by Edith Layton
“Father will be so glad to see you!” Fiona said gaily when they got to her house. And though she didn’t specify whom he’d be so glad to see, it was clear when the baron came out to greet them.
“My lord! I give you good day, Alveston!” he said with pleasure when he took Jared’s hand. “Oh, hello, Justin,” he added when he saw whom Della was with. He absently sketched a bow to Della, but never took his eyes from Jared as he did. “I’ve something to show you, my lord,” he told Jared.
“Alveston will do,” Jared said curtly, because he was so aware of Justin, silent, at his side. He was uneasy with the way the baron so quickly accepted his new title and so casually renamed the man who would soon be his son-in-law. “I have always been Alveston,” Jared went on, drawing himself up to his full, imposing height, “but the ’my lord’ still doesn’t sound right to me.”
“You’ll soon get used to it,” Fiona’s father said. “But wait until you see what I unearthed for you! Letters from your mother. Notes from your father. And a miniature of them both. We grew up together, you know. Justin has seen them, but I’ll wager you never have.”
Jared’s eyes widened. He hadn’t seen his parents’ faces in over twenty years. They’d had their portraits painted as infants; he’d seen the painting in the gallery at Hawkstone. But they’d not lived long enough to have them done as adults—or so he’d thought. He held them in his mind’s eye only: his father, tall as a tree, with deep gray eyes; his mother, fair and blue-eyed and always smiling. He remembered the sound and smell and feel of them much better.
“I’d like to see the pictures,” he said eagerly, all haughtiness forgotten.
“They don’t look much like our parents,” Justin commented. “They are just beautifully colored paintings. They could be of anyone.”
But Jared wasn’t listening as the baron led him into his library.
*
“Do you think he minds?” Della asked nervously, as they walked back through evening shadows.
Justin didn’t answer right away, and so she knew Justin thought that Jared not only didn’t mind, but that he probably didn’t even notice they’d left.
“He has other things to occupy him,” Justin said carefully.
She could only nod. She knew it wasn’t only the papers and pictures Fiona’s father had to show Jared that Justin was talking about. Fiona had been hanging on Jared’s arm even as he’d looked down at the two tiny, brightly colored insipid portraits that were supposed to be of his parents. Justin was right; they were nothing like any real people Della had ever seen. But she understood why Jared stared at them so long and held them like holy objects—for Fiona to see. Fiona had even shared that with him, Della thought numbly, resenting every scrap of Jared’s past that she was being locked out of.
“This all may pass,” Justin said as they went up the stairs to what had been his townhouse and was now his brother’s. He didn’t say more as the footman opened the door and let them in. In fact, he didn’t speak again until he and Della were alone in the drawing room. Then he paced as restlessly as his brother usually did. That was one of the major differences between them, Della noted bemusedly: Jared was the one who was always tense—even when he stood still, he seemed filled with nervous energy. Justin always appeared calm and composed. Until tonight.
“But it may not pass. Or will it? You’d know better than I,” Justin said, stopping to look at her.
She didn’t pretend to misunderstand. It seemed they had come to some kind of unspoken alliance. She owed him better than coyly pretending ignorance of what he was talking about. Besides, she wanted to know the truth for herself, and he could help.
“I don’t know,” she told him honestly. “I never saw him like this. He was very infatuated with Sarah Pope when he was sixteen. All the boys were. But I’d never say he was in love with her; he teased her more than flattered her, and turned red when I jollied him about his interest in her. This—this fascination—I don’t know. He never discussed such things with me. I didn’t know the other women he visited in town, or at least I never saw him with them,” she added scrupulously. “So I don’t know what this is, or if it will pass.”
“Nor I. It appears I know very little of love or of my intended bride,” Justin said with a strange laugh. “As for my brother, I know the boy he once was, but too many years have passed since then. The boy I knew was perceptive and sensitive, as well as bold and responsible. Only a year older than I, but my superior in every way. Or so I thought then. I wanted nothing more than to be like him.
When I lost him—through his saving me—I knew I could never measure up to what had been lost. Now, I don’t think that I know him at all. All I do know is that he still inspires hero worship, doesn’t he?”
“It’s more than that!” Della cried. “He’s still sensitive and responsible and perceptive and whatever else it was you said he was. All of it. It’s just that a man can’t help whom he falls in love with. I’m as sorry I had to say it as I am that it’s true, but I had to, and I’m glad I did,” she said all in a jumble.
“Della,” Justin said quickly, coming up to her. “Della,” he said sadly, taking her hand in one of his and putting his other alongside her flushed cheek. “No, don’t look away. Everyone doesn’t see it—really. I do, but only because I’m watching Fiona as closely as you watch him. There’s nothing wrong with what you feel. He is an admirable man. And you’re right, it’s not his fault.”
“It must be awful for you,” Della said straight out, before she could think better of it. She saw the infinite sadness in his eyes, which made her realize that she’d been too full of her own misery to see his. “I mean, to lose the woman you love to the man who’s already taken everything else from you…”
“Everything else was his to begin with,” he told her, just as he’d told himself so many times, “even the lady. And I’m not sure I’ve lost her. But if I have, I’m not at all sure it’s such a terrible thing,” he said with a sad smile. “We took each other for granted for so long that we stopped truly seeing each other. Now I wonder if that was a good way to start out a lifetime together—as though we’d already spent one together. I don’t think so, not if we didn’t want a marriage a la mode, that is. And I never did.
“Sometimes blessings come in the disguise of disaster,” he said, thinking aloud. He still cradled her face in his hand, but his thumb now caressed the line of her jaw. “I have my brother back, after all. I’m not landless or penniless, and what I have now was always rightfully mine. And certainly, if the woman I wanted to marry doesn’t want me, it’s no bad thing not to marry her. There are other women in the world. It’s just that I never took the time to look at them carefully,” he said, gazing into her dark-blue eyes, looking at her flawless skin and pink mouth, studying every nuance of expression on her upturned face.
She stood very still, listening more to his voice than his words. Fiona was right. His voice was like Jared’s, but the accent was different. If she closed her eyes, she would never mistake his voice for Jared’s, but it sounded so much like him that it struck her to the heart. It was as if she knew this man very well, and yet not at all. She opened her eyes and saw his solemn ones watching her. His face too was very like and yet altogether not like Jared’s. It made her feel good and bad and lost and found, all together.
His hair had been growing longer during her stay in England, and he wore it without powder now, like his brother. But his long eyes were a clear light blue, not foggy gray; his skin was not as sun-bitten as his brother’s, but just as clear and fine. She noticed he had a faint, long, thin scar on his forehead that ran into his eyebrow, and she wondered how such a fine gentleman had ever gotten hurt. But his eyes told her he could feel hurt, and did. They told her something else too as they considered her. She looked down hastily to his firm mouth, and saw that his lips were a little less full than his brother’s, but well shaped, and much, much more close to her own than they had been a moment before. She wondered if they wou
ld feel like Jared’s—and then realized she didn’t know what Jared’s kiss was like, beyond a brotherly touch. She also realized she was thinking a strange and dangerous thing. She stepped back, suddenly alarmed and ashamed.
He gazed at her, his face impassive, unreadable, but his long fingers brushed an inky curl back from her brow. “No,” he said softly, “I am not he. And I am not thinking about consoling myself now, either. Or you. Nor do I believe you are my sister. Not for a minute. I think we both must begin to think about that.”
She nodded because she didn’t know what else to do. But it seemed to please him, and he took her hand, kissed it gently, then bowed and left her there, standing, staring after him, not knowing what to think or say.
There were voices in the hall after he’d left her, but she hardly heard them, so intently was she listening to the ones in her own head.
“Back already, I see,” her father said briskly as he came into the room, taking off his gloves. “I met Justin as he was leaving; Jared not back yet? Just as well, just as well. I needed to talk with you alone, puss. Speaking of brothers, remember mine?”
“Your brothers?” she asked, getting her jumbled thoughts in order again, delighted to be diverted by the question. “Terrible Terrence? Dreadful David and Monstrous Martin?” She laughed. “Of course. I loved the story about them; it was like a fairy tale. I loved hearing about how they got their comeuppance. They were cruel to you because they’d inherited and you hadn’t. They wouldn’t share or help you when Mama died. And then they were mad as fire when you went to the Colonies and wound up richer than any of them—so mad that they never wrote to you again. Those brothers?”
“Well, yes,” he said, uneasily.
“What of them?” She gasped. “Don’t tell me you ran into one of them!”
“Well, no,” he said, avoiding her eyes, “it’s just that—well, I’ve a notion to see them.”
“What?”
“Actually, I wrote to them, from here. And now they want to see me again.”
“What?” she asked again, amazed. “Why? After all these years? Do they want to see you, too? Don’t trust them,” she said indignantly. “They probably only want money from you, because you know how to make it and they only knew how to take it.”
“I know,” he said, in a strangely quiet tone, “but even so, I want to see them again. Jared’s not the only one to miss his family and want to visit his birthplace again. All people do, sometime; I think, whether their family’s worthy or not. I know very well what my brothers are, but I confess I have this strange desire to see it for myself again, so I’m going north to visit them.”
She looked at her father as she had not for years. Although he was heavier than he’d been when she’d been young, he was straight and well proportioned, and still had his hair and his charming smile. He’d never remarried, but she knew he had a “special friend,” a widow in town he visited now and then. But now, seeing how uncomfortable he was with whatever emotion he was suppressing, she saw him as a man separate from her father, and suddenly realized he might have missed much more than his wife all those years of her childhood.
Although she’d joked about it, it was terrible thinking about how his family had treated him. It was worse to think about how they might try to take advantage of him now. But because his first thoughts had always been of her, how could she argue with him about his wishes now? If he felt the need of his family, then it was cruel of her to point out how selfish they’d been.
“They’re very influential up there, have been there for generations,” he went on, with a note of false good humor that her ears picked up. “They all have huge families. You have tons of cousins, puss. Some are your age, some a bit older—men and women. Lots of gay times there, I suspect. Lots of young men friends hanging about the place, too, no doubt.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“To be brief, what do you say you come up north with me now, puss, eh?”
“Father, I—” she began to say.
He interrupted, saying gruffly, “Aye, I think it’s a good time for you to go, lass. Leave here with a smile and a wave of farewell, and come with me. Leave a good impression at least. Don’t see what else you can do. And I can’t bear to see you hurt anymore, either, and there’s the truth of it.”
“Oh!” she said, her breath leaving her. She wondered if he had heard anything from the hallway, or if he was just talking about everything he’d seen in all the days before. As brave as she was, it was a thing she didn’t dare ask him.
Chapter 13
Her eyes opened so wide at what he’d said, Alfred thought she looked like the child she’d been rather than the fashionable young woman she was now.
“But—I thought you taught me never to run away,” she managed to say.
“I?” he asked. “Nonsense. Where did you get such a foolish idea? Not from me. There’s no better answer for some problems than to run away from them. What do you think I was doing when I took you and your brother across an ocean into the wilderness? I was running away. Aye, and think—there wouldn’t be anyone but Indians in all the Colonies now if people didn’t run away from their problems. Who do you think is settling the place? Contented people? No, people who have run out of answers, that’s who. People who are wise enough to run away and start over again—as I believe you should.”
She looked at him with such wild sorrow in her deep blue eyes that he felt his heart turn over. She no longer reminded him of her mother, though she was her image. She reminded him of himself and everything he held dear. He folded her into his arms. It was easier to say what he had to without looking at her, so he rested his chin atop her head of curly hair and spoke softly, staring at the wall, the windows, anywhere but at the girl he held so tenderly.
“I’m sorry for what I had to say, my honey, but glad I’ve said it. You’re the eyes in my head and the beat of my heart and have been since the day you were born. That I never said it so plainly before doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it. I can’t bear to see you unhappy, and that’s the truth.” He stroked her silky curls and sighed. “I suppose going up north is my way of running again, but it worked last time and might again. I want to take you with me.”
“But Jared…” she said.
He sighed more heavily. “Aye, Jared. That’s the crux of it—Jared. I love the lad, too. Dearly. He’s everything a man could want in a son. It was almost like the Lord sent me another after he took my only one. I confess, I had the same hopes you did. But now? He’s acting like he’s found the girl for him, and that’s the truth with no bark on it.”
He felt her stiffen, and he went on sadly, “I can’t say for sure that he has, or if he really knows himself yet, either. But he’s interested, and that’s a fact. And she and that father of hers are getting less interested in his brother by the hour. As for Jared, he’s flattered, and why not? The way I see it, she’s everything he feels they took from him, along with his childhood and the life he was supposed to lead. I can’t say she’s good for him, and that’s not just because I believe you’d be the best thing for any man anywhere on this old earth. She’s so young in ways—and flighty. Pretty, and pretty manners, too, it’s true, but too full of herself in that prettiness, with not a thought in her head for anything but frippery. But maybe that’s what he wants and needs after the life he’s led. Maybe he wants nothing from a woman but laughter and silliness now, to make him forget.
“He’s had a terrible life, Della. We tried to make it up to him, but no one could. He deserves the best, but he has to choose what that is.”
“And you think that won’t be me?” she asked, too wise and too sad now to bother to deny the truth anymore.
“I don’t know,” he confessed, “and I can’t stand to think of how you’ll feel if it is to be her, after all. Being here with him while he decides isn’t going to make any difference. Maybe he’ll even miss you more when you’re gone—but no, that’s not likely, and I shouldn’t try to sell you a fish story,” he admi
tted. “Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder; were that so, then every sailor would come home to marry his sweetheart, wouldn’t he? I don’t want to see you hurt. So why not come north with me?”
He stepped back and lifted her chin with one hand. His eyes were candid as he studied her face. “That bit about my missing the old place, why there really is truth in that,” he said. “I would like to see it again. That, and all the people, too, just one last time. And I want you happy. So, two birds with one stone. What do you say?”
“I don’t know.”
“Time for plain pound dealing,” he said roughly. “Is it the brother? Justin?” She averted her eyes as color flew to her cheeks. “A nice likely lad, to be sure,” he said, nodding, “but I don’t know if you see that—or just the resemblance to Jared. That isn’t fair, child.”
“I know. Don’t worry about that—that I do know. But Papa, I don’t think I do want to go away just yet. It’s like—like watching someone you love die, I guess,” she said with a quavering smile. “You have to see the thing out so you can go on with the rest of your life without pretending. There has to be an ending, and I must see it for myself. Can you understand that?”
He nodded.
“And so if it hurts, why then, it does. It’s not like I have no one waiting for me at home,” she said with a jaunty show of bravado that just about broke his heart. “You remember I told you about Jack Kelly? Don’t make such a face; he’s not just a sailor. His father owns the whole shipyard. And there are other men—it’s just that I’ve never been able to see them for Jared. But maybe once I know it’s over, well and truly and forever, I’ll be able to see them. Do you think that could be so?”
She asked him hopefully, and he could give her no less than his own hope for an answer. “Aye, it could be,” he said. “And it might be so,” he said with more energy as he thought about it. “You’re as strong as you can be, child. It may well be so,” he said with growing enthusiasm. “I suppose I’ll cancel the trip north.”