A Lord Rotheby's Holiday Bundle

by Catherine Gayle

  Quin took a seat on the ground next to Jonas, draping an arm over a propped up knee. “I’ll sort it out. I’ll take care of it.” Somehow. Good God, everything about his life had become a blasted nuisance since Aurora came into it. “You know, I’d rethink the whole idea of finding a bride, if I were you. They’re often more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “Says the man who’s done everything in his power to avoid his wife,” Jonas came back with. “You’re neglecting her, Quin. She deserves better than that, despite the mistakes she may have made along the way.”

  “What would you know of it?” Quin barked. “You should mind your own affairs.”

  As expected, Jonas failed to even flinch from the rebuke. “I’ll mind mine when I’m satisfied that you’re not going to ruin what could be a very good thing. I spent the afternoon with Lady Quinton. She really is rather delightful to be around. You should try it sometime.”

  “I’ll take your marriage advice when you’re married. Until then, keep your opinions to yourself.” Quin ground his teeth. What did Jonas know of it? The baronet was almost thirty and had never seriously entertained the notion of marriage. At least not that he’d let on to Quin. He’d kept the same damned mistress for at least the last six years. “And stay away from Aurora,” he added as an afterthought.

  “She’s lonely. If you don’t spend any time with her and you keep her virtually imprisoned here with no interaction other than with servants, she’ll go mad within the year. Your wife was not built to be idle, Quin.” Jonas faced him, his eyes holding a serious glow in the moonlight. “So either you start paying attention to her, or I will.”

  “You’ll stay away from her or you’ll answer to me.”

  “You’ll uphold your responsibility to her or you’ll answer to me,” Jonas said, his voice holding a quiet threat. “And you’ll damned well learn to stay away from the brandy or I swear to you, I’ll take her away from you and put her somewhere you’ll never find her. She deserves better.”

  “Of course she deserves better. My mother deserved better! I deserved better. But we didn’t get it.” Quin pushed off the ground and stalked to the riverfront. “And instead, I turned into him. I became an exact replica of my father, and there is nothing I can do about it. Every day, I am more like him. Every moment, I feel more of him creeping through my soul, coaxing me to drink, driving me to strike something.”

  “If you strike her, I promise you that you will never see her again. Mrs. Marshall and Forster have already sworn their assistance. They won’t sit by and watch you lash out against that girl the way your father lashed out against you and your mother. Going through that once was more than enough for this lifetime—for anyone.” Jonas came up alongside him and skipped a stone across the placid surface of the river. The ripples danced in the light of the moon. “But you are not your father. You don’t have to be like him. You are your own man, Quin, and you make your own decisions in life. Right now, you’re choosing to follow his path.” He turned and walked back toward his horse, pausing before he mounted. “I’m asking you to choose a different path. I don’t want to lose a friend. But it is your choice.”

  ~ * ~

  Quin hadn’t watched the sunrise come up over the river by the hermitage since before Mercy died. Not until that morning, after sitting there by the great oak the entire night.

  He didn’t drink any more of his brandy. There was plenty left in his stores, so he could have drank until he passed out, and then woke up and had some more.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead, he spent the entire night thinking of Mercy. He always thought of her when he went there. It had been their spot, almost as though it had been created just for the two of them—their favorite place to go when they wanted an adventure, or just to escape their tutor and governess for a while. Mother and Father had always made certain the servants kept it well stocked, with logs to burn in the hearth, pillows and bedding, changes of clothes, bread and sweetmeats. Quin and Mercy could escape there, for a few hours or the better part of the day, sometimes even spending the night and watching the sunrise together while they fished in the river, laughing and talking about how fun it would be to leap from the branches of the old oak, to swim in the water without a care in the world. They never did. The branches were too high. He had believed he could climb it, but surely she couldn’t. She was just a girl, after all. A girl with skirts and any number of other things to hinder her.

  Still, it was perfect. Their secret place that wasn’t a secret. Their haven.

  Until that one day when he came upon Mercy laying on the riverbank, beneath the great oak with a pool of blood around her head. The day she died. The day his life changed forever.

  For the next two years, the hermitage was no longer an adventure. It was a place to hide when Father went into a drunken rage. A place to lick his wounds in private, so Mother wouldn’t know how badly he’d been beaten that time. A place to fear discovery, if Father ever came out looking for him.

  After his father died, Quin hadn’t been back to the hermitage. Until now. Until he was running from himself. Maybe he thought a part of Mercy was still there, where she’d laughed and lived and died. Maybe he thought she would have the answers he sought, that she could still speak to him.

  But she wasn’t there. She didn’t speak.

  Mercy was nothing more than a memory floating away with the current of the river. Not even the perfection of the sunrise washing the meadow in gold could bring her back.

  Quin couldn’t sit there any longer, waiting for the ghost of a girl who had died at thirteen to come to him. He needed to find a way to repair things with Aurora. He needed to put an end to the lies being printed.

  He needed to tell her he loved her—and of the changes that must take place because of that love.

  When he turned, he froze. Coming along the pea-gravel path over the hill, shrouded in the pastel glow of dawn, she came to him. Aurora, his goddess of the morning.

  Chapter Twenty

  19 May, 1811

  There could be some hope, if I can make him listen to me—if I can make him believe I’m not responsible for these things. Perhaps then he will forgive me for my faults. Perhaps we can start over again, and try to behave as a husband and wife ought. Or perhaps my head is still in the clouds, wishing for things that can never take place, hoping for things when there is no hope. But how will I know if I do not try?

  ~From the journal of Lady Quinton

  Aurora stopped in her tracks. With the haze of the rising sun at his back, she couldn’t read Quin’s expression. He stood in a meadow of delphiniums that overlooked a winding river, looking quite out of place amidst the natural backdrop. Part of her wanted to turn, to make for the abbey and never look back. But she’d never been one to run from a confrontation, not even when she likely should have.

  She took another step. “Quin?” she called. “Sir Jonas told me I would probably find you here.”

  He said nothing. He didn’t even move. Was he cross that she’d come here to find him?

  Aurora took a few more steps. She needed to make him understand that she had not written those stories. She needed his forgiveness for ever having written any stories in the first place. If she hadn’t, none of this would ever have happened. “I was hoping we could talk. I wanted to apologize”

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” he bit off. Still, he remained where he stood.

  She had everything to apologize for. If Lord Rotheby learned of these new stories, regardless of whether she’d written them or not, they’d likely be tossed out the door without a chance to explain. “But…?”

  “But nothing,” he said more softly. “I’m the one who should apologize, Aurora. I’ve been drunk and belligerent and absent. I’ve done everything to you that my father did to my mother, save cudgel you. And I nearly did that last night.”

  “But you didn’t,” Aurora said, moving closer to him, reaching for him.

  He stepped backward, reestablishi
ng the distance between them. “No, I didn’t. But I threw your journal and only missed you by inches. If Jonas hadn’t been there, I don’t know what I would have done. I lost control. I’m sorry. I’m so very, terribly sorry. I should never have married you. I’m not fit to be anyone’s husband.”

  He looked so vulnerable. She’d never seen him vulnerable before. Quin’s eyes were big and sad, like a deep well of unshed tears. She wanted to soothe him, to comfort him. To hold him while he let it all out.

  But again, when she stepped closer to him, he backed away. It felt like a mirror of how their marriage had been—always a certain amount of distance separating them, a permanent divide.

  “You’re my husband,” Aurora said. “What’s done is done. You didn’t hurt me.”

  “What if I do? What then?”

  Oh, dear good Lord. If he didn’t stop it soon, she was liable to lose her patience. “You won’t. I seem to recall you telling me, rather angrily I might add, that you don’t strike women. So tell me why, all of a sudden, you seem so certain you’ll hurt me.”

  “Because I’m just like my father.” Quin dragged a hand over his face, and then he turned and walked away.

  “Wait,” she called out. He kept going. Blast him. Aurora raised the hem of her skirt and followed. “Slow down.”

  He seemed none too inclined to comply. She hurried along behind him until she could reach him. “Please, Quin,” she said, taking hold of his hand and tugging until he looked at her. She could get lost in his eyes. They held a world of hurt and fear—a world she would never understand unless he talked to her. “Tell me about your father.”

  “My father was a moral degenerate. He was the lowest creature in all of England. He drank and yelled, and if you were lucky he would only beat you with his fists. Mother was usually lucky, because she didn’t yell back.”

  Quin looked out across the river, seeming to stare at nothing. “I wasn’t lucky.”

  “You fought with him often?” Aurora prodded. She stroked his palm absently.

  “Every time he came home smelling of whiskey and some other woman’s cheap perfume. Every time I caught him on his way into London to visit the gambling hells. Every time he struck my mother. Yes, I fought with him all the time. I’d fight with him again today if he dared to come within a hundred feet of my mother. We would see how tough he was against someone his own size.” Quin shook his head, the dimple on his cheek twitching as he clenched his unshaven jaw. “I’d kill him with my bare hands for all he put us through. He got off easy, being thrown from his horse. Fate was far kinder than he deserved.”

  Aurora suddenly understood how very lucky she had been all her life. Her parents were not overly affectionate with each other, or sometimes not with her, but she’d never had to fear for her safety. She never wondered where the next blow would come from.

  Her heart ached. She wanted to wrap him in her arms and soothe the boy trapped inside him. But that wouldn’t solve anything. His eyes still held too much anger, too much pain. “Was your father always this way?”

  “It often feels that way. I remember those times so much more than the others—than when we were happy.” Quin led her to a soft patch of grass and spread his coat for her to sit on. “But the truth is, he changed. When Mercy died.”

  His sister. The girl from the painting. “What happened to her?”

  He frowned and squinted his eyes. “It’s difficult to remember all of it. I was only ten. Just a lad.” He swept a hand, indicating the area around them. “We used to come here a lot, Mercy and me. Always together. We were inseparable, even though she was three years my senior. But since she was thirteen and becoming a young lady, Father thought she needed to stop traipsing around all over the place with me. That she needed to behave like a young lady ought, and wear dresses, and learn to do embroidery. All those kinds of useless things girls are expected to do. Mercy didn’t particularly care for that idea. They had an argument that night—the night she died.”

  He went still for a moment—long enough Aurora thought he might not go on. But just before she interrupted, he continued. “Mercy and I had been out riding through the hills again that day, when she was supposed to be with her governess. I had talked her into giving Miss Robson the slip. She wouldn’t have gone, otherwise. But she changed into one of the stable boys’ trousers and a shirt, and we rode off, laughing about what a coup it had been. Father caught us when we came back. He pulled her off the saddle, yelling about how ladies never ride astride, and dragged her into the house. They were at it for over an hour. I thought she was banished to her chamber for the rest of the day, so I tried to stay out of the way. I didn’t want Mercy to be in any more trouble because of me.

  “Hours later, she hadn’t come for tea. Mother didn’t say anything of it, so I didn’t ask. But when she did not come to the table for supper, Father sent a maid to fetch her from her chamber. She wasn’t there, though. She was gone. The whole abbey was turned upside down with servants searching for her. Father told me to stay put, but I knew where she would be. She would be here—at the hermitage. Where we always came. So I ran out of the house and all the way here. I was too late.”

  Quin’s voice hitched. A tremor ran through the hand Aurora held. “You found her?” she asked softly, holding him tighter when he tried to pull away.

  “Under the tree,” he said and pointed to an oak just beside the hermitage. The lowest branch was easily higher than three men standing on each other’s shoulders. “She tried to climb it to dive into the river, but she fell. There was so much blood. It pooled around her and fell into the river. I still remember watching the trail flowing through the water. It went on forever. I thought it was my fault.”

  “But you were just a boy!” she argued, cutting him off. He couldn’t still blame himself for such a thing.

  “I was. And I thought it was my fault, because I’d convinced her to go riding with me that day. But then I blamed my father. He drove her to it. Only years later did I realize that it was no one’s fault. Only long after Father had died and blaming him didn’t make me feel better anymore.”

  “Did he blame himself?” Aurora asked.

  “Perhaps. I’ll never know. He had always doted upon her. When she was gone, he started to drink. He became belligerent. Whatever he felt, whether it was guilt or anger or grief, he took it out on Mother and me. Mrs. Marshall was my nurse at the time. She tried to interfere once, to stop him. Then she wasn’t my nurse anymore, but one of the maids. I was on my own. But by the time I was twelve, I had started to get taller, grow stronger. And I got a lot meaner, too. I was going to be just like him.

  “One day, he went after Mother. I got in the way and pushed him off her. He came at me then, with his fists swinging like mad. I grabbed a candlestick and knocked him over the head with it. He stopped, but I didn’t—not until Mother pried me off him. Until then, I just kept hitting him everywhere I could with that candlestick and wishing it was enough to kill him. He eventually staggered to his feet and left. I never saw him again. His horse threw him that night. He cracked his skull open. I was only sorry it hadn’t been me with the candlestick to do it.”

  Quin looked in her eyes then. He reached up and wiped a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. She didn’t even realize she’d been crying. “You’ve married a monster, Aurora. I’m so sorry.”

  ~ * ~

  Quin could have thrown himself from that oak tree just then. Why had he told her all of that? Why had he burdened her with his family’s horrifying past? It was bad enough that it haunted him at every turn, particularly here at Quinton Abbey, but now she would never escape it either.

  “I’m not sorry I married you,” Aurora said. “You are not a monster.”

  Her expression was sincere—clear, bright eyes, even through the shimmer of her tears. She couldn’t mean it. He must not have made her understand how depraved he had become in that moment. How he had grown to be everything his father had ever been. How she wasn’t safe with him
.

  Quin had to make her understand. “I tried to kill him. I would have, if I were only bigger. I might…I might hurt you. I wouldn’t mean to hurt you, but I might.”

  She took his hand in her own, trailing her thumbs along the creases of his palm. “You were trying to protect your mother. You did the right thing. I don’t believe for a second that you would hurt me.”

  Was she daft? Quin stood and paced to the riverbank. “I almost did last night.”

  “But you didn’t.” Aurora followed him. Ever so carefully, she took his hand in hers again. “You won’t.”

  He pulled away. “How can you be so sure of that? How are you so certain that I’m not the monster I believe—the monster that my father was?”

  “Look at me,” she implored. When he didn’t, she took his face in her hands and pulled him to her. “You are not your father. You are Niles Thornton—the brave boy who protected his mother, now grown into a man. A man who, by the way, does not strike women. You won’t hurt me.”

  If only he was so certain. Quin shook his head. “I can’t take that chance, Aurora. I love you too much. If I ever hurt you…”

  Her eyes widened. “You love me?”

  She didn’t return his words. Quin couldn’t very well expect her love. He damned well didn’t deserve it. But still, some small part of him had hoped.

  “More than I could ever tell you with words. More than I could show you in a hundred years of trying. And because of that, I need you to leave. Jonas will take you away. Back to your father, if you’d like, or perhaps to stay with Lady Rebecca and her family. Somewhere away from me. Somewhere you’ll be safe.”

  She should be relieved. She should be on her knees, thanking him.

  Instead, she appeared affronted. No, that was far too tame a word. Aurora was livid. Her eyes turned to flames that licked at him, burning him to the core. She crossed her arms over her chest and planted her feet at shoulder’s width apart. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m not going anywhere, unless you leave. Then I’ll come with you.”