by Jaima Fixsen
“What is your name?” he asked.
“You first,” she said.
“Rushford. Jasper Rushford,” he lied.
“I am Mrs. Morris.” She seemed to be waiting for him to ask after her husband, but Alistair was not such a novice. If there was a Mr. Morris, he was clearly a complaisant man, and therefore of no consequence.
“You’re a nice armful, Mrs. Morris, but I’d like a look at your legs again,” he said, propelling her into a spin so her shape would appear beneath the swaying skirts of her high-waisted gown. Very nice. Wherever she had come from, she looked like a thoroughbred at least—close to his own height and perfectly formed from her neck to her wrists to her ankles.
“You shouldn’t say such things to me,” she said.
“Why not? Don’t you like it?” He slid his thumb along the edge of her hand, kindling fire in her eyes.
“Your lady won’t like it,” she said, radiating angry heat. Surprising. You’d think she’d have overcome such scruples.
“I don’t think she’ll ever know,” he said.
“Probably not. Her eyes are all for Tom. Look, he’s very taken with her.”
If she meant to goad him, it was a weak attempt. Sophy could have her one waltz. It was of no consequence.
“Bad luck. She’s not for him,” he said.
“How do you know?” she asked.
Alistair grinned, happy to retake some ground. “Because she’s for me. If I want her, that is.” The music slowed, sinking in heavy pools between dancers approaching stillness, a heartbeat of a pause to exchange courtesies before breaking apart and leaving the floor. Alistair lifted his hands from her as the last note swam into the air. He sank into a bow. “I’m quite sure that I do, so don’t give up on him, Mrs. Morris. The lady in blue is unavailable, and you are not without some attractions.” He let his eyes travel slowly down below her face. “Thank you for the dance. May I escort you to your seat?”
“No.” She didn’t curtsey, returning instead a look that might have smelled of sulfur. Just as well. He shouldn’t have offered to return her to her place—force of habit, he supposed. He needed to fish Sophy out of this crowd, not squire this jade back to her seat.
“Good hunting,” he said, speaking low.
Her quick spin away was more eloquent than words. He couldn’t help admiring her as she stalked away, disappearing into the crowd of dancers, a brilliant catalogue of persons collected from every known land and point of history. It almost hurt his eyes, this collection of scandalously fragile skirts, golden collars, loose Eastern trousers and embroidered slippers with curled up toes. He stepped out of the way of a stiff lace ruff worn atop a set of panniers as wide as barrels. Not for the first time, he thanked his stars, happy to be born in a more rational age. But he’d lost Sophy. He could see every imaginable color except her domino cloak of bright blue.
It took two or three dances before he could reclaim her and steer her onto the floor himself. In the days that followed, Alistair kept watch for the tall fellow—Tom, she’d called him.
He only spotted him once, ogling Sophy through a quizzing glass at the theatre, looking singularly awkward, so he dismissed the fellow. A mistake. He shouldn’t have forgotten about Mrs. Morris either. Sophy might not have married Tom Bagshot, if he’d told her what he knew about him and Mrs. Morris. He could have destroyed Sophy’s love before her eyes, reducing her hero to clay, instead of telling her she’d outgrow this infatuation with Bagshot. Too late now. Sophy was married and she wouldn’t like learning about her beloved’s connection to that dark-haired female. It would break her heart. Might be best, in fact, if she never knew. But Jasper, who took up arms so quickly in his sister’s cause, would want to hear of this.
It was his duty to tell him, Alistair decided, squashing a faint flutter of conscience. Jasper would buy that reasoning. Alistair could almost believe it himself, but for the trickle of vicious, subterranean satisfaction oozing inside him. He was no saint, after all, and it was hardly fair that he should shoulder all the misery of this affair.
Alistair shut his book with enough force that it ruffled his hair. He must wash and change his dress. And hope Jasper’s temper had cooled enough so he could speak with him.
Chapter Three
But Relatives are Worst of All
Anna Morris, née Fulham, felt ready to scream, but it hadn’t occurred to her once to wash her son’s mouth with soap. She’d had few opportunities to confront the practicalities of child-rearing. After an hour chasing Henry in the park, where she’d torn her flounce and given herself a headache, she wondered why she bothered. Wringing permission from her brother-in-law to spend time with her son was wearing enough—and then one actually had to spend the time with him.
She’d been pleased with her appearance when she’d presented herself at the door of the Morris home, and proud of the way she had airily dismissed Henry’s nurse. She didn’t need more tale bearers watching her. If she so much as sneezed, her brother-in-law knew of it. But Henry had dragged his feet ever since leaving the park, dropping bonelessly to the ground in protest, dirtying his clothes and trying to kick off his shoes. She’d carried him most of the way, but they would still be late. Frederick had only granted them an hour and a half—and she’d argued hard for the extra half hour. Returning dirty and disheveled with a fretful child chanting obscenities was not going to help her cause.
“Aaasss—” Henry started up again. Anna could feel heads turning in their direction.
“Hush!” she whispered, laying a firm finger on Henry’s lips. He stopped for a second, eyeing her hand. Before he could bite it, she whipped it away. There was little she understood about her son, but she needed less than a second to decipher that calculating look. Her mother claimed she’d been a biter too, before progressing to pinching. They’d cured her of that, eventually, but really—she’d be so much happier if she could succumb to impulse and give a hard twist to her brother-in-law’s nose, snarl at her well-meaning mother and burn the grass covering her dead husband’s grave.
Perhaps that last was a little much.
It was probably just as well the Morrises didn’t want her near Henry. This short afternoon outing had nearly done her in. Nothing had gone as she’d imagined: no loving gazes, no jammy kiss (she’d decided she could tolerate jam), no trotting companionably at her side. Just another failure. No matter how she tried, everything she touched turned to dust and ashes.
You’ve gotten maudlin again. How contemptible.
“We’re late. Your uncle won’t like it,” she said to Henry, probably sounding as plaintive and disagreeable as he did. At least she wasn’t yowling. Yet. “We don’t want—” she grunted, hoisting his slipping bottom back onto her hip, “to do anything—” Goodness, he was heavy! “. . . that your uncle will not like.” Not that Frederick was disposed to like anything she did. He only tolerated her because of the money she had brought his brother. On Anthony’s death, everything but her jointure passed to her son. Frederick was Henry’s guardian and trustee, which put both her money and her boy beyond reach. She’d known Anthony hated her, but she had underestimated how much.
She looked down at Henry’s tousled head and surly bottom lip, a hot lump rising in her throat. She’d bungled again. “Next time will be better,” she promised.
Henry stuck out his lip. “No.”
They were still ten houses away. She could bundle him into a hackney and take him to her parents’ home, feed him tea and try to win that jammy kiss, but she had only a faint likelihood of succeeding. Henry didn’t like her—and why should he? She had brought him to the park and gotten annoyed with him for ruining her clothes, for scampering away from her and finding new, appalling vocabulary. Instead of following him as he capered across the grass or taking him to stare at the milk cows up on the hill, she'd turned peevish, sure they were drawing disapproving eyes. Instead of laughing with him at the spectacle of two grown men tussling it out like a pair of schoolboys, she’d gotten angr
y. Yes, it was true that Henry would probably end up calling someone in the Morris house some colorful names, but what of it? If he used them on his uncle, she was in perfect agreement. Unfortunately, Frederick the Ass-wipe didn’t need more excuses to bar her from Henry’s company.
Ignoring yet another pitying look from the elegantly dressed strolling along Mayfair’s pavements, Anna swiveled Henry to her other hip, hoping to ease the burn in her right shoulder. Her back was sweaty and her face hot. It was fitting, she supposed, that even an afternoon in the park turned into a struggle—everything else was. Her parents felt badly for her, but they were of little help. She ought to be used to helpless frustration, to containing the feverish plans that circled round her head like a mill wheel. These ideas seemed good in the small hours of the morning, but they always proved weak and flimsy against Frederick once the sun filled the sky. That wasn’t what filled her with despair. Defeat at Frederick’s hands was nothing compared to today’s, from Henry. He didn’t like her. She might as well give up trying.
But Henry’s dark hair and petulant mouth . . . they were exactly like her own. And though she couldn’t remember ever sharing his sturdy legs, round knees, and impudent smile, those were hers too. He was her son and she would have him. Someday. Soon. She caught his round pink hand and pressed it to her cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said, but he pulled his hand free, impatient with her caressing. “Next time we can go to Grandpapa and Grandmama Fulham’s. You’ll like the kitty.” Someone had to, besides her mother.
Henry narrowed his eyes. “Does he have teeth?”
And claws, Anna thought ruefully, remembering a pair of gauzy silk stockings.
“Boris has teeth. Boris chewed my dit,” Henry said.
She knew Frederick’s poodle, Boris, but she didn’t recognize the other thing. “Your dit?”
He nodded, expecting that to be answer enough. “Next time can I bring it? But not if there’s a kitty.”
She nodded, dumbfounded, but willing to agree to anything he suggested. He settled himself complacently, pointing to his own door once she began climbing the steps. The door swung wide, revealing the butler and the nurse, poised with waiting hands. Henry wriggled free and scampered into them with such eagerness that Anna felt her stomach widen into a cavernous hole. For a moment she wished he was back inside her, where he might bump and nudge, but no one could take him.
“Were you a good boy?” the nurse asked Henry, eyeing Anna’s dress.
“Next time I’ll wear a dark one,” Anna said. Maybe Frederick would allow her to take Henry for a drive and they could get ices. That might go better. He couldn’t run away from her if he was in a carriage. She would bring a maid with her. Or a leash.
“I’m hungry,” he said to the nurse.
“Your tea is waiting for you,” she said, taking his hand and leading him up the stairs. Anna tried not to mind when he didn’t look back. Alone with the butler in the hall, she waited a moment, but was not invited inside. “Give Mr. Morris my apologies for our lateness. Henry had a hard time walking all the way home.”
He bowed, acknowledging her message, and she left, realizing once she was outside that she should have paused to straighten her bonnet in front of the hall mirror. She gave one futile brush at her skirts, but the prints of Henry’s shoes were plainly marked. At least Henry had temporarily forgotten his new words.
She turned in the direction of her parents’ house, wondering when, if ever, Henry would notice her absence. On the whole, it might be better if he did not. They would never let her have him.
*****
Alistair was nearly finished the transformation from grubby ruffian to society gentleman when Oakes summoned him.
“Lord Fairchild is waiting for you in the drawing room.”
Alistair looked away from the mirror and the folds of his cravat. “My uncle’s here?” Lord Fairchild always said the only good thing about Lady Ruffington, Alistair’s mother, was that he could avoid her more successfully than her sister, his wife. Of course, Alistair’s mother was gone now, fled from London, unable to face her friends, but Lord Fairchild couldn’t know that. They’d hardly spoken since the day Sophy ran off. “I’ll be down shortly,” Alistair said, deftly shaping the white waterfall foaming at his throat.
“Perfect,” said Griggs, from behind the hand mirror.
“It’ll do,” Alistair said, holding out his arms so Griggs could brush off any specks of lint. Alistair didn’t have many coats to his name, but all of them were irreproachable.
He found his uncle in the drawing room, poking at the charred remains of a newspaper fluttering at the edge of the grate. Alistair decided to ignore this evidence of his own bad temper—the cartoons this morning had been unendurable. “You honor me,” he said, bowing to his uncle. “What brings you?”
Uncle William gestured at the black tissue crumbling onto the floor. “I feel that I am in some way to blame.”
“You did try to stop her,” Alistair said, tightening his mouth and glancing at the window.
“Yes. But I don’t think we’d have faced the problem if I had . . . done differently,” he said.
Alistair lifted an eyebrow.
“Sophy told me she was reluctant, but my wife wanted the marriage and I wanted to make her happy,” he said. “We pushed you both too hard.”
Alistair picked up the medal he’d been presented after the battle at Fuentes de Oñoro that his mother liked to keep so prominently on her occasional table. He turned it face down. “I know Sophy didn’t love me. Told me as much. But did she tell you why?” He wanted a reason. Something he could refute.
Lord Fairchild sighed. “She wanted to be loved.”
“And she didn’t think I could?” This was worse than he’d expected. He’d fully intended to make her as happy as a woman could wish.
Fairchild shrugged. “It’s probably as much my fault as yours. I don’t think I’ve convinced her that she isn’t a mistake—she’s born out of one, certainly, but—well, I value her for all that.”
Perhaps Sophy would have responded to a more single-minded pursuit, though when he had tried that, it hadn’t gone well. She had kissed him, he had laughed, and she hadn’t forgiven him for it. She hadn’t understood that he had laughed because she’d delighted him. From then on she had refused to believe he was courting her, never crediting him with sincerity. Or honor.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t convince her,” Alistair said, a little stiffly.
“I just said it wasn’t your fault. But I would have liked the match. I’m sorry for all this—inconvenience,” he said, gesturing again at the fireplace. Which was a mild way of putting the whispers, jeers, and scandal sheets.
Alistair moved to pour himself a drink, offering one to his uncle. He refused. When Alistair sat down and sipped his, he remembered why. The liquor in this house was pigswill.
“I’m sure the entire episode will be forgotten in a few days,” he lied. He wouldn’t forget, though. Neither would his uncle, even when society tired of it and moved on to something new. But since there was nothing to be done, he must tough it out. A man must consider his dignity—especially when he had so little remaining.
“Have you heard from her?” Alistair asked.
Lord Fairchild shook his head. “I don’t expect to after the way we parted. Jasper has seen her, but he refuses to say if she is well. She’s Bagshot’s wife and there’s nothing now to be done, but I worry for her. I know almost nothing of the man she’s chosen. I’ve driven out twice to Suffolk, but never made it all the way to Bagshot’s door.”
“She was determined to have him,” Alistair said carefully. Confiding his suspicions of Bagshot’s perfidy to Jasper was a simple matter, but he wasn’t certain he could mention them to his uncle. Jasper might deceive most with his sophisticated airs, but Alistair knew the jealously guarded secret of his cousin’s private convictions. He might ogle bosoms and flirt and tell warm stories, but if Jasper had ever pursued a flirtation to its natural conclus
ion, Alistair didn’t know of it. Jasper would expect Tom Bagshot to love his sister honestly, but Lord Fairchild’s example suggested he would be satisfied with kindness and circumspection. Indeed, their world expected nothing more from husbands, who frequently got away with even less.
“He’s indecently wealthy. Nothing to complain of, I suppose, though it all smells of the shop. I hear rumors of mills in dockside taverns though. Fellow’s a real bruiser, apparently.” Lord Fairchild’s forehead creased and he stared with bleak eyes at the ugly landscape hanging on the opposite wall. “A violent man. Suppose one day he hits her?”
Alistair swallowed. It wasn’t something anyone liked to speak about. “Would you take her, if she came back?”
“God, yes.”
Shamed by his own feelings—hadn’t he taken secret pleasure at the prospect of shattering Sophy’s illusions, of paying her in kind for the pain she’d given him?—Alistair spoke. “I’ve seen him on occasion. Once with a dark-haired woman. The wrong sort, of course, but she seemed more affected than he. It was a chance meeting, one I’d temporarily forgotten. I was about to find Jasper, to tell him of it.”
His uncle’s face closed, hiding distress that seemed all the greater for being buried out of sight. “When was this?” he asked.
“Earlier in the season, the night Sophy and I went with Lord and Lady Arundel to the masquerade ball,” Alistair admitted, loath to mention that mistake. If he hadn’t agreed to escort Sophy and her older, legitimate sister to that vulgar spectacle, Sophy would never have crossed paths again with Tom Bagshot, and none of this would have happened.
“Fairly recently then.” Lord Fairchild rubbed his cheek. “I can scarce get Jasper to speak to me. You’ll tell him? See what you can find? There’s little we can do, but if Sophy needs help—”
“I’ll speak to him,” Alistair promised.