They waited for Richard. It irked me that he should be the person they turned to when it was my idea. He glanced at me and smiled again before looking at them. He knew what I was thinking.
“We could have nigh on thirty if we wanted to,” said the younger brother. “If we’re ready for them, instead of the other way about, we might be able to drive them away in one sweep.”
“One thing,” Richard said. “A word of warning, if you like. I know what you’re planning, and I know what the Bow Street man is planning. I will not tell him of your plans, and I won’t tell you of his. I won’t be drawn in on either side. Clear?”
“So you know both?” the elder brother said, looking at Richard with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
“I do.”
“What if we decided to make you tell?” Cawnton turned his head and stared at me, eyeing me in a speculative way. I met his stare, but inside I was quaking.
“If my wife is ever—ever touched in any of this,” I heard Richard say, his voice edged with steel, no smooth society tones now, “you will both answer personally to me.”
Carier’s hand touched my shoulder in reassurance.
“It’s true then?” Cawnton said. “You’ve killed for her?”
“Yes,” Richard averred. “And you know we’re not discussing society duels.”
Cawnton nodded. I tried not to think about the one time I’d seen it. “It’s not my way, in any case. If I have a problem with someone, I take it up direct.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Richard said. “I can promise you that if John Smith hears about this, it won’t be from me. But if he does hear, I won’t tell you.”
“Fair enough,” came the reply. “You’re not the only one with spies.”
There was nothing more for us to discuss except for the specifics. It took some time.
Chapter Seventeen
As Richard had promised John Smith, Yale arrived the next day. I liked him. He was about forty, with a face weathered from spending most of his life out of doors. He handled Rosebud with an assurance that put her at her ease, and when I watched him attend to her needs, I wondered if I could keep him in my employment once he’d done his job here. He came from Yorkshire, but had travelled the country, having worked for the Quality all his life. I told him I’d go into town the next day, and would expect him to come with me.
I came upon my sister, not entirely by accident, in Martha’s morning room. She was sewing, but with such a lovely smile on her face, I was forced to remark, “You should pose for your portrait like that. You look lovely.”
She looked up and broke the pose. “Every day my wedding gets closer. Every day I’m more sure.”
I sat down with a delicious rustle of silk. “Can this be the woman who said she didn’t look for love in marriage? The one who wanted friendship and social position?”
She laughed at my teasing. “The very same,” she said.
“The one who told me not to get involved with Richard, whatever my feelings for him were?”
Her face grew more serious, the smile disappearing. “His reputation was so dangerous. You took such a chance, I feared for you.”
“No I didn’t.” Lizzie was one of the very few people who knew for sure when I’d first made love with Richard. A week after we met. “If I hadn’t done it, he might have gone away and not come back. I wanted him so badly.”
She shook her head and set another stitch in her tambour-frame. “It’s still a puzzle to me. I love Paul, but I’m quite happy to wait. Paul wouldn’t ask it of me.”
She surprised me. Once the marriage contract had been signed, the betrothal announced, many couples took it as a done deed and commenced intimate relations. What I’d done had been crazy, but later, before our marriage, we had taken advantage of that easier freedom tacitly allowed to betrothed couples. “You mean you haven’t…?”
I enjoyed her blush. “We want to wait. We have the rest of our lives. We don’t need to rush anything now.” She smiled up at me. “To tell you the truth, I’m enjoying the anticipation, the courtship. It’s delicious to imagine, to think.”
“We couldn’t wait,” I admitted ruefully.
“I think,” said my sister, “once you have—”
“Made love,” I supplied for her.
“Yes. Well. Once you have, then you find it more difficult to do without it.” She was so sure, I was almost sorry I had to disillusion her.
“It was worse before. I longed for him, Lizzie, I knew I wanted…”
“What?”
I shrugged. “Very well, since you ask it. I wanted to feel his skin against mine, his hands on me. I ached for it.”
Her blush deepened.
“Well you did ask,” I reminded her. “It’s one of the reasons we spend our nights together. Only Carier and Nichols are allowed in our rooms when we’re there. That’s how we retain the privacy he needs.”
“Strang?” Lizzie’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Privacy? I always thought of him as a very public man.”
I shook my head. “He needs privacy, time to think and be himself. He’s very different then.”
Lizzie pursed her lips and frowned in thought. Even that looked pretty on her. I looked as if I was scowling when I did that. “I wouldn’t have thought it of him. It shows how wrong you can be about people. When you first took up with him, I was convinced the marriage would be a failure because you’re so different. He’s so confident, so arrogant, and you were always so shy and careless of your public needs. You seem to have changed more than he has. When I see you in public, I think, ‘Where’s Rose? Where’s my diffident sister?’” She grinned. “All the time you lived here I tried to change you. Now it seems your husband has done it in a mere two years.”
I laughed. “No, he taught me a few tricks, that’s all. He found Nichols for me, and she dresses me. And don’t you think I’d have looked foolish next to him, the way he dresses and the careless way I used to dress?”
Now Lizzie laughed at the vision I’d presented her with. “I’d have given good money to see that.”
“He gave me the choice,” I told her. “He was willing to change for me. On our honeymoon he asked me if we should buy an estate somewhere quiet and retire there. He meant it too.” I smiled as I remembered that Sunday morning, when he’d fulfilled a promise to me and made love to me in the sound of the bells of Venice. “I think it would have bored him silly after a while, and I decided to face the life I should be leading, as his wife. It’s not been too bad.”
“Not been too bad?” she echoed incredulously. “I used to dream of a life like that, when we lived here, with only squire’s sons in prospect. I’d imagine Theo Francombe, say, as the owner of a large estate and the entrée to court, the bestower of pin money beyond my wildest dreams. Ha!” She laughed shortly at her own foolishness.
“And now you’ll get it,” I said. “Everything you ever wanted.”
“But I don’t care anymore,” she said softly.
Just then, the door opened and Ian came in. When he saw us, he smiled and gave us a mock bow each. “Exchanging secrets?”
“Sort of. Come in. It’s not exclusive.”
He came in, closing the door behind him. He sat in the chair opposite me. “You both look lovely.” I was still leaning towards Lizzie, but at his words I leaned back and assumed my best Lady Strang pose, head tilted arrogantly, lips straight, hands disposed carefully, one on my lap, the other resting on the arm of my chair.
Lizzie, seeing what I was doing, put her chin up and lost the smile. “And now?” she asked.
“The cream of English society.” I smiled, and the moment was gone.
Lizzie resumed her sewing, but then frowned and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Oh dear, I have to go. I have a final fitting for my wedding gown in half an hour and it will take at least that long to get into it.” She tucked her needle into her work and put the tambour aside.
After she left the room, I recalled my conversation wit
h Gervase. I’d never have a better time to sound my brother out about his feelings for him. What did I really know about him? I’d known him very well as a child, but now he was a man and he’d developed in ways I knew nothing about. He’d never shown a partiality for any young lady, but at four and twenty, he had plenty of time. Our new fortune meant less to him than to the rest of us. He preferred to avoid society when he could, saying that it bored him, but then it always had. He preferred his studies.
He smiled at my regard, his thin mouth turning up, changing the fine, aesthetic features into a more welcoming cast. “So what’s so serious? I thought everything was going well for you.”
“It is. Except I miss our daughter, but she’s coming home soon. Martha won’t stay away for long now, especially with Lizzie’s wedding imminent.”
“Sometime next week, I’d imagine. James misses her.”
“So he does.” James had smiled a lot less since Martha had gone away. “I thought Richard would have to go when he told me he hadn’t had smallpox.”
Ian was surprised. “But Gervase has had it.”
“One twin was inoculated, the other left to take his chances.”
“And they chose the heir to be inoculated.”
“That is typical of Lady Southwood,” I told him. “There’s a lot of cold calculation under that sweet exterior.”
“It hadn’t escaped my notice,” he said dryly. “You’ll be the next Lady Southwood. I wonder what they’ll say about you.”
“I hope, for Richard’s sake, they say I was successful at the job.”
“Is that how you see it, a job?”
“It’s how he sees it.” I shrugged. “He never wanted the inheritance, never asked for it. He would much prefer to make his own living. How would Gervase feel if he were the eldest twin, if he became earl one day?”
Ian answered me without hesitation. “He wouldn’t welcome it. He made his own way in life.”
“He enjoyed India,” I remarked.
“Up to a point.”
“You know why he went there?”
“Yes.” He wasn’t smiling now.
“The real story?” It had been put about that Gervase had run off with Lady Boughton, not her husband. Lord Southwood had expended a great deal of time and money to ensure it. Some people still believed it.
“Yes, he told me.”
I leaned forward a little, clasping my hands in my lap. “What do you think about that?”
“He must have been very much in love.” Did his voice shake? I couldn’t be sure.
“He was. But it’s over now. Don’t you mind that he prefers men to women?”
Ian broke eye contact then and put one long, delicate hand to his forehead, covering his eyes. “How can I, Rose? How can I when I feel the same way?”
Silence. Although that was one of the things I’d set myself to discover, it still came as a shock. “How long have you known?”
He still didn’t look at me. “Forever. I always knew it. No woman I ever met made me feel like some men did.”
“Why did you never tell me? I thought we were close.” I felt hurt. I clenched my hands together in the soft cotton of my gown.
“Why should I burden you?” He still wouldn’t look at me but dropped his hand and stared at a patch of space above my head. “It was my fight, my problem. What could you have done?” Finally he looked at me then, his soft brown eyes filled with unshed tears.
“I could’ve shared your troubles. It might have helped.”
He shook his head. “No, Rose, you couldn’t have done anything. And I might have lost you. How was I to know how you’d feel about it?”
I couldn’t believe he’d feel like that and I suspected he wanted to shelter me. “You’re my brother and I love you.”
I was glad to see a small smile cross his features. “I love you too.”
I stood up and went to look out of the window to give myself a moment to work out what to say next. I confess to a little cowardice. I didn’t want to see how he would react.
“When Gervase ran off with that man, they made him come back and live with his wife again to put the lie to the rumours. The true rumours.” I watched someone in the distance, a gardener by the look of him, walking towards the house. I focussed on him while I told my brother something of what I’d discovered since I’d become a Kerre. “Heartbroken, Gervase found solace in the beauties of Italy. But it wasn’t enough. He tried to kill himself once, and failed. Then he realised how it must feel to Richard. They have a bond, Richard and Gervase.”
I turned to Ian again. He stared at me, watched me without expression while I told him. “They feel each other’s emotions sometimes. Once, Gervase fell off his horse and broke his leg. Richard knew, even though Gervase was in India at the time. Gervase knew when Richard fell in love with me. He felt some of Richard’s joy when we married, but not, thank goodness, our more intimate moments.” I had to tell him that, to reassure him. I’d been alarmed when I realised what this bond could mean but it was no threat. “Gervase also told me that he felt bereaved when he came back from India and found Richard so cold, so distant. He said I’d given him back his brother.” I smiled when I remembered the love I’d found in Richard, locked up for so long. Ian smiled back, wavering but recovering. “Truly, Ian, I’m the happiest of women. He gives me everything without stint. They’re astonishing, these Kerre brothers. So cold on the outside, so much passion beneath.”
“They’ve had to be like that,” Ian said. “They’re in the public eye all the time. Even more so because they’re twins, and so striking.”
“They are, aren’t they?” He smiled. “So Richard knew at once when Gervase fell in love.” I stopped. Ian wasn’t smiling now, just looking at me, wide-eyed. The world slowed down. “With you, Ian.” My brother caught his breath. “Gervase loves you. He’s so afraid it will drive you away from him, he says he would be happy if friendship is all you can offer him, but we know that’s a lie, don’t we?”
“Yes.” He sat perfectly still.
“Gervase is worried he might cause another scandal, but there’s no need for that.”
“Are you telling me to go away? To avoid involvement with Gervase?”
“How could I, feeling the way I do about Richard? How could I deny you that? But I don’t know how you feel. If you can’t love him, then yes, stay away, make it clear to him you can’t do this, but otherwise all I can ask is to be discreet. Gervase is starting on a parliamentary career. He can’t afford scandal in his life, but there’s no need. Oh God!” I turned away.
“What is it, my dear?” It was his turn to be calm, in control, mine to be overwhelmed.
“How do you feel about Gervase? Can you tell me?”
“Oh yes,” my brother said. “I love him.”
I spun around, joy filling me. So sure, just as I was. “Then you should go to him. Don’t think about anyone else. I didn’t, and I’ve never regretted it.”
“How long did it take you?”
I didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “A week.”
Ian grinned. “I can understand that. Do you think there’s some sort of attraction between our family and the Kerres?”
I grinned back at him. “I wouldn’t be in the least surprised. I’ve thought that myself. Gervase asked me if I thought you felt the same way he does. He’s afraid, waiting for an answer. Go to him, Ian. We’ll sort something out so you can be together.”
Ian got to his feet and crossed the small space between us. He took me in his arms and we stood there for some time, clinging to each other like small children. “Rose, I’m afraid.”
“So was I when I decided to put my faith in Richard. But you can trust him.” As I did when I offered Richard my virginity, free with no obligation. My gift to him. But Ian was about to take a graver step. I couldn’t have been hanged for doing as I did. He could.
He drew back and looked down at my face. “I have to, don’t I? Otherwise I’ll wonder what might have been for the re
st of my life. I’ve not—I’ve never…”
“I was a virgin too.”
He kissed my cheek and released me. He turned to leave the room, and on impulse I went forward and caught his hand. “Shall I come with you?”
“Yes please.” Hand in hand like children, we went upstairs to the library.
Gervase was reading when we went in but he looked up from his book and his expression froze. His attention settled first on me, then on Ian, when his blue gaze softened in a way I knew well in his brother. But this love was not intended for me.
“Ian has something to tell you, Gervase.”
Ian took a hesitant step forward, and Gervase stood up.
I wasn’t needed here. I left the room.
Richard found me in my bedroom in tears. He said nothing, but took me in his arms until I’d done, and then dried my tears with his handkerchief and gently kissed me. “I felt it, sweetheart. I felt his joy. They’re as much a devoted couple as we are. We can only hope they’ll be as happy.”
Chapter Eighteen
I woke up with a start—I’d fallen asleep in the little sitting room. Someone had lifted my feet up on to the sofa, but otherwise I was alone.
Voices came from the room next to the one where I lay. I couldn’t help but hear. I recognised the female voice, raised in what sounded like anger. “You’re a coward!” Julia cried. “Why haven’t you done anything yet?”
The door was open a crack. That was why I could hear them so clearly. But if I got up to close it, they’d know I was there. “What do you want me to do?” Steven protested. “If she says no, what can I do about it?”
“Use your charms,” she purred. “They worked on me, didn’t they?”
A pause fell. “You were ready for me. Strang had spurned you and it was obvious to everyone except you that you’d lost him.”
“If I hadn’t lost my head, I might still have married him.”
Steven gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Not after they’d slept together. Nothing would have kept him away from her then.”
Hareton Hall: Richard and Rose, Book 6 Page 17