“I’m your almost-fiancé,” Hadrian said as the little orchestra tuned up. “You belong in my arms, at my side, and not among the servants, longing for this night to be over.”
She’d been praying for that, between aiming false smiles in no particular direction and ignoring Lily’s anxious surveillance between every dance.
“Hadrian, I know you mean well—”
She allowed him to arrange her in waltz position—the last dance of the evening would be a waltz—because she could not dissuade him without creating a scene for which she would be more than lectured.
He held her a hair closer than he should, and she submitted to this presumption because it wasn’t nearly as close as she wanted to hold him. The music was slow, lilting and sweet, and perfect for ending a summer night’s revelry.
“You have to be exhausted,” Hadrian said near her ear. “You’re letting me lead.”
“You’re more subtle about it than Fen,” Avis said, stifling a yawn. “I fit you better.”
“You fit me perfectly.” He fell silent, as if expecting her to argue, but she let him pull her particularly near on a turn. For the duration of this dance, she was best served by not making a fuss, and if she enjoyed not making a fuss, well, the dance would soon be over.
“People are staring,” Hadrian noted moments later. “Do you ever get used to it?”
“I haven’t, though it’s gone on for years.”
“Do you recall when it started?”
“Started?”
“I can’t believe anybody would say or do anything to insult Benjamin and Vim’s sister. While you and Alex recuperated at Landover, Harold would have beaten to a pulp any man who tried.”
“The men aren’t the problem,” Avis said, sad—and relieved—that Hadrian was seeing the truth of her situation. “The rutting goats among them insult all women, fallen, ruined, virtuous, what have you. The decent men keep their mouths shut.”
While they drank her ladyship’s ale, ate her food, and avoided her company.
“Thus, you avoid the women?”
“If I avoid them, I am haughty; if I make overtures, I am presumptuous. Once tarred with the brush of scandal, one has few good options except to grow indifferent.”
Which Avis had never quite managed.
“Was it always so bad?”
“I don’t know, Hadrian.” She wanted, more than anything, to lay her head on his shoulder and dance off into the darkness with him. The conversation was difficult but necessary, and dragging Hadrian into the shadows was the worst mistake she could make—for her, but for him as well. “When Alex was on hand and Benjamin was about, I don’t recall it being so bad, but maybe that’s because people truly could not blame her for what happened.”
“She still limps?”
“Not badly. Benjamin says it shows only when she’s tired or the terrain is uneven, but she hardly goes out of doors, which confirms that the injury still pains her in some way.”
“While you hardly leave Blessings. This has gone on long enough, Avis.”
Not Avie, and Hadrian’s voice held a thread of anger she didn’t often hear from him.
“It isn’t your problem, Hadrian,” she said as quietly as she could without whispering. Whispering would cause talk, leaning up to speak softly to him would cause talk, dashing off the dance floor would cause more talk.
“It damned well needs to be somebody’s problem.” He’d spoken in normal tones, and she shuddered to think who overheard him. “You shall have the respect you deserve, even if it arrives to you twelve years overdue.”
She danced in his arms silently, wishing the music would end, wishing it would go on forever. Hadrian was a good man, and his anger on her behalf was a reminder of Avis’s own frustration. She’d been frustrated for years, but somewhere along the way, the frustration had faded to anxious, weary bewilderment, leaving only a need for peace.
Peace and quiet.
The music ended, and when she would have stepped back to offer the requisite curtsy, Hadrian trapped her hand in his.
“Hadrian?”
“Come along. You can break something over my head tomorrow, but tonight, we’re taking action.”
Foreboding welled as Hadrian towed her up the few steps to the first tier of the terrace, where the musicians were returning violins and guitars to their cases.
“Friends, neighbors!” Hadrian called out. “If I might have your attention for one moment before you seek your beds?”
A good-natured smattering of response came, mostly from the men about seeking something other than their beds.
“I recall that it’s tradition at our assemblies to announce betrothals, and in that spirit, I’d like you all to know I’ve put the marital question to Lady Avis. You will end our evening on the best note by offering your congratulations now.”
A cheer went up over the roaring in Avis’s ears.
God help her, God help them both. When she would have raised her voice to make a jest of Hadrian’s announcement, he sealed his mouth over hers, and the cheering grew louder.
“Don’t fuss,” he murmured against her lips. “You can jilt me tomorrow.”
He ended the kiss and held Avie’s hand up over his head, as if she were the successful contender at a bare-knuckle match. Unable to stand the scrutiny of her neighbors, Avis merely turned into Hadrian’s body and forced him to shield her from the grinning, cheering fools around them.
She endured a few more toasts and good wishes, and then let Hadrian haul her into the house. He didn’t stop until they reached her private parlor, where, thank a merciful Deity, some servant had drawn the blinds, giving them privacy.
“I cannot believe you did that,” she fumed as he lit a single candle from the coals in the hearth. “I simply cannot believe—Hadrian, what were you thinking? My life was ruined when I jilted one fiancé, and now you—what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking you’d make a fuss if I told you my plans. Shall I stir up the fire?”
He’d already stirred up one fire.
“Please.” Avis was cold, though the room wasn’t chilly. Mostly, she wanted to keep Hadrian near until she’d set this folly to rights. “I know you meant well, Hadrian, but this dramatic gesture,”—she flopped down on her sofa, feeling centuries old—“it won’t help.”
“Ignoring cruel gossip wasn’t helping, either.”
Hadrian rose from the hearth, the fireplace giving off a deceptively cheery blaze. By firelight, he did not look cheery. He looked big, grim, and diabolically determined.
“Ignoring the talk helps me endure my life.”
“Endure.” Hadrian spat the word. “Do you endure my attentions, Avis?”
She could not fathom his point, though he would doubtless elaborate upon it. “I very much enjoy your attentions.”
“Then why not very much enjoy your life?” He angled his long frame so he could prop an elbow on the mantel when Avis would have liked him better within hand-holding range. “Why not look forward to seeing friends at church, why not have the occasional guest at luncheon, why not exchange a few smiles and greetings when you shop in the village?”
“Because I can’t,” she cried. “Because those activities require the felicity of the people in one’s community, something I have lacked for years.”
“Well, I haven’t,” Hadrian shot back. “I was a damned vicar, and I can be so bloody pleasant our neighbors will wish Harold had left years ago.”
“A damned vicar?” Avis was amused, despite the gravity of the situation, despite Hadrian’s wrong-headedness.
“And bloody pleasant.” He nodded, clearly proud of his foul language. “I heard talk about you tonight.”
Well, of course. “So you must gallop to the rescue.”
He settled beside her. “Either that or I must break some heads. What has become of Hortensia Dillington?”
She’d become quite stout. Avis kept that unkind thought to herself.
“Hortensia Cuthbe
rt now. She married the miller’s second son, who has a tidy small holding of his own, but Hortensia had no other offers and thus feels her lot sorely.”
“She’s jealous, then.”
“Jealous?”
“She married out of expedience, while you have wealth, doting if distant brothers, freedom, and authority. Of course she’s jealous.”
Hadrian was very sure of his conclusions, and yet Avis resisted the impulse to take his hand. She was simply too tired—exhausted in body and soul—to disabuse him of his addled notions.
To protect him—though she would.
Somehow, she’d preserve him from the folly he’d wrought in the last five minutes, even if it meant she became the first woman in the history of the shire to jilt not one but two eligible bachelors.
Who could possibly be jealous of her for that?
Chapter Eleven
Of all the gifts Hadrian wanted to restore to his intended—for Avie was his intended—her capacity for anger ranked at the top of the list. He wanted every form of ire put back in her hands—fury, simple testiness, irritability, fuming—for if she could locate her indignation, perhaps her courage might be returned to her too.
“I hadn’t thought any lady could be jealous of my situation,” she said. “But what does that matter? I now have you for my fiancé, Hadrian, and without having accepted your suit. Not well done of you.”
Not well done of you . He usurped her future, albeit with the best intentions, and that was the scolding he received?
“You want to marry me, you just can’t admit it, and I’m damned sure I want to marry you.” His assurances sounded more pugnacious than he’d intended.
“Of course I want to marry you.” Now, when Hadrian would have taken her hand, Avie rose and made a production of poking at the already blazing fire. “You’re toothsome, wealthy, and my friend.”
Though not quite her lover. Not yet.
“And you care for me,” he reminded her, “and you’ve seen me as God made me.” She’d done considerably more than that—and enjoyed herself thoroughly.
As had he.
“Hadrian, you’re newly free of the church, at loose ends, mindful of the need for heirs, and I’m a familiar old friend. You’re at sixes and sevens, and I’m—”
She was daft, also exhausted, and too willing to cope with any and all challenges on her own.
“Am I familiar to you, Avis?”
She settled on the low table facing him, an indication of how badly he’d rattled her. Miss Prentiss would have been scandalized by such abuse of good furniture.
“You are wonderfully familiar to me, Hadrian Bothwell, and yet you are also wonderfully new.”
“Stop flittering around, Avie.” He took her hand and tugged. “I could not stand to hear your name bandied about among the gossips when you’ve done not one thing to merit their contumely. We can have a long engagement, a year if you want, but let me give you this much protection, and you can see if you like it.”
“Oh, I’ll like it,” she said, letting him pull her to his side. “Though you have to promise me two things.”
“I’m listening.” Listening, but he wasn’t promising blindly. He’d learned a few things in his years as a husband.
“First, you cannot use your appeal to coerce me to the altar.”
“Love, you’ll have to translate that. If you think this will be a chaste engagement—” In Hadrian’s experience, a chaste engagement was a rare beast, unless a fellow had proposed to a clergyman’s youngest daughter.
“I don’t want a chaste engagement.”
Bless her and the fresh Cumbrian country air . “Well, then—”
“Promise you won’t withhold your favors to inspire me to accept your proposal.”
“You think I could withhold my favors, so to speak, and render you biddable?” She had a poor grasp of her effect on him if that was the case.
“Wretch.” She took a leaf from his book and bit his earlobe. “You could. I am that lost to propriety. That wanton.”
The urge to wring Hortensia’s neck rose anew—and Hart Collins’s as well. Avis was entitled to be wroth with her petty, judgmental neighbors, but she had instead accepted a load of shame and uncertainty that was not hers to bear.
“You are not wanton,” Hadrian said, looping his arm across her shoulders, lest she hare away to arrange flowers—or cry into her pillow. “You are curious. Your curiosity is part of what endears you to me.” Along with her sheer dauntlessness, which he knew better than to mention now. “You’ve asked for two promises, the first relating to my intimate availability, do I have that right?”
“You do.”
“You shall have me, Avis, exclusively, and absolutely.” He hoped she’d have him often and always too. “What is your second demand?”
She gazed at the fire, her expression so sad Hadrian might be the one crying into his pillow. “You must be honest with yourself, Hadrian.”
“About?”
“When the shopkeepers won’t put coin in your gloved hand, but only set it on the counter, when nobody tips his hat to me, when you aren’t invited anywhere, when nobody calls, even to congratulate you on our betrothal.”
She had kept this litany of miseries to herself rather than share it with her brothers, and they had likely been loath to pry.
To hell with such consideration, if it consigned Avis to more lonely misery.
Hadrian traced the shell of her ear with a single finger. “You want me to report these supposed slights to you?”
“I want you to report them to yourself. I want you to acknowledge that the good opinion of your neighbors is valuable, and marriage to me will jeopardize that asset. Then I want you to multiply the loss of that good opinion by the decades you hope to be married to me, and ask yourself honestly if you can bear that cost.”
She was ignoring his caresses, so he didn’t tell her his calculations went in a different direction: All the slights and indignities Avie had endured times the number of years she’d born them. That was the sum of the smiles he’d give her in the first year of their marriage.
“You have my promise, Avie. I will assess the impact of marriage to you on all facets of my happiness.” He kissed her brow to reward himself for his honesty.
“Do we tell Benjamin or Vim about this engagement?”
“Vim being whereabouts unknown,” Hadrian said, “I’ll send the requisite flowery epistle to Benjamin, provided we can determine his location. My inquiries have resulted in a note from his solicitors that he’s on business outside London.”
“He’d be relieved to see me safely wed.”
“He’d be happy,” Hadrian countered evenly. “For you. You should write to your sister of this development.”
“I should not.” Her tone said she would not. “I haven’t accepted your suit, Hadrian, no matter you are determined on this course, and no matter an engagement will send a message to Collins. Alex will be hurt to think I’ve found a mate, while she contents herself to raise other people’s children.”
Hadrian kissed her temple, as a reward for not bellowing. “Now it’s Alex for whom you must sacrifice your happiness?”
“She very nearly sacrificed her ability to walk for me.”
Hadrian could not allow that flight of martyrdom to go unchallenged.
“Did you sacrifice your happiness to keep Alexandra safe? Collins had both of you in that cottage and could easily have finished with you then moved on to her but for your distracting him.”
Avis hunched forward, out from under Hadrian’s arm. “She was fourteen, Hadrian. How could she have prevented what happened?”
“She left you,” Hadrian said. “Left you to face that brute alone and failed to get help in time. I assure you, your sister carries tremendous guilt for leaving you to Collins’s dubious handling.”
The word rape echoed in the shadows flickering across the hearth rug.
“My poor Alex.”
“And her poor Avie. Rather
than talk about this with each other, you’ve put a realm between you and lost what ease you might have had years ago.”
Much as Hadrian had gone pelting into the arms of the church and kept the West Riding between him and his older brother.
“I didn’t want Alex to go south. We fought about that, but we should have been fighting about this other.”
“This rape?”
“Assault.”
Avis hadn’t discussed the details of the incident itself in all the weeks Hadrian had been home. Surely, it needed discussing, when Avis was ready. Not before that.
Hadrian urged Avis to resume her place cuddled against him.
“As vicar, one is called upon to resolve differences between neighbors. I was often amazed how different people’s perceptions could be of the same incident, even an incident I had observed myself and would not have described as any of the disputants did.”
“I can’t go south uninvited,” Avis said. “Alex and I both have to be willing to have this discussion.”
“If we’re married,” Hadrian said, pressing a kiss to her cheek, “I can escort you south, merely to see the capital, or to avoid the damned northern winter.”
“You have property in the south?”
“We have a farm in Kent, close enough to Town to be convenient. Harold also has a house in Mayfair, because he occasionally voted his seat and did the pretty.” And likely kept company with Finch, about which Hadrian had ceased to care much at all.
“You haven’t promised me you’ll be honest about the gossip.”
“I’ll be honest. You must be honest too, Avis.”
“About?”
“About how much joy you find in the thought of being my wife, having our children, and availing yourself of my charms.”
“I’ll jilt you,” she warned. “I’ll avail myself from one end of the shire to the other, then toss you over.”
“Of course you will.” Hadrian kissed her again, because she was trying too hard to look after him. “You’re wicked Avis Portmaine, scheming seducer and despoiler of innocent lambs like myself. Shall you start availing yourself now? I’m in serious want of despoiling.”
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