“My lady,” Peters said. It didn’t seem to be as much a greeting as an expression of shock. Or a question, perhaps.
“I should like to see the earl,” Sarah said calmly, determined to keep her composure, despite this united masculine display of near hostility. Then, for the first time, she began to think about why they should be so shocked to find her here and why the valet had stationed himself in front of Justin’s bedchamber. A reason that had never occurred to her before now.
Had Justin come up to London expressly to visit his...? To visit as...? Her thoughts faltered, because she was unsure of the terms she should use. She knew her father had had a mistress. Brynmoor had even mentioned her name to Sarah once in one of his disjointed and rambling discourses.
Justin, who had been out of the country for years, had spent some days, maybe even some weeks, in London before he had come home. Perhaps he had renewed an old... acquaintance in the capital. Or made a new one. If either were the case, he would certainly not welcome Sarah’s unannounced presence in this house tonight. Nor would his loyal servants.
The agony of the image of Justin and some other woman together behind this door was far more powerful than the sick embarrassment that had begun roiling in her stomach. No wonder they were blocking the entrance to his bedchamber.
She had made a fool of herself in coming here. In running to Justin at the first sign of trouble. Despite how she felt about him, he had made her no promises about his private behavior. And, of course, she had asked him for none, because she had never even thought about this. Naively, she had never considered the possibility that Justin might seek his carnal pleasures outside the marriage bed.
“Is the earl expecting you, my lady?” the valet finally found composure to ask.
“No,” she whispered, without correcting his impertinence.
“What’s wrong?” Andrew asked.
She looked down at him, grateful for the excuse not to have to face the two men guarding the earl’s privacy. In his tiredness, or perhaps in response to the cold darkness that surrounded them, Drew had been clinging to her skirts in a manner he had outgrown, at least since Wynfield had entered their lives.
Now he was looking up at her, anxiety in the depths of his eyes. His face blurred in the sudden, unexpected burn of her tears. She blinked them away, clearing her vision and then taking a deep breath. “We have to go on to my father’s,” she said. “We are not expected here.” Or welcome.
Drew’s eyes widened as they searched her face. “Isn’t Wynfield here?” he asked. “You said he was.” His voice had risen. Tears stood in his eyes, a product of fatigue and this terrible disappointment after their long journey. “You promised me, Sarah,” he accused. “You promised I should see Wynfield.”
“What the hell is going on out here?”
The angry voice unmistakably belonged to Justin. As with David Osbome’s, Sarah would have recognized its distinctive timbre anytime. Anyplace. Pulling her gaze from Drew’s face, she looked up in time to see the door behind the valet flung open, so that the small room itself was revealed.
At least there was light, she thought. And warmth. She could feel the welcome heat of the fire that burned on its hearth seeping out into the cold hall where she and Drew stood.
The valet had turned at his master’s voice, and then, bowing slightly, he moved aside, revealing the man who had opened that door. Shockingly, Justin was leaning on a crutch, and the blaze from the fireplace behind him cruelly highlighted the reason. The right leg of his trousers hung straight, obviously empty below the knee. And Sarah felt the hot sting of tears again.
“Wynfield,” Drew said excitedly.
At the sight of Sarah and Andrew outside his door, Justin’s eyes widened, just as his valet’s had. The effect was far more pleasant, however. At least more pleasant to her sensibilities. Of course, it had been so long since she had seen him. So many days that she had been deprived of those secret glimpses of her husband that she cherished.
“Sarah?” he said, his voice filled with the same questioning disbelief it had held that first day at Meg Randolph’s cottage. And her heart again lodged in her throat.
She was aware that Drew broke away to run through the open doorway and fling himself against his beloved Wynfield. The earl staggered when the hurtling body hit him, but using the crutch and a quick backward hop, he managed to regain his balance. He put his free hand on the back of the little boy’s head and squeezed him close against his good leg.
His eyes, however, never left Sarah’s face. They hadn’t, not since the valet had moved away from the door, revealing her presence. They held on hers, through a long breathless silence, before he asked softly, “What’s wrong?”
Dear God, how much she wanted to tell him. The words trembled on her tongue, demanding release. She had come to him for protection, the instinct to do that so strong, in the face of David Osborne’s threat, that her usually reliable common sense-had not been able to overcome it.
But of course, she could tell him nothing of what had occurred. There was no explanation of what Osborne had said that would not reveal the Irishman’s relationship to Drew. And the details of the boy’s birth that she had guarded so long.
“Andrew missed you,” she said instead. And I missed you. I need so much to be with you. I need to know that you are nearby.
Those words, as true as the others, were left unspoken. She stood in the doorway, watching him. His eyes, luminous in the dimness, continued to assess hers. Once he had known her well enough to know whether or not she was telling him the truth.
Now he must be uncertain of her motives. She was as well. Uncertain of everything except the instinct telling her that as long as they were with Justin, nothing very bad could happen. He wouldn’t allow anything to happen. Not to either of them.
Into the considering silence that stretched between them, Andrew’s voice intruded. “It’s almost Christmas,” he said.
Justin’s eyes fell, thankfully focusing on the child’s face rather than on hers. “And you came all this way to wish me happy Christmas?” the earl said, smiling at Drew, his tone deliberately lightened from his worried question to Sarah.
“No,” Andrew said, laughing.
“To bring me presents?” Justin teased, ruffling the little boys’s hair with one big, dark hand.
Andrew turned to look at Sarah, his brows raised in inquiry.
“We came to shop,” she said.
It might have been the perfect excuse for their unheralded arrival, with Christmas little more than two weeks away, had it not been for the length of the journey and the difficulties of travel this time of year. The earl’s gaze followed Drew’s back to her face, and at the puzzlement in his eyes, she felt her color rise.
“To shop?” he repeated carefully.
“The shops here are so much better than the ones in the village,” she said.
“Of course,” Justin concurred.
There was another silence. Thankfully Andrew, who seemed unaware of the unease between the two adults in his life, broke it again. “It’s warm in your room,” he said.
“Would you like to come in?” the earl invited.
He smiled down at the child. Then, turning awkwardly, he used the crutch to make his way back to the desk, which had been placed near the fire. It was obvious he had been sitting there before their arrival. As he sat down in the chair behind it, he leaned the crutch against the edge of the desk.
“What are these?” Andrew asked.
He had followed his hero, and was looking down at the papers spread out across the expanse of the desk. Even from where Sarah was standing, she could see that they were drawings. Not letters. And not business papers.
“Plans,” the earl said softly.
“For what?” Drew asked.
“For things that may never come about,” Justin said, smiling.
He lifted the boy onto his lap. Then he pulled the top drawing closer and together they examined what he had been working
on. The earl’s servants had disappeared into the darkness behind her. Still Sarah hovered by the door, feeling out of place. Left out of the bond the two of them had formed. A bond she had wanted for Andrew, but still...
“It’s warmer inside, Sarah,” Justin said. “It will be more likely to stay that way if you close the door.”
She looked up from her unseeing contemplation of his drawings to find that his eyes were on her. And in them was something she had not thought to see there again. Not welcome, perhaps. That was too much to ask. But...acceptance. Acceptance of her right to be here.
It’s warmer inside. That had been an invitation. And Sarah, who had stood outside this new-made bond, drawn like a lonely moth to the flame of the growing affection between Justin and Drew, stepped inside her husband’s bedroom.
Justin knew there was more to this unexpected arrival than a shopping expedition. He was almost certain Sarah had thought up that excuse as she hovered uncertainly in the door to his room. And uncertainty was not something he associated with the woman she had become.
He had been amazed at what she had accomplished at Longford. In contrast to his, everything on her father’s estate, from the dairy to the farm, ran smoothly. And profitably. Her tenants were well cared for, and her books probably balanced. He wouldn’t dare ask if they still did, not with the amounts he had taken out of her accounts in the last few months.
Far more than he had really needed to withdraw all at once, he admitted. He had warned her that their bargain would be expensive, and he supposed he had been determined to prove the truth of that.
She had never complained, although, as the sums had grown, he had certainly expected her to. He had almost hoped she would, so that he could throw her protest back in her face, but she hadn’t reneged on their agreement. He would give her that. She had kept to the terms of their bargain, allowing him to institute the necessary repairs to both the Park and the cottages that surrounded it. And his father’s and brother’s debts had all been paid in full.
Despite the enormous drain all of that must have been, even on a fortune as large as Brynmoor’s, Sarah had not uttered one word of protest. Neither had Mr. Samuels, of course, but Justin had seen his shock on more than one occasion at the sums he’d requested. And in the beginning, he had intended those to shock.
He had also been determined, of course, that winter would not again find his tenants in need of either food or adequate shelter. And some of the projects he had ordered at Wynfield Park had been necessary to keep it literally from falling down. But come spring...
“What are those?” Sarah asked.
He glanced up and found that instead of approaching the warmth of the fire as he had expected, she was standing beside his chair, looking down on his drawings.
The days and nights he had spent in London had been long. And very empty. Empty for more reasons than one, he acknowledged, as the faint, feminine fragrance of rose water permeated the very masculine atmosphere of his room. A scent that was too evocative of a long-ago summer in this same city.
“Things I hope to implement in the spring,” he said. “Some new methods of husbandry I’ve been reading about.”
The books he had read were scattered around the perimeter of his desk and stacked on the floor beside it. That had been something else he had been allowed to rediscover. The joys of reading, of studying a problem and finding a solution.
His situation the last five years had not allowed time for the intellectual. Or the academic. But during the two weeks of enforced inactivity he had endured in these rooms, he had again found joy in those pursuits. Of course, that was something else he would probably never explain to Sarah.
“You haven’t opened the town house,” she said.
“No,” he admitted.
“Because you’re going to sell it immediately?” she asked.
“Not unless you are calling due my notes,” he said. An ill-advised jest, he realized, seeing the color drain from her face.
It had been hard having to take Sarah’s money, which was another reason, perverse as it might be, that he had been determined to spend as much of it as he could. Being forced into this marriage had been a blow to his pride, already almost as badly damaged as his body. That wasn’t Sarah’s fault, of course, and he regretted the gibe as soon as he’d uttered it.
“Call due your notes?” she repeated.
He couldn’t read her voice. Once he had been so good at that. At knowing what she was thinking. And feeling. At knowing what she wanted. She was so changed now that he was lost in how to deal with her, especially in their situation.
“Forgive me,” he said with real contrition. “Too much time in my own uninteresting company.”
“I hold no notes of yours,” she said softly.
“I know.”
Her eyes held a moment longer, very dark in the firelight, and then they shifted back to the endless and highly detailed drawings he had made. There had not been much else he could do. Nothing, the surgeon he consulted had ordered, but sit and give his leg a chance to heal. And that forced inactivity, when there was so much he needed to be doing, had been almost unbearable.
So he had begun to plan for what he would do when the wound he had broken open two months ago by leaping off Star’s back had finally healed enough to allow him to use the artificial foot again. Then he was determined to resume the schedule he had adhered to before he had come to London. Determined to return Wynfield Park to what it had once been. Determined to repair his family’s fortune and good name. And determined to repay Sarah.
“This is Wynfield,” she said, looking down on the diagrams for terraced fields and windmills and irrigation ditches.
Of course, Sarah knew every mile of these properties, just as he did. She had walked them or driven across them all her life. Far more years than he had, he realized, given his long absences on duty. “Yes,” he agreed softly.
“And these are improvements you want to make there.”
“Eventually,” he said. “I want not only to restore the Park, but to make it more than it was. To make it what it should be. All that it can be.”
Her eyes were on his face now, watching as he talked. And Justin realized that he probably sounded mad to her. Gentlemen, especially impoverished ones, did not worry about planning drainage ditches for their meadows.
“But you are not restoring this house?” Sarah asked.
He wasn’t sure what she meant. Or why she should be concerned. After all, if she wanted to come to London, there was always ter father’s house, far more elegant than this. Even its location in the heart of Mayfair was more desirable.
“I don’t think we should need two London residences. And the market is very good for property here, despite the economy.”
For the first time since he had opened the door and found her and Andrew huddled together in the hall, her mouth relaxed, the taut lines giving way to what was almost a smile.
“It might be even better for a little...refurbishing.”
“A great deal of refurbishing, I should think,” he said. Of course, that would require more money. By now, his initial anger over having been “bought” had subsided, and he had already decided to sell the house just as it was, and to apply whatever it would bring to his debt to Sarah.
“As long as I’m here...” she said hesitantly.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
“Unless you have an interest in choosing fabric and carpets.”
“You are offering...” He paused, unsure exactly what she might be offering.
“To see to the house. I think that putting it back to something like it must once have been can only increase its value when you put it on the market. It’s just good business.”
“What about your shopping?”
“I don’t think that will occupy all my time,” she said, really smiling at him for the first time.
It was almost the smile he remembered. Almost Sarah’s smile, and something shifted in his chest in respon
se. And then he realized that whatever was in Sarah’s smile or in her eyes, it could never be the same. Neither of them was the same.
He was a cripple, dependent on Sarah’s charity. And she was the woman who had rejected him when he had been neither of those things. There was nothing left of the relationship they had once shared. All that was between them now was a business arrangement.
That’s all this offer was. Sarah was astute enough to know that with a few minor expenditures for cosmetic purposes, the house would bring much more than if he put it on the market as it was now. The sooner it sold, the sooner she would get her money back. He should read nothing more into her offer. And nothing into her arrival on his doorstep looking as if something had frightened her.
Frightened her. That was what he had seen in her eyes—fear. But if Sarah were running away from something, he would be the last person she would come to. Why would he think she might want his protection? Or believe he could protect her? He couldn’t, of course. Not anymore.
“I think he’s asleep,” she said softly.
She bent, stooping by his chair to look at the face of the child he held on his lap. Justin hadn’t been aware that while they talked, the little boy’s head had drooped lower and lower, until it was resting unmoving against his shoulder.
Sarah looked up from that small relaxed countenance to smile into his eyes. And he fought the pull of it. Fought the emotion that tender smile engendered, forcing himself not to return it.
No romantic fantasies about what Sarah might be doing here were allowed. No fantasies about what he thought her eyes were saying. He couldn’t afford them. He had enough to deal with without imagining that a woman who hadn’t wanted him when he was strong and whole could possibly be interested in him now.
“You’ll have to take him,” he said brusquely.
Her eyes widened. At the sharpness of his tone? Or at her realization that he could not carry the boy to bed?
“Of course,” she said, but she didn’t move. Instead her eyes held his. “Are you all right, Justin?” she asked softly.
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