“Dear me! You’ve made quite a study of my habits, haven’t you?” She glanced down at her hands, even though she knew he was right. When she pulled her fingers apart and whipped them behind her back Christopher chuckled. She pouted and gave his arm an affectionate push with her shoulder. “All right! I’ll own to it,” she confessed in a low voice, not wishing to be overheard. She continued to lean in against his arm. “I am worried for you—being here amongst my relatives.”
“I am touched. But I hope it’s not because you think me out of my depth in this exalted atmosphere?”
“No. Not at all. It’s because you are here not because you want to be here, but because you’ve been made to come by circumstance. If not for Teddy up a treehouse, you may never have come at all. And to be utterly truthful, I’m often out of my depth amongst my Roxton relatives, and I am related to them by blood! You have now met my cousin and her husband, and see how they conduct themselves. I do not possess a tenth of their sangfroid.”
“I don’t begrudge them their place in the world, and I am not awed by it. I like your cousin the Duchess, and I like her husband even more. He may be a duke, but strip him of his ermine and he is straight talking and no nonsense, and knows the value of an acre and the worth of the man who tills the soil for him. I respect him more for that than the fact he’s been burdened with an ancient Scottish title. I hope I may have the same respect for your cousin Roxton, regardless of the fact he owns this vainglorious beacon to noblesse oblige. But when all is said and done, what I care most about is how they treat you.”
“Me?”
Christopher regarded her for a moment, expression giving nothing away of his thoughts, and then startled her by saying with a wry smile, “Surely you must know by now that I would gladly walk into a lion’s den—or be here in these lofty surroundings—for you, and for Teddy, if that were required of me.”
Mary believed him and was overcome. She did not know what to say. Unconsciously her hands came together again, right squeezing the fingers of the left.
Christopher let her take a moment to digest his heartfelt words, drained his wine glass, and handed it off to a footman. He took a sweeping look about the opulent room with its gilding, crystal chandeliers, and silk-covered chairs up against the painted walls, and found it all a bit overwhelming, even for one who had spent a decade fawning over the wives of Italian aristocrats in their gilded pleasure palaces. Those plastered layer-caked edifices were as hovels when compared to this monstrosity of marble and masonry. He wondered what could be keeping its illustrious owner, and found himself anxious to get on with the pleasantries, and the dinner, so he could implement his plan to free Teddy from her fear.
“I wish we’d had more time together in your cottage,” Mary confessed, bringing him out of his introspection. “I wish I could tell you how you make me feel.”
“You don’t need to tell me, Mary. I know how I make you feel. Just as you know how you make me feel. But I don’t want to spend more time with you in my cottage.”
“You—you don’t?” Mary asked, instantly disconsolate.
“No. Nor do I want to continue as your steward or your squire-neighbor.”
Mary’s heart sank further into the gloom of rejection. She nodded and sighed and tried to rally herself. After all, if she were honest with herself, she knew from the moment she stepped into his cottage that her time there was finite. But it was so much more difficult to accept that their affair—for want of a better word—was at an end, when he made such a declaration. Still, she tried to rally, as this was not the time nor the place to fall all to pieces.
“I admit it was no easy task having you in the house as steward one moment, and thus my servant, and the next as squire, and therefore my neighbor. Such societal dilemmas always give me the headache!”
He leaned into her and said with a light in his eyes, “I can cure you of that.”
Mary stared up at him, eyes wide. “You can?”
He knew she would have no idea to what he was alluding and so was not surprised by her incredulity. But it was her response to what he said next that most interested him, and set his heart racing.
“Yes. Marry me.”
His simple declaration was punctuated by laughter coming from somewhere deep in the room. But to the couple, to Christopher and Mary, they could have been atop an isolated mountain peak in the wilds of Snowdonia, for they heard nothing and saw no one but each other. Christopher kept his expression neutral and his gaze fixed on her. Mary stared up at him, face white and lower lip trembling. Finally she swallowed and hissed,
“You cannot ask me that! Not here! Not now! It’s not poss—”
“Why isn’t it possible? Because I am a lowly squire and you are an earl’s daughter, and thus I do not have the right to ask you to be my wife?”
“Yes! No! I don’t see you as a-a lowly—anything!”
“What then? Would you have answered differently had I asked you while we were naked in bed together—”
Mary’s face glowed pink. “That’s unfair!”
“Why? At least in bed we are equals, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Would you?”
Mary shook her head. While they were at the cottage, while they were in bed together, while they made love, there had only ever been mutual respect and enjoyment. Making love with Christopher was a world away from the treatment she had received at the hands of her conceited husband, her social equal. Christopher was light to Sir Gerald’s dark. And he was right. She wouldn’t have had it any other way.
And here in this gilded saloon she didn’t see him any differently. Just because they were clothed and were held by intangible societal dictates that demanded his status in society was less than hers, her rank meant she could not marry beneath her. Beneath her? What did that mean precisely? And why should she be denied personal happiness and the choice of mate when her brother could marry the daughter of a merchant and lift her up to his level, and neither would be ostracized? Why did it fall to the females to be dictated to that they could marry up, not down the social ladder. Where had her mother’s social climb gotten her? It certainly had not secured her happiness—a happy marriage, or a happy life. The same could be said of Mary’s marriage to Sir Gerald.
And then, just as she was regaining her equilibrium through the strength of her own arguments, and was about to agree with him, he stopped the words in her throat by asking simply,
“Perhaps you do not wish to marry me because you do not love me?”
“Do not love you?” Mary repeated, incredulous, as if there could be any doubt about her feelings for him or that she had never spent a moment’s thought on such an idea. She had even told him so in the cottage, so why was he questioning her here and now?
“I love you and have always loved you, since that first day we were introduced in the hall of Abbeywood Farm,” he said simply. Then goaded her. “But perhaps loving you must also be restricted to our time at the cottage?”
“You know my feelings, and yet you have the-the—bold-faced cheek to ask me here in public whether I love you?” Mary drew herself up to her full height, indignant. “My heart is not fickle, and you, of all people, know that, Mr. Bryce of Brycecomb Hall!”
Christopher bowed to her with excessive politeness, but when he straightened, he realized a hush had descended upon the room and that their once polite, low-voiced discussion had turned, with every dramatic pronouncement, into a heated argument heard by everyone. And so he did not give her an immediate response but remained tight-lipped. But there was another more pressing reason for his silence. At Mary’s shoulder was a stranger who Christopher knew from the familiarity of his green eyes—a trait he shared with his mother—must be His Grace, the most noble sixth Duke of Roxton.
“Dear me, Mary. I can’t recall the last time you said anything with such force of conviction,” the Duke drawled. “Such a passionate speech deserves a response. But I dare say Mr. Bryce of Brycecomb Hall would prefer to do that in private, not with a
ll your family and relations bearing witness.”
Mary spun about in a swish of quilted petticoats and instantly dropped into a curtsy of welcome, eyes to the parquetry, and leaving Christopher face-to-face with Julian, Duke of Roxton, a nobleman much maligned—hated even—by Sir Gerald Cavendish, and with whom, for over two years now, Christopher had exchanged enough correspondence with many a terse sentence that he thought he had a measure of the man.
But Christopher received a severe jolt. He did not know why it was, and later he still could not put into words how he reached such an immediate appraisal, it was just a feeling he had, an intuition, a certain undefinable something he saw in those eyes, that told him here was a good and honest man he could trust with his life.
He made the Duke a respectful bow and said bluntly, the words out of his mouth before he had given them much thought, and thus all the more powerful in their sincerity, “I wish we had met years ago, Your Grace.”
Roxton stuck out his hand with a smile. “So do I, Mr. Bryce.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
DINNER WAS ALMOST over, with pudding on the table, along with platters of seasonal fruits and nuts, when the Duchess finally joined her family.
There was a general hush amongst the diners because Christopher had just outlined his idea for freeing Teddy from her fear of the Duke, and everyone was awaiting Roxton’s response. The Duke thought it such an excellent stratagem for helping a child overcome an ingrained fear, that he wondered aloud how it was that the childless squire was attuned to a child’s fears, and perhaps he had half a dozen children of his own hidden away somewhere?
Everyone knew this for a quip, but given the earlier heated altercation between Mary and the Squire, no one dared to laugh, and so the joke fell flat, and everyone returned to eating what was left on their plates. Everyone except Mary, who turned to Christopher for the first time since they had sat at the table and teased him with the question she knew the answer to but wished him to tell her otherwise,
“So that’s the secret you’re keeping from me, Mr. Bryce. You have a brood of brats hidden away in your house—of Italian extraction no doubt?”
“There is no wound to prod, my lady,” Christopher stated mildly, though Mary heard the walnut shell crack in his hand and he keep his fist closed. “I wonder why you would pursue it?”
“Because you are keeping something from me, something Cousin Duchess says I should know about if I am to make a decision about my future.”
Christopher glanced up the table to where the Duchess of Kinross was deep in conversation with Kate and the Duke of Kinross. He watched as Kate laughed out loud at the Duke’s comment and then put her fluttering fan over her mouth as if what he had just told her was equally extremely shocking and humorous. The scene sent him hurtling back to when he was fifteen and had met Kate for the first time, with no idea as to her identity. And how shocked, angry, and disbelieving he had been when told she was his mother. He wondered if Mary would have a similar reaction, and he decided there was no time like the present to find that out.
“Do you want to know here and now, or can it wait until after we free Teddy from the treehouse?”
“Now.”
“Why am I not surprised by that?” he muttered, and then he almost breathed an audible sigh of relief when the Duke interrupted their tête-à-tête.
“Mary, my dear, I must tell you not to fret about Teddy,” Roxton interrupted, unaware the couple were in whispered conversation. “Jack and Harry are with her, which is why they are not here at dinner with us.”
“Jack and Harry are in the treehouse with Teddy?”
“It seems Jack and Teddy have struck up a rapport, once she learned who he was, and he asked her about Abbeywood. She has been telling him all about his inheritance, and in return he has been playing his viola for her.” Roxton smiled and shook his head. “It was Harry’s idea that Jack play at the base of the oak in the hopes that Teddy would find the playing annoying enough to want to leave the treehouse.”
“Oh, but Teddy loves music,” Mary interrupted. “And Jack is a fine musician.”
“Just so. Either Harry has no appreciation for music, or he’s tone deaf! No matter. What does matter is that Teddy has some company. Between Jack and Harry’s visits during the day and her nightly sleeps with Scipio and Cordelia’s pack of pups, she has settled in well. So well in fact, that Frederick and the twins are demanding the girl who lives in their tree be evicted forthwith! Ah! Here you are at last, my darling,” he added, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet as his duchess swept through the double doors.
Everyone got to their feet, except for Antonia, who was the first to be acknowledged by her daughter-in-law and receive a kiss to her forehead. The Duchess then asked after her health and the baby, and only when satisfied her motherin-law was well did she smile upon the assembled company and tell them not to stand on ceremony and to resume their seats. She then went to the head of the table to where the Duke still stood, and said, after kissing his cheek,
“Forgive my tardiness. No sooner had I fed Otto than the boys and Julie needed settling again because they heard one of the nursery maids telling Nanny that Her Grace of Kinross had returned. Of course, they wanted to come downstairs and see Mema for themselves, convinced the baby must have arrived while she was away.” The Duchess picked up a slice of apple from her husband’s plate and nibbled on it, adding with a smile. “It is as well poor Otto has no idea how neglected he is by his brothers and sister, who think the only baby in existence is Mema’s! Oh, and before I forget, Charlotte sends her apologies for not being here at dinner. Apparently she is still nursing a bilious headache. Perhaps she’ll be able to find the energy to get out of bed in time for supper,” she added, turning to address Mary, “now that she knows you’ve arrived, Mary dear.”
“If she waits until supper she’ll find the place deserted,” Roxton replied. “We’re all needed over at the pavilion at Crecy, where I am to be magically transformed from ogre to handsome—yes, handsome—duke with the help of Mr. Bryce. Let me introduce you to—What is it, Deb?” the Duke demanded, worried when his forthright Duchess swayed and gripped his upper arm. “Darling, you’re bleached as white as fresh linen! Here, sit and—”
“Otto?! My God…!”
“I told you with this baby you should’ve employed a wet nurse sooner—”
Deb shook her head. “Not the baby. My brother Otto—”
“Deb, darling, your brother has been gone for over a decade now,” began the Duke patiently, and was cut off.
“Who are you, sir?” Deb demanded of Christopher, a glance to the end of the table where Antonia sat, and who by her secret smile let Deb know that she saw what she saw: The startling family resemblance between her daughter-in-law and the Squire.
Christopher made his bow to the Duchess, who now had a shaking hand to her mouth, but it was to Mary he spoke first, and in a clear, strong voice that allowed everyone about the table to hear what he had to say.
“I wanted to tell you at the cottage, and would have done so had we more time. And as I had already confessed to you my life in Lucca, I thought that enough of a revelation for you to manage in those first few days. And then Kate asked that I wait a little longer. I do have a secret to tell you. But this one involves others. It involves Kate, whom I would not want hurt for all the sugar in the Indies, and there are others—you, Your Grace,” he said to Deb, “and you, Your Grace,” he said to Roxton, “who may not wish to own to the connection, and I fully appreciate that is your right. But I must and will tell you,” he said to Mary, “because you need to know, and I trust that you will understand that it is a circumstance that was wholly out of my control. And while it does not define me, and I have come to accept it, it is still a blemish that can never be removed. The stain of my birth will remain with me for the rest of my life.”
“Blemish? Stain of your birth?” Mary responded quietly, up on her feet beside him. She glanced at Deb and saw that she still had
a hand to her mouth. She then looked back at Christopher, and into his eyes, and then had to take another look at Deb. It was then that she knew, and felt rather foolish for being blind to it before now. Her own violet eyes went wide with new knowledge, and then she met Christopher’s gaze and said, “You once told me your birth name was Cavendish. That you had Cavendish blood and that the connection was complicated. But it isn’t, is it? It’s really rather simple, once you know. Once you see the resemblance—” She stopped herself saying it. She wanted to hear him say it.
Christopher looked across the table at Kate, whose hand was being held by Antonia.
“Kate…?”
“I am not ashamed. I never have been,” Lady Paget replied. “But I do harbor regrets. I allowed others to persuade me to give you up. I regret I never played any part in your boyhood. That aside, you’ve grown into a fine, honorable man, worthy of being called a gentleman, and that’s all that matters. No mother could be prouder.”
The Duchess went to speak but then realized Christopher had more to say, so clung to her husband’s arm and kept silent; the Duke holding her closer. Christopher addressed himself to Mary, but again, his voice was steady and loud enough for everyone to hear that he spoke in earnest, and that his words were heartfelt.
“Mary—my lady—I stand before you as Squire Bryce, for that is who I am. But what I did not get to tell you, and which you should know, is that I am the natural son of Sir George Cavendish and Kate, Lady Paget. I was born at Brycecomb Hall and given the name Cavendish Christopher Bryce. I was adopted at three months of age by my mother’s sister Sophie and her husband Henry Bryce, and brought up as their son and heir. And those two good and worthy people were my parents in every particular. When as a youth I was told my true parentage—that Sir George was my father, and his son Gerald my brother—it was only natural I would refuse to believe it. For the longest time I lived in a condition of denial, unable to accept that my blood was polluted, that I was not who I thought I was. My life became desolate, and for a time, dissolute. That part I have confessed to you, and I need not repeat it here. And then Kate—my mother—found me, and I—and I—grew up…”
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