Unmasked Heart_A Regency Romance_Challenge of the Soul

by Vanessa Riley

  He read the markings on the folded papers and burned at the written name, Mrs. Cecil. “It doesn’t say Theo the Flower Seller, but Mrs. Cecil. Is that you?”

  She put a hand to her hip. “Yes. Give me those letters.”

  He waved at her again, fanning the pages near her cheek. “Then take them from your old friend. I don’t bite. Well, not unless provoked or dared. Remember, Mrs. Cecil—my dearest Theo?”

  She snatched the letters and stuffed them into her reticule. As she looked up at him again, her henna-colored cheeks darkened. “Too well, Mr. Fitzwilliam. How are you not dead? They said you died in Spain.”

  He extended his arm to her. “Perhaps we should get a bit of refreshment and have a long chat. You seem rather faint. Let’s go to your shop. I recall you scheming to get a flower shop.”

  “I…I have no shop.”

  She did look faint and the part of his heart that should know better made him take the tissue-wrapped package from her lean fingers and support her palm atop his forearm. “There’s a coffeehouse, Theo. Let me buy you a sweet. That will give you time to recover.”

  “No. No, I must go. I can’t be seen with you.”

  She pulled away, leaving him holding her parcel. With elbows flying, reticule swinging, the daft woman dashed into the hustling crowd. He stood there watching until her form disappeared beneath the triple arch at the south entrance on Piccadilly Street.

  She’d gone from the Burlington Arcade. Where? Where did she lay her head at night? And, whose pillow now possessed her?

  He wanted answers. But chasing after Theo shouldn’t be done. His pride wouldn’t let him. However, he was holding the schemer’s bag.

  Like breathing, his fingers automatically sought to fist, but her bulky pack sat in his hands. A few nosy pokes released the strong bittersweet scent of lavender. The flower had meant something to him once, not a sop for the soul, but of being caught in a thunderstorm. The scent came to him in his dreams. Isolated in one of his father’s carriage houses close to the Tradenwood flower fields, trapped with the business-minded flower seller who hadn’t talked about bouquets when he’d finally taken her lips.

  Who was this Cecil who had them?

  Did he know lies lived within each kiss?

  Or had Theo lied only to Ewan?

  Craning his neck toward the skylights above, he warmed his chilled blood with the sunshine. Yet more questions filled his breast.

  Why did Theo think him dead? Was it another of her falsehoods?

  Slinging her package under his arm, he spun in the opposite direction she’d fled and marched out the north side of the Arcade onto Burlington Gardens. Seeing the past twice in one day would be too much.

  With each step, Ewan stewed a little more. His gut ached. The words of his father’s letter, recounting how Theo had run away with another man, mocking Ewan’s choice for love, burned as badly now as it had when he’d first read them, laying near death in Spain. And this Blackamoor harlot you wished to make a Fitzwilliam.

  Blood started to hiss and boil in his veins. He walked down Bond Street, taking the long way back to where his brother’s carriage awaited, all while repeating his father’s slur.

  Before a footman could jump down, Ewan gripped the pearl-black door and flung it open. Dragging himself into a seat, he prepared himself for questions and hoped his mind could swallow up the bitter dregs unearthed from seeing his past.

  “Are you all right, Ewan?”

  The concerned, low-pitch voice of his brother Jasper Fitzwilliam, the Viscount Hartwell, startled him.

  Ewan gave himself a shake and dumped Theo’s package onto the dark tufted seat. Theo. How could she still have a hold upon him? Hadn’t he poured out all his anger at her lies into the lines of his latest play? He’d used his mad muse to re-create Theo as the perfect Circe, the goddess the playwright Homer had created to turn men into swine. Risking everything for Theo had made him low, like his father’s hogs. No, he wasn’t a fool in love anymore.

  “Hello, in there.” Jasper leaned over and thumped Ewan’s skull. “Not creating your next masterpiece, are you? Have you tried selling the first?”

  “Not my first, but by far my best. My first would have been exhibited at Covent Garden six years ago, if not for Father’s influence on the manager. He made Thomas Harris renege on his commitment to buy my play.”

  His brother poked his lips into a full grimace, so different from the man who loved to laugh. “Please, not that again. There are more things afoot than six-year-old misunderstandings.”

  The way Jasper said afoot, made the writer in Ewan sit up straight. He leaned forward to give the man his full attention. “I’m listening.”

  “I asked you to help me with these newspaper responses, but there’s more I need to involve you with. You’ve been in London these past three months and haven’t come out to Grandbole, yet. Why haven’t you seen him?”

  The him, their father, the Earl of Crisdon, hadn’t yet summoned Ewan, and he hadn’t had the energy to volunteer for another dressing down. A Fitzwilliam doesn’t write plays. The theater isn’t a profession for a Fitzwilliam. “Jasper, please. It’s difficult enough to visit with Mother and listen to her constant complaints of how I was cheated of Tradenwood. But I was not cheated. Only bad luck.”

  “Well, the report of your demise did make your uncle designate a new heir, who was not your mother. Their feud never ended.”

  Ewan stared up at the ceiling. Counted to ten. Yet, in his head, he heard his mother’s soft-voiced lament of his uncle changing his will to leave Tradenwood and all its fields to a distant cousin—all because of the incorrect report from the battlefield. He shook his head, banishing the loss. “Another subject. Your mystery woman had already picked up her mail. Our clever note is on its way to the intended victim. And since you corresponded as one of Father’s lesser titles, Lord Tristian for his barony, your identity is safe.”

  Jasper rolled his beaver dome between sweaty palms. “Who else should borrow but his heir? Being the eldest has its privileges.”

  “And its headaches.” Ewan shook his chin, wanting nothing to do with his father’s grooming or any of the ways the man sought to control Jasper. “But you seem to manage.”

  His brother nodded as his smile shrank. “It’s my humor. It comforts me. So, no peek at what the grand woman looked like?”

  Beautiful as ever, but Theo wasn’t the lady his brother was asking about. “Pardon?”

  “The newspaper advertisement owner. The woman who placed the matrimony request in the paper.”

  “The new shop clerk hadn’t seen her. I waited past the usual time you said the widow checked for correspondences. Sorry, old boy, your stationer has things wrong. Don’t let Father know a Fitzwilliam failed to obtain secret information. That would bring the earl such misery.”

  Jasper dropped his hat and folded his arms about his jacket, a hunting garment with oversized sleeves. It was hard to make someone so big look even bigger, but the man achieved the impossible with dozens of tiny diamond shapes running north and south upon his copperplate printed waistcoat. “That’s what I get for sending a writer to do a spy’s work. Should’ve sent Father.”

  The unflappable Jasper seemed nervous, a side of his half brother Ewan had never seen. With his brow rising, he felt his quill finger cramp as if preparing to write dialogue for a new play. “I am surprised the earl’s encouraging you to find a bride like this. Maybe he has changed after all these years.”

  Jasper shrugged his shoulders. “He doesn’t know that I am. I’m taking a turn at being the rebellious one and doing something Father wouldn’t approve of.”

  “How is that working?” Ewan chuckled.

  “A few disappointments. Mostly, I’ve exchanged letters with women of the wrong temperament or situation.” His brother shuffled his boots. “You don’t know how I’ve missed your assistance. You visit with your mother in Town, but what of us?”

  The us was Grandbole and all that came with the
grand house. Ewan did miss it. He missed the land and walking it to clear his head. He missed all the Fitzwilliams under one roof. “There are many things to remember, many things to forget.”

  “If I hadn’t spied you at the countess’s party, would you have let me know of your return?”

  “I missed your wit whilst I soldiered in the Peninsula, even the jokes at my expense. But I didn’t miss the arguments with the earl. It is he that gives me pause, not you.”

  Jasper looked down again, as if a humbled posture could wipe away the vitriol of their father’s famed rants.

  Ewan had given up on the earl. The pressure of never measuring up would build inside, until his lungs exploded. He was glad the scars on his chest bound him together, kept the rage from showing.

  He took a small breath. The pressure released. He wasn’t that weak-minded person anymore. Hadn’t the bad memories, the disappointments, become part of his sharpened sense of humor, the kindling wood for his farce comedies? Tweaking his cravat, Ewan sampled a little more air and sank into his beloved sarcasm. “Jasper, I would love to be the genesis of this rebellion, but take it from me, start small. Borrow the earl’s hunting dogs without permission. Then work your way up to…oh, I don’t know, petty larceny. Then you’ll be ready to take a bride without his approval.”

  Jasper sat back and drummed the black leather seat beneath his thick fingers. “I haven’t picked the lady yet, for it is so important to do this well. Once a gentleman proposes, there’s no taking it back. What if she doesn’t like children, as she says? What if this one is like the others, not as young as she stated in her advertisement?”

  “If you are fretting, go about finding a bride the old way. Pick a chit during the Season and propose. Lady Crisdon will help.”

  His brother’s face grew more serious with his jaw firming, his eyes drifting to the right. “I can’t bear to hear how none of them are like Maria. I know that.”

  The man quieted. If his eyes moved more to the right they’d fling from his skull. It must be hard losing a good wife. From the letters the brothers had exchanged over the years, Jasper had cared for her himself until the stomach cancer had taken its toll.

  “I’m sorry, Ewan. It will be a year next month.” Jasper tugged at his sleeves, readjusting his cuffs over his thick wrists. “Have you asked for your mother’s matchmaking assistance? That might get her to come back to Grandbole. We should be unified now.”

  Unity? At what cost? Ewan pushed at his temples with fingers that now reeked of lavender, Theo’s lavender. He put his palms onto the seat, gripping the edge, as if that would ground him from the memories of a fleeting romance with one of the Crisdon flower sellers. No luck. She’d be in his head tonight, tormenting him. “I’ve no time, or the finances, for a wife—not until one of my plays succeed.”

  Jasper rubbed at his chin. “What of that ginger-haired girl you danced with at your mother’s dinner last week, the one with freckles? She didn’t seem to mind the absence of a fortune.”

  That was unusual in London, to be sure. Mother must’ve whispered nonsense in the girl’s ear. “She’ll become enlightened by her own matchmaking mama. The second son from a second marriage can only do so much, particularly one recovering from banishment.”

  Jasper sat forward, folding his arms. “Father’s irascible, but he only did what he thought was best. I will admit he is often misguided, but sometimes… Sometimes he’s right.”

  Yes. The earl was right in the worst ways. He’d said Theo was after Crisdon money. He’d said she wouldn’t remain faithful. Groaning, Ewan looked down again at his hands, his fisting hand. “The earl also does wrong. Lording his money over our heads, doling it out when we do as he wants. But then, he stops us from gaining the means to be independent. Not this time. My new play will succeed.”

  “How would Father put it?” Jasper held his nose up and made his voice strangled and low. “Fitzwilliams do military or religious service. We may go to the theater, but not perform in such. Ewan, use your writing talents for sermon making.” He laughed and wriggled his nose. His voice returned to its normal energetic pitch. “That would’ve made Father very pleased.”

  Ewan’s stomach churned, thinking of both the difficulty of doing as the old earl wanted and the image of himself being struck by lightning behind the pulpit. He spoke very slowly. “The black sheep can’t wear white frocks, and I’ve already done my military service. Five and a half, almost six, years of service in Spain and the West Indies. My Fitzwilliam dance-card-with-bullets is jotted in full. I should be able to live as I want. I have stories to tell. They should be on the stage, no matter what the old man thinks.”

  Jasper dropped his hat as his shoulders slumped. “This new one is very good. It was a pleasure to read, but I hate being caught between you two. I’m not sure what has seeded the ill will, but this is a new day. We need family to pull together.”

  Not wanting to argue or mouth aloud Theo’s name, Ewan sighed. “So, how do you intend to tell the old man of your plan for a new wife?”

  “If advertisement number four lives up to the promise made in the newspaper, he won’t mind adding another fortune to the family.”

  Ewan couldn’t disagree with that logic, even if it felt wrong and unromantic. “Perhaps, but I still think you should give the traditional way a chance.”

  Jasper ran a hand through his curly, reddish-blond hair. His frowning lips turned up. “My rugged features do pale against yours, but I have three girls who will require dowries that my modest income will not profer. I don’t want their fates to be under the earl’s control. I need a young heiress who will be a good mother to my brood and add to my coffers. That can’t be had at Almack’s.”

  Maybe this finding-a-bride-by-newspaper-advertisement was a safe way for his brother to start living again. “A lovely brood, from what I can remember. Your wife gave you all she had. That is to be treasured.”

  Smoothing a wrinkle from his waistcoat, Jasper nodded. “I’m done with sentiment. You’re only allowed one great love in a lifetime. The next will be a marriage of convenience.”

  That couldn’t be true. His heart shuddered at the notion of only loving once. It would take a great deal of vanity for Ewan to convince himself that what he’d felt for Theo in those heady days before he’d left for war, was less than love. Oh, if only he were that vain.

  What had started as an innocent, well, almost innocent, flirtation between the errand boy for the largest flower grower of greater London and a sassy street vendor had changed everything. Wanting Theo had cost Ewan dearly. He’d been disowned, dispatched from the family, and had almost died in the war. He grimaced, allowing his gut to knot and twist with the horrid truth. Seeing how things had turned out: she’d apparently married a wealthy man, he’d written a farce of Theo’s love that would draw all of London. Perhaps she had been worth the sacrifice. Yes, his humor had matured.

  “Pay attention over there.” Jasper smiled. It was his infectious weapon. “Do you remember your nieces? You should see them. My eldest is now a petulant ten.”

  He stuck a hand in his pocket and shrugged. Staying away had cost more than time. Deep down in his heart, he missed his family, that sense of belonging. “Perhaps you can bring them to town. My flat is small but clean.” And not under the old man’s control.

  Jasper raised his brow. “You should come see them today.”

  Ewan shook his head. “No.”

  “But I will need your plotting abilities. I could pay you to help write my correspondences to number four of the Morning Post. If this woman is indeed young, with a fortune, and not so bad on the eyes, there could be competition.” He shuffled his boots. “And if you are not courting, who’s the package for? Smells like lavender. What secrets are you keeping from your elder brother?”

  “No. I bumped into a woman in Burlington Arcade. She left it. I’ll toss them away.”

  “Pretty expensive wrapping. A pity to disregard. When did you have time to make a new acquaintance?
Did you miss my mystery woman when you were flirting?”

  “I’d hardly call a pleasant exchange flirting.” But what would he call running into his past? Though Theo wore expensive garb, she could be like him, all outside trappings. These perfumed soaps shouldn’t be abandoned. Perhaps he should return them to their owner and have that final chat. He whipped off his top hat. “Our mission is done today, Jasper. Drop me back to my residence.”

  “No, you must come with me for dinner with the girls…and Father.”

  Ewan slumped in his seat, wrinkling the vest he’d labored to pick out for an evening of cards at his mother’s house in Town, not for seeing the earl. What type of mood would he be in after seeing Theo and his father in the same day? He shook his head. “I’m beginning to feel tired. Yes, very tired.”

  Jasper groaned, loud and long. “The chest wound?” His brother’s voice raised an octave. “Does it still bother you?”

  “Only on wet days…and during thunderstorms.”

  “Come to dinner, Ewan. So much has changed. The family needs to pull together. Don’t be stubborn like Father.”

  Like the old man? His brother might as well have punched Ewan in the face to utter such horrid words. “I’m nothing like him. Stop the carriage. I’ll walk.”

  Grabbing his arm like a madman, Jasper kept him from leaping out of the carriage. “I’m sorry, but it is true. I won’t say it again. Have one meal. Get his complaints off my shoulders for a day. See my girls.”

  His brother had always tried to keep the old man at bay, even slipping Ewan a fiver upon occasion. “One quick meal, but as soon as he starts in, I’m gone. I’ll steal a horse and return to London. In fact, give me money to stable a stallion now. For you know it won’t take long for Father’s harangues to start. It’s about three jokes before he fumes.”