Proud Mary

by Lucinda Brant

  Mary sighed without realizing it. “Yes. And there are those who never see it at all, at any age.”

  His lips twitched. He almost smiled, but schooled his features to remain grave.

  “Pardon me for saying so, my lady, but Sir Gerald had little time for anyone but himself. Self-absorption makes one blind to the myriad of possibilities that surround one.”

  Mary had not been thinking of her husband at all, but of her mother, and she agreed with him. But she did not say so. One of her brows arched in surprise. “Sir Gerald had plenty of time for you, Mr. Bryce.”

  Because he spent that time droning on about himself and his misfortunes, real and imagined, and I patiently listened to his self-absorbed ramblings because it was demanded of me, not because I wanted to, Christopher wanted to reply. Instead he said levelly, ignoring the criticism in her tone,

  “We spent that time discussing our mutual agricultural interests, Sir Gerald’s onerous duties as High Sherriff of Gloucestershire, and further afield, there is the Stroudwater Navigation canal project, of which Sir Gerald and I are both investors.”

  Mary’s mouth set in a thin prim line and though she did not actually roll her eyes, Christopher was certain she was mentally doing just that. Her polite remark, intended to mask her boredom merely underscored it for him, and he could not prevent a burst of laughter when she stated,

  “How fascinating. I see now why you both could not tear yourselves away from the port and the fireplace.” Adding when he laughed, cheeks aflame, “You think I jest, Mr. Bryce?”

  “May I speak freely, my lady?” When Mary nodded, suddenly wary, he added without emotion, “As one neighbor to another…”

  “Yes. Of course.

  “What I think is you are good at hiding your true self behind a veil of politeness. Why not say what you mean: That you’re glad you were not subjected to the tedium of discussing wool yields, cloth embezzlement, the poor laws, and advanced canal construction.”

  “But that’s not what I meant at all,” Mary argued, indignant. When it was Christopher’s turn to raise his brows, as if he needed convincing, she explained, “I would gladly discuss any or all those subjects if I were given the opportunity to know something more about them. I expect—no! That is not true. I know Sir Gerald considered me incapable of comprehending any erudite matter with any depth. And that is true because I had a woefully inadequate education, even by female standards. That became glaringly obvious to me when, being a little older than Teddy, I went to live with my Roxton cousins. The more time I spent in the company of Cousin Duchess, the more I realized just how ignorant I was.”

  “Cousin Duchess? The cousin who is due to deliver a noble heir in the new year?”

  “Yes. The very same. She is my closest cousin, though she is some twenty years my senior. Yes, Mr. Bryce, your mental arithmetic is quite correct. She is to be a new mother at fifty. Though this is not her first pregnancy. She has two sons by her first marriage to the old Duke of Roxton.”

  “The present duke is her son?”

  “Yes. I have a complicated family tree, do I not?” Mary replied with a smile at his surprise, adding, “I am glad of it, and for her. Her Grace had an unconventional upbringing—her father was a physician and as his only child was given a boy’s education—it has given her the ability to converse on all manner of topics, and in three or four languages. She also reads Latin and Greek, and is never afraid to ask questions.”

  Christopher pulled a face.

  “She’s not a boorish female pedant, is she?” he asked, more to alleviate Mary’s feelings of inadequacy than an indictment of a noblewoman he did not know, or, for that matter, any objection to a female receiving an adequate education.

  “No. No. Not at all! In fact she is the most delightfully feminine creature alive. Your comment of striving to remain young at heart suits her perfectly. For she is so vivacious, kind-hearted, and stunningly beautiful that when I was a child, to be in her company was to be in the presence of a fairy godmother. The years I spent with the Roxtons were the most magical of my life.”

  “You lived with the old Duke and his duchess…?”

  “When I was twelve years old, after my parents became permanently estranged and my father went to live in the Bahamas. Dair and Charlie were sent off to Harrow, and because my mother’s health was so poorly it was thought best that she spend time away, adjusting to her—to her new situation. She went to live in Cheltenham for a time, where she was unknown. She grew to like the place and has returned there every year since, to great fanfare. Teddy tells me Granny is the Queen of Cheltenham society.”

  “Yes,” Christopher said with an exaggerated sigh, hoping to make Mary smile. “Teddy told me that, too.”

  But Mary did not smile. She was made uncomfortable and said apologetically, “I suspect Teddy has told you a great many things that do not bear repeating.”

  “Oh, have no fear, my lady. What Teddy tells me remains in here,” he said and tapped his temple. “It’s not for me to repeat the Countess’s many maxims—to anyone.” When Mary’s shoulders slumped and she looked fretful, he added gently, “It would not be wrong of me to assume that whereas Teddy would miss you dreadfully were you to be parted from each other, you did not have the same sense of loss when you were sent to live with the Roxtons?”

  Mary took a deep breath and nodded. She would not dissemble, and as he was a very willing ear, and she in need of a confidant—later she was to wonder if tiredness had played its part in loosening her tongue—she said with uncharacteristic openness and more emotion than she intended,

  “Mr. Bryce, those four years with Cousin Duchess and M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton were the happiest I’ve ever been. Time spent in their company opened my eyes to a way of life hitherto unknown to me, in every respect. Except for the birth of my daughter, I have not experienced such happiness since…”

  Her voice trailed off, unsettled that it was so easy for her to express herself to him when she had never done so with Sir Gerald, most definitely not with her mother, and had rarely opened herself up to anyone else in her extended family. When she gave it a moment’s thought, the only other person with whom she had conversed in such a free and easy manner was with the old Duke of Roxton, who had a way of listening without comment and without giving his thoughts away. Much as Christopher Bryce was doing now—watching her intently, but most definitely not giving away what he was thinking.

  Just as Teddy was confident and never ridiculed by her Uncle Bryce, as a twelve-year-old she had prattled on all manner of topics, and the old Duke had listened as if her conversation were the most interesting he had ever heard. Of course now, thinking back on it, she marveled at her own naïve bravado, particularly with such an ancient and formidable aristocrat. There were even times when she would be chattering away and catch him glance across at Cousin Duchess, curled up in her favorite chair reading. The couple would exchange a smile, and she, a girl of twelve, had the supreme audacity to ask him if he was listening to her. The old Duke was never at a loss, though his gaze was all for his wife, and was able to recite the last sentence she had spoken. And then he would ask her to please continue, her conversation was most edifying. Of course she realized years later that he was being ironic, and that his enigmatic smile and the look in his eyes when he gazed upon his wife was one of love and utter devotion.

  Her parents had never looked at each other in that way, and if they had ever been in love, it was before she was born. She had been raised in a household where her parents rarely communicated, such was the icy hatred between them. Nor had Sir Gerald looked upon her with love and devotion because he had not loved her. But then, to be fair to him, she had not loved him either. Theirs was an arranged marriage. She had accepted his offer so she could escape her mother’s misery. Perhaps if the Roxtons had been in England and not in faraway Constantinople, she would not have felt the need to rush into marriage. She had desperately wanted to go with them on their Continental journey, and they had wan
ted her to. But her mother had pleaded with the old Duke that she could not bear being left alone and parted from her only daughter. Despite Mary’s protestations, the old Duke let the Countess have her way. Before the year was out, Mary accepted an offer of marriage from Sir Gerald Cavendish.

  She doubted anyone would ever look at her the way the old Duke of Roxton had looked upon Cousin Duchess. When he had died, part of her cousin’s heart had died along with him. Yet her cousin had eventually remarried, and to a man who was just as in love and devoted to her, and now they were expecting their first child. And here she was a widow and turned thirty—never been in love; never known the love and devotion of one good and worthy man, least of all two; never shared a passionate kiss with any man, never mind experiencing the intimacy that only two people in love were capable of…

  Please don’t let my heart shrivel and die, my hope to wither away, my capacity to love be limited to my daughter.

  Why, of a sudden, was she so wretchedly self-absorbed? Her mother lectured that she needed to think of Teddy’s future. Her family’s honor and pride demanded she make another arranged marriage. Females of her station had a higher calling and a duty to their lineage. Passion was transitory; love faded. Love matches were for others—people of low birth, and mushrooms who had sprung from nowhere. She was of the nobility. She had royal Stuart blood in her veins. She was—

  Repeating her mother’s dictums verbatim… Oh God, was she becoming her mother? Please, dear God, no—

  “My lady. Here. Take this…”

  Mary blinked tears off her lashes and glanced down to find a white linen handkerchief scrunched in her fist. She wondered what she was supposed to do with it until she realized she still could not see clearly, that her sight was blinded by tears, and that those tears had run down her flushed face and dripped off her cheeks and onto her embroidery.

  FIVE

  MARY SHOT to her feet, hurriedly dabbing at her eyes and stained cheeks, mortified by her behavior. She forgot about the ivory embroidery hoop in her lap until the lap stand clattered to the floor. Christopher scooped it up and placed it atop of her sewing box by her chair. And when she just stood there with his damp handkerchief in her hand, and this the second time he had been obliged to give it to her, he gently took it from her and shoved it in a pocket of his frock coat.

  “Forgive me, Mr. Bryce. I don’t know what came over me,” she managed to say in a steady voice. She swallowed and brushed down her quilted petticoats then clasped her hands in front of her a little too tightly. “It was inconsiderate and—”

  “Please, my lady. There is no need to explain. Powerful memories sometimes overwhelm us—”

  “I do not wish to discuss this any further,” she said with an imperious sniff, and looked anywhere but up at him. “If you please, I am sure you have matters to attend to, and I must ready for bed. If you would tell me what it is you wish me to do. I would like to be of some assistance in the capture of this-this thief.”

  CHRISTOPHER STARED at her, lips pressed together in a thin line, and gave himself a moment to collect his thoughts. He knew their intimate informality was over, and he knew when to hold his tongue. He also knew how to wait, and wait, and wait. Had he not waited eight years already? Six without any hope at all, and then with the death of her husband, two years waiting for her to reflect on that moment when they had first met, and see that it was fate that had brought him to her.

  Kate accused him of being maudlin. She had warned him that Lady Mary’s stiff-necked pride and his would be the millstone around their necks that would see them drown before any happy resolution could be found to their predicament. Not that Proud Mary—as Kate teasingly called her—had any idea as to his feelings for her, did she? That too, did not bode well for the future. Kate knew the Roxtons and their milieu far better than he. He may have spent a decade brushing up against the padded silk shoulders of the Italian nobility, but he had not been Christopher Bryce of Brycecomb Hall there, had he? He had been known simply as “Cristoforo”, and in his chosen vocation that was all that was asked of him.

  The English nobility was different from that to be found abroad. In Italian society, handsome and accomplished men could occupy a particular position within a nobleman’s household, no questions asked. Cristoforo was accepted because he was acknowledged by the husband, and catered to the wife. But here, here on English soil, the home of his birth, he would always be shaped by his family circumstances and provincial upbringing, regardless of how he had gone about reshaping his life and himself while in self-imposed exile on the Continent.

  Christopher did not want to hear what Kate had to say, but he knew she was right. After all, had she not done the same with her own life? But she could not provide counsel where the Lady Mary was concerned. He understood Mary better than anyone, better than her family and her husband, better than Kate, who had yet to meet her, and most definitely better than the Countess of Strathsay.

  He just had to persuade her to look at herself and her world differently—to divest herself of her noble societal armor and all the stifling dictates that required when she went out in Polite Society—to see that the Mary that lived here in the vale was the true Mary.

  The true Mary took delight in her bee-keeping, her cheese-making, and her embroidery. She was a good and loyal wife, albeit to a conceited, pompous husband who did not deserve her devotion. The true Mary took long walks up and down dale and performed her responsibilities and duties as the wife of local landowner with dignity and commitment. She did not send others to do her bidding, but took it upon herself to visit the sick and infirm, the old, and the very young amongst her husband’s tenants, taking them food baskets and listening to their stories and grievances as if she had all the time in the world.

  The Mary he knew told her daughter how beautiful and clever she was, that she was capable of anything she put her mind to, and let her be her tomboy self. Teddy believed her mother, and so she was a happy, self-assured, contented child. At ten years of age, that’s all that mattered. And what about Mary’s own accomplishments and beauty? She was so self-effacing and so awkward about her red-haired prettiness that he had at first mistaken her selfconsciousness for conceit. That is until one day she made an impulsive remark about her cousin and a mutual paternal grandmother with the flaming curls, both being so extraordinarily beautiful that she was considered the plain one in the family. He had huffed his disbelief. She was sincere, and thus affronted.

  Kate had smiled and agreed with him, and his face had flushed crimson with embarrassment that he had allowed himself to be so publicly effusive about his feelings. But Kate understood. Though her failing eyesight meant she could not see his expression, the sincerity and the love in his voice rang out loud and clear. Yet, she worried time was running out for him, because it was running out for Mary. The Roxtons and the Strathsays would never allow Mary to remain a widow forever. She was still pretty, still fertile, and thus still marriageable, and so she was an asset to their political and societal advancement. They would marry her off to a nobleman who would take her and Teddy far away from the vale. He had best come up with a plan, and soon, or Mary and Teddy would be lost to him forever. If indeed he had any chance at all. Did he have a plan…?

  “MR. BRYCE? Your plan?” Mary asked a second time when he did not respond but continued to stare down at her. “You must have some idea of what you intend to do to catch this thief, and I should know of it so that I may help.”

  “Yes, yes, I do, my lady,” he said with a nod, mentally shaking himself free of Kate’s well-intentioned advice for a future that seemed as probable as the cow jumping over the moon in Mother Goose’s Melody! “Once I’ve secured both doors that permit access to and from Sir Gerald’s rooms, and thus the intruder cannot escape via the servant door, or out into the corridor—

  “—assuming it is a thief and not a ghost.”

  “Yes. Assuming it is a thief and not a ghost,” he repeated patiently. “I intend to wait until I hear movem
ent in Sir Gerald’s rooms. I will then surprise the thief by entering via the connecting door in your bedchamber, and take him by force.”

  Lady Mary’s eyes widened. “Without any assistance? Should you not have several of the servants with you in case this thief attempts to overpower you?”

  “And have these men wait with me in your bedchamber? No. I would not do that to you, my lady. And I would prefer the fewer who know about this thief, the better. Besides,” he added, stepping back and spreading out his arms and turning slowly about so she had the full measure of him, “do I appear as if I am in need of their assistance?”

  Mary looked him up and down with all the seriousness of one taking the measure of a prize stallion she was considering for purchase: The Squire was not tall but he was above average in height, his chest and shoulders wide, his calves solid, his feet long, and when he flexed his hands to make fists she was sure he could punch through walls with ease. For all his athleticism, he had a lean frame, and the fine nose and intelligent eyes of a patrician, not a brute by any means. She shook her head in agreement, and had to smile when he lifted his brows as if providing an exclamation point for his question.

  “You will, unfortunately, have to abide the inconvenience of my company in your bedchamber,” he apologized, the smile gone. “If there were another way…”

  Mary lowered her lashes and hoped she wasn’t blushing, though she felt the heat in her cheeks. She swallowed and managed to say evenly, meeting his gaze,

  “It is a small inconvenience for the desired outcome, Mr. Bryce. I intend to spend the night on the chaise in my dressing room—”

  “I would not deprive you of your bed, my lady. I—”

  “Please do not concern yourself on my account,” she interrupted brusquely to bring the discussion to an end. She flashed a smile she hoped showed she was unruffled. “I’m confident you will apprehend this thief as quickly as possible… And when you do, what do you intend to do with him?”