by Edith Layton
“How long?” she asked impatiently.
“Well, between this and that, say a week.…”
She groaned.
“Say three days, then,” he said in surrender. “It can’t be done sooner.”
“Well, then,” she said brightly, “do you know, I’d like some of that delicious-looking syllabub now. Oh, but maybe some of that rarebit first. And toast; it smelled so good before. And some of that joint of beef you said was so good—the rare part. And ale—yes, definitely—now I’d like some ale, too.”
“Oh, Della,” he said and sighed.
“It will be all right, Papa; you’ll see.” She grinned at him. But he only sighed again. “It will be fine,” she promised. “We’re going to see Jared. He’s gotten what he’s wanted all his life, what he deserved—so how can it be bad?”
*
Della dropped her towel and gazed at herself in the looking glass for long, silent moments. She hadn’t taken stock of her appearance much since she’d come to womanhood, but she felt the need to do it now. She hadn’t been able to on shipboard, not with her maid living as close to her as her own shadow. But this was a fine inn and the girl had her own alcove now, and the door between them was shut firmly. So Della contemplated herself in the glass. It was a thing she found as necessary as the long soak in the hot tub from which she’d just climbed. After all those weeks at sea, her hair had felt like kelp and she had sworn she leaked brine from every pore. Now she smelled like lavender and her hair hung in damp, silken coils. And now she stood naked in front of her mirror and ruthlessly assessed herself.
Her breasts were nice, she thought dispassionately; they were high and firm and full, and tilted very nicely down to rosy tips. Her waist was small; her stomach was almost flat; her hips rounded then tapered to shapely legs. Surely, she thought, men must see more, because she wasn’t awfully impressed herself. In fact, only her breasts pleased her a little; the rest looked fairly commonplace. Her faults seemed glaring. Her skin was perhaps too white, because she could see blue veins here and there. And her hair… She sighed. She’d never minded having black hair—on her head, at least; she’d thought it a nice contrast to her complexion. But that jet-black triangle, that inky patch on all that whiteness of her body? It looked silly, at best—ugly, actually—not what she would have liked at all.
Jared’s body hair was golden. She knew because sometimes in the summertime when he worked outdoors, his shirt would gape a little. Men on a farm weren’t modest, but Jared never took his shirt off in public and had always been very circumspect around the house, even when he’d been young. She’d seen his bare torso only once, all those years ago, that terrible, painful time after he’d first come to them. She tried not to remember that. Instead, she remembered the glory.
Once, when he’d been helping with the haying, his shirt had slipped aside and she’d seen golden hair on golden skin moving over smooth, hard muscles. Actually, that was the day she’d learned what lust was. The preachers were right, she thought. She’d been punished for it, all right: she’d been stricken with incurable longing every time she remembered the sight of his handsome body. And she couldn’t forget.
Now she frowned at her reflection. She placed a hand over that dark thatch and stared at herself in the glass. Then she turned and looked at herself from over her shoulder. She turned again, angled a leg, bent a knee, sucked in her stomach, and jogged a few steps in place. Then she sighed, picked up her nightshift, and pulled it over her head. Enough was enough—it wasn’t as if there was anything she could do about her looks.
But as she scrambled up into her high bed, she decided she would waste a day tomorrow after all. She’d go to the finest fashionable dressmaker she could find and order herself the most extravagant gown in London town.
*
But she wasn’t wearing that wonderful gown when her carriage finally approached Hawkstone Hall. First, the dressmaker wasn’t able to finish it on time. Second, the dressmaker had then explained it wouldn’t have been good to wear on a long trip anyway. In order to travel in such a fashionable gown, with a hoop and wide panniers, a lady wouldn’t be able to sit on a seat in a coach. She’d have to travel crouched down between the two seats. That was what beautifully dressed ladies did in London when they had to travel from house party to house party. But they had to travel only a few streets, after all. And then, they were London ladies, who usually traveled only from upstairs to downstairs.
Della wore a green silk gown with only a drape of fabric to hint at panniers, with no hoop at all, and without so much as a rib of whalebone to support her ribs. Although she guessed she looked provincial, she was very comfortable. But she got so excited when the carriage finally turned into the drive that she couldn’t breathe any better than she could have if she’d been wearing a corset made of spikes.
“It’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen!” she said, gasping as she stared at the golden stones of the hall.
“Aye, our lad’s done himself proud,” Alfred said with a trace of sadness in his voice. He remembered the beaten but proud boy on the dock as he looked at the grand house before him, and he had to blow his nose before he could speak again. “Done fine, our lad has; that’s a fact.”
When the coach stopped in the drive and what seemed to be dozens of servants appeared to help unload it, Della hesitated to step out. But then she remembered who she would see inside the wonderful house, and she forgot to be awed. She emerged from the coach and hurried down the little stairs, looking around for Jared.
When the tall man came running lightly down the steps to the courtyard, Della stopped breathing. She poised herself on her toes, ready to launch herself at him—and caught herself just in time. Because though this man had Jared’s height and shoulders and looked like him from afar, the nearer he came, the more Della saw the resemblance was like a glance into an old, wavy mirror. Jared’s head, but not his face; Jared’s mouth, but not his eyes. And this man wore a white wig pulled back into a queue and tied with a black velvet ribbon. That should have told her immediately, but she’d been so eager to see him, she hadn’t thought.
Della stood and smoothed her gloves as she waited for the man to approach. This wasn’t Jared. Of course—it was his brother, Justin, the man who had been earl until Jared’s return.
She eyed him openly as he came nearer. He wore a long coat with bold brass buttons over a fancy long vest, a ruffled white neckcloth, and shiny silk breeches, and there was lace at his wrists. But fashionable as he was, he looked more manly than any English gentleman she’d seen so far. Maybe that was because she knew who he was, but it seemed to her that this man was so full of vital energy, just as Jared was, that the lace and powder only made him look more masculine by contrast—the way the contradiction of a pirate wearing a single golden earring made his tanned face look even more manly. He was a handsome fellow, with an air of easy command. She looked over his broad shoulder for Jared.
“My dear sir,” Jared’s brother greeted Alfred. “How good to see you. We hadn’t expected you so soon! But I know Jared will be delighted. I’m his brother, Justin. And this must be Della! I’m amazed,” he said, taking her hand as she dipped into a curtsy. “The way Jared speaks, I thought I’d have to get a nanny for you—and look at you. A most welcome surprise—a grown and beautiful lady.”
Nothing at all like Jared, Della thought with sad irony as she rose from her curtsy and smiled at his brother.
“But where’s the lad?” Alfred said, and then laughed. “I mean to say, where is the earl?”
“Out riding. I expect him back shortly. As I said, we didn’t know you were coming so soon, or I’m sure he’d have been here to greet you himself. Allow me to do the honors. Please, come in; your rooms are ready. Wash the dust of travel from your hands and then join me for something to wash the dust from your throat,” Justin said with a sweep of his hand as he showed them the house like a lord of the manor, welcoming them in.
Della smiled and followed him,
marveling at how pleasant he was. After all, it had been his house; he had ruled here until a few months ago. I would have been mad as fire, she thought. But then, she told herself, relaxing, he’s giving it back to Jared after all.
Still, as she climbed the grand staircase to her room, she wasn’t so much awed by the magnificence of the house as she was worried about Jared’s being here. His elegant brother, with his lacy cuffs and white-wigged head, seemed to belong here, but Jared, with all his virtues, was still a plain, no-nonsense man from the Colonies. Della wondered if this return of his was such a good thing after all. Just look at King Midas, she thought. All the gold in the world isn’t worth much if you can’t use it properly.
Her room was twice the size of the one she had at home, and she’d thought her home the nicest on their side of the river. The furnishings made her revise further her view of home—there was so much gilt and glass here. Her traveling dress looked very plain in comparison to the draperies at her window, not to mention her bedhangings. She had her maid unpack and help her slip into her second-best gown, one she’d saved for an important dinner, because she now felt the hall demanded such finery. And she wanted Jared to see her at her best, after all.
Still, once she’d put on the blue silk gown with lighter panels and had fidgeted with the dollop of lace at each elbow, she sighed. It didn’t look that fancy, after all—at least not here. She picked up her favorite fan, the one with a painted scene of Arcadia on it, and rebound her hair into a high tumble of curls. Nothing helped.
Her sense of the ridiculous saved her. Here she was, she told herself, in the grandest house she’d ever seen, halfway across the world from home, about to see Jared again—and she was staring into a mirror? There were so many things to see and she was only looking at herself? Blockhead! she chided herself, and, grinning, left the room.
She went down the wonderful double stairs she’d come up, the sweep and breadth of it making her wish she could simply keep going up and down it all day: up the right stairs, across the hall, and then down the left stairs again. She was so busily staring up at the high domed skylight that bathed it all in white light that she almost stumbled when she heard her name called. She paused, momentarily blinded by that light, and couldn’t see where Jared was, although she knew he had called her. She stood midway on the stairs, squinting down into the hall below.
The tall man with the white wig was Justin; she remembered the cut of his coat. There, by his side, was her father. There was a beautiful lady, all in rose silk, there, too. And then, aside from a footman, she saw only another elegant, white-wigged gentleman. But where was Jared? She looked for a glint of golden hair and that familiar tanned face.
“Della, you wretch!” Jared called. “Has sea travel made you blind? Come down so I can welcome you to my new home.”
“Jared?” Della asked in an awed voice.
He was the elegant gentleman next to the beautiful lady! His glorious golden hair was hidden under a white wig, tied back with velvet ribbon. He wore lace at his throat, with more frothing out from his wide, turned-back cuffs, and his vest was gray-striped silk. His riding coat was long in back and cut close in front in the latest style, so his muscular, buckskin-clad thighs could be shown to best advantage. His face was only lightly gilded by the sun now. She ventured down the stairs, half afraid of what she’d find at the bottom.
When she got there, he put two hands around her waist. She caught her breath and looked up into his warm, gray gaze. It was Jared, her Jared. She sighed with relief, her heart warmed. A smile tugged at his lips. He lowered his head; she dared not breathe, but her lips parted. And then he laughed and bent his knees so he could swing her up in the air, the way he’d done when he’d returned from his travels, ever since she’d been a child.
“Della!” he cried exuberantly, holding her a little off the floor so he could see her eye to eye, as she rested her hands on his shoulders. “My own little Della. Welcome! Welcome to my home,” he said with pride.
Then he put her gently down, hugged her hard, kissed her cheek, and took her hand in his.
“Brother,” he said, “Mistress Fiona,” he said in a softer voice, “here’s my dear little Della, who’s been like a sister to me, come all the way from the Colonies to see me.”
Della smiled and curtsied to them, glad of the chance to bow her head for a minute. It seemed that in spite of all her fears and hopes, Jared hadn’t changed at all.
Chapter 8
They were all much too polite. Della wanted to put down her fork and knife and shout at the earl, the man she’d known as Jared, “Where’s Jared? Who are you? What in the world has happened?”
She sat at his table and dined. Dined! But Della longed to laugh, to rejoice with Jared at meeting again, to tell him everything that had happened since he’d left and hear everything that had happened to him. She wanted to be natural and free, the way they used to be—certainly not to be treated like “company,” the way she was now. She desperately needed to look into his eyes and be his Della, and not his “little Della”—or yes, even “little Della,” if she could have her Jared back again in place of this charming, pleasant, happy man who looked more like his brother than her Jared and whom she hardly knew at all. Who was this stranger who greeted her, introduced her to his brother and friends, and then sat down to “dine” with her?
But she was too polite to do more now—too tired, confused, and disappointed, too. And much too proud to cry. Instead, she looked from face to face and hoped she’d pinned a nice smile on her own as she listened to them chatting. She drank her wine every time they refilled her cup, and if they weren’t fast enough, she raised it to get the footman’s attention, But she was too distressed even to get tipsy.
They sat at a long table in a long room with tall windows overlooking the grounds. It was early evening, and dusk was slowly shading everything outside the same shade of gray as Jared’s eyes. He sat at the head of the table, his brother at the foot, and when they grinned across at each other, it was eerie, because they were so alike and unalike, all at once. The beautiful Fiona sat next to her fiancé, but she watched Jared and kept jesting with him to make him smile at her. He did, and often.
But why shouldn’t he? Della thought with growing unease. Fiona Trusham could make any man smile. She was as charming as she was lovely, young, and fresh-faced, with classical features and pansy-brown eyes that were always smiling. Her brows were light, so Della assumed her hair was, too, but whatever color it was, her fashionably curled snow-white wig made her creamy skin glow like a pearl. Her manners were perfect, her voice was low and pleasing, and she laughed at everything the gentlemen said to her. And they had a lot to say. In fact, she made every man at the table feel he had all her attention. She wasn’t mistress of this house or promised to its master anymore, not since Jared had come home, but even so, she queened it there at the foot of the table, as though the foot were the head and she and Justin were lord and lady of the manor. It made Della uncomfortable, but neither Jared nor Justin nor the lady herself seemed to care.
Fiona’s mother, a plump, placid lady with a comfortable smile, sat on the other side of Justin. Her husband, Baron Trusham, a slender, clever-looking man, too well dressed to be the countrified gentleman he claimed to be, sat beside her. He passed his time watching Jared carefully, his mild smile concealing whatever he thought of the man who had taken his prospective son-in-law’s—and so too his daughter’s—place at the head of the table.
The three uncles, whom Della still couldn’t get straight in her mind, ranged round the table. The one beside Della was polite to her, but was more interested in talking to his wife. The other wives, each separated by an uncle, kept talking to each other across the hapless gentlemen throughout the meal. The housekeeper, pressed into service as a dinner guest because otherwise the company made the unlucky number of thirteen, sat across from Della—and no matter how hard anyone tried to talk with her, she knew her place too well to do more than nod. Della sat at J
ared’s side, but because he was host, he said little to her aside from “Try this lamb; it’s delicious.”
So in a sense, she sat alone. Della didn’t feel like eating. She tried to keep her eyes on her plate anyway, so she wouldn’t be caught staring hungrily at Jared, the way she found herself doing when she wasn’t thinking. But Justin saw it. She was sure he did, and she ducked her head when he gave her a sudden understanding smile. His eyes seldom left his brother, though. The few things Della had eaten had stuck in her throat when she thought about that.
After all, the man had been king here. Now he’d been deposed. Della remembered how the English nobility were famous for scratching and clawing their way to power. Stories about clever, ambitious, deadly Tudors and Plantagenets—various Henrys and Edwards and Richards—and then Jared’s own wicked uncle—began to spin in her head. She put down her fork and knife, her appetite completely gone.
Jared sat at the head of the table and surveyed his guests—his guests—in his great house, and his heart swelled. His brother, his uncles, his home—all here, all restored to him at last. Alfred and Della were here now, too, to share in his glory. He’d never felt such contentment, such pride, not in his whole life. He wondered if it was true that a man had to lose what he had before he really appreciated it, or if he’d have been just as happy if he’d never known those years of helpless longing for what he had lost. He doubted it.
One cloud shadowed his happiness. Once again, he wondered what his brother was really thinking. How could he just hand over all of this without pain, resentment, and anger? His expression grew grave as he met his brother’s somber eyes across the long table.
And Della saw it and her heart clenched.
She thought of the Borgias and ambitious brothers and grew colder. Then she saw Jared’s hand on his glass. It was a strong and yet elegant hand, a hand she knew was capable of both hard work and fine letters. She relaxed again. She’d been about to defend Jared from imaginary enemies, but he needed protection the way a tiger needed teeth. Then he laughed at something Fiona said, and she saw the admiration in his eyes as he gazed at the lady at his brother’s side. Della realized there were things other than enemies for her to fear.