Second Chance Love: A Regency Romance Set

by Wendy Lacapra

  “I consider myself a connoisseur,” Carstairs said. “And you, Kendrick. What is your occupation?”

  The question reminded Adam that he had not fully thought out this masquerade as a gentleman. As a viscount, he had no one occupation, but rather many, overseeing several estates and business ventures. Best to choose one. He turned once more to Carstairs. “I’m in shipping.”

  “Indeed? I own several ships myself. It can be quite a profitable business.” Carstairs helped himself to mullet in cardinal sauce. “Of course, the tariffs eat up so much of the profit.”

  Adam saw an opening. “I suppose that accounts for the popularity of smugglers.”

  At his elbow, Miss Freed made a choking sound. “Are you all right?” Clarissa asked, half rising from her chair.

  “F…fine.” Miss Freed gulped wine. “Please, forgive me for interrupting.”

  “Do I hear contempt in your voice when you talk of smugglers?” Carstairs asked.

  “You do not call it contemptible when a man circumvents the law for his own gain?’ Adam asked.

  “But not for his gain alone,” Carstairs said. “Many people benefit from the lower prices these free traders are able to offer for their goods. I submit that their very existence is proof that taxes are too high.”

  “Perhaps taxes are so high because so many people avoid paying them,” Adam said. It was an old argument, one his own father had made. “Those of us on the right side of the law then must pay more than our share.”

  “Please, gentlemen. If you want to debate the tax acts, do so over your port,” Clarissa scolded. “Let us find a more pleasant topic of conversation for the dinner table.”

  “Very well.” Carstairs smiled at her. “I’m thinking of giving a ball next month.”

  “Is there some occasion?” Clarissa asked.

  “Next month marks the twentieth year since I assumed the baronetcy.” He raised his glass in a silent toast. “And twenty years that I have known you.”

  She looked away, though Adam could not tell if her expression was one of embarrassment or displeasure.

  After lamb cutlets, roast venison, and peas and asparagus, they finished with crème Anglais. Then the women retired to the sitting room, and the footman brought a bottle of port on a tray. “If you appreciated the wine, you’ll like this,” Carstairs said, handing him a glass.

  Adam had a good idea how Carstairs had acquired his excellent wines. “Another gift to Lady Delaware?” he asked.

  Carstairs smiled and held his glass to the light. “A beautiful woman deserves many gifts, don’t you agree?”

  The liquor held a smooth heat going down. “Doesn’t her husband object?”

  Carstairs shook his head. “Lord Delaware has been out of the picture for some time now.”

  “Oh?” Adam pretended surprise. “Where did he go?”

  “The continent, I expect. Maybe even the colonies. Far away from here.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Had the tradesmen on his heels. You know the story.” Carstairs waved his hand dismissively. “Gambling, poor business judgment. He bankrupted and then it was either the public shame of crippling debt or flee. Lady Delaware was able to remain on this estate because it is her family seat. In truth, the property belongs to her elder brother, the current Lord Waverley, but he prefers life in town and allows her to live here as long as she is responsible for its upkeep. She does so by taking in guests such as yourself.”

  Adam set aside his glass. He had no more stomach for Carstairs’ contraband. “What kind of man would leave a wife and children to clean up his mistakes?”

  Carstairs’ laughter was coarse. “Delaware was a gentleman by title only. I say she is well shed of him.”

  Adam frowned, remembering the words of the letter. How could a woman love a man who would treat her so shabbily? And how could a man abandon a woman who gave herself to him so completely? “So she takes in lodgers out of necessity?” he asked.

  “That, and she has a kind heart. She wants to help people.” Carstairs saluted Adam with his glass. “People like you.”

  Adam looked away. He wanted no help from Clarissa Delaware or anyone else. He wanted only to find Devon and persuade him to return home to the ordered life they had led before.

  “I believe if you were free to marry, Lord Carstairs would surely offer for you,” Emma said when she and Clarissa had retired to the drawing room.

  “I have no interest in marrying Lord Carstairs.” Clarissa took her customary place by the fire and picked up her needlework.

  “But why not? He’s not a bad looking man, and he’s terribly wealthy.” Emma sat across from Clarissa and pulled her tambour frame close. “I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway, since you’re still married to Lord Delaware. But you could always become Carstairs’ mistress.”

  Clarissa’s thread snarled and she looked up, startled. “Emma! How can you suggest such a thing?”

  Emma shrugged. “It’s not as if you’re a young girl who must keep herself pure for marriage. You’re an experienced woman. Don’t you miss being with a man?”

  Heat washed over Clarissa’s face. She turned to stare into the fire. “Of course I do. Sometimes.” Some nights she lay awake, aching for the strength of a man’s arms around her, longing for the dimly remembered ecstasy she had once enjoyed. But what respectable man would want her now, when she’d given so much of herself to Jared, only to have her gift discarded like this morning’s breakfast leavings? She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what I want, Emma. I have two children to look after. And a reputation to guard for their sake, if nothing else.”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t be discrete.”

  “There is no such thing as a secret in a house full of people.” She picked up her needlework once more and tried to concentrate on the stitches. “Everyone always knowns what everyone else is up to.”

  Emma laughed. “Do you think so? I imagine there are all sorts of things going on within these walls that you know nothing about. But then, you were always the most trusting woman I knew.”

  Trusting. The word had a bitter taint these days. She had trusted Jared with her heart, and almost lost her soul in the process. She drew a deep breath, driving back the dark thoughts. She was done with bitterness. There was no profit in it.

  The door opened, admitting the men. They filled the quiet drawing room with the scents of leather and port, and a vitality absent when the room was occupied only by women.

  “Clarissa, will you play for us?” Carstairs asked. “Miss Freed can turn the pages.”

  “Pray forgive me, my lord,” Emma said. “I have been on my feet all day, chasing after the children. Perhaps Mr. Kendrick would like to turn.”

  Clarissa reluctantly took her place at the pianoforte and Kendrick came to stand beside her. The same feeling she had had upon their first meeting swept over her again – a sense of his overwhelming strength, and an awareness of her own vulnerability.

  She chose a stately polonaise and began to play. His coat brushed her arm as he leaned over to turn the pages and she shrank away. “Do I make you nervous?” he asked. His voice was a tiger’s purr, low and sensuous. “I do not mean to.”

  “Of course not.” She winced as her fingers stumbled on the keys, and hurried to find the right notes. “I’m merely tired tonight.”

  “Overseeing this house and your guests keeps you busy.”

  She nodded. “But I prefer that to idleness.” Idle moments left too much time for brooding.

  “I met your children this afternoon,” he said.

  She stopped playing and stared at him. “Where did you meet them?”

  He indicated a point on the page. “I believe you were here.”

  She glanced across the room, but Carstairs and Emma had not noticed the interruption. They were seated across from one another, engaged in conversation.

  She resumed playing and Kendrick spoke again, his voice soft, intimate. “They came to my room. I suspect they were c
urious to meet me.”

  “They should not have done that,” she said “I’m very sorry they disturbed you.”

  “Don’t scold them. I haven’t been around children much, but they seemed quite charming.”

  She couldn’t keep back a smile. “Every mother likes to hear compliments about her children.”

  “You’ve done well with them. It must not have been easy for you, without your husband here to help.”

  This time her hands did not betray her. It was just as she had told Emma: there were no secrets within a household. “So you have heard about him already?”

  “Carstairs mentioned he left you some years ago. And you have not heard anything of him since?”

  She shook her head, hands crashing down on the notes. In the early days, when she had thought their separation only temporary, she had written to him. She blushed to remember those letters now. But they had gone unanswered, and after a few months, most of her missives were returned unopened, with the notation that the person to whom they were addressed no longer resided at that address. “I have not heard from him,” she said. “Nor do I care to.”

  Kendrick winced. A mere momentary tightening of his features, but she noticed and seized the opportunity to change the subject. “Does your head still pain you?” she asked.

  “Some.”

  “How long have you suffered from these headaches?”

  He hesitated, then said, “I was twenty, and I am forty-one now.’

  “What does your physician say about them?”

  He straightened, drawing away from her. “I have no use for physicians.”

  He walked away. She continued to play, but watched him through the veil of her lashes. Was he a spy, as Emma suspected? Why else had he asked all those questions about Jared?

  Or did he have a more personal reason for asking? Was this a subtle way of learning if she was available? He wouldn’t be the first man to proposition her. In addition to Carstairs, there had been others, men who thought a married woman whose husband had conveniently vanished would make the ideal mistress.

  He stood by the window now, looking out. What could he see in the darkened glass but his own reflection? Or did he see anything at all? Was his gaze turned inward, as hers often was, a trait of all who spent too much time in solitude?

  She turned her attention once more to the pianoforte, but her hands felt awkward on the keys. Tonight music offered no solace for her jangled nerves. Why had Adam Kendrick come to Waverley House? And why did the feeling persist that he wanted something from her? Something she was not prepared to give.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When Adam came downstairs the next morning, the breakfast room was empty save for a portly man who sat at table, a full plate before him. He looked up when Adam entered and gave him a hearty salute. “You must be the new man, then.”

  Adam nodded. “Adam Kendrick.”

  “Sir Henry Grantham.” The old man wiped the shiny dome of his head with a monogrammed handkerchief and studied Adam with open interest. “So what ails you, young fella?” He looked Adam up and down, then assumed a confidential tone. “Got the French disease, have you?”

  Adam sloshed tea onto his saucer. He glared at the old man. “No! Why would you assume that?”

  “No offense intended.” Sir Henry sliced off a bite of chop. “But you’ve more than average good looks and the cut of that suit – plus the fact that you’re here at all – tells me you’re not too short of the ready. And you’re too hearty by far to be consumptive or an opium addict.”

  “I’m merely here to rest.” Adam helped himself to bacon and eggs from the sideboard.

  “Battle fatigue, is it? I should have known, what with the eyepatch and all. I saw enough of it when I was fighting in the Colonies.”

  Adam only half-listened to the old gent’s droning on about his military adventures. He’d spent a restless night, trying to mesh the picture of Clarissa Delaware that had presented itself thus far and the notion he’d formed before coming here that she was protecting her felonious husband, and even plotting with him.

  The two images of the woman would not match up. He blamed it on his own limited experience with women. Growing up with no mother or sisters, he didn’t know how women really behaved in their own homes. Perhaps it was usual for them to present different public and private faces to the world.

  “I say, our Clarissa’s a lovely woman, ain’t she?”

  Sir Henry’s question pulled him from his reverie. “What did you say?”

  “I said, Clarissa Delaware is a lovely woman, ain’t she?” He speared a kipper with his fork. “If I was twenty years younger, I’d offer her carte-blanche.” The kipper disappeared beneath his walrus moustache.

  Adam scowled at his plate. “Lady Delaware is a married woman.”

  “Yes but the husband’s out of the picture, ain’t he?” He followed up the kipper with a swig of tea. “I had a red-headed mistress once. A dancer with the Russian ballet. She was married, too. Married women make the best mistresses. Less complications.”

  Adam thought a woman’s marriage to another could only lead to more complications for her lover, but kept silent.

  “What are your plans for the day, young man?” Sir Henry asked. “We play cribbage at half past one if you’re in for a rubber.”

  It had been years since anyone had referred to Adam as young, but considering that Sir Henry must be well into his seventh or eighth decade, he supposed it was a matter of relativity. But Adam was not so old that he spent his afternoons playing cribbage. “Thank you, but I intend to go riding.”

  Sir Henry nodded. “Used to be quite the horseman myself. Rode to hounds with Lord Albritton and that set…”

  Before Sir Henry could launch into another monologue, Adam excused himself and went to change into his riding clothes.

  On his way up to his room, he met Harry Delaware. “Good morning, sir,” the boy called from the top of the landing. He took the stairs down two at a time until he was even with Adam. “When you were a boy, were you good at sums?” Harry asked.

  Not the topic Adam would have expected to start a conversation. “I suppose I did well enough at sums. Why do you ask?”

  Harry made a face. “Because I am monstrous bad at them. Miss Freed says I must master them if I’m to go to Eton next year.”

  “I’m sure if you keep working, you’ll get better at them.”

  “Did you go to Eton, sir?”

  “Yes, I did.” Most well-born sons were expected to attend Eton and from there to go on to study at Oxford or Cambridge.

  “What was it like, sir?” Harry chewed his lower lip. “I mean, was it a nice place? Was it hard to make friends?”

  Understanding warmed Adam’s heart. Though it had been many years ago, he could remember his own anxiety at leaving home to live among strangers. “It is a tolerably nice place,” he said. “I’m sure a fine lad like you will have no trouble making friends. And when you come home on holiday at the end of Michaelmas term, you will be quite grown up.”

  The thought seemed to cheer the boy. “Thank you, sir. I’d best be going now. Miss Freed sent me to the kitchen to fetch a cup of currents. We’re going to use them to figure sums.” He grinned. “For every sum I answer correctly, she says I may eat the currents!”

  Harry continued down the stairs, two at a time, his shoes clattering on the marble entry floor as he raced toward the back stairs and the kitchen below. Adam smiled to himself as he climbed the rest of the way to his room. Devon had been much the same as a young boy, always eager and full of questions. He had been an infant when their father died, the only child of the Viscount’s second marriage, as Adam was the only offspring of the first. Both their mothers having died in childbirth, the two had only each other to cling to and, despite the advice of some who had encouraged Adam to farm the boy out to some responsible couple to be brought up until he was old enough to go to school, Adam had raised Devon, becoming a kind of surrogate father to him.

/>   Looking after Devon had given Adam a purpose in life. He wanted to protect the boy from any more pain and suffering, and had sent him to the best schools, outfitted him with the best wardrobe, and paid for any extravagance. Rather than become spoiled by such indulgence, Devan had remained modest and well mannered. He had a tendency to be bookish, but was also an excellent horseman and could hold his own in the boxing ring.

  Now he wanted to throw that all away to wield a scalpel and lancet. A physician was little better than a tradesman. Why waste his life on that?

  Adam rubbed his aching head and reminded himself that Devon was young. He had run away in a fit of childish anger. Once he and Adam were reunited, Devon would come to his senses and listen to Adam’s advice, as he always had. Adam had only to find him, and everything would be right between them again.

  He changed into riding clothes and went to the stable, where he found his gelding, Peleus, freshly curried and happy to see him. “He’s a prime bit of blood, sir,” the groom, Alfred, said as he led the horse form the stall.

  “Yes, he is.” Adam stroked the gelding’s nose and patted the side of his neck. “I have others at home, but he is a favorite. Are you ready for a ride, fellow?”

  He headed down the lane leading away from the house, then circled around behind the buildings. He wanted to get a feel for the lay of the land and see if he could spy out any likely hiding places for DeLae or the goods he smuggled into the country from the continent.

  The house itself sat well back on an expanse of green lawn. Twin Doric columns flanked a portico between two wings, over which was a broad veranda. French windows on the ground floor overlooked the lawn and a curving drive. Around this extended the gardens, including a walled rose garden, herb garden, kitchen garden, and a small orchard. Beyond that were fields and a swath of woodland, and beyond that still, the sea.

  Passing through a gap in a hedgerow, he came upon a group of elderly people gathered around a tea table. He reined the horse to a halt. “I beg pardon,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He prepared to turn the horse around.