Christopher leapt to life and lunged for Evelyn. “Enough o’ye filthy maundering!”
With a yelp, Evelyn yanked up the nightshirt and jumped up onto the mattress, scrambling across it, laughing gleefully. “I knew it! I knew it!” he hissed loudly. “I knew it the first time I saw you look my cousin’s way! Hey! Ho! Squire Backwater has feelings for the Lady Mary!”
“Mr. Bryce! Mr. Bryce?” It was Mary, calling from the next room.
Christopher had one boot up on the bed and a hand out to seize Evelyn, who was still laughing and jumping up and down on the mattress, not in any way frightened for his life, or that the straightness of his fine nose might be broken by the larger, more solid, and furious squire. At the sound of Mary’s voice both men froze, as if they were two small boys caught out playing a game of grandmother’s footsteps. They waited a moment to hear if she would add anything further to her call, or worse, come back into the bedchamber.
But when she did not, they both came to life again, Evelyn to drop to his knees amongst the pillows, chuckling, and Christopher, to hop down off the bed and brush at his frock coat, mortified at his school boy behavior. But what concerned and overwhelmed him was that this thin slip of a man, with the irritating laugh and bright blue eyes that saw too much, and who had been in his company for less time than it took him to pull on his boots, had peeled back his feelings for Mary like a scab to a never-healing wound and made them raw again.
“Off you trot to assist m’cousin, while I indulge in a second cup of tea and a snooze,” Evelyn commanded with a nonchalant wave and a loud yawn. “It’s damnably freezing in this house, and one night awake shivering is enough. But mind your manners. She’s a lady by birth as well as reputation, and you her servant, regardless you may think yourself her knight errant. No! Don’t speak! Lady Mary is waiting!”
Christopher stared at Evelyn as if he were truly mad. Inside he was still seething. He took a deep breath, swallowed, and said very low, “I don’t care who you are—the King of Poland for all I know—or that you are her ladyship’s cousin. Know this: If you ever make unguarded or crude remarks about her marriage again, I’ll knock all your good teeth to the back of your throat. Understand?” When the silence stretched, Christopher took a step nearer the bed. “Dost thou Majesty understand?”
Evelyn settled amongst the pillows and plucked a long red hair from the front of his nightgown. He met Christopher’s unblinking gaze, and then, after a moment, shrugged, and said with a pout that was at odds with the hard glitter to his eyes, “Perfectly, Squire Worthy.”
With a curt nod, Christopher turned on a heel and disappeared into Sir Gerald’s dressing room.
And there was Luke, holding aloft a taper to shed light on a large trunk he had pulled out from a neatly-arranged stack that had been under a dust sheet, but was now a disordered mess in the corner. Mary was bent over the closed trunk, bathed in the glow of candlelight. She was jiggling a key in the lock, long hair falling over one shoulder to the floor. She had never looked more beautiful, or more unobtainable.
ELEVEN
‘OH! HERE YOU ARE, Mr. Bryce,” Mary announced, surprised when he appeared beside her. She did not look up. “I seem to have got the key stuck in the lock.”
“Let me look at it.”
He crouched and she instantly straightened and stepped away, signaling for Luke to move closer to provide Christopher with more light. He worked at the lock for several moments in silence, before she said, as if he had asked her for an explanation,
“Evelyn and I are cousins. I believe we are both related to the fourth Duke of Roxton, who was Evelyn’s great-grandfather, and my great-great grandfather. The present Duke is his first cousin, and my first cousin once removed.”
“The key is wedged up into the mechanism,” he replied as if she had not spoken. “It may take me a moment. I don’t want to force it or the key could snap.”
“It may not be the correct key. There were several in the drawer.”
“That would make you second cousins once removed.”
“Second cousins once removed? Oh? Yes. Yes, I believe you are right…” She peered over his shoulder, trying to see what he was doing. “He—Evelyn—he eloped with a girl the family considered most unsuitable—French. Daughter of a Farmer-General. She died in childbirth. She was very young and very pretty… Such a tragedy… News of her death was the last letter I received from him.”
“It needs lubrication,” Christopher stated and stood up. “Some lard should do the trick,” he said to Luke and took the taper from him. “Ask Jane.” He put the candlestick on the trunk and waited for Luke to disappear through the servant door. “Let me see what other keys we have.” When he turned, it was to find Mary staring at him. He smiled to himself when she quickly looked away. He watched her rummage through the dressing room drawer. “I am sorry about his wife.”
“I wish my brother had told me Eve was alive. I cannot understand why he would keep such news to himself, and from the family.”
“Perhaps he was ordered to do so?” he ventured. When she came away from the drawer holding several keys and waited for him to continue, he added, “He is a spy, and so is your cousin, and thus both are constrained to do as they are bid.”
“That makes sense,” she said, as if this had never occurred to her, finally meeting his gaze. “Dair is a risk taker and an excellent soldier.” She had a sudden thought. “Perhaps Evelyn had to pretend to be dead for reasons of state?” She handed him the keys. “They are all labeled, but one is not.”
“Thank-you. Yes, perhaps your cousin was given such orders,” he agreed evenly, suppressing a smile at her earnestness. Quick appraisal of Cousin Evelyn told him the man did what was best for Evelyn and no other, reasons of state be damned, and that her cousin was most decidedly unlike her soldier-hero brother. But he kept this assessment to himself for now. “I am certain he will tell you what he can, eventually. Though… he may wish to keep the past in the past, and just get on with his future. Men who live by subterfuge have secrets that are best kept to themselves. You may not like what he has to tell you.”
“The truth is always preferable to lies and dissimulation, Mr. Bryce.”
“I beg to differ, my lady. The truth sometimes leads to disappointment and heartache, particularly if the recipient of such truths is ill-equipped to deal with a confessional. In that case, it would be best to leave the person in blissful ignorance.”
“I helped him elope,” she blurted out with a guilty blush.
Christopher was momentarily surprised, and wondered why she felt the need to tell him. Then he realized she had misconstrued his explanation as a criticism of her, and knew it was so when the response to his simple question was met with justification.
“Did you?” he asked smoothly.
“Yes. I did,” Mary stated defiantly, thinking he did not believe her. “I am conventional and most definitely not a-a dissenter. I saw and heard enough cruel vitriol exchanged between my parents when I was young to wish away a lifetime of non-compliance. But that does not mean I will sit by idly, remain mute, or cower from what I believe to be right when called upon to add my voice, or act upon a worthy cause. To this day, my family have no notion that I aided in Evelyn’s elopement. I helped Dominique—his bride-to-be—escape from her father’s house to be with Evelyn. And I pawned my jewels so they had sufficient funds to see them across the border into Switzerland.”
Christopher set the keys aside, having selected one he thought might be a better fit for the particular trunk. “That was admirable of you. But perhaps in this case, as it was a clandestine marriage not favored by either set of parents, it would have been wiser not to involve yourself?”
“There was no one else he could turn to. And I wanted to help. He is my cousin, and Dominique deserved that Eve should marry her.”
Unconsciously, Christopher’s gaze flickered to the open doorway into Mary’s bedchamber, as if he expected her long-lost cousin to be leaning against the jamb w
ith a defiant smirk. He was not. He met Mary’s gaze.
“So it was not love. He ruined her.” It was not a question and he was not surprised by her answer.
Mary nodded, eyes downcast. “Yes. And in the process ruined his friendship with Roxton and his wife, and was cast out by the family.” She smiled weakly and shrugged. “To own a truth, I had nothing to fear from aiding and abetting Evelyn’s unsanctioned marriage. As it so happened, Roxton—well, he wasn’t the Duke then, but he is now—had just that week ordered my husband into exile for some unpardonable infringement. That meant I, too, was banished.”
“Ah. I was unaware it was your ducal relative that had gone to such lengths to distance himself from Sir Gerald. I was told it was the other way round.”
Mary’s eyes widened. She knew immediately what he meant. “That Sir Gerald wished to distance himself from my family? Whatever for?”
Christopher hesitated, not because he did not want to tell her, but because he now realized that what Sir Gerald had confided in one of his late night drunken confessionals was in all probability untrue, or a version of the truth. He had no desire to upset Mary, but nor did he want to lie to her, so he said simply,
“He intimated that he disliked the—attention you received from the Duke—that it made him, and I presume you, uncomfortable.”
Mary stared at him, transfixed. She became indignant.
“That I received—that he disliked—that I received—attention from-from Roxton?” When Christopher nodded she blushed. “But—that’s utter nonsense. Cousin Julian—Roxton—has never looked at any woman sideways, least of all me. He is devoted to the Duchess. They are very much in love. Why would Sir Gerald make such a scurrilous accusation against my relative, and to you?”
Christopher took a moment to answer her.
“Let me assure you that he told me in the strictest confidence—
“That does not console me, Mr. Bryce. That he said it at all is most upsetting.”
“Is it?”
“Yes! Very much so. Why would you think it would not be? Sir Gerald not only besmirched the Duke’s good name, but mine, and I his wife. And he did so to-to you.”
“I wonder what upsets you more, my lady?”
“It is a wonder that you believed him!”
“Pardon me for stating the obvious, but Sir Gerald set great store in his name, his noble connections, and yours. And I have exchanged enough correspondence with His Grace of Roxton, not to mention the visits here by his high-and mighty-secretary, to know something of the man behind the quill. I believed Sir Gerald because I knew it would take something monumental to wrest your husband from that ducal bosom.”
Such was Mary’s incredulous anger that she forgot her own good advice to keep her distance from the Squire, and came right up to him and looked into his eyes. “You have known me for as many years as you knew my husband, longer in fact, if we count these two years of my widowhood, and yet knowing me, you chose to besmirch my character by believing there was an immoral connection between me and a noble cousin whom I love and respect as a brother, as I do my own brothers.”
“Such arrangements are not uncommon amongst the nobility.”
“No, but they are also not as rife as some would believe. My father’s deplorable conduct aside, the members of my family take their marriage vows very seriously.”
Christopher’s eyebrow raised of its own accord. “Indeed? Even the present Duke’s esteemed parent?”
Mary rolled her eyes and huffed, as if this was such old news it was not worth her time to offer an explanation. But she humored him by asking flatly, “And what would you know of M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton, Mr. Bryce?”
Christopher put his hands behind his back. “That his sullied reputation was black enough to cast an ink stain across the map of Europe.”
“Never sullied, Mr. Bryce. There you are wrong. Yes, he had mistresses aplenty and many casual liaisons, and yes, he did not care who knew about them, but M’sieur le Duc was a man of honor, in all things. And once he fell in love and married my cousin, his heart and his bed belonged very much and only to Mme la Duchesse. They were devoted. And if you think the son is anything like his father, then you are quite correct for the present duke is just as uxorious. If Sir Gerald intimated anything to the contrary, then he misled you, and that is unpardonable. I am sorry. Now, please, may we try the key one more time?” she added, and went to step past him. “I am suddenly weary, and it is very late, and Luke should have returned by now with the lard, should he not? Perhaps you need to find out what is keeping him?”
Christopher did not move.
“It was not Sir Gerald who told me about M’sieur le Duc, but my mother. She, like you, defended him, though not with quite the same passionate conviction. She also gave a good account of the son.”
“A sensible woman. Perhaps you should’ve given her opinion its due consideration, Mr. Bryce.”
“Yes. But in my defense I have never besmirched your character. Not for one moment did I believe you willingly submitted to Roxton’s attentions, but that it was he who attempted to seduce you, and that’s why Sir Gerald saw fit to cut the connection.”
Mary was puzzled. “Why would he wish to seduce me?”
It was a simple question requiring a simple answer. He knew from her earlier responses, particularly to his kiss, that she was clueless to her inherent allure. Her lack of carnal awareness he blamed on Sir Gerald, which again made him wonder at the man’s boorish behavior in the bedchamber, but he was not daunted by it. He knew that this same lack of awareness saw her and her long-lost cousin cozy up on her bed, and she think nothing of it. He also knew the only way forward was to be utterly truthful with her, however much she might be made uncomfortable. He had to hold to the belief that their kiss had opened her mind to possibilities, possibilities with him.
“Why? Because you are very beautiful and desirable.”
Mary went white, and then her face flooded with the heat of embarrassment. She was fraught with uncertainty and confusion.
“Me? Beautiful and-and des-desirable?”
“Yes. I defy any man to say otherwise.”
In all her thirty years, nothing and no one had prepared her for this. Her mother had only ever bemoaned her looks, loudly lamenting upon one occasion before a room full of tea-drinking ladies that she had been saddled with a daughter who was “a bran-faced, redheaded dolt”. It did not help that her first cousin, the Duchess of Roxton and Kinross, was a celebrated beauty. And so at eighteen, she had supposed Sir Gerald had offered for her because of her lineage and connections, and had disregarded her indifferent looks.
“You may not offer me such-such hollow compliments, Mr. Bryce!”
“We’ve had this conversation before. It’s Christopher. And there is nothing hollow about my compliments. You are beautiful, and you are desirable. And that is the truth.”
“But you said so yourself that if the truth leads to disappointment and heartache, then that truth is best left unsaid.”
“Ha! That will teach me to be truthful,” Christopher replied with a false heavy sigh of regret, though his lips twitched into a smile. But when Mary did not realize he was teasing her and kept wringing her hands, the smile died and he asked gently, “Will you tell me why such a compliment, no doubt told to you by others many times, is a cause for disappointment and heartache when uttered by me?”
Mary shook her head, unable to articulate in a few sentences an explanation that he would understand, and that would not deeply offend him. Her mother had preached the sermon enough times that it was forever etched in her mind—to people of birth, the gentry were little better than menials. A steward was to be ignored as a servant, and a squire, as a small landowner, required a begrudging nod of acknowledgment for his freehold existence, but conversation must be kept to inconsequentials such as the weather and the state of the roads. Compliments offered by social inferiors amounted to toad-eating flattery, and were to be avoided and discouraged, and
could never be believed for their own sake.
But in the eight years she had known Christopher Bryce, he had never been insincere. In fact, he was quite the opposite. He was frank to the point of curtness. So she believed him when he said he thought her beautiful and desirable. So she reasoned she must be truthful with him, too.
“Mr. Bryce, I have never received such a compliment before, from any man.”
His dark brows drew sharply together. “Never?” He was so incredulous he vocalized his thoughts. “But how is that possible?”
She was overjoyed by his heartfelt puzzlement and cemented his praise in sincerity. Meeting his gaze she was filled with a happiness she had never known before, one that left her giddy, as if she were on a swing and at its highest point in the air; her own heart beating rapidly.
She wanted to thank him, and had a sudden urge to gently brush back the dark auburn curls come loose from the riband at his nape, to rise up on tiptoe and press her lips to his mouth so the frown would clear from his brow. Perhaps he would then take her in his arms and kiss her as he had that first time, with ardor and with his tongue and—No!
She must stop this fanciful schoolroom-miss nonsense. She was thirty years old, not seventeen. Just because a handsome man found her attractive did not mean she should go all to pieces and lose a sense of perspective. There was no future with a squire in the wilds of the Cotswolds. Not that he had offered her one, just a kiss, and a furtive one at that. She was Lady Mary Fitzstuart Cavendish, and she must face the cold reality that she needed to remarry, and marry well. To do so, she must trade on her unsullied reputation and her connections and marry title and wealth, for she was penniless, and she had a daughter whose future depended on her.
She dropped her gaze on a shattering breath of reality, and when he just stood there, looking down at her, she panicked and blurted out,
“Don’t you understand? You should not—cannot—give me such compliments. You have never done so before, and I wonder why of a sudden you would. Perhaps that is my fault, for asking you to come to my bedchamber because of my irrational fears there was a ghost. And seeing me in my night clothes inflamed your senses. And men cannot be blamed for their behavior when it is women who by their imprudent actions—”
Proud Mary Page 14