by Martha Keyes
No, he wasn’t. Why did he have to remind himself that he was unattached, even two years later?
The irony of being offered a match with the cousin of the woman who had jilted him was not lost upon him. Solomon had only met Deborah Lanaway twice, but what he knew of her was harmless enough. She wasn’t Mercy Marcotte, by any means, but—he clenched his jaw—Mercy Marcotte had clearly not been the right choice. He was looking for someone different from Mercy, not someone as similar to her as possible.
If he kept reminding himself of that fact, he was sure it would settle in soon enough.
“Eh, Kennett?” Mr. Lanaway’s voice broke in on Solomon’s thoughts.
He nodded, hoping that he was agreeing to something he wished to agree to. “What are your daughter’s sentiments on the subject?”
Mr. Lanaway waved a dismissive hand. “Agreeable, very agreeable to it.”
Solomon ran a finger along the brim of his hat. “It is a very interesting prospect, Mr. Lanaway. I hope you understand when I say that I shall need a few days to consider it.”
“Of course, of course. I am for home today, so send me word at Westwood when you’ve come to a decision.”
Mr. Lanaway said it as flippantly as if Solomon was simply debating whether to have his coat made by Weston or Stultz.
This was no small decision.
It was nearly dusk as Solomon and John opened the door of White’s and descended the steps to the outside world.
“So what did Lanaway want?” John asked, climbing into the chaise.
Solomon followed him, grateful that the task of getting into the carriage gave him a moment’s delay. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to tell John everything Mr. Lanaway had said—and suggested. But such a large, far-reaching decision required more consideration than Solomon felt his own mind capable of alone.
Solomon took his seat, setting his hat beside him and removing his gloves. He ran a hand through his hair, which he found to be peculiarly dry. He was used to his hand coming away damp in the humid heat of Jamaica. “He wishes to join forces. In more ways than one.”
John frowned, inspecting his own hat, which was showing signs of wear. “Meaning?”
Solomon cleared his throat. “He wishes for me to marry his daughter.”
John’s brows shot up. “Oh. Well that’s certainly something.” His brows knit together again. “Is it Deborah? Is she not cousins with—”
“Yes,” Solomon said, cutting him off. It had been two years since he had heard her name aloud, and for some reason, he didn’t think he could bear it at the moment. He hardly needed her clouding his mind on such a big decision. “But I hardly think that fact has any bearing on the matter.”
John scoffed. “What? Marrying the cousin—and dearest friend, mind you—of the girl you were once engaged to? The girl you once loved?”
“Once,” Solomon said. “That is the key word, John.”
“Is it?” He looked at Solomon with a twinkle. “Saying it doesn’t make it so, brother.”
Solomon clamped his jaw shut. John had a way of poking through façades that was useful and admirable—until he used his powers to poke through Solomon’s. Then it was just aggravating.
“And yet, it is in the past.” Solomon smiled through clenched teeth, hoping John would take the warning and change the subject.
John folded his arms across his chest. “You are telling me that, if Mercy Marcotte appeared in this carriage with us right now, you would be entirely apathetic to her presence?”
Solomon scoffed. “On the contrary, I would find it completely unnerving and incredible if any person appeared out of nowhere. But you mistake things, John. I have no love for Mercy Marcotte. Far from it.” He had worked hard to rid himself of any shred of affection for her after all.
John lifted the window shade and peered out of the chaise. “Love and hate are two sides of one coin,” he said absently. Smiling at whatever he saw on the street, he dropped the shade and settled back into the seat.
“That may well be true,” Solomon said, “but I never said I hated her.” He shifted in his seat. “I am merely indifferent.” It was more of a hope than a reality, but John needn’t know such a trifling detail. Solomon was determined to act rationally. It wasn’t love that had seen him through the grueling work required to make a fortune out of almost nothing at all.
John shot him a knowing smile.
“Have done, John,” Solomon said. “It is all in the past. Everything is different now. I am different now.”
“And thank heaven for that!” John teased. His smile faded slightly, and he twiddled his thumbs in his lap. “Listen, Sol. You’ve done a great deal over the past two years, and heaven knows I’m proud of you. We all are. I don’t know where we would be without you.” He looked up and caught Solomon’s gaze. “Just make certain that you’re not letting what happened in the past determine your future. You have nothing to prove to anyone.” He threw his hat across the carriage so that it landed in Solomon’s lap. “And, for heaven’s sake, don’t marry Miss Lanaway without being certain that it’s what you truly wish.”
Solomon gave a dry chuckle and threw the hat back to John, who caught it deftly, then laid his head back on the squabs.
Once he knew that his brother’s eyes were closed, Solomon’s smile faded. It was easy for John to say he had nothing to prove to anyone—to forget the past. It hadn’t been his heart that was crushed nor his word that was doubted and dismissed. It wasn’t something one simply forgot.
And since Solomon hadn’t been able to forget it, he had done the next best thing: used it as motivation.
And it had worked very well. In just two years, he had accomplished what people told him he would never be able to do.
And now? He certainly wasn’t going to walk back to Mercy and beg her to reconsider his suit. No, he would not take love for his guide this time. Reason was the only thing he could trust. And there were many reasons for a match with Miss Lanaway.
The fact that she was Mercy’s cousin was not ideal. And yet, in some ways, the prospect of Mercy seeing his success, watching him marry someone as courted as her cousin was...Well, he couldn’t deny that there was some triumph in it.
That feeling—for he imagined it would be but fleeting—was certainly not enough to justify such a large decision, but there were plenty of other reasons for the match. And those were the only reasons that mattered.
Chapter Three
Mercy Marcotte stepped into the morning room of Westwood Hall, where the light of the late summer morning poured in through the two east-facing windows. Except for the hushed movements of the servants preparing for the day, the house was still quiet, and it would be some time before breakfast was laid out.
The peaceful morning room was hardly the scene of distraction Mercy might be wishing for, but certainly there were more things to occupy her there than there had been lying abed—and she would settle for any distraction, however small.
Her eyes traveled to a book sitting upon the chair, two dried flowers marking a place three-quarters of the way to the end.
She smiled softly. Her cousin Viola had set it there before retiring to bed. She often did that—ensuring that the next day’s reading was immediately ready for her upon coming downstairs. Mercy was only surprised she hadn’t taken the book to bed with her.
She reached for it, letting it fall open to the bookmarked spot. Two dried daffodils stared back at her, their bright yellow color faded so that they almost blended with the pages behind.
Lifting the dry stems, she let her eyes travel over a few of the words: “...naught but a kiss upon thy rosy lips can calm the tempest—”
“Please tell me Viola isn’t turning you into a romantic.”
Mercy closed the book and smiled up at her cousin Edith Donne, feeling only the slightest blush creep into her cheeks. Edith’s brown eyes watched Mercy with amusement.
“You are awake earlier than usual,” Mercy said as Edith walked over and took t
he book from her hands.
“I am always awake with the sun. I simply choose not to come down before breakfast.” She turned the book in her hands to read the print on the binding and then flipped through the pages, pausing for a few seconds to scan a line or two.
She raised a single brow at Mercy, smiling. “Does this appeal to you?”
Mercy grinned. “You would never think of me the same if I said yes, would you?”
Edith laughed and shrugged as she handed the book back to Mercy. “I simply never took you for the fanciful dreamer.”
“And you were correct in your assessment.”
A sharp intake of breath sounded, and both Mercy and Edith whipped their heads around to the source.
Viola stood at the door, her mouth parted in surprise and her eyes wide as they traveled from Mercy to the book in her hand and back. Viola’s light brown hair, curled and piled atop her head, was streaked with black—evidence of a failed attempt to darken it the day before. “Have you begun to read it, then?”
Mercy set the book down firmly on the chair. “For heaven’s sake! Might a woman not hold a book in her hand without everyone getting all manner of ideas?”
Edith chuckled and reached for one of the publications from the basket, taking it with her to one of the small chairs in the room. “Viola would very much like for us all to read it, no doubt. Or, even better, for us to act as absurdly as the characters in Miss Pickering’s play.” She indicated the book with her head.
Viola strode over and took the book up in her hands, holding it against her chest as if to protect it against Edith’s mocking. “Every woman should be the heroine of her own romance, shouldn’t she?”
“Oh, Vi,” Edith said on a grand sigh, “I shan’t try to dissuade you from such a view, but at least tell me this: why must every woman’s play be a romance? Why not a comedy? Or a history?”
“Or a tragedy?” Mercy offered with a teasing smile. On days like today, her own play felt more like a tragedy than a romance—and one of her own making.
She pushed aside such overly dramatic thoughts. She had clearly been spending too much time with Viola. In the year since Viola had come to live with the Marcottes—a decision made very reluctantly by Mercy’s parents after the death of Uncle George—Mercy had come to look on her much like a sister, different as they were. Viola did everything with her entire soul, and she never dwelled on the adversity life had brought upon her.
“Why would any woman wish for her play to be anything but a romance?” Viola asked. “Love is the most powerful force upon the earth, Edith!” She held out the book in front of her to survey it. “And thanks to Miss Pickering and others like her, we better understand that power.” She sighed and dropped into a chair, staring at the book with admiring eyes. “What kind of woman must she be to have such insight into the human heart?”
Edith shot a significant glance at Mercy, as if they might bond over the oddity of Viola.
But Mercy couldn’t help smiling. She had a soft spot for Viola’s romantics. Certainly the girl deserved a bit of fairy tale in her life after her humble and strict beginnings. Mercy had hope that, with time, the odd little kick in Viola’s gallop would disappear, and her turn for the romantic would abate to healthier levels.
“Who knows?” Edith didn’t take her eyes from the publication in front of her. “Miss Pinkerton, or whatever her name is, may well be a decrepit, old maid who never ventures from her small flat in Harrogate except to drink the waters and send chastising glances at passing young couples.” There was a pause, and Mercy watched Edith’s mouth tremble at the corner mischievously. “Or perhaps she is not even a woman at all, but a man.”
Viola’s eyes widened, her hand over her heart. “Surely not!” She opened the book to her saved place and narrowed her eyes, skimming the page. She shook her head. “I refuse to believe that a man is capable of writing such a perfectly feminine perspective! Or an old, angry spinster, for that matter.”
Mercy had no doubt that, in Viola’s mind, the author was a young, dark-featured woman—for Viola admired nothing more than dark features—confined in the dungeon of a medieval abbey, writing in secret by flickering candlelight.
“Why not a man?” Mercy asked. “You quote no one more than Shakespeare. And you are a lover of Byron, are you not?”
Viola conceded this with a reluctant nod.
Mercy shrugged, picking up a collection of fashion plates from the basket. “Well, if a limping rake may illuminate the subject of love and move you to admiration, then why not an old maid? We certainly cannot know what the human heart has experienced from merely looking at a person.”
Edith looked up briefly from the page of The Quarterly Review she was reading, but Mercy avoided her gaze. For someone as closed off to love and romance as Edith was, she could be aggravatingly perceptive at times.
“You see?” Viola’s head tilted to the side. “You are a romantic, Mercy!” She glanced at Edith, and her chin tipped up. “And I am convinced that you are, too, Edith. Deep down. And someday you shall be swept away by the force of love, entirely under its power!”
Edith snorted, and Mercy stepped in before she could say something cutting. “Surely one needn’t be swept away to experience love.”
“No,” Viola replied, pursing her lips in thought. “I suppose only the deepest love has such power.”
Mercy hesitated for a moment. “I think, Vi, that you must take care not to mistake grand gestures in the name of love for love itself. At the risk of blaspheming a story I know you consider nearly sacred, take Romeo and Juliet. Their love was certainly acute—”
“Calf-love, more like,” Edith interjected.
“—but”—Mercy pointedly ignored the interjection—“their grand gestures deprived them of one another and put an end to the love itself.” She resisted the impulse to shift in her chair. “Some love is quiet and steady rather than brash and loud.”
Viola was silent. She finally looked up at Mercy. “I see what you mean. But I think that the lesson from Romeo and Juliet—may they rest in peace—is that we must all, at some point, choose whether we will sacrifice for love and be brave enough to act, be the consequences what they may.”
Mercy felt her hands gripping the compilation of fashion plates too tightly, and she forced them to relax.
She couldn’t change the past. How many times would she say those words to herself before she believed them?
She managed a smile at Viola and took a seat on the floor in front of her, resting her back against the leg of the wingback chair and opening the fashion plates. She hoped they might distract her from thoughts she had no desire to reexamine for the thousandth time.
The door opened, and Uncle Richard stepped in. “Ah, there you are, Mercy.” He approached her with unaccustomed energy in his step and a letter in hand.
“What is it, Uncle?” She laid the papers down beside her and looked at him expectantly.
He flipped out his coattails and sat on the settee across from Viola and Mercy, placing the letter beside him. “I have just received some correspondence and wished to thank you.”
Mercy raised her brows. “Thank me?”
“Yes!” The light in his eyes gleamed more brightly. “For keeping my Deborah in line, you know. I can only imagine what mischief she would have got up to by now if not for your steady influence upon her.”
Mercy shifted her legs and attempted a smile, trying not to think of the clandestine correspondence she knew Deborah to be determinedly carrying on with her secret beau. Not all of Mercy’s reasoning had swayed Deborah this time.
“It has all paid off, though—your efforts, I mean.” He sighed contentedly and leaned back. “And I think that Kennett at least shall be able to govern her with a steady hand.”
Mercy stiffened, her hands clutching at her dress. “Kennett?” Her voice cracked as she said the name, and she cleared her throat. “Solomon Kennett?”
Viola’s book came down slightly, as did Edith’s m
agazine, the eyes of both young women trained upon their uncle.
He nodded, reading over some of the lines of the letter with a smile upon his face. “Yes. One and the same. Home from the West Indies, rich as a nabob, and agreed to marry my Deborah.” There was no mistaking the victory in his voice.
Viola lowered her book all the way to her lap as Mercy put a hand to her stomach, as if that might quell the storm brewing inside. Her head swam, and she blinked forcefully to anchor herself.
Uncle Richard looked at her in concern. “Are you quite all right, my dear?”
She managed a smile. “Yes, of course.”
His eyes narrowed, as if searching for some elusive memory. “You and Kennett had some connection or other at one time, didn’t you?”
Some connection or other.
Mercy avoided her cousins’ eyes, but she could feel them boring into her. Edith and Viola knew the strength of the connection—or at least they knew it had been an actual engagement.
She tried to wave away her uncle’s words. “A piece of history hardly relevant anymore.”
He chuckled. “Very well. If you don’t regard it, I certainly shan’t. I imagine there have been plenty such short-lived connections since then, eh?” He wagged his brows playfully.
“An overabundance.” Mercy gave a little laugh, though the words were anything but humorous to her. She had tried—oh, but she had tried—to forge something other than what Uncle Richard termed a “short-term connection.” But every time, her heart had balked, refusing to let things move forward—not with Mr. Myers, not with Mr. Norwood, and finally, not even with Lord Nichols. She had finally given up trying, realizing what she had resisted admitting all along: what she and Solomon had together was unique, just as he had told her that fateful day under the willow tree.
Her fists still clutched at her skirts, white-knuckled, but she feared that to loosen her grip would only betray the way her hands trembled.
Her uncle reached toward her and patted her cheek playfully. “You at least can be trusted not to take some light-hearted flirtation seriously. But Deborah”—he shot Mercy a look full of meaning and waved the letter he held. “Ah well, Kennett has a steady hand. I have great hopes that it will quell her regrettable tendency toward flightiness.”