Hadrian

by Grace Burrowes

And had been for years.

  She yawned. “For pity’s sake, Hadrian. Not here, not now, and possibly not ever. We’re both exhausted, and the night has been quite exciting enough.”

  When a lady yawned in the face of an offer of seduction, even a lamb in need of despoiling made a strategic retreat.

  “You’ll make me work for it, then. Excellent tactic. I adore a challenge.”

  “Well, challenge yourself to go to bed. We’ve been closeted in here too long as it is.”

  Not nearly long enough.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Hadrian said, rising and helping Avis to her feet. “Will you come to services with me?”

  “Again?”

  “I’ll probably ask next week too and the week after that.”

  “Are you having the banns cried?”

  He smiled in contemplation of that step. “Suppose I shall.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Avis hissed. “No special licenses, either.”

  “Stubborn.” Hadrian kissed her again, a consolation kiss, because even the summer nights in Cumbria could be chilly.

  “I’m also exhausted, so away with you.”

  Hadrian jammed his hands into his pockets, a desperate schoolboy tactic for dealing with the results of too many kisses. “Good night, my love. Until tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “Can this be the newly engaged Mr. Bothwell?” Fen drawled from the darkness of his back porch steps. “Is there trouble in paradise, Choir Boy? Did the lady disdain your impromptu wooing? Or perhaps she needed to ring a peal over your handsome, impetuous head before sending you to my cold, hard guest bed?”

  Though Bothwell had probably chosen his moment after a lengthy consideration of strategy.

  “Lady Avis is worried about you.” Bothwell took a stair below Fen. “Lily Prentiss was glaring such daggers at you, surely you must have given her the French compliment.”

  Miss Prentiss deserved such a fate, though Fen wouldn’t be the one to bestow it on her.

  “Some are prone to smiling, some are prone to glaring.” Fen passed a bottle. “It’s uisge beatha. Be careful.”

  Bothwell took a casual pull of libation no decent vicar should have managed so easily. “You’re swearing off the peach brew?”

  “I like variety in my pleasures.” Fen accepted the bottle back. “All that dancing worked up a thirst.” And, predictably, all that dancing worked up a sorry case of longing for home.

  “Avie isn’t happy with me.”

  Choir boys must be allowed their confessions. “Dramatic tactics, old man. Did something inspire your declaration?”

  “Hortensia Cuthbert.” Bothwell appropriated the bottle again. “Elmira Woodman, Josephina Dandridge.”

  “The harpies were in full force tonight,” Fen allowed. “You asked me how bad the gossip is regarding Avie, and I said it comes and goes, but it’s as bad now as I’ve ever heard it.” The meanness of the talk had an edge that two generations ago might have turned to mutterings about stillborn babies and the devil’s handmaiden.

  “Maybe now you’re listening for it. I know I am.”

  In truth, Fen had been trying desperately to ignore the gossip. “Will she marry you?”

  “Maybe.” The doubt was making Bothwell miserable, but the man wouldn’t lie—not even to himself. “I desperately hope so, or I’ll have to swear off proposing.”

  “Practice makes perfect.” Fen shifted so he sat on the same step as Bothwell. “You mean well.” He took another drink from the bottle. What did it say about a Fen’s courage, that he’d never proposed to any of the several women to catch his fancy?

  “I do not mean well. I mean to marry the woman, and I mean to have the privilege of threatening death to any man who thinks to harm her. Avie merely wants to be left alone, and is likely weighing the burden of having me for a husband against the benefit of taking me on as her devoted watchdog.”

  Sometimes, a fellow could be too honest.

  “Was Lady Avis leaving you alone up at the pond last night?”

  Bothwell’s posture didn’t shift, but in his very stillness, Fen perceived menace. “Did you spy on us, Fenwick?”

  “I don’t have to spy to know you’re turning her head, Vicar, and it’s about time somebody did. She might just give up and marry you.” If Avie had appointed Bothwell her champion, then Fen could make a visit to the north, because summer was the only time such a journey made sense.

  “She might give up what?”

  The moon rose higher, the night birds went hunting, and Fen fashioned his thoughts into a parable, because Bothwell would grasp a parable most easily.

  “Have you ever put a wounded creature in a cage, to help it heal?”

  “I have not.”

  “In the Highlands, as a boy, I came across all manner of creatures in distress. It seemed my special gift, in fact. I found the stags who’d lost the mating matches, horns bloodied, noses bloodied. I found the fledglings who fell from the nest too soon. I found the rabbits caught in some crofter’s snare. My grandfather told me I wasn’t supposed to heal the beasts. I was to end their misery and gratefully commend them to the stewpot, but I didn’t listen.”

  Fen was still in the business of finding wounded creatures, apparently, or perhaps he’d joined their number.

  “I found one of those rabbits,” Fen went on, though he hadn’t thought of this particular beast in years. “Its hind foot was neatly cut, but the wound was clean, and I thought I’d give the creature a chance to heal. By spring it would be hopping about, nibbling clover, making little bunnies, and proving my grandfather wrong.”

  Always a pleasure to prove Grandpapa wrong.

  “Your rabbit didn’t survive?”

  “She healed up well enough, but the day came for me to open the door to the cage and let her bound forth. She cowered in the back corner, unable to move, as if by opening that door I’d served her a dire betrayal.”

  Grandfather had extricated the rabbit from her captivity anyway, for which Fen had been grateful.

  “Your point?”

  “Avie knows how to be a strong victim, of Collins’s attack, of gossip, or of her family’s benign neglect. You want her to give up that cage and be Landover’s viscountess. She might not have the courage for it, Bothwell. She’s coped so long in her cage, she might not even know how to want something else.”

  “As you’ve coped in yours?”

  Not exactly, for in some ways, Fen shared captivity with Lady Avis, did she but know it. “We all cope, Vicar. You’re staying here tonight?”

  “I am.” He leaned back and rested his elbows on the stair above. “I’ll have to pop over to Landover in the morning to roust my coachman. I’m escorting Avie to services.”

  Fenwick doubted Avie had been apprised of that development. “After last night’s announcement, it will be expected. Shall I come along?”

  “Of course. Avie deserves all the support she can get.”

  “And I need to prove old Maudie didn’t dance me off my feet.” Fen fished the cork from his pocket and stoppered the bottle rather than give in to the temptation to remain under the stars until it was empty. “You’ve put in a bloody awful week with the crews, Bothwell. Then to take on Avie’s situation… You deserve some support too, if not a keeper.”

  And yet, the man’s own brother had sailed off to parts distant.

  “Avie is trying to ignore the fact that Collins is somewhere in England. I’m merely providing her a distraction.”

  “Right.” Fen stretched his back, which had also put in a bloody awful week. “Marriage is one hell of a distraction. You’ll wake me in the morning if I’m still at my slumbers?”

  “At first light.” Bothwell followed Fen into the house and took himself down the hall to the guest room.

  Avie would be an idiot to refuse Bothwell’s suit, and Scotland was lovely in summer. On that thought, Fen took the bottle back outside, saluted the full moon, and headed for the trees.

  * * *

&nb
sp; “Last night, I forgot to tell you something,” Fenwick said as he and Hadrian cleared the trees on the Landover side of the property line.

  Ashton Fenwick did not forget. He likely didn’t forgive much, either. “Something important?”

  Fenwick drew rein such that a sunbeam slashed across his face, and in the dappled morning light, he looked nearly haggard. “You have a guest at Landover.”

  “A guest?” Hadrian’s first thought was that Finch had journeyed back from Denmark to report that misfortune had befallen Harold, but Finch had pigeons to convey all but the worst news.

  “Devlin St. Just, Earl of Rosecroft,” Fenwick replied. “He arrived late yesterday afternoon, and your staff sent word to my house. St. Just’s note said not to disturb you needlessly.”

  “So when I was busy proposing before God and man to Avie, my houseguest was rattling around Landover without a host?”

  “I expect he was sleeping. Traveling overland from Yorkshire is devilish tiring. I meant to tell you, but then you proposed and I decided it would wait until morning.”

  Hadrian urged his horse forward, because Fen was embarrassed to have taken steps to assure a friend a good night’s sleep.

  “Then I must thank you. I was barely on my feet by the time I found my bed. St. Just doesn’t stand on ceremony. Come along and I’ll introduce you, assuming he’s kept to his usual habit of rising with the sun.”

  Fenwick’s gaze traveled back in the direction of Blessings. “He’s an earl. You can introduce us at church after I’ve had a decent breakfast and donned my Sunday best.”

  “You’ll hide,” Hadrian countered. For God’s sake, Fenwick’s uncle was an earl. “You want to meet him just so you can ask him about how he trains horses.”

  “I do?”

  He did, and they both knew it. They were dismounting in the Landover stable yard when a voice sang out from the barn.

  “Where have you been, Hadrian Bothwell, that you come stumbling home, peaked and wan at the crack of doom? If this is country living in Cumberland, I’ll have to visit more often.”

  “St. Just, welcome to Landover.” Hadrian extended a hand to a dark-haired, green-eyed broadsword of a man, only to be pulled into a rough embrace.

  “Emmie sends her love,” St. Just growled, walloping Hadrian between the shoulder blades. “As does Winnie, to you and to Caesar. She says Scout sends his love too.”

  The chestnut horse pricked his ears at the sound of his name, and St. Just turned to inspect the beast—while Fenwick took a small eternity to run his stirrups up their leathers.

  “Caesar’s in good shape,” St. Just said. “You’ve kept the muscle on him, and his coat is blooming too. Well done, Bothwell, and who is this sturdy fellow?”

  Fenwick declined to capitalize on the opening, so Hadrian answered St. Just’s question.

  “Handy belongs to Mr. Ashton Fenwick, steward over at Blessings and my host for the past week’s haying.”

  “Haying.” St. Just grimaced. “Makes me itch in unmentionable places just to hear the word. Fenwick, Devlin St. Just, at your service—or Rosecroft if we’re doing the pretty. This one has an Iberian ancestor grazing on the family tree, doesn’t he? Maybe by way of the Dutch trotters.”

  As they walked toward the house, Fenwick almost shyly joined the discussion of horses, but was soon trading opinions with St. Just on the merits of shallow versus deep shoulder angles.

  “Have you broken your fast, St. Just? Fenwick and I are off to services when we’ve eaten and seen me put to rights.”

  “You’ve put on muscle,” St. Just said as they crossed the Landover terrace. “Fenwick must be hitching you to the plough, and your staff is seeing to your victualing.”

  “He puts his own shoulder to the plough,” Fenwick volunteered. “You’d think the church would spoil a man for hard work, but this one doesn’t know when to quit.”

  St. Just slung an arm over Hadrian’s shoulders, the gesture surprisingly endearing, considering all present were sober. “You aren’t pining for your congregation over in Rosecroft village?”

  “I am not.” Not in the smallest degree, not a one of them. Hadrian wasn’t even missing Harold too terribly much. “How is your countess?”

  “Emmie is doing splendidly, which leaves an expectant father rather without dragons to slay. She shooed me off, claiming I scowl too much, and our first born will pick up the habit from me prior to birth.”

  Their first born would likely canter out of the womb. “Feeling de trop?”

  “Abysmally.” St. Just’s smile was lopsided. “Emmie needs to have Winnie all to herself for a bit before the baby comes, and they’ve been patient with me. You are the first stop on a jaunt south.”

  “Their Graces need to see you?” For St. Just was the oldest of a ducal brood of ten, and illegitimacy meant, if anything, St. Just endured an extra helping of fretting from the duke and duchess.

  “I need to see my parents, and my brothers and sisters, and I’ve nephews and nieces to spoil. Life has become complicated.”

  Fen remained silent throughout this exchange and nearly so at breakfast, though the earl ambushed him nonetheless between sips of tea.

  “Mr. Fenwick, you do not appear cheered by the prospect of morning services.”

  Something about Ashton Fenwick was never entirely cheerful, but Fen had waited up for Hadrian the previous night and looked like his slumbers had not been peaceful.

  “If you’d rather retire from the field, Fen, St. Just is a newly minted earl. We can tuck Avie’s hand on his arm and make a point quite nicely.”

  “I was trying to think of a way to suggest you put his lordship to that very use,” Fen replied, “without revealing my appalling lack of Christian virtue.”

  “Avie would be Lady Avis Portmaine, of hallowed fame in Bothwell’s letters?”

  Hallowed fame was better than some of the characterizations St. Just might have trotted out.

  Fen smeared half the jam pot onto his buttered toast. “Been writing the lady’s praises, Vicar?”

  “I will resort to violence if you insist on addressing me thus much longer.” Hadrian topped off tea cups all round, though in the space of a glance, an alliance formed between Fen and St. Just that promised much misery for Hadrian’s dignity.

  “I don’t use the title,” St. Just said, “except on rare occasions, such as the need to impress Bothwell’s neighbors. If I’m off to curvet about the churchyard, I’m faced with a dilemma. My horse can’t be left to idle all day, or he’ll stiffen up. After our jaunt through the hills, somebody who’s up to his weight has to at least hack him out, or I’ll be a week working out the kinks.”

  And so the mighty Fenwick was reduced to the status of excited new recruit given his first battle mount. “Think you can handle a St. Just horse, Fen?”

  Fen drained his tea cup with unceremonious haste. “If he’s anything like Bothwell’s chestnut, then I’m your man.”

  St. Just picked up Fenwick’s half-eaten toast. “Another sinner gallops astray. Apologies to your Maker, Bothwell.”

  “Apologize to your own Maker,” Hadrian rejoined. “Give me a few minutes to get into decent linen, and I’ll meet you out front.”

  “I’ll be in the stables, introducing Mr. Fenwick to Apollo. Ethelred came with us on a leading line, but he’s a less steady fellow altogether.”

  “Fen, to my friends,” Fenwick said as he got to his feet. “You will please tell me about this Apollo beast, lest I disgrace myself before we’re beyond the stable yard.”

  They disappeared, both lost in a discussion of stiffness to the left and a tendency to drag on the reins when bored, while Hadrian considered that he was having his first house guest, and St. Just was somebody he truly welcomed as a friend.

  At least, when Hadrian had proposed to Emmie, the lasting effect on his relationship with St. Just had been the winner’s sympathy and respect for the loser. And how fortunate that Hadrian had lost. Emmie was deliriously happy with her grow
ling earl, and Hadrian intended to be just as blissful with his Avie.

  Provided she accepted his proposal.

  * * *

  Emmie St. Just, though far gone with child, had practically led Apollo out and boosted her husband into the saddle, so insistent had she been that St. Just make his bow before Their Graces and look in on their dear friend Mr. Bothwell.

  St. Just had battled old feelings, of being the odd man out, the marginalized sibling who’d joined the family late and awkwardly, until he’d confided these sentiments to his wife and been roundly—affectionately—scolded for “goose-ishness.”

  Emmie and Winnie had been right: Somebody had to look in on Bothwell and ensure that having mustered out of the clergy, he was bearing up under the strain of life as a civilian sinner.

  Now that Fenwick was off on his pony ride and the coach rolling toward Blessings, St. Just expected a report, for Emmie would expect a report, and little Winnie would too.

  “You wrote that Lady Avis was the victim of an assault,” St. Just said, “but that happened years ago, before you even finished at university.”

  Bothwell made a study of the lovely Cumbrian countryside, and a small part of St. Just was relieved that Emmie wasn’t there to admire their friend in his Sunday finest. He’d not only put on muscle, he’d also put something off too—something churchy and foreign to Bothwell’s true nature.

  “Lady Avis was brutally attacked by the fiancé she was intent on jilting,” Bothwell said. “Some in the shire took the position Collins was merely anticipating vows and Avis put a vile name on his attentions to see him run off in disgrace.”

  “A costly tactic on her part, when sending a note would have sufficed, or sending a brother or two.”

  “You’re right. If she wanted to break things off, she had better options. I’m the one who found her, St. Just, after she was raped.”

  St. Just had seen rape aplenty in the wake of broken sieges. The screams of the violated were in some ways more traumatizing than the screams of the dying, and nothing in the theological curriculum at Oxford would have prepared Bothwell for either.

  “What else can you tell me that you didn’t put in your dispatches?”