by Regina Scott
She glanced at Gregory. His gaze was intent on the vicar, but, every once in a while, his lips twitched, as if he were speaking to someone in private. Praying? She hadn’t managed a prayer since the last time she’d entered this place. Would God listen to her? She’d broken so many of His commandments.
“Do you think God understands about the war?” she asked Gregory as they walked back to the carriage after service through a bright spring day. Villers was just ahead, Lady Carrolton on one arm and Lady Lilith on the other. She could hope he was scouting ahead, but she doubted it.
Besides, he had little need. Gregory’s gaze roamed the churchyard as if attempting to see behind each gravestone, around every tree. His thunderous frown kept anyone from seeking conversation with them. “God knows everything,” he said. “So He must.”
Such a simple faith. A shame hers had been lost with her family. She glanced at the sheltered church, surrounded by its green hedge, the villagers so purposeful and polite. The man beside her, so strong, so open. If she could find peace anywhere, it would be here.
The countess was feeling well enough that they passed the afternoon in company. Yvette thought Gregory might allow them to venture outdoors at Villers’s suggestion, but he insisted on ensconcing them in the south withdrawing room instead, where sunlight streamed through the windows. Surrounded by the crimson and blue tapestries, the carved-back furnishings, Villers offered to regale the ladies with stories of the ton. It was gossip. She had heard its type too many times in Paris. Besides, she was more interested in Gregory’s reaction. Rather than join them near the hearth, he had gone to the window and kept glancing out. She got up from her seat and went to join him.
“Do you see danger in the bluebells?” she teased, nodding to the carpet under the trees. “Or are you considering them the next flower to plant?”
He turned from the view with a smile. “I have no need to cultivate them. They grow in profusion each year.” He lowered his voice. “But I would like to see this done.”
“Me as well. Yet you missed the opportunity to parade me on the lawn.”
“And I will again. Julian should have been here by now. Until I know why he’s late, you’re staying where I can keep you safe.”
She didn’t know whether to thank him or protest yet again.
Just then Lady Lilith laughed at something Villers had said, and Gregory glanced her way with a frown.
“She is happy,” Yvette murmured. “Be glad.”
“I am more concerned with her happiness over the long term,” he replied. With a nod to her, he strode back to the group.
“Mr. Villers, a word.” It was not a request. Villers scrambled to his feet and followed the earl from the room.
Lilith collapsed against the back of the sofa as Yvette returned to her side. “You see. Gregory is still against him.”
“And why would that be?” Yvette asked, hoping to soothe her fears. “The earl is a reasonable man.”
“Sometimes,” his sister muttered before biting her lip.
“You cannot blame Gregory this time,” her mother said. “Mr. Villers has a ready address and a witty tongue. But he has no income and a questionable family. I might almost think him a fortune hunter.”
Lilith burst into tears, jumped to her feet, and ran from the room.
Lady Carrolton tsked. “I didn’t say I disliked him, but one must face facts. Besides, it might be interesting to have a fortune hunter in the family.”
“You are incorrigible,” Yvette said.
She smiled, straightening on the high-backed chair. “I am, aren’t I? Well, French, the others have fled. It’s up to you to be entertaining. What can you do?”
If she only knew.
Yvette spread her hands. “As you have seen, I listen well.”
Lady Carrolton sucked her teeth a moment. “That’s something. But I tire of talking.”
“Recently?”
The lady frowned as if she wasn’t sure whether Yvette was teasing. “Why not play the spinet for me?”
“My fingers are tired,” Yvette replied.
“Do you perhaps sing?”
“Not on key.”
“Perform recitation?”
“Only of dire predictions of the future.”
Lady Carrolton clapped her hands. “Excellent. Let’s hear some.”
“You want more gossip,” Yvette accused her.
“That would suffice as well.”
Yvette laughed. “Very well. I know little of your aristocracy, but I recall a thing or two about France.” She told her a few stories from her time at court, and the countess gasped in delighted shock or railed at the vanity, as she felt was appropriate.
Neither Gregory nor Villers returned before dinner, and Marbury reported that Lady Lilith remained in her room. The countess decided on a tray in her room rather than eat with the others. Yvette had resigned herself to a quiet evening when Lilith came in. She wore a subdued wool gown Yvette had thought she had donated to the staff, and her hair was once more sleeked back from her face. Pale, eyes clear and watery, she went straight to the bed, bent over her mother, and kissed her on the forehead.
“Good night, Mother. Always remember I love you.”
Something poked at Yvette, and she put herself between the lady and the door. “What are you doing?”
Lady Lilith drew herself up with her usual hauteur. “This is none of your affair.”
“Perhaps not,” Yvette allowed. “But is it your brother’s?”
Her eyes widened. “No! You will be silent, or I will…”
“What?” Yvette asked. “Strike me? Careful, my lady. I strike back.”
Lilith took a step away from her. “Mother, tell your companion that she must say nothing to Gregory.”
“I will do no such thing,” her mother replied. “She’s right. You’re acting oddly, and I want to know why.”
She sagged, then hurried back to the bed. Her voice came out low and breathless. “Gregory will never give Beau permission to marry me. We’re eloping to Gretna Green, tonight.”
“What!” Yvette cried as the countess stared at her daughter.
Lady Lilith nodded. “You ought to be pleased, French. You encouraged me to take matters into my own hands. Well, now I have.”
~~~
Gregory couldn’t settle for the evening. A French agent prowled his estate, a French lady with silky red-gold hair prowled his thoughts. And Beau Villers was a spineless weasel.
“Fine, fine,” he’d said when Gregory had taken him to the north withdrawing room to ask him again about his intentions. “You are right to question me. Every day I fall more in love with Lilith. She is everything I could want in a wife. However, much as I admire your sister, I find I cannot bring myself to offer for her. I’d be hard pressed to keep her in her usual style.” His look had turned cunning. “Unless, of course, you were inclined to be accommodating.”
He could not mean what it seemed. “Accommodating?” Gregory asked, hearing the growl in his voice.
For once, Villers wasn’t deterred by it. He leaned forward. “Yes. She has a small inheritance from your father, I understand. A pittance, really. As her beloved brother, you would want to be more generous.”
Cold and heat rushed up him in turn. “You want a bribe to marry my sister?”
He held up his hands as he straightened. “No! Never. I merely wish to ensure her happiness. I would be delighted to accept a small estate near London on her behalf, perhaps a townhouse, with its own mews, of course.”
His smile made Gregory ill.
“You,” he spat, “will get nothing from me. I want you out of my house by morning.”
He washed white. “But the mission. Yvette’s safety.”
“I will see to Yvette and my sister’s future. Goodbye, Mr. Villers.”
He rose. “Are you so selfish you can see no one else happy?”
Gregory surged to his feet. “Out!”
Villers ran.
Gregory
hadn’t sat since.
Selfish. He had never thought to have the term applied to him. Was it selfish to want more for his sister than to marry a conniving scoundrel? She would be hurt by Villers’s defection, but better that than life married to such a creature. Or should he have let Lilith make that decision?
Was it selfish to keep Yvette from the light, to protect her from her cousin? That was his duty, yet it was also his need. Thinking of her being harmed made it difficult to draw breath. But Yvette could take care of herself. Was he smothering her? Prolonging the danger to her by refusing to allow her to meet it head on?
He paced the withdrawing room for a long time, until the candles were gutting in the brass. He went and snuffed them out. A shame he could not shut off the sound of his thoughts so easily.
He was coming into the entry hall when he heard a noise on the stair. Odd. He should be the only one up at this time of the night. He’d sent Marbury to bed hours ago. The sound came again, a stealthy footfall. His muscles tensed, ready for a fight.
Someone was in his house.
Keeping his back as close to the wall as possible, he edged along, then ducked behind the statue of Apollo. A dark shadow darted across the tiles for the front door. Leaving? Was Gregory already too late? Had the Claude de Maupassant entered the house, harmed Yvette?
With a yell, he leaped across the space and seized the fellow, lifting him off the floor.
“Gregory!”
His sister’s voice barely penetrated the red haze. Someone lit a lamp, and he became aware of Beau Villers’s face, turning a horrid shade of purple, as one of Gregory’s hands clamped around his windpipe.
He released the fellow, and Villers fell, coughing, onto the Blue John tiles. Lilith’s shoes clattered on the purple-blue stone as she ran to his side.
“Beau, darling, are you all right?”
Villers rubbed his throat. “Yes, no thanks to him. I should see you up on charges of battery, sir.”
The threat was its own form of battery, topped only by the look in his sister’s eyes.
“What are you doing?” Gregory asked, feeling suddenly heavy.
“Eloping,” his mother said.
Turning, he saw her at the foot of the stairs, leaning on Yvette’s arm. Yvette’s face was twisting, as if she alone knew what this betrayal would mean to him.
Lilith rose, head high. “Yes, I’m eloping. With the man I love. The man you refused to accept.”
“Because he’s only after money,” Gregory protested.
Lilith held her ground.
“She knows he’s after her fortune,” his mother put in helpfully. “She doesn’t care.”
“No,” Lilith said. “I don’t. Beau treats me with respect. He listens.”
“How long will he listen when your dowry is spent?” Gregory challenged.
“Longer than you,” she sneered. “You are a bully and a tyrant, and I don’t know why I’ve tolerated you as long as I have.” She sucked in a breath, eyes widening, and her hand reached out to him. “Oh, Gregory, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that. Oh, I’m no better than Father!”
His mother hobbled forward with Yvette at her side. “Yes, you are. You both are. You must be.”
Had everyone gone mad? “What are you talking about?”
Lilith sucked in a sob as she bent to help Villers to his feet. “Stop acting as if you didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” he demanded, his voice echoing off the statues. Deeper in the house, doors shut, and footsteps sounded. He’d even woken the servants.
No one around him seemed to care they would shortly have an audience. His mother avoided his gaze. Lilith kept her head bowed. Villers looked from Lilith to him, clearly perplexed.
“I will tell you,” Yvette said in the silence. “Your father treated your mother and sister cruelly, and they fear you will do the same.”
Chapter Seventeen
He stared at her, eyes wide, body stiff, and she knew the truth. He would never have treated them so poorly. He wasn’t capable of it.
“That’s not possible,” he said. “Father was a good man. He would never hurt Mother or Lilith.”
“He did.” Lilith’s voice was low and controlled. “More Mother than me, especially after I could look him in the eye. He said it was for our own good, that it would develop our characters to hear our faults clearly laid out. We were flawed you see, and in need of his correction and guidance.”
Yvette felt sick. A similar revulsion marked Gregory’s face.
“I never knew, never suspected.” His hands rubbed at his trousers as if he could make them clean.
“Didn’t you?” Lilith accused him. “Or perhaps you agree with him. Men like seeing a woman weakened.”
“No,” he insisted, shaking his head as if to clear it.
“It wasn’t just us,” Lady Carrolton put in. “I know he criticized you, Gregory. I heard him.”
“Rarely,” he said, “and I generally agreed with his assessment.”
He would. He was too humble, and she rather thought that would have been his nature no matter his father.
Lilith shuddered. “I didn’t. Or at least I didn’t want to. But after hearing yourself belittled enough times, you began to wonder.”
“We can learn from pain,” Yvette murmured, “but I always thought love a better teacher.”
Villers slipped his arm around Lilith’s waist. “I am so sorry such indignities were forced upon you, darling. Rest assured I would never reveal your shame.” He glanced at the earl.
Gregory was breathing hard, as if he’d run a race. She could not see him put through more, especially if Beau Villers was up to his usual tricks.
“No, you will not, Monsieur Villers,” she said. “You know how distressed I become when my friends are threatened. You and I have discussed this before. Pointedly.”
He rubbed his throat again with his free hand. When he’d attempted to blackmail her friend Harry over helping Yvette, she had pulled her dagger on him.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I would never do anything to distress any of you.”
“So, you are determined to marry?” Gregory asked, gaze on his sister. “Despite my misgivings?”
Villers raised his chin. So did Lilith. “Yes,” she said, and her voice echoed in the entry hall.
He nodded. “Very well. Villers, ride to London for a special license. You can be married here. No need to subject Lilith to the scandal of a Gretna Green match.”
With a glad cry, Lilith turned and buried her head in Villers’s shoulder. He nodded to Gregory over her head.
“We’ll start on the preparations tomorrow,” the countess said. “Come, French. It’s time I was in bed.”
She almost didn’t go. He looked lost, so alone standing in his beautiful entry hall. She wanted to hold him close, tell him she believed in him, that she knew the truth even if his sister and mother might doubt.
But she had to play her part. A companion would never wrap her arms around her employer and hold him tight, whispering comfort against his breast. If dozens of people would be arriving shortly for a wedding, Lady Carrolton and Lady Lilith must not suspect her true identity.
Still, she could not leave him with nothing. “Thank you, my lord,” she said. “You are a good man.”
The look he cast her said he no longer believed that.
~~~
She did not see him the next morning. He wasn’t at breakfast when the countess came down with Yvette, though Lilith and Villers were there, billing and cooing as if making the most of every moment before Villers traveled to London for the special license. Gregory didn’t come visit his mother that morning or for tea in the afternoon. His absence made the countess more fractious.
“Let me see that paper,” she demanded more than once, going on to mark out several names she had told Yvette to add to the growing list of people to be invited to the wedding. A moment later, she’d order Yvette to put the names back on.
“
Fini,” Yvette declared, setting the cross-hatched paper aside. “We will work on this tomorrow.”
The countess pouted. “That is not your decision to make.”
“As I am doing the writing, I think it is. And you are not attending. Admit it, Countess: you miss your son.”
She hitched herself higher on the chair by the fire. “Of course I miss my son. I always did when he was away at school or traveling.”
“He is not away now,” Yvette pointed out. “I could find him for you.”
The countess brightened. “I have a better idea.” She reached for her bell on the table at her elbow and began ringing. The resounding clang filled the room.
Yvette put her hands over her ears. “I am here! Cease!”
“Not until I see Gregory,” the countess insisted.
Ada appeared first. She scampered into the room, trembling. “Did you need me, your ladyship?”
“No,” the countess said. “I want my son.”
With a curtsey, Ada fled.
She must not have been successful in locating Gregory, for the next to respond to the countess’ din was Mr. Marbury. He pulled up short when he saw Yvette seated next to her. Yvette spread her hands.
“Find me my son,” the countess demanded.
“At once, your ladyship.” With a bow, the butler saw himself out.
As the countess lifted the bell for another swing, Yvette grabbed it and wrestled it from her grip.
“That’s mine,” she protested. “I need it.”
“What will your son think that you ring for him like a servant?” Yvette countered, rising to take the bell to the dressing table on the other side of the room.
“He’ll know to come sooner next time,” the countess said.
Yvette shook her head as she tucked the bell into a drawer. “Did you ring for your husband as well?” she asked, returning to Lady Carrolton’s side.
The countess put her nose in the air, reminding Yvette of her daughter. “Certainly not. He would never have answered, and I didn’t have a bell then.”
Yvette managed to interest her in discussing the flowers for the wedding, but she was glad when Mr. Marbury returned a short while later. Unfortunately, his words did not soothe the countess.