the empty doorway and lingered for a moment. She had been quiet to this point, listening to the story, adding the new information to the facts she already had about Gareth. She would allow it all to sink in before beginning to consider revising her impression of him.

  Four

  Spring, 1814

  Bathed in a glow of serene happiness, Faith walked down the curving staircase to the floor of the immense ballroom, flanked on one side by her aunt, Lady Cleo Egerton, and o
n the other by Amanda Lloyd. As she descended, she looked around for some of the friends she was accustomed to seeing whenever she attended a Town event.

  It was, for Faith, her second Season out, although in a way this was really her debut. The previous year she and Grace were presented to Society at the same time, and although it had never been Grace’s intention to attract a husband, everyone had expected her to be the first to wed and treated Faith appropriately. Grace, of course, had attracted the Earl of Huntwick, who was at the time Society’s Most Eligible.

  As of yet, and despite Faith’s prediction, Society had not quite made up its collective mind about the man who should replace Trevor as the newest catch of the Season. There were many candidates who were willing to take the role, of course, but none really fit all of the requirements.

  By far the richest and most powerful of those widely considered were Sebastian Tremaine, the Duke of Blackthorne, and his distant cousin Lachlan Kimball, the Scottish Marquess of Asheburton. Certainly both of these men were titled, rich, powerful, and undeniably handsome. The problem was that neither man was even remotely accessible, for Asheburton kept mostly to himself on his estate in Scotland, and Blackthorne also rarely made appearances in Town. Whenever the latter did attend a ton function, his icy demeanor and strange golden eyes made him virtually unapproachable.

  Gareth Lloyd had also rocketed upward in esteem, as foreseen. A mere younger son the Season before, Gareth was always considered a decent catch by virtue of his connections and popularity, if one was willing to settle for a man with a smallish fortune and a noble relation, though, sadly, no title of his own. That had changed, of course, this Season, when he had been named the new Marquess of Roth. And when the rumors flew at the beginning of the Season that the title came with a staggering hidden fortune, the new marquess had been instantly added to the list of possible Most Eligibles. But like Asheburton and Blackthorne, as the Season wore on, Gareth failed to make an appearance in Town. The rumors began to fade, although occasional wild speculation broke out here and there.

  Which left Lord Jameson. Horatio Aaron Grimsby, the Earl of Jameson, was an average-looking gentleman of average height, average intelligence, and average fortune. There was nothing spectacularly wrong with Lord Jameson, but neither could it be said that there was anything particularly right about him. He was so singularly uninteresting, it was only by default that he could be considered the most eligible bachelor of the Season.

  Faith Ackerly, on the other hand, was enjoying immense popularity. Proclaimed an “Incomparable” almost from the moment she stepped into her first London ballroom, she’d been all the rage during her first Season, and was even more so this year, despite her height and regal, almost aloof distance. Her cool beauty was magnetic, and the calm kindness she displayed in conversation gave the ton dandies ample reason to overlook the tiny flaw of being a bit taller than the average debutante.

  Thus, Horatio Grimsby wanted her. And so it was that only seconds after they reached the foot of the stairs, Faith, Amanda, and Aunt Cleo found themselves in the company of the awkward, determined nobleman.

  “Miss Ackerly,” the earl enthused, quite forgetting that proper etiquette demanded he address first Lady Egerton, then Lady Seth, and last of all Faith. He lifted her hand for a kiss, clumsily catching her dangling dance card on the stud at the cuff of his sleeve in the process. “You look as lovely as ever—lovelier, in fact,” he corrected himself, tugging in vain at the mess he’d created while Faith hid her exasperation behind a gracious smile. The offending stud finally came apart just as a hush was stealing across the room. “Got it!” crowed Jameson, his voice echoing into the sudden silence as the separate halves of the stud clattered to the floor and disappeared in opposite directions.

  Her hand freed, Faith frowned and looked around to try to discover what had caused the gathered crowd to grow so suddenly quiet. The faces around her were all turned up to the top of the stairs, so she turned also, just as the butler bellowed, “The Marquess of Roth! The Earl of Seth!” to announce the arrivals to an astonished crowd.

  Furious whispers broke out all across the room, but they faded to the back of Faith’s comprehension. She watched Gareth Lloyd descend the stairs next to his half brother. Gone seemed the prankster with the laughing brown eyes who had made the outrageous remark at her sister’s wedding the year before. This man seemed stronger, harder, more powerful.

  And he was staring straight at her.

  When the pair of noblemen gained the ballroom floor, the crowd surged toward the stairs, crowding around Faith, Amanda, and Cleo in an effort to be the first to greet the new marquess. Gareth sent Faith a last, strangely assessing look before he reluctantly pulled his attention from her to the mass converging around him.

  “Goodness, Faith,” said Aunt Cleo with a thump of her ever-present cane. “Looks as though Roth is as interested in you as Jameson here.” She poked Horatio, who was now holding his cuff closed with his free hand, with the end of her walking stick. It was a remark characteristic of the blunt old dowager, but even so, Horatio turned an unbecoming shade of red and abruptly excused himself.

  Amanda laughed sympathetically. “That poor little man. I suppose he’ll go home with his tail between his legs,” she said.

  Faith looked reproachfully at Aunt Cleo, who glared back. “Well, it’s true. That boy was drinking you in like a thirsty man, and you didn’t do a thing to discourage him!”

  “Oh, Aunt Cleo, it’s hardly Lord Jameson’s fault he’s a trifle uncomfortable with himself and has a bit of trouble with expression. It wouldn’t be kind of me to treat him coldly.”

  Cleo looked at Faith as if she were daft. “I wasn’t talking about that little pea brain. He hasn’t a clue how to go about getting a proper wife. I was talking about Roth, of course.”

  Taken aback, Faith looked toward the steps where Gareth and Jon were still besieged by well-wishers. She shrugged. “I doubt he even remembers my name,” she prevaricated, and linking her arm through Amanda’s, turned, and strolled away.

  Evelyn Hedgepath wasn’t nearly as dismissive of the Marquess of Roth’s first social appearance. She, like everyone else in Town, had heard of his improved circumstances and elevated rank, and had given considerable thought as to how she might go about renewing her relationship with him. Given his long absence from Society, however, she’d had no opportunity to do so.

  But now here he was in the flesh. She smiled speculatively, flipped open her fan, and waited for the opportunity to present itself.

  Much later, Faith stepped out onto the balcony and breathed a sigh of relief. Not only was the noise of the five hundred or so invited guests nearly deafening, and the heat from the chandeliers and so many bodies crowded so closely together exhausting, but she’d been beset by suitors from nearly the moment she’d arrived. It wasn’t that this ball was any different from the dozens she’d already attended this Season—it was filled with the same people, and held the same amusements as any other, with one notable exception. This ball had the Marquess of Roth in attendance.

  The second he’d appeared, debutantes and their mamas had begun thrusting themselves at him in droves, which left an unusually large number of men with no young ladies to tease, cajole, and dance attendance upon except Faith, who seemed to be the only unmarried female in the room who was not falling all over Gareth Lloyd.

  And so Faith, who was usually quite accustomed to being surrounded by men, suddenly found herself overwhelmed with requests to dance, offers to fetch refreshment, and astoundingly flowery compliments, all designed to garner her exclusive attention. After a couple hours of endless smiles, thank-yous, and curtsies, Faith had had enough.

  Aunt Cleo had long since abandoned her for friends, and Amanda had been rescued by her husband, so Faith gave the throng of admirers a last gracious smile and excused herself to find the ladies’ retiring room. She slipped gratefully inside and sank down on a cushioned stool, rubbing her temples and closing her eyes in blessed relie
f. Unfortunately, her peace was not destined to last. No sooner had she settled herself than a group of chattering young ladies entered the room, arguing over the silly subject of to whom Gareth had paid the most attention. Faith listened for a moment and felt her head begin to throb anew. She reluctantly stood and left, completely unnoticed.

  She made her way unchallenged along the back wall of the ballroom, eyed the French doors that led to the terrace, then decided she’d find no peace there either. She ducked around a corner and up the back staircase to a deserted hallway. Down the hall to her left was another chance at solitude: a pair of doors led to a balcony.

  Counting on finally getting a modicum of silence, she walked down the hall, opened the doors, slipped outside, and closed the doors behind her. She stepped at once to the wrought-iron railing and leaned on it, turning her face up to the cool night sky. Peace at last.

  Sighing in relief, she peered out over the darkened gardens, then braced her hands on the railing, leaning over and looking down at the terrace below. She heard a smattering of giggles and excited girlish chatter just before the same group of girls she’d encountered in the retiring room walked into view. Silently, she congratulated herself on the decision to not try the terrace doors.

  “Do you think he’s out there somewhere?” All the girls looked out into the shadowed gardens, where dozens of daring couples had already disappeared.

  “Well, he has to be somewhere. He’s not in the ballroom anymore,” answered another.

  “Maybe he left,” said a small, uncertain voice that barely managed to float up to the second-floor balcony.

  “He’d better not have!” exclaimed a petite brunette. “My mama said she got him to agree to a dance with me later in the evening.”

  Someone opened the doors to the ballroom at that moment, allowing the noise of laughter, music, and conversation to escape. The girls turned as a group, disappearing first from view and then from hearing as the doors closed again, dimming the sounds of the ball to a welcome dull roar in the background.