by Kerryn Reid
“Not sure that debt was worth collecting,” said the old man, breathing rather hard himself. “Given the beating that came with it.”
“Call it a charitable donation.”
The man gave a snort. “Not Aubrey’s favorite charity, then.”
Lewis dropped the coins into the pocket of his coat, bundled it up with his cravat, and tucked it under his arm. With the greatcoat pulled close around him, maybe he would pass for normal. At a glance. In the dark.
They made their careful way down the stairs together and out onto the pavement. The cold felt good.
“Where are you headed?” the man asked. “Can I hail you a hackney?”
“No, it’s not far.” He fought his way through a spell of dizziness. “I can’t thank you enough, sir…for your kindness.”
“Say nothing of it. Stay out of trouble, lad.” He strolled off toward St. James’s.
Lewis’s shoulders slumped and his knees buckled. He felt the Earth rotating, himself spinning off it. He hoped he wouldn’t vomit.
He could hardly sit on someone’s front steps—he might never get up again. He caught on to an iron railing and tried to appear jaunty and nonchalant, as if he was waiting for a friend. Dozens of men walked past him in one direction or the other, toward St. James’s or the Haymarket. A few of them he recognized in the nighttime glow of the gas streetlights, but none looked twice at him. Thank heaven for that.
He moved along the fence until he reached a dark corner where the stone wall jutted out. Wedging himself there to stay upright, he closed his eyes against the dizziness. That made it worse. One of Gideon’s punches must have done some damage. If he ever made it home to Yorkshire, they could lock him up with Jack in one of the attics. Deliver some bread and water every day and send a servant to muck the place out once a week. He fought an insane desire to laugh.
He must have passed out. Couldn’t have been for long—surely he would have toppled over, or slid down to the sidewalk like shit thrown against the wall. Which is what he felt like. Why had he wasted his time on fencing lessons? He should have been boxing instead.
The world seemed more stable. He pushed away from the wall but stayed close, out of the stream of jostling pedestrians. At the Haymarket he shrank into the safety of the wall for a moment, then stepped out into the clog of nocturnal pleasure-seekers.
By some miracle he got across without falling or being trampled. He turned the corner he thought led toward Lindale’s. It was darker there, which suited him fine. No doubt there was blood on his face… Yes, he could feel it, dry and crusted, on his chin, cheek, and neck. His ear was still oozing; it felt as if the lobe was torn half off.
He hoped Lindale’s valet would deign to clean up a stranger.
Chapter 32
The following morning, shaved with care by Lindale’s valet and dressed in clean clothes, Lewis sent the man to rouse his master.
Despite the ungodly hour of ten o’clock, Lindale was already up. “You look a mess. I came home early last night to see how you fared, but you were already asleep.”
“More like unconscious, I’m afraid. I tried persuading Gideon to marry the girl. I failed in dramatic fashion. Got a small contribution, however. I haven’t counted it. ”
It didn’t take them long to do the job. Five of the new gold sovereigns and a pile of smaller coins, all totaling ten pounds, seven shillings, and thruppence.
Lindale took a gulp of ale. “So, what will you do next?”
“I suppose I’ll marry her myself, though how I’ll keep her clothed and fed I haven’t a notion. Gideon’s ten pounds won’t last long.”
“There’s more involved than a broken heart, then?”
“Much more. A child, for instance.”
Lindale whistled long and low. “That’s grim. What man would want to raise his brother’s by-blow, even if that brother wasn’t Satan?” Lindale raised one eyebrow. “Might depend on how much he cared for the lady.”
Lewis merely grunted. “Tell Fuller I’m off to Bath. I’ll make sure Miss Wedbury is safe.”
Lindale sent him off with an unopened bottle of rye. “You might be needing that.”
“I might indeed.”
At ten o’clock that evening, Lewis reached the house Sir John had hired on Milsom Street in Bath. There, at least, he had no doubt about his reception, whatever the time.
The old butler gripped one hand, his face creased into a rare grin. “You should have let us know you were coming, sir. Lady Wedbury is at home, but… I say, sir, what have you done to yourself?”
“Nothing that won’t heal.” He’d seen himself in the mirror that morning and didn’t figure he looked any better now, after twelve hours brooding in a coach. The other passengers had eyed him askance and left him alone with his thoughts, which were forbidding indeed. A lifetime of unrequited love, for instance.
“Is there a room where I can clean up? Then I need to see Lady Wedbury.”
“Yes sir. I’ll let her know.”
When he entered the parlor half an hour later, Lady Wedbury swept across the room with both hands out in welcome. “There you are, Lewis! What a pleasant surprise. What brings you to Bath?”
Smiling, Lewis held her hands and waited for her effusions to wear themselves out.
“You’ll stay with us, naturally. I hope you plan a nice long visit. We’ve been in the dumps since the men left, and not much better before that. But you! Wimbley says you…” She took hold of his chin and angled him toward the light. “Good gracious, your eye! What happened?” It had turned a deep, dark red over the course of the day, all traces of blue hidden in its depths.
“It doesn’t matter. There are more important things on my mind.”
“Oh dear. We’d best sit down. Help yourself to a drink.”
He gladly took some brandy to the fireside, where Lady Wedbury had seated herself. He remained on his feet, however, his back to the flames.
“Have you heard from Sir John since he returned home?” Hard to believe only eight days had passed.
“Of course. What a dreadful journey they had, and no sign of improvement in Jack’s condition as we hoped.”
He sought words of comfort. “It’s too soon to tell, ma’am. Give him some time to settle in.”
“I know,” she said with a sigh. “But it’s so hard not to hope for a miracle. How does he seem to you?”
“I had only two days at White Oaks before I had to leave…on another matter.” Lewis had no intention of spewing Jack’s indiscretions into his mother’s ears. He paced back and forth. “Did Sir John tell you about—er—”
“About this unfortunate business with Miss Spain? Yes, he did.” Her chin rose pugnaciously, the spark in her eyes a forceful reminder of Cassie in a temper. “And of your suppositions with regard to Gideon. I must say, Lewis, I would not have thought you could leap to judgment about your own brother on the basis of a short acquaintance with a girl who is clearly not as virtuous as she wanted us to believe.”
Instinct told Lewis to defend the woman he loved, but he shoved instinct aside. Anna was not faultless in the matter, and argument on that point would get them nowhere. Best to keep the focus on Gideon.
Still, he spoke through clenched teeth when he responded. “It is no longer supposition, ma’am. He was quite pleased to admit it when we—er—talked yesterday.”
Lady Wedbury straightened, her eyes wide with shock. “He confessed to it? And then he did that to you?”
“I threw the first punch. The things he said…” He stopped in front of the fire, peering into the dark places between the flames. “It’s a game he plays for his amusement, ma’am. A calculated strategy aimed at seduction. Miss Spain is nothing more than a mark on his tally sheet, her child even less. Nor is she his only victim.”
She shook her head in denial. “I don’t believe that. Many an otherwise honorable man has his affaires de coeur, and sometimes a child is the result. I don’t think—”
Infuriated, Lewis rounde
d on her. “An honorable man does not seduce an innocent girl with implied promises of marriage, and then jest about the suffering he’s caused. Nor does he abandon his own child to the horrors of a workhouse, for God’s sake!” Shaking, he gulped down the rest of his brandy, wishing it was Lindale’s rye.
Lady Wedbury stared, her mouth agape.
They both jumped when Cassie spoke from the doorway. “Lewis! That was magnificent!” She ran toward him.
“Not so magnificent, Cass. I just swore at your mother.” Holding off Cassie’s embrace, he turned to make his apology.
But Lady Wedbury’s gaze was fixed on her daughter. “That was not for your ears, Cassandra! Surely you know better than to barge in like—”
“Yes, Mama, but Lewis is here.”
“I am aware of that, Cassandra. Now greet him like a lady.”
Cassie rolled her eyes at Lewis and did as she was told, extending her hand and sinking into a curtsy suited for royalty. “How delightful to see you again, Mr. Aubrey.”
He bowed over her hand and replied in kind, but ruined the charade by pulling her into a hug and bussing her on the cheek. “You’re looking well, Cass.” Above the ball finery, her face was pale. Those tiny lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes—surely they were new?
“I can’t say the same of you. What in heaven’s name did you do? Get trampled by a horse? I hope that eye is temporary.”
“So do I!”
“What horrid man were you talking about just now? He sounds an absolute boor!”
Lady Wedbury rose, shaking out her skirts. “That is none of your business, Cassandra. It’s time we went upstairs. You can see Lewis in the morning.” She eyed him with the ferocity of a wild dog protecting its pups as she attempted to push Cassie toward the door.
Cassie resisted. “But, Mama—”
“This is Cassie’s business, ma’am,” Lewis said. “She’ll know the truth soon enough, in any event. I intend to make Anna Spain my wife. I’ll be on the early coach for Bristol.”
The ladies stared in shock. Lewis blinked at his own pronouncement. He’d thought of little else all day long, yet saying it aloud unnerved him.
Cassie started toward him, her face stretching toward a grin. “How wonderful! How did it—?”
“Surely not, Lewis!” Lady Wedbury converged on him as well, her brow creased in dismay. “She’s not your responsibility. Why should you give up your life for a trollop?”
“Madam!” Lewis bellowed, and she winced. Aware, no doubt, that she herself had just laid half the cards on the table for her daughter’s examination.
Cassie’s eyes opened wide as she looked from one to the other. “Anna? She’s not a… She’s a…”
Keeping half an eye on Lady Wedbury’s mutinous countenance, Lewis led Cassie to the sofa and sat her down. “Anna is about to have a child, Cass.”
“What?” She leaped to her feet. “I don’t believe it! She’s as innocent as—” Her hands clenched into fists. “It’s Gideon, isn’t it.” No doubt at all in her voice. She wrapped her arms around Lewis. “And you fought him! Oh, I do love you, Lewis. I hope you beat him to a bloody pulp and threw him in the river to drown.”
He smiled at her enthusiasm for the kill. She and Fuller would be well matched. “Alas, no. But I doubt he looks any better than I do.” He needn’t have worried that Cassie would soften toward Gideon.
She dropped onto the sofa and burst into tears, soaking her little handkerchief. Yet when her mother sat and offered a vinaigrette, she rejected it with disgust.
“Did you care for him, then?” Lewis asked.
“No!” She blew her nose once more. “I don’t know. He makes me laugh. But no, of course not. It’s only…” A sniffle. “I miss Neil awfully.”
Lady Wedbury sighed. “I know, Cassandra. You’ve put on a brave face, but I know.”
Lewis cleared his throat. “Have you given any thought to going home, ma’am? I’m determined that Anna must be accepted by society, even if it’s only Wrackwater Bridge society. I shall need all the help I can get.”
Mrs. Wedbury took her daughter’s hand. “What do you think, Cassandra?”
“You’d like to go, wouldn’t you, Mama?”
“I would. As little as Captain Fuller has been able to visit Bath, however, it will be far less in Yorkshire.”
“I know. But if we can help Lewis and Anna, it will be worth it. Lewis will travel with us, and—”
“I can’t, Cassie. I’m on my way to Bristol.”
Lady Wedbury tsked her disapproval. “Please reconsider, Lewis! You’re twenty-two years of age. To be burdened with a child that isn’t yours, and a wife you don’t care for—”
“But I do, ma’am.”
Cassie clapped her hands. “Of course he does. How splendid! A happy little family, ready-made.”
Lewis grimaced. “Hardly. But perhaps in time…”
Lady Wedbury’s brows arched. “Does she still have hopes for Gideon, then?”
“Oh no. I believe she loves him, though, despite everything.”
Cassie put both hands on his arm. “But she will come to love you in no time. She must. I’ll tell her so. Because otherwise, how could you bear it?”
Chapter 33
It wasn’t a nightmare that awoke her. Or if it was, nothing remained of it but a vague feeling of unease in the darkness.
Anna stretched her legs in the bed, the coarse cotton sheets cold against her exposed skin. It felt good. A light film of perspiration covered her and one of her heavy woolen socks had come off. She must have been restless, though unaware of it.
She’d taken to leaving the curtain open a crack when she went to bed. That hint of connection with the world outside calmed her, reminded her where she was…and who she was, though there was nothing comforting about that.
Her stomach felt queasy, but any time she ate more than a few morsels, she regretted it. She’d drunk a whole glass of rich Yorkshire milk that evening, because Putnam would not let her go to bed until it was gone.
She closed her eyes, took as deep a breath as she could, and slowly let it out again. Imagined Lewis’s voice soothing the horses.
Three days he’d been gone. Where was he now?
The baby shifted. It was a small movement, perhaps stretching his little legs as she had done. The poor infant, cooped up inside her all these months, cheek by jowl with all his mother’s anger, fear, and misery. He must be desperate for escape. Don’t hurry, little one. Life outside will be no improvement.
Her body relaxed, her mind let go, and images crept in as she slipped over the edge into sleep. An indistinct view of Yorkshire from the coach window. Pulling up in the snow-covered yard at the Rose and Crown, though they had arrived in August. Waiting for their luggage, the coachman handing her a bandbox and a baby. Seeing Gideon approach, the surprise of it, not knowing what she should feel. “Is that your babe, Miss Shame? Let me see.” Flipping back the blanket that protected it from the cold, she saw a skull. Swaddling clothes filled with nothing but bones. She hugged those bones to her breast while Gideon laughed, mocking, demeaning. Then Lewis was there, nodding to her. “Look again, Anna.” Terrified, she reached once more for the corner of the baby’s blanket…
Another roll in her belly brought her full awake. A strange sensation, as she imagined thunder might feel if you could not hear it, or the roll of a ship in stormy seas. Not painful, but not something one could ignore.
It passed quickly, but she knew what it was. This was what had awakened her the first time. This nightmare was real.
All these months she’d dreaded it. Yet oddly, now that it was here, calm settled over her like a blanket. At the very least, things would change. No more of this dreadful purgatory. For the next few days, she was in fate’s hands, she and her baby. After… Well, there was nothing she could do about After, until it arrived.
The midwife had said the process would move slowly at first. “If it starts in the night, as often happens, don’t tha�
�� be wakenin’ me. Just slip a note ’neath my door so I’ll see it when I rise. Mornin’ be plenty o’ time.”
Anna had no idea how far off morning was. It could be one hour or six.
They could sometimes hear the bells from St. Peter’s or St. John’s, depending on the wind. She listened idly as her mind wandered through the familiar maze of faces and places, the if-onlys and could-have-beens, the litany of choices made and regretted. With each contraction of her womb, the sad chronicle paused as her focus shifted from mind to body. Then it moved on.
She would regret giving up her child, no doubt about that. But did she have a choice? Were there options they had missed, she and Putnam? And Lewis too, the sweet, deluded soul. She smiled at his naïveté, cried for his loss and her own.
If she had been less naïve last spring, would she have recognized Lewis and Gideon for what they were? Two sides of a coin, opposites in so many ways. She had made no choice then, not even flipped the coin.
She had hardly noticed Lewis. He’d seemed a boy then, diffident and unsure. Now he was a man. Still serious, still restrained, as he would always be. Still learning. But he showed the bones of something rare and valuable. Something irresistible. What a superior husband he would make for some woman.
It would not be her, and it was her own stupid fault. What was that line from Othello? ‘She wished that heaven had made her such a man?’ Well, heaven had done its part, and Anna had bungled it.
How long did she lie there, drifting in her thoughts, waiting for each successive pang? By the time the dawn light brightened the room, she had almost given up on it. Perspiration slicked her skin again as the spasms came more frequently, regular now and purposeful.
She rose and used the chamber pot, dug her missing sock from between the sheets and sat on the bed to pull it on. Taken by a pain as she bent over, she pressed one hand to her belly and straightened. She didn’t need that sock. When the spasm passed, she dragged on her dressing gown and went for Putnam.