by Baird Wells
Spencer was watching them with a tight expression she couldn't interpret. She smiled, and he looked away. Why were they always out of tune?
Laurel made a noise, and grimaced. “Not a taste I'd choose to have in my mouth, but I admit to feeling better. Are these also for your cough?”
“What?” She’d heard the questions; now she stalled for time to construct a reasonable explanation.
“Chas shared with us that you have lung complaints, coughing fits.” Laurel’s mouth pulled into a sympathetic frown. “The clean air here will make that better, I think.”
Alix bit her cheek against a smile. She did not have a lung complaint. She had a Paulina complaint, and a clever excuse to avoid going just about anywhere with her brother's wife. Her only embarrassment was that it had taken so many years to concoct a remedy. Hot peppers from the East, a little soot from the grate, and like magic she’d contracted a debilitating chest ailment. Who would notice that it was aggravated anytime she was forced to share company with the horrible woman? “Oh,” she murmured, studying her glove and trying to sound frail, “I'm not certain that it will.”
* * *
Over the years, Laurel had taught him a thing or two about being a good host, and now had seemed the perfect time to put her lessons to use. Having never been married, never having had a woman to manage the gentler aspects of his estate, he’d often relied on her to make the house presentable for guests.
Laurel had teased him about his companions now and then, insisting that he could entertain a lady just fine without her help. He’d been provoked, after much harassment by John, into explaining that his sort of entertaining was not suitable for London company. The women who had passed through his life didn’t cross stitch or pour tea. Some years ago, upon noticing his lack of domestic ability, Laurel had taken it upon herself to impart her wisdom, educating him on comforts and niceties which impressed visitors. From where the chairs should be arranged on a cold day in order for guests to be warm but not soot-covered, how to arrange the table so that disagreeable pairings were avoided without creating hard feelings, Laurel had mastered all of the rules. Having sent his groom ahead to Oakvale in order to have tea and refreshments ready for their arrival, he was proud that some of her lessons had sunk in.
Almost upon arrival, Chas and Paulina had stomped upstairs under complaints of fatigue from a poor carriage ride. Now, standing in the hall and watching John usher a green-about-the-gills Laurel out into the garden for air, Spencer felt cheated of his moment.
He turned to Alexandra and held his breath, waiting for her to make an excuse and take her leave, as the others had. Instead, she smiled and shrugged. “More for me, then. I am famished.” He dared a hesitant smile of his own and opened his mouth, only to be cut off by a warning of footsteps, boots striking marble at the top of the staircase. He turned, disappointed at the thought of Chas returning and was greeted by the sight of his brother. A smart blue riding jacket and buckskins announced that Bennet was on his way out.
“Reed.” Bennet took the stairs in a military double-time, scowling and hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “Who in bloody hell were those two dowdies? I swear that woman gave me a look to plain freeze my –” He skidded to a stop and craned his head, grinning. “Oh. Hello.” He painted Alexandra in a quick once-over, and he met Spencer’s eyes with a nod of approval.
Spencer sighed and gave Bennet quelling shake of his head.
“Hello.” Alexandra stepped forward and pursed a smile, ducking her head and charming him.
Bennet strode forward, eyes on her all the while. “I don’t believe we’ve met, and shame on my brother for it.” He kicked back a leg and bowed for all his worth, as though they were at court.
Always showing off to the ladies. Spencer supposed to an extent it ran in the family. His history was marked with a few acts shamelessly aimed at grabbing attention from the fairer sex. He stepped aside and raised a hand to Alexandra. “This is Mrs. Rowan. Mrs. Rowan, this, unfortunately, is my brother, the honorable Bennet Reed.”
Alexandra curtsied to Bennet. “And you have just had the pleasure of meeting my brother, Mister Paton, and his wife Paulina.” Bennet had the decency to look stricken, until Alexandra threw him a sly look. “And what a pleasure it was, I’m sure,” she said.
Now Bennet looked to him, head and lips cocked, and raised a brow at her wit.
Spencer raised a brow of his own and communicated as best he could with only his eyes that Bennet had better not even consider it. Alexandra Rowan was not on the market, as far as he was concerned.
“My brother has told me a great deal about you,” Bennet was toeing a line to get in his dig; Spencer resisted an urge to wring his neck. “And it seems it was all true.”
Alexandra brightened. “That’s very kind. We’re all grateful to be invited.” She paused and glanced up the stairs, then shrugged. “I am very grateful to be invited.”
He had been ready to shoo his brother away and seize an opportunity for a moment alone with Alexandra, but now reconsidered. As they traded quips, he watched her engage Bennet now in a way he had not observed in all their time together since the garden. Bennet always had an easy charm which drew people out and gained their confidence, and Spencer appreciated that there might be an advantage to keeping his brother at hand today. “We were just going in for luncheon,” he said.
Bennet nodded. “I was headed to the stables.”
“You should have something to eat before you exert yourself.”
“I’m not particularly hungry,” Bennet said, puzzled.
“You always say so,” ground out Spencer, “and then you feel unwell after. I really believe,” he said, stressing each word with eyes wide, “that you ought to come in with us and have a little something.”
“I – oh! Oh.” Looking back and forth between his brother and Alexandra, understanding dawned on Bennet’s face. “I should. You are correct.” In a coup, he pushed past and took Alexandra’s arm before Spencer could say another word.
They settled at the breakfast table around a tempting spread. Its crisp white cloth and centerpiece of molded sugar paste fruit renewed a pang of disappointment that a majority of his guests had missed the brilliant efforts of his cook, Mrs. Tate. It passed a breath later when Alexandra ooh’d and ahh’d enough for three people.
“You’re right to be impressed, Mrs. Rowan,” said Bennet, snatching a tiny pink cake from its tray without waiting for her to go first. “When it is just the two of us, Reed makes us sit on the floor at the kitchen fire and eat from wooden trenchers.”
“That was my plan for today as well,” he teased, watching Alexandra for a reaction. “But Mrs. Tate must have missed my instructions.”
“Ogre,” she said without looking up from her plate. She didn’t have to; her expression had softened, and he caught some of the warmth which had first drawn him to her. A shiver of concern intruded, and Spencer wondered again at the looks which had passed between Alexandra and Paulina at the Hastings’.
“How are you finding England?” Bennet managed, finishing a bite.
“I hardly have words,” she said. “We arrived in London first, and that was one sort of beauty. There is a strange pleasure to be had in its clockwork busyness. It all seems like chaos, the crowds and parties, but there is a rhythm to it that you notice when you really examine the city.”
He had never thought of London as anything other than the crush she had first described, but upon reflection, Spencer appreciated that she was right; he may not enjoy being a part of the mechanism, but London was not the bedlam he had accused.
Her opinion had surprised Bennet too, who was nodding slowly and trying to formulate a reply.
Alexandra’s interference saved them both. “Anyhow, the north is spectacular in its own way and these lands in particular…” She shook her head, eyes half closed. “As Laurel promised, they really are breathtaking.”
“It is kind of you to say,” Spencer muttered. Pride welled in his chest
at her praise of his home, further igniting his attraction. He pretended an examination of his plate, stealing glances at her until Bennet caught her in conversation. Then he dared a more blatant study.
She was easy with Bennet, as she had been with Laurel in the carriage. When she smiled at a part of his outlandish story, her cheek filled out and lent her face the same delicate softness which had charmed him at the masquerade. His eyes paused indecently long on her mouth, thrilling at the memory of her lips on his. Her hands on his face, her fingers in his hair…
It was a long moment before he grasped that the conversation had stopped, and that Alexandra was staring at him. He met her eyes, which were filled with mischief.
“You stare very frankly, Lord Reed,” she said, and Spencer nodded in recognition of his earlier words to her.
“I do.” His admission hardly changed her expression, but he didn’t miss a hint of pink which flushed her face.
“That is not staring,” interjected Bennet, oblivious. “Reed is an intellectual sort. He prefers the term ‘contemplative’.”
Alexandra clutched her belly and giggled, a beautiful sound which set his heart to pounding. When she tossed him a fetching look, warm and unreserved, he was undone completely.
He decided that Bennet had been right in ordering him to Broadmoore to see Alexandra, and absolutely capital for agreeing to tea.
* * *
Stiff-backed in her chair, Alix read the same page for a third time, bound up by a cord of silence strung between Chas and Paulina, whose eyes had been fixed on her for the better part of an hour. Now and then something stuck in the woman’s craw, something Alix said or did. There would be no end until Paulina had her say, but Alix would read the same page fifty times rather than make it easier.
A sigh.
Alix braced and turned the page.
Chas cleared his throat. “Alexandra.”
She glanced up, not at Chas but Paulina, who perched at the edge of her chair, pulling Chas’s strings with a nudge or a clearing of her throat.
Closing her book, Alix didn’t bother marking her place. She gripped it edge and spine and strangled the poor little tome in effigy.
“Our cousins travel with a certain set,” he pressed. “You need to be mindful of your conduct.”
Alix recalled the conversation she’d caught on the stairs between her brother and Paulina and realized she hadn’t won, only delayed punishment. “I should be uncivil? Make no conversation, engender no good will?”
“I am surprised at you,” cut Paulina, clearly not trusting her husband to get the job done. “For all your claims of loyalty to our family, our trade, your glib attitude does neither one credit.”
A simmering anger, always beneath the surface, began to boil. “Glib? Just the opposite. I am mindful each day of being beholden to Mr. and Mrs. Paton. To our benefactor and patriarch Silas Van der Verre!”
A flash of ivory muslin was scored by a chair toppling against the hearth. Alix raised her book in preparation, but a hair too late, and Paulina’s slap caught her jaw and shot sparks behind her eyes.
“Unthinkable, my father wasting his affection on a hoer.”
Cradling her stinging face, Alix looked past Paulina to Chas, who sat staring at his hands folded in his lap.
“The only thing your father is wasting,” she returned through gritted teeth, “is the effort he spends to get control of my shares.”
“A letter!” threatened Paulina, drawing up. It was her warning of punishment, spanning most of their forced existence together. A detailed account of her transgressions would be given to Silas for a future reckoning. “He will have a letter at once!”
“I may get my blows,” said Alix, smug firmness hiding her fear, “but not until we return to America.”
Paulina’s bony fingers gripped her bun and canted her head back. Lips next to her ear spat words in a low growl. “Father may be closer than you think.”
The information sent a chill along her spine. It was a terrifying thought, no matter its truth. He couldn’t have followed them, could he? In a flash her mind ran through a decade of Silas’s dominion, and she answered the question with a hard swallow.
The tearing in her scalp subsided. Paulina withdrew her talons and blew past, her exit announced by a door shuddering in its jamb.
Alix massaged her head and returned her attention to Chas, spearing him with a glare and willing him to look up. When his sudden bout of immobility persisted, she pressed him. “One day, Charles, it will be me shutting the door between us.”
He snorted at her idle threat, certain of its impossibility. Until a few months ago, he would have been correct. With Silas’s fists around her inheritance, no revenue from shares, not even a home to call her own, it was an unspoken punchline that she had no place to run and no means of getting there. Her abandoned tryst with Edward Mills had proved it, Silas already waiting when their ship put in at Charleston. The reach of his lacquered black walking stick had reinforced, blow after blow, that she would never be beyond his grip. She closed her eyes against the memory, still throbbing from long-healed bruises.
Recovered, she sat forward and tried a different tack, giving him a desperate stare and sure that her effort was fruitless, as always. “Father broke his back to build what we have. How can you bear losing the company?”
His arms flailed. “We’re not losing it! Where does this madness come from? Silas is rolling everything into Paton & Son. We’re more solvent than ever, nothing but growth.”
Paulina’s words, no doubt. There wasn’t enough belief in Chas’s tone for him to have concocted the lie himself.
Chas had never been the one with a head for business; that much had been apparent on countless occasions. It was apparent by his not wondering at Silas desperately farming new customers for an already successful venture. Even a child could puzzle out which company was absorbing the other.
It would be a defeating prospect except she’d found a way to fight back. She’d made excellent progress consolidating Paton’s shares and even some from Van der Verre, behind Silas’s back. Her father’s solicitor Mister Meacham wasn’t able to do much, but he deserved sainthood for what he’d managed already. At least someone was still loyal to their father. She snorted her disgust at Chas, slouched and pale in his seat.
“Why do you do it?” she asked.
A blink, a stare.
“Is it truly a simpler thing, suffering? Watching me suffer, letting them own your pride rather than just saying no?”
Chas came half out of his chair, face etched with more emotion than she had witnessed in years. He beat a fist against his breast. “Pride?” he sobbed. “He owns my soul, Alexandra!”
“And your bollocks, too? You certainly haven’t enough to fight back!” She found her feet, mirroring his posture while tears stung her eyes. “And I am added compensation to your deal with the devil!”
He deflated back into the chair, eyes shuttered once more. “Don’t --”
“Make trouble, Alexandra. I know.” She did, by heart.
“And don’t cross Paulina. For both our sakes.”
She huffed. “Your wife is brainwashed enough to die for Silas’s approval. You’re a matched pair.” Alix moved behind her chair, putting it between them as insurance against Chas’s occasional instability. “But I am not like you.”
“Don’t make trouble,” he muttered again, scrubbing hands over his face. “You lack the ammunition to do battle with him. And I won’t help you.” His voice hitched, and for a moment she thought there was something there, something below the surface. “I cannot help you.”
Her fingers twitched for want of circling his throat. Her nail beds ached with a need to claw his face, to provoke something besides cowardice. Instead she drew a breath, the slow effort fading rage into a red tint edging her thoughts.
“I will remember that you said so. And when the time comes,” she backed up, a pace at a time until she reached the door, heart hammering in her chest, �
��you remember that you said so, too.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Spencer was determined not to let Paulina spoil his reconnaissance of Alexandra, but it wasn’t easy. Alix was not conversational by any stretch when under Paulina's gaze. There were pursed lips, sideways glances, and many a clearing of the throat. Paulina was a harridan whose reason for existence appeared to be ruining everyone else’s sport, with the bulk of her ire directed at Alexandra.
For Alexandra’s part, it wasn't intimidation he saw in her downturned expressions, but a quiet resignation. The attitudes were one and the same as far as he was concerned. He wanted a moment unchaperoned to flush out the woman in the garden rather than the woman who sat silently in his drawing room. Wanting and getting were desires keenly separated at the moment by the snooping nose of Paulina Paton.
“Mrs. Rowan.” He stopped behind her, close as he dared, leaning on the mantle and watching her. They’d been listening in silence to Laurel's mastery of the pianoforte.
“Lady Hastings plays beautifully.” Alexandra's words were an awkward bridge strung between them. They were stilted, obligated, and Spencer sensed he was a victim of politeness.
“Lady Hastings boasts all manner of accomplishments.” He dared a half step closer, breathing her in. “She has taken Broadmoore in hand. Arranged a very fine garden with some exotic specimens. I wonder if you had an opportunity to see it during the ball last week.”
Holding his breath, he pierced her, searching for any reaction – a flinch, a blink.
Alexandra exhaled at a forlorn pace, nearly a sigh. “It was dark.”
There was something cryptic hidden in her words, he would swear it, but it was not a hint for his benefit. She showed no sign of being his paramour from the masquerade. Once more, he was at a loss.
A few notes trailed between their silence, and then she sighed in earnest. Turning, she curtsied in a half-hearted dip before moving away. He watched her, down the hall and to the stairs, a whisper of dove gray silk over marble filling the growing distance.