The Carhart Series

by Courtney Milan

  Ned raised one eyebrow. “Oh? I’m dreadfully sorry to hear that, Dennis. How difficult that must be for you. I would say it was not very hard…but then, given your admission, perhaps that’s the problem, eh?” Ned shrugged apologetically. “You might be doing it wrong. There are physicians who can help with that, you realize.”

  Even pond scum recognized when its masculinity was challenged. In fact, it was probably the only thing pond scum recognized. Dennis flushed and shook his head. “I have no notion what you’re talking about. No need for physicians here.” The man hunched, though, as if to protect his groin. “I suppose a man could seduce anyone’s wife. Including his own. All I meant was, it’s no fun if you do it.”

  “No fun?” Ned shook his head ruefully. “You are definitely doing it wrong.”

  Catcalls rose up at that, and Dennis turned an even brighter red.

  “You don’t need five thousand pounds, Carhart,” Port-Morton put in. “What are you going to do with it, anyway?”

  Ned shrugged. “I don’t know. Likely I’ll buy my wife something pretty.”

  “Jewels?” Ellison asked. “As if she were a mistress? Good God, Carhart. What a waste. What a phenomenal waste.”

  “Ellison,” Ned said, “I hate to repeat myself—but you are probably doing it wrong, too. And that, gentlemen, is why you all lost. And why, after three years away, I still won. Close the book on this one. The wager’s over and done.”

  They stared up at him still, their eyes wide and unbelieving.

  Ned let the smile on his face widen, and he leaned in. “Close the books, or next time it will cost you all a great deal more than money.”

  Ellison shook his head, stupid to the end, and gestured next to him. “At least play a hand, give us a chance to win it back.”

  Ned shook his head. “I have my wife to get home to.”

  LONDON HAD BEEN A DIZZYING MIXTURE of good and bad and confusing for Kate. The gossip about she and her husband had run high the first few days they had arrived, in no small part due to some stunt Ned had pulled at a gaming hell. But the discussion had been romantic—and it had served only to carry tales of how they spent their time to Harcroft’s ears. And oh, how those tales must have confused him. All of society was talking about how the couple had inquired into passage to France, particularly departing from Dover. Mr. Carhart had then shown a less than subtle interest in minute happenings in Ipswich.

  There had been a hundred misdirections.

  After the third day of it, Kate’s head pounded. After the fourth day, her entire body ached. Today, a week after they had begun their campaign of confusion, she had seen Harcroft for the first time. He had been in attendance at a party last evening. He’d seen Kate—and had glowered at her across the crowded room before turning away with a smirk.

  Smirks, of course, were Harcroft’s peculiar speciality. If self-satisfied expressions had been coins, Harcroft would have generated enough currency to personally sustain the commerce of the entirety of the kingdom of Sardinia. One more shouldn’t have mattered. But this one had got under Kate’s skin. It stayed there, after she and Ned had left the glittering lights of the party behind them. She felt that unease even more now, the back-and-forth swaying of the carriage buffeting her to the point of nausea.

  “He’s planning something,” she said aloud.

  She didn’t need to say who he was. Next to her, Ned was a warm, solid mass. Their carriage rounded a corner and she lurched against him. He didn’t move, as if he were somehow strong enough to be immune to the effects of inertia.

  “He’s started a proceeding in Chancery,” Ned said. “He has been quite secretive about it, of course. But I’ve managed to dredge up a few pieces of information. That, coupled with some comments he made to me when he believed I was in sympathy with him…” Ned sighed; she felt it in the movement of his chest against her shoulder, and she stared ahead into the darkness.

  “Well, what does he intend?”

  “This is speculation, mind. These sorts of proceedings are usually kept in the strictest of confidence. For reasons that will soon be obvious.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I believe he’s filed a petition in Chancery to have Louisa declared a lunatic.” Kate gasped. “He said something about this to me before. At the time, I dismissed it as a token of his emotional overset. If his petition is successful, she won’t be able to testify—not for a divorce, nor in a criminal suit for spousal cruelty.”

  Kate felt a chill creep into her, something colder even than the oncoming winter. “He means to flush her out, like a partridge. She’ll have to come to Chancery just to testify on her own behalf. If she doesn’t…”

  “She’ll be held incompetent.” Ned set his hand on her knee. “Incompetents have no freedom. He’ll be able to lock her up. Any measures he takes after that, however stringent, will be seen as attempts to cure—or at least subdue—her mental infirmity. If he is made a trustee over her in lunacy, he’ll have even more control over her than a husband has over a wife.”

  Kate put her fingers to her temples. “He’s tired of chasing down our little leads, and so he’s begun to attack instead. Well. That makes our course of action clear.”

  “We need to communicate with Lady Harcroft, and ascertain her wishes,” Ned said.

  “That.” Kate tapped her fingers to her temples. “And we might consider a little bit of an attack ourselves. I think we should talk to Chancery about his claim of lunacy.” She smiled, tightly. “Testify on Louisa’s behalf. And perhaps, I think, we should give the Chancellor some other petitions to consider.”

  “Harcroft has some other plan, too,” Ned said. “I haven’t determined what it is yet, but don’t you worry. I’ll keep you safe—you and Lady Harcroft both.”

  She nodded solemnly. “And who shall look out for you?”

  He snorted, half amusement, half appalled consternation. “I didn’t realize I needed someone to look out for me.”

  The Earl of Harcroft had proved vengeful, spiteful and not above using violence to get his way. Kate didn’t imagine the man spared much love for Ned—not after Ned had hurled him bodily across the hall.

  “Of course you do.” Her hand slipped to his knee.

  She had not realized that the knee could tense so. Yet his did, lifting underneath her hand as if he were unconsciously flexing his feet at her words. His breathing stopped.

  “I’m not going to be a burden to you,” he growled out.

  “A burden? Who said you would be a burden? I just want to help you.”

  “I don’t want to be helped. I don’t need to be helped.” She could imagine the stubborn set of his chin as he spoke.

  Slowly Kate pulled her hand away. She swallowed back the hurt that encompassed her. She’d thought he was different—that he saw beyond the delicacy of her appearance. That he saw her as strong enough to be trusted.

  But of course. He’d taken her a week before, but since that first evening, he’d not spent the night with her again. Instead, he’d made his bed alone in that murderous cold. It was a silent way of pushing her away. He liked her well enough for a few hours, but not enough to trust with his secrets. Not even with something so simple as his sleep.

  He took her hand. “No. This is not about you. You have to understand.”

  But rather than explaining, he stopped again. Kate waited, wishing for patience.

  He let out a breath. “You’re so strong. You can’t imagine.”

  She wanted to pull away from him, wanted to curl about the hurt in herself. Instead, she drew in another measured breath. “I can try.”

  He blew out a breath and shifted uncomfortably. “Sometimes—this thing happens to me.” He seemed to think that description adequate, because he sat slouched in the carriage next to her.

  Heaven save her from uncommunicative men. “Thing is not a very specific word,” she prodded.

  “It’s not a very specific…thing, you understand. I’ve never found words for it. It’
s not exactly like madness, you see.”

  She hadn’t really been expecting him to answer—just to provide more obfuscation. But what he’d said well and truly shocked her into silence. If it wasn’t exactly like madness, how close did it come? His elbow jostled her, and she realized he’d removed his hat from his head and held it against his chest.

  “I asked a physician,” he told his hat. “And so I know that much. It’s not madness. It’s madness if you can’t control what you do or say, or if you’re unaware of reality. I’m always aware of reality, when it happens. And I’m entirely in control of my own actions. All the time. I can do whatever I want.”

  What he wanted was to sleep in the freezing cold, shutting her out.

  “I can do whatever I want,” Ned repeated slowly. “I just… Sometimes I don’t want.”

  “What don’t you want?” The carriage turned; as it did, Kate pressed full against him again.

  She felt the shrug of his shoulders. “When it starts, I don’t even want to get up in the morning. When I was nineteen, it came for the first time. I stayed in bed for weeks. My mother thought I was ill, but the physician could find nothing wrong with me. I just didn’t want to get up.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a thing.”

  “It’s easier if I think about it as something separate. The alternative is that I am that thing. That every few years, I wake up one morning and I decide to act as if I’m a different person. No, Kate. I’d rather think of those times as if they were a brief, bitter winter. As if it were something outside me. I can’t explain it, except to say that I’m not mad and you shouldn’t ever have to worry about it.”

  “Not worry about it? But—”

  He raised his gloved hand to cover her lips. “No. Don’t make me into some sort of wounded creature, one that you need to tend to wellness. There’s nothing to heal here, Kate, no dragon for you to slay. There’s nothing but a beast that I’ve already managed to tame. It raises its head occasionally. In the past, it tried to defeat me. But it won’t. Not ever again. I don’t need help. I don’t like help—it makes me want to do even less.”

  “But—”

  “It’s nothing.” His hand hit the side of the carriage for emphasis, and the carriage rumbled to a stop. It took Kate a few moments to realize they were stopping not because of that ill-timed rap, but because the carriage had arrived at their London townhome.

  Ned reached over and grasped the door handle, holding it in place to preserve that brief space of privacy. The door rattled, and then, as the servants realized it had been blocked from the inside, stood still.

  “You don’t have to worry,” he repeated. “I don’t stay in bed any longer, when it comes. I’m prepared for it now. I practice for those mornings when I can’t bear to get up, because I know they’ll come again. I practice by doing things I don’t want to do.”

  “Such as…”

  “Such as running three miles in the morning, and when I don’t think I can possibly manage it, running three more. Like sleeping with the windows open, without a fire.” He met her gaze. “Occasionally, abstaining from intercourse when I desperately desire you. I make myself strong enough so that those times don’t matter.”

  “That seems…” Kate trailed off, groping for a word. Odd? Inexplicable? Extremely cold? Nothing seemed to fit, and so she raised her chin. “That seems like something you should have told me about.”

  She could have helped. She could have done something. The inkling of a plan started to assert itself.

  In answer, he let go of the latch and pushed the door open. A footman greeted them; Ned turned his head, and like that, his tension disappeared into a wicked grin.

  “Well,” he said flippantly, “I have much more fun making you laugh. Don’t you think?”

  He stepped down; she stared out the doorway of the carriage in disbelief. He hadn’t—he really couldn’t have packed away the conversation as if it hadn’t happened. Kate stood so rapidly, she almost struck her head against the roof of the carriage. “Ned, you—you…”

  Her words sputtered out into cold silence. Exhaling, she gathered her skirts and stumbled to the door of the carriage. But he hadn’t left her; he’d taken the footman’s place, and as she stood at the edge of the steps, he held out his hand to help her alight. His fingers were warm, even through both their gloves. “I’m good at jokes,” he said to her, his voice so quiet she strained to hear it even above the velvet silence of the night. “When we married, I was excellent at playing the buffoon. After all, it’s better to have your sins chalked up to tomfoolery than it is to have everyone realize that you occasionally succumb to this cloying thing that is not quite madness.” He grinned again, and that expression was so at odds with the seriousness of his tone that Kate shook her head.

  His arm came about her as they walked up the steps.

  “But—”

  “I didn’t tell you, Kate, because I didn’t want you to know. I won’t have you looking at me and seeing weakness. I don’t need anyone to feed me gruel and wipe my chin. Besides, the more people know, the more real it seems.”

  The last seemed like such a superstitious thing to say. Kate frowned at her husband. But he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he swept through the front door, as if he could guide the conversation as easily as if he were leading her about a dance floor. He was shunting her aside again. It was a different sort of abandonment, compared with traipsing off to China, but it was an abandonment nonetheless. It was a denial of what their marriage could be, of what she could be to him, if only he would let her.

  If he thought she could not even hear the truth, he didn’t really trust her at all.

  Kate locked her knees and braced her slippers against the floor, and he stopped.

  “No.” Bare denial was all she had.

  A second footman paused behind her, in the act of reaching for her wraps.

  “My lady?” A hint of bewilderment touched his voice.

  “No,” Kate repeated, her tone subdued, “we won’t be needing your services any longer tonight.”

  Ned didn’t contradict her. Instead, he leaned against the drawing room door and watched as the footmen departed. After they were alone, he pushed off the wall and wandered into the parlor. A low fire flickered in the grate, but gave off barely a glow. Ned made no move to take a candelabra with him, or to light the oil lamps.

  It would be a mistake to think he was pushing her away. No; he was holding her as close as he dared. But she wanted him to dare more. Kate held her breath and waited.

  He seemed nothing but a silhouette to her, his back lit by the gleaming lamp in the hall beyond. She almost couldn’t fit his features to the shape of his profile; the sharp line of his nose, the stubborn jut of his chin. The silence seemed smoky with possibility.

  “Well?” he finally said. “I thought you wanted to pose some questions. Is there anything you should like to know?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to answer me.”

  “I don’t.” His breath hissed out, a faint approximation of a chuckle. “So I’ll do it. Lovely how that works, isn’t it?”

  There were a thousand things she might have asked him. When did this “thing” come? How had it started? Was there anything to be done about it, besides accept his suffering? But in the darkness and the silence, nothing mattered except one small detail.

  “Will you not let me help because you think I’m not capable of it? Because you think I’ll break if you lean on me?”

  He shook his head. “Kate,” he said quietly, “you are the most indomitable woman I know.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Really. If you were tossed in a den of lions, you would order them to sweep the bones of the lambs they’d devoured for breakfast out into the refuse pile—and they would not dare disobey. If you were abandoned in a wilderness, you’d rebuild ancient Rome, from the humblest fountain to all its marble halls. And you’d do it using your bare hands, and perhaps a pocketknife for assistance.”
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  “I have no interest in being left in the wilderness, Ned. If I’m as capable as you keep saying, why don’t you trust me to help?”

  For a moment, he didn’t respond. And now the silence preyed upon her, resurrecting old doubts, older hurts.

  He’d been lying. All those fine words about lions and Rome and indomitability—they’d been tales, spun to comfort her.

  Kate didn’t want comfort, and she didn’t particularly care for lies. Not now.

  “Ah,” he finally said in tones of amusement. “I suppose…I suppose that some of it is what jealousy looks like.”

  “Jealousy?”

  “I told you men were beasts. Do you want to know how unworthy I really am?” He turned to her quietly; she took a step back. Her backside hit a sharp edge—her hands splayed out behind her onto polished wood. She’d bumped a table, just above her hips in height.

  “Jealousy? But—”

  He straightened and moved toward her. She could not see his features, but his shoulders were held rigidly as he walked. He seemed a tall blaze of smoldering emotion. And he was coming closer. She swallowed.

  “Calm and control come so easily to you. Even when you’re most upset, you’re always in control.” Those words, from another man, might have sounded harsh and embittered. From Ned, they felt like a caress.

  Kate leaned back against the table. It wiggled lightly, and she heard some ceramic object—a vase set upon it, perhaps—rock, but there was no escape from his intensity. She folded her arms about herself, but the gesture offered scant protection.

  “I’m jealous,” he continued, “of the way that you let nothing stop you—not fear, not even marauding, brutish husbands. If you’d found yourself bebothered by some odd thing, you’d never stay in bed. You would face it calmly and matter-of-factly, and then simply vanquish it with a shake of your head. If you wanted to prove yourself, you’d never have run off to China to do it.” His fingers brushed her cheek.