by Mary Balogh
But he was a delightful man, Rebecca had decided. He was not remarkably handsome. He was of medium height, had auburn, wavy hair and eyebrows, and a pale complexion. His eyes were brown and set perhaps rather too close together for perfection. But they were candid and smiling eyes. His teeth were rather large for his face, or his mouth was too wide. But they were white teeth and showed frequently. He smiled a great deal.
He made friends very easily, a quality that Rebecca admired in him. Soon after his arrival he was on the best of terms with both the baron and Harriet, and thus any resentment that his unexpected visit might have caused was smoothed over. He made an effort to converse with Rebecca, though he need not have done so. Her approval was not necessary to his continued stay in the house. He had expressed interest in the school and had even agreed with her opinion that some form of education should be offered to the girls of the village, too. Philip had never been sympathetic to that idea. Mr. Bartlett had met Philip and the Sinclairs and had been warmly welcomed by all.
Only Maude, strangely enough, seemed less than delighted by his presence. But Rebecca could understand why. It must be hard for a girl as quiet and shy as Maude to have a brother like Mr. Bartlett, a man so much at his ease in company. She had taken months to get to know and feel comfortable with people whose approbation he had won within days. It must seem unfair to her to know that they were of the same family yet were so different in temperament.
The Misses Sinclair were the first to rise to leave. Julian reluctantly followed their lead and got to his feet.
"Christopher will be here in two days' time," Ellen reminded the company. "I do not know how we will live through the rest of today and tomorrow. We will bring him to visit as soon as may be, Lady Holmes." She turned eagerly to Mr. Bartlett. "And you and he will have a chance to renew your acquaintance," she said.
Mr. Bartlett smiled and bowed.
After they had left, Lady Holmes rang the bell for the butler to remove the tea tray, and everyone sat down again.
"I am so pleased that Mr. Christopher Sinclair is coming here," said Harriet. "He is a very fashionable man, is he not, Papa?"
"Decidedly so, my dear," her father agreed. He had taken a jeweled snuffbox from the table beside him, placed a pinch on the back of his right hand, and sniffed delicately through each nostril in turn. Then he took a lace-bordered handkerchief from his pocket and waited with half-closed eyes and twitching nostrils for the sneeze to follow.
Having completed the action to his own satisfaction, he continued the conversation. "It will be interesting to hear what news he brings from town," he said. "It is so difficult here to be up to the minute on what styles and fabrics are currently in fashion. Mr. Bartlett, did you not tell me that black had become an almost acceptable color for evening wear? I can scarcely conceive of such a thing. Black!" He shuddered delicately.
"Beau Brummell started the fashion, my lord," Mr. Bartlett replied, "though at the time it seemed just a personal eccentricity. Yet now one sees the style with fair frequency. Of course, all men of any distinction of looks and bearing-like yourself, my lord, if I may be permitted to say so-still prefer more palatable colors."
The baron nodded affably to show that his guest was indeed permitted to say so.
"We must invite Mr. Sinclair to dinner within the week," Harriet said, as always oblivious to the fact that she was no longer mistress of the house. "But will that mean having to invite the whole family, Papa?"
"It will be a pleasure to have them all," Maude said. "It is some time since we gave a dinner party. Do you not agree, my lord?" she asked, glancing with hasty self-consciousness at her husband.
"Oh, quite so, quite so," he agreed.
"I hope Mr. Sinclair makes an effort to appear to advantage with his family," Mr. Bartlett added, smiling graciously at Harriet. "They are worthy and likable people."
Harriet raised her eyebrows and looked back at him, all attention. Rebecca, too, looked sharply across at him.
"Why would he not appear to advantage?" Harriet asked.
"Pardon me," Mr. Bartlett replied, serious for once. "There is nothing unacceptable in his manner by some London standards. If he is rather a spendthrift, one at least cannot say that he is so with anyone else's money than his own-now. And if he is something of a rake, one can say the same of many other men of rank in town."
Maude got to her feet and gathered together the embroidery that she had earlier set down beside her. "I am sure that Mr. Sinclair will know how to behave when he is here, Stanley," she said matter-of-factly. "Harriet, shall we go to my sitting room and make some plans for the dinner party?"
"Oh," replied Harriet, "I already have it all arranged in my mind, Maude. You do not need to worry about it."
"Then you shall tell me what you have planned," Maude said with quiet persistence, and she preceded her stepdaughter from the room.
The baron too retired to his room in order to rest before beginning the exertions of evening dinner and a hand or two of cards in the drawing room afterward.
Rebecca also rose to leave the room. She planned to have a leisurely bath after the hours spent teaching in a warm schoolroom and the hot, dusty walk to and from the village.
"You must have known Mr. Christopher Sinclair before his marriage, Miss Shaw," Mr. Bartlett said in his friendly way. He was smiling at her. "Though I believe he must be considerably older than you."
"Only a few years, sir," Rebecca replied. "And, yes, I knew him. It is impossible in a small place like this not to know one's neighbors."
"Tell me," he said, looking at her candidly, "was he always such an unprincipled man? I must confess that now I have made the acquaintance of the Sinclairs, I find it difficult to understand how he has become the way he is. I suppose that in most families there has to be one black sheep."
Rebecca sat down again. "Unprincipled in what way?" she asked guardedly.
"Perhaps he was a close friend, Miss Shaw?" Mr. Bartlett added, looking at her searchingly. "I would not wish to ruin your memories of him."
Rebecca made a dismissive gesture with one hand. "It is many years since I have even seen him, sir," she said.
"I knew his wife," he said. "She was a friend. A delightful creature, though not by any means a beauty. And many people despised her because her father was in business and not, strictly speaking, a gentleman at all. Sinclair married her for her money, of course. And I would not stoop to blame him for that. Many a gentleman with pockets to let has been forced to do as much."
Rebecca lowered her eyes to the hands in her lap. Perhaps she ought not to be listening to this. It was none of her affair, after all. But she could not help herself. It is sometimes too delicious to hear evil of a person one has despised for many years. She had not been mistaken, then.
"I could certainly have forgiven him for marrying my friend for her money," Mr. Bartlett continued, "had he treated her with proper respect thereafter."
"And he did not?" Rebecca prompted, raising her eyes unwillingly to his.
"The Sinclairs seem a humble enough family," Mr.
Bartlett said. "And that makes it all the more surprising that Sinclair himself is so insufferably high in the instep. He treated her with the utmost contempt, Miss Shaw. He never took her about with him, and he flaunted his mistresses before her most shamefully."
"Poor lady," Rebecca murmured, feeling sympathy for the late Mrs. Sinclair for the first time.
"Perhaps the situation would not have been so tragic had she not doted so much on him," Mr. Bartlett continued. "She lived with the hope that perhaps the child would bring him closer to her. Her death was tragic, yet under the circumstances perhaps for the best. She would have been disappointed, I am sure." His tone had become almost vicious.
"I do not find your story impossible to credit, sir," Rebecca said, her voice strained. "Yet I believe it would be as well to keep it to yourself. I would not wish to see his family hurt."
"Indeed, ma'am," he assured her earnestly, "I
would not dream of breathing a word to anyone else. I would not have said anything to you either, but you seem to me to be a lady of sense. And I fear that perhaps Sinclair will not, after all, behave as he ought here. He has lived for too long a life of self-indulgence and depravity. I wish to suggest, Miss Shaw, with all due respect, that you keep careful watch over your cousin. She is a lovely and impressionable young lady and wealthy enough, I believe, to attract a fortune hunter."
Rebecca's eyes widened. "Do you believe he would dare?" she asked. "I cannot think it."
"And I trust you are right," he said earnestly. "But I felt it my duty to speak. I would not be able to forgive myself if anything happened because I had felt the matter too delicate to involve myself. Forgive me, Miss Shaw. My sister's family has in a sense become my own. I must be concerned for the welfare of its members. If Sinclair behaves as a gentleman ought, I shall be happy, though I may lose credit in your eyes."
"Not so, sir," Rebecca assured him. "I thank you for taking me into your confidence. You may be sure that I shall be properly concerned for Harriet's welfare when Mr. Sinclair arrives."
"Thank you, ma'am," he said, and his face relaxed into its accustomed smile. He took Rebecca's hand in his and raised it to his lips before turning and leaving the room.
Chapter 3
Rebecca ascended to her room with lowered eyes and lagging steps. She could feel one of her infrequent headaches coming on. The day had been hot and busy. She rang immediately for a maid and directed that bathwater be brought to her dressing room. She ran a finger beneath the high neckline of her cotton dress and turned her head from side to side. But it was no-good. There was no cool air to be felt.
She should not have stayed to listen to Mr. Bartlett. She should have told him quite firmly as soon as he began that the way Mr. Christopher Sinclair chose to run his life was none of her concern.
People were all the same, she supposed. Everyone liked to hear gossip, especially if it showed someone one knew in an unpleasant light. She always prided herself on her lack of interest in either listening to or spreading vicious rumors. Yet there were times when she could not resist. And she had heard so very little about Christopher in almost seven years. She had taken a malicious sort of pleasure in hearing what Mr. Bartlett had had to say, and really she could not entirely blame either him for speaking or herself for listening. He had spoken from the best of motives-his concern for Harriet and the Sinclair family. And she had listened for the same reasons.
But now that she had had time to digest what she had heard, she would far prefer not to have listened at all. She undid the buttons at the back of her dress, not waiting for a maid to assist her. It was a relief to slip the fabric off her shoulders and arms, light as the cotton material was.
She had wanted to forget Christopher. Once she had convinced herself that he had meant it when he said that he would never return, she had resolutely set herself to forgetting him. The self-discipline that she had built up during her childhood and youth as her father's daughter had aided her outwardly. She had not crumbled, and no one-not even Papa-had known the size of the battle raging within. But finally she had won that battle, too, though never perhaps quite to the extent she would have liked. Occasionally she would think to herself with some satisfaction that she had now forgotten Christopher. But she would immediately realize that the very thought proved her wrong.
She had had to concentrate on the negative side of his character that she had known only at the last, the side that she had never even suspected. She had always known, of course, that he was not perfect. Her earliest memories of him were of a mischievous plague of a boy, whose greatest delight seemed to be to tease the prim, rather shy daughter of the vicar. She could remember him at church, sitting with his family in the second pew, behind her and her mother. She had wom her hair in long braids as a child, and she had liked to toss the braids over the back of the seat, where they would not dig into her back. One Sunday morning she had been forced to sit through most of her father's lengthy sermon with her head tilted back at an unnatural angle while Christopher's knee had kept her braid held firmly against the back of the pew. She had been released finally, she remembered, a moment after hearing the sound of a swift slap immediately behind her.
And then there had been the time when Mrs. Sinclair had been visiting at the parsonage and the children had wandered outside. She remembered sitting on a tombstone in the churchyard, finally too terrified either to get down or to turn her head as Christopher stood in front of her, very seriously and sincerely describing the ghosts that came out of the graves at midnight. For many nights after that she had awoken Mama with her screams as she struggled out of some nightmare.
Rebecca was very thankful to peel off her remaining clothes when the water finally arrived and to climb into the bathtub and soak in the lukewarm suds. It had been just such a day when she had finally realized that both she and Christopher were growing up. She had always hero-worshiped him to a certain extent. He had always been a tall boy for his age and slim and-to her child's eyes- very handsome with his dark, straight hair and blue eyes. She could even remember the time when she was about twelve years old and had started to fantasize about his rescuing her from terrible dangers: fire-breathing dragons, vicious highwaymen, treacherous quicksand. He had always been mounted on a white stallion in those fantasies and he had always had a black cloak streaming behind him. And the fantasies had always ended at the moment of rescue.
The time she was thinking of was the summer when she was fourteen and he seventeen. The annual village fair had lasted the whole day and was ending in fast and furious fun as everyone danced on the village green. Rebecca, for the first time, had been allowed to stay up until eleven o'clock, but finally Mama had instructed her to go home to bed. The whole village was alight. There was no need for anyone to acompany her. But Christopher had fallen into step beside her, chatting in his amiable way as he walked her home. By that stage of their lives they had become firm friends.
They had taken a shortcut through the churchyard on the way to the parsonage and Christopher had tried to revive her old fear of the graves there. But she had tossed her head, which was feeling very grown up with its hair pinned up for the first time, and thrown him a look of contempt.
"Pooh, Christopher Sinclair," she had said, "you cannot scare me with such tales any longer. I am grown up now."
"Are you, though, Becky?" he had said, looking sidelong at her. "I'll wager you aren't."
"I bet I am," she had retorted, turning belligerently toward him and placing her hands on her hips. "I am too a woman grown. I am allowed to wear my hair up and I have been allowed to stay up until eleven o'clock."
"I'll wager you don't know how to kiss, though, Becky," he had teased. "You aren't a woman until you know how to kiss."
She had been very thankful for the darkness that hid her hot flush of shock and embarrassment. "Nonsense, Christopher Sinclair," she had said with all the bored sophistication of a fourteen-year-old. "Of course I know how to kiss."
"You will have to prove it then," he had jeered.
She had kept her hands on her hips, lifted her chin defiantly, puckered her lips, and squeezed her eyes tightly shut as she saw his face approaching.
If she really had known how to kiss, it would have been glaringly obvious to her that he certainly did not. But she had assumed that that bruising, grinding pressure of lips and teeth against lips and teeth was how it was supposed to be done. She never did ask herself whether she had liked it or not. When she had stopped running and had the door of the parsonage safely between herself and any possible pursuit by Christopher, she had been too deeply in love with him to consider anything more than the fact that he had kissed her, and she had proved to him that she was indeed a woman.
She had loved him mindlessly, passionately, for the following five years, until he had told her that he was going away and never coming back. And even beyond that she had loved him, painfully and against her will, until she
had finally forced herself to forget. Or to tell herself that she had forgotten.
Rebecca slid down in the bathtub until her whole body was submerged to the neck. She put her head back against the metal rim and closed her eyes. The cool water felt very good. She could feel all her muscles relaxing. Perhaps her headache would not develop after all. It was pointless to pursue these memories of Christopher now. It was all ancient history. He was clearly a very different man now from the one she had loved as a girl and very young woman.
***
Two days later, Rebecca was again walking home from a day at the school. The weather was still hot, though clouds had moved across the sky since she had left home that morning so that at least she did not have the glare of the sun to contend with.
She was not feeling cheerful. She and Philip had come very close to quarreling during the morning. It was not his day for teaching, but he had spent half an hour with her before luncheon.
She had been listening to the boys reading aloud. The performance was not an inspired one, but most of the pupils had managed to stumble their way through the words on the page. However, there was one boy who had not. There was scarcely a word he could recognize, and even Rebecca's promptings and encouragement to sound the words out syllable by syllable did not help. Philip had walked over to stand silently behind the boy, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression stern. The boy, feeling the vicar's presence there, had become nervous and confused. His stammerings had become totally incomprehensible.
And finally Philip had lost his temper. He had scolded the boy for inattention, for lack of effort, for stupidity, and for truancy. He had finally berated the lad with bitter sarcasm for his dirty fingernails and uncombed hair. A few minutes later Rebecca had given the boys a break and stood silently at her desk while they filed out, far more subdued than usual.