Dangerous 01 - Dangerous Works

by Caroline Warfield

  He drove the chaise past the outskirts of Cambridge proper. The moon hung low in the sky and would soon be gone, leaving them in darkness.

  “I want …” She couldn’t complete the sentence.

  “What is it you want, Georgiana? Do you know?”

  “This beautiful thing between us, this fragile, private thing—it is mine … ours. I don’t—”

  “Don’t what? Don’t wish to marry me?”

  The very word struck her with horror, and she could see by the look on his face that her horror hurt him deeply.

  “I want you. I don’t want marriage.”

  “Let’s look at this carefully,” he said.

  How can he be reasonable and analytic at such a time? She wanted to scream. The horse ambled on, oblivious to her churning emotion, carrying them relentlessly on under darkened skies, the moon having sunk beneath the clouds.

  “You said you wish to stay with me. Do you think you could live in my house?” He was as relentless as the horse.

  “Certainly not! I mean, yes, but that isn’t the point. Of course I would love to be there with you, or in a grand house, or in a one-room croft. It isn’t the house.” And it wasn’t. She would have happily followed him to Spain and lived in a tent. She wouldn’t have missed her golden cage.

  “Well then. One barrier removed. You should know that, while I’m not a wealthy man in the sense that your father is wealthy, my service—and some opportunities it brought me—left me well fixed. Many would consider it wealth.”

  He skillfully maneuvered the team around a rutted part of the road. When she didn’t speak, he continued.

  “I can afford to feed you, to provide a few servants, and to keep you in muslin and writing paper, while living as a gentleman scholar.”

  The hard seat of the chaise cut into her back while she struggled in vain for words. The picture he drew tempted her, but she shrunk from it. Marriage meant trading the control of one man for the control of another.

  “He can’t ruin me.” Andrew’s voice came to her from far away. He had grown impatient waiting for her reply. “There is nothing he can do to me.”

  He mistook her silence. She knew that he assumed that she worried about him instead of herself, and the realization shamed her. He offered to marry her, knowing the harm her father could do. He was more generous than she.

  “Do you hear me, Georgie? He can’t harm me.”

  “You don’t know him. There are many ways to ruin a man.” And destroy a daughter.

  Andrew let out a frustrated breath. “You don’t wish me to order your life. Very well, don’t order mine. I’m not twenty-two any longer or so easily dismissed.” He managed his horse one handed, and ran the other through his hair in frustration.

  “Aren’t we getting ahead of things anyway,” he burst out. “Before we worry about his reaction, I believe the first step is to ask him for your hand.”

  “No! You mustn’t!” Her panic this time had a frantic edge. Her father would become involved. He would demand her obedience. The delicate balance she had struck with her parents gave her the ability to work. What Andrew was asking put all that at risk. She spent too many years avoiding her father’s notice to risk it now. “You mustn’t do that, Andrew.”

  “Why ever not? It is a mere formality. We are of age, and he can’t forbid it. The worst he can do is withhold your dowry or cut you off from family funds. Is that what worries you?”

  She thought for a moment. “No, but I shouldn’t like it. I would hate being treated like chattel. It would be ugly. He would make it ugly.” She knew that he would humiliate her, that her mother would humiliate her.

  “Very well, we can forgo the courtesy of it and simply marry.”

  “It would never be simple! At first banns they would swoop down and begin to bully the minister and the local magistrate. The entire shire would be in an uproar. They would know immediately. They have eyes everywhere.”

  She grabbed his arm in her agitation, clinging tightly. “And Andrew, I have nothing but my house. I would come to you with nothing.” She would contribute nothing. She wouldn’t be a partner. She would be completely dependent on him. Her fragile independence mattered too much to give it up for another man’s care.

  “Georgiana, your beautiful self is certainly not ‘nothing.’” He ignored the horse. “And there is also the work. You have already done me the honor of sharing the work.”

  She wondered how the work could be enough. Their partnership was too new, too fragile.

  “You are correct about one thing: His Grace’s eyes and ears.” Andrew went on without waiting for an answer. “I wouldn’t care to elope, however. I want to pledge my fidelity before God and the world–yes, even in the face of His Grace of Sudbury–not before some blacksmith in Gretna. Your father’s reach doesn’t frighten me.”

  “It should. And my mother—”

  “Ah. Your mother. Now, she is quite frightening.” He said it lightly.

  “Perhaps not to you, but you have no idea how much cruelty she can inflict.”

  “But I do, Love. I saw her at her worst, remember?”

  “You saw her aim barbs at me. She ignored you. You were beneath her notice. You have never been on the receiving end of her attacks. She finds everyone’s weakness sooner or later and exploits it to cause pain. Sometimes I think she enjoys it.”

  “We could obtain a special license.” His voice reached a new level of wariness. “Once we’re married, you would never need to see her.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Don’t you understand that his eyes are everywhere? The Archbishop of Canterbury is his cousin. York is my uncle, and Winchester simply a shooting companion but a close friend for all that. It will not do.”

  His refusal to face reality irritated her. Suddenly she felt sick, weary unto death, of men telling her what was best for her.

  “Andrew, don’t you see, marriage is so very public. I don’t want to ruin this beautiful thing we have—the two of us alone.”

  He pulled the horse to the side with abrupt movements and turned to face her. Her arms hurt where his fingers bit into them.

  “What precisely is that, Georgiana? What do we have? What were you doing tonight? Researching Nossis of Locri?” She had hurt him; she hadn’t meant to, but she had hurt him.

  “No, no, never that,” she soothed. “What we have is a precious thing, precious and, and private.”

  He ran his hands through his hair again, the familiar gesture of exasperation, before he picked up the reins and urged the horse on. “It is never private, Love.” He didn’t look at her. “Desire may feed on the soul of an individual, but it is never private. It always impacts the larger world. What is it you want from me? What were you asking for tonight?”

  She couldn’t answer that. She had intended to demand a kiss and gotten more than she anticipated. She could only stare at him, touched beyond measure, but equally confused and riddled with anxiety, wondering what to do with this new reality.

  He came to a halt again, and she found herself at the lane to Helsington Cottage. He came round and lifted her to the ground.

  His kissed her, a kiss as fierce as it was brief. She reached to pull him back, but he held her away. “We need to settle this.”

  “I can’t talk about marriage, Andrew. I simply can’t. Perhaps tomorrow we can piece this together.”

  “Perhaps.” He looked dubious. He glanced up at the dark shadow of the house. “Be careful. If you don’t want to marry, you best take care that the world doesn’t know where you’ve been.”

  In the deep darkness before dawn, she walked up the lane to her house alone.

  Andrew nursed his anger all the way to Cambridge. Her proud back, walking unbowed down the night-shrouded lane, had inflamed and infuriated him. Every bump along the route deepened his rage, every slowing of his horse’s steps his frustration. She had no idea what she did to him, and in his opinion, she didn’t care either. A bitter smile followed that thought. She ought to know now
what she did to him—even if she didn’t care.

  In the public livery where Andrew stabled his horse, a young groom grumbled when Andrew woke him.

  “Do as you’re paid, damn it. You’re not paid to tell me what time of day I have need of you.” Andrew slapped the reins against the seat of his chaise and winced. Anger drove him to leap from the vehicle with little thought, and a crooked landing on his weaker leg resulted. Sharp shafts of pain along his irritated nerves sent a wave of nausea through him. He sagged against a stall, breathing heavily.

  The groom took his horse with a sullen look and led it back into the stables. Andrew watched him work with quiet competence. The groom was little more than a boy and should have been in his bed another hour or more.

  “Sorry lad,” he said. “I’ve had the devil’s time tonight. It isn’t your fault.”

  He slipped the boy a coin and limped toward his dark house just as the sky turned a light gray. The house lay silent as a tomb. He labored one painful step at a time, up the stairs to his study where the fire burned low. In the dim light before dawn, he could just make out the shadow of the bed with its crumpled linens through the open door to his bedchamber. Silent as a tomb but emptier, he thought.

  A serviceable decanter sat at the ready on his window sill. He poured a glass and drank it in one movement. You’re a damned fool, Andrew. This time is no different than before. You present every argument, and they brush you aside. Her family’s claws are in her deep. It will never be any different. He poured another glass and drained it.

  Anger teetered toward bitterness. He picked up the decanter and lurched to his chair by the fire, trying to fan the flames of anger, trying to keep the bite of bitterness at bay. “I am not something to be used for your pleasure and tossed aside, my lady,” he spat. There was no response from the silent room.

  He knew his words were not fair to Georgiana; he didn’t care. She never considered the consequences of her actions to him—or to herself for that matter. The Haydens used the entire population of England to suit their comfort. Tonight was no different.

  Sunlight crept gradually across the dark planks of his floor. The new day brought no peace and very little clarity.

  He heard Harley bang about loudly in the kitchen below. Scorched eggs, dried toast, and burnt coffee. Damn. I need to hire a decent cook.

  A vision of Georgiana with flour on her nose came to mind. He glanced over at the rumpled bed, and the vision shifted to one of her lying there in that bed, her face transformed with desire. He wanted her there now, wanted to wake up next to her every day just as he told her. Her nonsense about their love—”this beautiful thing … this fragile, private thing”—was a flight of fancy, the stuff of gossamer fairy tales. There was nothing fragile in what he felt and nothing fragile about what they could have together.

  Andrew thought about the life they might build together, one with a sheltering, nurturing love—the sort that got two people through a lifetime. We could, if only she could let go, if only she would let herself, if only— Shattered glass and the flare of brandy on embers stopped his ragged thoughts.

  This is the end. I will leave the blasted woman! he thought and then he sank his head back and laughed bitterly. He would never leave. He should, but he wouldn’t.

  He wondered what they would do about the work. She might try to pretend that nothing had changed, but he couldn’t.

  He hobbled to his rugged worktable and found pen and ink.

  “Lady Georgiana,” he began but crossed it out. Even in correspondence, there would be no going back.

  “Georgiana, I’m not able to continue our work.” He crossed that out also. This was not about the work. “I’m not able to come to Helsington Cottage in the near future.”

  He couldn’t bear it.

  “I’ll be unable to keep my commitment.” No. He crossed that out. He must finish the work. He owed it to her; he owed it to himself.

  “I have sufficient notes here to work on my own.” For how long? Two days? Then what?

  A savage roar and a string of curses filled the air of the study. He threw the crumpled note against the wall. He knew he would never be able to stay away … never.

  Chapter 18

  He didn’t come.

  Andrew always arrived at one in the afternoon. Georgiana depended on his punctuality. She needed the dependable, the familiar, the comfort of habit more today than ever. She needed work to restore her balance. She needed to work while they talked, while they reasoned, calmly and logically, through what had passed between them. She needed Andrew. She didn’t get him.

  Instead, the long form of her brother Richard lounged with sophisticated ease on her gold brocade settee. He had arrived a day early.

  Damn you, Richard. She knew with total certainty that everything in Richard’s world happened by design. He invaded my privacy for a purpose, the traitorous swine.

  Georgiana’s ormolu clock chimed the quarter hour, fifteen minutes after one and no sign of Andrew. With Richard here, relief warred with desperate disappointment.

  “You look well, Georgiana.”

  She needed Andrew, not Richard. She needed work, not this foolish pretense of civility. What she got was her brother, his silk-clad legs stretched across her fine Axminster carpet, and awkward conversation. She forced herself to respond to his small talk.

  “Thank you. Your suggestion of Mr. Peabody was a blessing. He has been a lifesaver in every sense of that word.”

  Georgiana poured herself another cup of tea. “Your color is excellent,” her brother went on, “and you appear more animated than when last I visited.” Richard had declined tea in favor of a fine sherry, which he held gracefully in the slender fingers of one hand.

  Richard’s eyes, so like hers in color, lacked her warmth and revealed nothing. The same could be said of his words—no light and little warmth.

  “I take the air with more regularity,” she responded. “And Mr. Peabody’s regime has had a salubrious effect.” Georgiana’s mind wandered. Does last night’s adventure show plainly in my face? Where is Andrew? I hope he doesn’t come, not with Richard here. I don’t want to face them together. Drat it, where is he?

  “I understand you order kegs of water from a particular spring in Yorkshire. Fascinating that iron in water could—”

  “What brings you here so suddenly, Richard?”

  Her brother raised a well-bred brow at the interruption but didn’t comment on it. “There is to be a house party at Murnane House. The Earl of Chadbourn, you may recall, is the Duchess of Murnane’s brother. He is to marry a distant connection.”

  “Will is getting married? I am glad for him. I wish him happiness.” William Landrum, the Earl of Chadbourn, was one of a handful of Richard’s true friends, his boon companion when they came up from Cambridge before the war—like Andrew.

  “Her Grace wishes you to attend, and I have been commissioned to bring you there directly.”

  “Absurd.” Georgiana put her cup down with enough force that it teetered in the saucer.

  Richard’s cultivated brows rose simultaneously. “I beg your pardon.”

  “Mother hasn’t wished my presence at Mountview these years, much less at a house party.”

  “She wishes it now.”

  “She does or you do?”

  One of his rare smiles, slight but sure, lit his gray Hayden eyes. “Does it matter?”

  “Certainly. If she doesn’t wish to see me, she won’t see me, even if I’m in the same room.”

  “That doesn’t become you, Georgiana.” She noticed he didn’t answer her question. “Chadbourn was once your friend, too.”

  She acknowledged the truth of that; Georgiana genuinely liked Chadbourn, but she was never close to him—unlike Andrew. “Does he wish my attendance?”

  “He is too besotted to know what he wants.” Richard’s tone spoke his disapproval. “He has succumbed to the most banal and mawkish of sentiments.”

  “You mean he has the poor taste
to be in love with his intended?” It amused her. The Haydens had long savaged those whose sentiments were plebeian, those with sentiments like the ones Andrew expressed last night.

  “Who is she?” she asked.

  “She is—she is respectable.”

  “Mother doesn’t approve.” It wasn’t a question. “She is ‘no one who is anyone’?”

  “That is correct.”

  Chadbourn has fallen in love with a commoner, how intriguing. Georgiana was stunned to silence. The thought that her mother might wish her to witness the distastefulness of an uneven match occurred to her. She wondered if it was Richard’s intention also. Georgiana puzzled over the possibilities. Perhaps Richard wished her to lend support to the bride. She once thought she could read her brother but not now, not now that she knew what he did to her eleven years ago. It clouded her view of him.

  “Mother—” he began. She didn’t let him finish.

  “Why is my presence required?”

  “You stay too long in your own company.”

  “That isn’t our noble mother speaking. What is really on your mind, Richard?”

  “Chadbourn’s wedding and your duty to your station.” His chin rose, and his tone became icy. “A lady doesn’t avoid the marriage of a peer and a friend when invited.”

  It was a command, an order to attend, but she still didn’t know who had issued the order. The wedding itself might not be so bad. Distantly she heard her brother fill in details of his plans, assuming she would comply.