by TYNER, LIZ
William would risk the lack of comfort of his body to protect his ears from a night of Sylvester’s slurred words about this remedy or that, and William’s necessity of keeping a chamber pot at hand for when Sylvester cast up his accounts.
The moments of solitude would be much better than a night of revelry.
‘I wish to inspect my new home and then I will spend the night there.’ He didn’t wish to speak with anyone.
He placed a boot firmly on the carriage step, aware of the sluggishness and groan of the carriage springs caused by the falling temperatures.
The ride had the spirit of a cortège.
*
When the carriage stopped, William descended and examined his purchase. A smaller house, further from his club. Further from Sophia’s. Closer to Sylvester’s. Without the parlour windows and their inside wooden shutters, and the ability to stand at the window looking down over a busy street. The main attraction of this house had been its availability.
He had asked his man-of-affairs to be hasty and, considering all, this was a good selection. He had paid above an expected price to get the residence quickly. Marriage was costly, but he had known it would be so.
William stepped out.
Again the springs in the carriage creaked as the coachman jumped down to give William a lantern. William hurried the man away, knowing he wished to get back to his own family.
When the carriage left, William saw another man, one of his new neighbours, struggling with a wriggling fluff sticking out from where the man held something against his coat. In the other hand, he held a cone of paper wrapped around greenery.
A servant ran out with a lamp and, before the door closed behind him, a little boy, wearing a long-sleeved shirt, rushed from the doorway into the chill.
The father stopped and held out the white barking fluff. The boy took it and hugged. ‘Not too tight,’ the father said. ‘Mustn’t squeeze too much or he’ll nip your nose.’
The father put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, guiding him towards the door while the boy blasted out a selection of names possible for the puppy.
William grimaced. He hoped it would not be a large dog. The barking could quite disturb sleep.
Irritation rumbled through him at the thought he was abandoning his house. Another complication caused by the emotions. The neighbours at the other town house tended to be invisible, but these might not be. The hour was much too late for a little child to be awake.
He raised his eyes higher when a movement at the window caught his eye. The lamps in the house were lit bright as day.
He looked up in time to see a woman, her back to the street, and the man’s arm moved into view and held something above her head. Mistletoe. She laughed and moved from view, the mistletoe following.
William turned, trudging into the house, more than ready to put the numbing cold behind him and throw the festivities to the rag-and-bone collectors.
He hated the joyous, wondrous Christmas with all its solitude and bleakness and nonsense.
The cheerful spirit bit into the winter. Each year he looked forward to his favourite day—the day after Christmas. That day he woke up with a smile on his face because normal lives resumed.
*
The door to the new residence opened without noise. Darkness pressed on each side of him, tomb-like.
The air. The air, instead of seeming warmer from the outside, had captured the chill of the winter and settled into the clasp of the house. Even the scent of lantern oil didn’t make it seem warmer.
Above stairs, he saw chairs by a table. Larger pieces of furnishings the owner had left behind as part of the agreement to vacate hurriedly. William kicked a boot heel against the bare floor. No movement. Steady, but not in a comforting way as he’d expected, but in a hard, unforgiving hold.
The fireplace didn’t call out to him. The mantel had no engravings, just a wooden structure of average size. He raised the lantern, seeing a pale spot where a picture had once hung on the wall, and at the window, water stains. Shadows flickered like the moments from a bad dream.
He moved through each of the family rooms, seeing the scrapes of life on the walls and the nicks of time about.
Bones, not flesh.
The room with the fireplace and water stains on the wall compelled him to return. William walked to the mantel and put the lantern on it. He found a tinder box and lit the coals in the fireplace, and stood, trying to get the chill from inside himself.
Searching about the house, he found more coals and brought them to the room. The night would be spent sober and he didn’t wish to be cold as well.
Again his eyes landed above the fireplace.
The space around the mantel had darkened with the soot and the pale space above indicated a large portrait.
Going to the bedchamber, he saw the trunk he’d instructed sent ahead. On top of it sat a tiny basket, with biscuits, a flask, currants and comfits. Cook didn’t want him to starve. He opened the flask and tasted. The water he liked.
He sat the basket aside, opened the trunk and found the box. The box with his mother’s ring and the little scrap of feather from Isabel’s hat.
He imagined his mother’s portrait. The second one. The one started after her death.
His first sight of the completed painting had caused a smothering inside his throat that not even his first bout of drunkenness had cured. His head had ached the next morning—his world had spun, but the picture had remained in the library. Never again had William taken a book from the shelves. The servants had gathered anything from that room he’d wished.
He’d still had to encounter the sight of his father when the Viscount summoned him, shouting out commands that sometimes were nonsense. His father had always been the same—staring at the portrait, an empty glass in his hand. A decanter sat beside him and several others graced the mantel—one container always full.
Above that stone mantel, the picture was not truly of William’s mother but a likeness taken from a family portrait completed before her death. The eyes had not been right and yet they had. They’d been dead. He’d never completely erased that image from his mind. Seeing his mother die had not been as hard as seeing the picture of lifeless eyes, staring—every time he entered the room, if he looked in that direction. He learned to keep his eyes from the mantel.
Many times he had contemplated slashing the portrait. But he could not.
Even the room, when he walked by it, door open, and his father inside, had begun to emit some scent of rot.
He’d put a knife into his father’s grasp and told him to use it.
His father had stabbed the weapon into the table and sworn to the rafters. William had stood, a brandy bottle in his hand, his cheek cut from a fight he’d been in the night before and his stance defiant.
‘Get out of my sight,’ his father had shouted.
William had swung the bottle into the door facing as he’d left the room. The shattering crash had resonated. He’d dropped the bottle neck in the hallway on the way to his bedchamber. When the neck hit the rug, he’d looked down the hallway.
Sophia’s eyes stared from around her door. Harriet and Rosalind peeped from the other side, all wearing nightdresses. Three wan faces and three sets of eyes looking too large and too old.
He’d begged their pardons, promised them treats for breakfast, suggested a new hair ribbon for Harriet, a book for Rosalind and a new dress for Sophia. He’d said he’d fallen from his horse on the morning ride and was in a foul mood, but his beautiful sisters made his day better.
No one had smiled. At that moment, he had changed. His actions, in his sisters’ presence, had become more circumspect. And he’d taken more care when out. He didn’t want his sisters losing their only brother and he didn’t want to see any more pain in their eyes.
He’d not even realised he must take charge of both the land and the household at first. He’d expected his father to wake any minute and resume the duties to family. Or Aunt Emilia—but h
er husband had been sick and so had her mother.
He’d waited, but then he’d been able to wait no longer. He’d done the best he could, but he’d not been able to expect everything. One day Harriet had wandered away and he’d been terrified because he’d not planned for it. Not expected it.
William had not wanted to become a parent and particularly not wanted to become a parent for his father. But he’d had no choice.
He raised his head. Nor had his mother had a choice.
His father had, however. William was thankful he’d not realised the tale of him attacking a woman would pull his father from his room or he might have made up the story himself when he was a lad.
Eleven years had passed since his mother had died. He rested his elbow at the mantel and leaned his head on his fingertips, shutting his eyes. His mother had been taken from him and his sisters, and they’d not known what to do. He could understand her being taken from him, but his sisters had needed their mother so much. That made him most angry.
He sat by the coals, watching them as they glowed and then faded away. Several times he moved, raking them around in the same manner he poked about in his head, resurrecting memories of days buried deep in his mind.
Harriet losing her front teeth and thinking they would not grow back. Rosalind stealing a horse from the stables. Sophia and that rakish soldier. Giving up on his father. All before he was Isabel’s age.
William knew how differently he’d been at nineteen compared to Isabel.
He stopped, realising that his father had been eighteen when he married. Thirty-two when his wife died. Not much older than William.
William’s chest thudded. If Isabel had died at Wren’s hands… True, he didn’t know her then, but still, the thought took his breath.
Perhaps he understood a bit more now. He didn’t even want to think of it, and yet, his father had lost the one true love of his life, for ever.
William thought of Isabel again. Alone. What if something happened to her and he was not with her? Wren was not the only man who might want a songbird caged.
He could not live with himself if someone hurt Isabel.
He breathed in and it was as if she touched his skin. She would always touch him, whether she was in the room or not. Whether she was in the world or not. And he could not live without touching her.
He could not bear the thought of her being alone. If she wanted someone to love her, she should have it. Isabel should have whatever she wished for.
And he should give all to her that he could.
He had not known what love was about. He had not expected that a person could fall in love with another person when they were not in the same room. But he fell in love with Isabel at that moment because now when thoughts of her surrounded him, he wanted it no other way.
He no longer cared that it might destroy him if something happened to her. He would be destroyed if he didn’t spend his life, whatever remained of it, with her.
*
William stepped into the house, pleased for the warmth after the long walk and thankful for the plum cake he could tell had been baked. Candles added to the early morning light, giving the entryway a glow he’d never seen before.
The butler stepped up, took William’s frock coat and gave a grin and a bow of his head. The bow was usual. The smile unexpected.
‘Welcome home, sir.’
William’s body lightened. For the first time, he felt the house was more than a place to eat, sleep and gaze out the window. Isabel was here.
‘Are you not supposed to be having a day to spend with family, today?’ William asked.
He nodded. ‘I am spending it with family. Just last month I married Cook.’
William’s eyes widened. He’d had no idea of the romance. Cook was the mother of the little boy who’d been tiptoeing about for almost a year.
William nodded and moved up the stairway. He didn’t want to wake Isabel.
He looked at his little finger, now wearing the heirloom ring. He touched the band, examining the stone. He slipped it to the second knuckle of his left hand and clasped his fingers closed. Vows might have been said, but this ring was the vow of his marriage. Once the band went on Isabel’s finger, they would be married for ever, if she would accept the token.
Chapter Nineteen
The aroma of the burning yule log reminded Isabel of Christmases past, and all that had gone before.
She’d risen well before her usual time and still wore the dressing gown because she’d not wanted to wake her maid early.
But soon she’d have to put on a bright dress and an even more festive face to visit William’s sister and pretend everything was well, even though Sophia would know the truth. William not being present would tell too much.
She looked at the crumpled handkerchief in her hand, considering whether to burn it or not. The other had flamed briefly, but hadn’t given her the joy she’d expected. She’d had trouble not pulling it back from the fire because it felt wrong to destroy something that reminded her so much of William.
The crumpled handkerchief looked exactly like she felt on the inside.
‘Is…’ The voice at the door caused her to still, afraid her imagination was deciding to torture her.
She turned, suddenly feeling she sat too close to the flames.
William’s hair had been pressed into place by the hat he held in his hand, but he thrust his fingers through the locks, causing it to resume its natural state. He still wore the clothes from the night before.
‘Isabel. I am doing the same as my father. The same. I am mired in the past of my mother’s death just as he was. He could not go on with his life and I could not go on with my life. I could care for my sisters, but I could not trust myself to have a family.’
She longed to reach for him, but didn’t. Looking into William’s eyes, she could see flickers of the pain from his childhood.
‘After Mother died and the roof began leaking, and the house began smelling of rot, I instructed the man-of-affairs to send workmen to check for a leak from the roof. A leak was found and repairs started. My father complained that his solitude was disturbed, but the men kept working on the roof. I realised everyone would listen to me if my father would not speak to save us.’
Isabel didn’t move, but waited.
‘The house was rotting away,’ William said. ‘Father had not noticed. Then I turned fourteen and tossed a bottle into the hallway. I couldn’t remember what I’d done that night. I wondered how I could protect my sisters and keep them safe, if I was no more aware than my father.’
Stepping forward, he took her hand and looked to the window. ‘After my youngest sisters were skilled at taking care of the estate, I moved where I could visit clubs easier and enjoy myself more. I found this house and had every board checked. Every board had to be solid. The windows had to be tight and the sounds of the outside world diminished. Storms kept at bay. The rooms sturdy. The house shut out the world so I could sleep in the day and be alone when I was here. I do not look out the windows to see what is happening. I look out to see that I know none of the people.’
She imagined his father sitting alone in one house, staring at a portrait, and William alone in another, staring out the windows.
‘With my sisters, there are three,’ he said. ‘It is not as if my heart is solely wrapped around one. But with a wife, my heart would solely be wrapped around her. She would be inside me. How fragile that seems to me and yet—’ he touched her cheek ‘—I cannot risk not loving you. That would be even worse.’
*
At the moment he reached out a hand in her direction, she knew he had made a decision.
He made one step forward. ‘I was given the gift of a Songbird almost to my window and I would not raise my head enough to hear the music.’
His eyes searched hers and she threw her arms around him and he tugged her so tight and so close he lifted her off the ground.
When he lowered her to her feet, she asked, ‘Have you re
turned to stay?’
‘Absolutely. Wherever you are is where I plan to live.’
Then she looked into his eyes and saw what she’d always wanted to see. Love. For her. If he had not held her, she would have grasped him to remain on her feet. But she didn’t even have to tighten her hold. He kept her steady.
He held her away so their eyes could meet. ‘I had to step in and care for my sisters and manage the estates when my father was mired in grief. I had to. Perhaps Sophia was old enough to manage, but Ros and Harriet were not. Our family’s fortunes would have disappeared. And I had to take the place of mother and father when I felt I had lost my own parents as well. I was so angry and buried it so deep. It wasn’t my sisters’ fault any more than mine and I didn’t want them to suffer.’
‘But they didn’t, because you took care of them.’
‘I did. But not for myself. I had no one to turn to and I accepted it. And I decided I didn’t need anyone and I became more and more alone. I lingered at Sophia’s house, hoping for a feeling of family, but it wasn’t there for me. Then you offered it and it was too good to be true. If I love you, I risk the loss again. But I can’t be happy without you. Or even content. Or close to it. I want to have you here.’ He clasped her hand, closing her fingers, and pulling her fist over his heart.
‘I want to spend Christmas with my wife. This year. And every year for the rest of my life.’
Words she had dreamed of from the man she didn’t even know to dream of.
She buried herself against him, the wool scent mingling with the warm earthiness of him.
He stepped back and took a ring from his little finger, and took her left hand, their joined hands igniting a glow of love inside her.
‘You’re not wearing the wedding ring,’ he said, rubbing his thumb over the empty spot where the jewellery had been.
‘No. I gave it to some children who were singing at the front door.’
His fingers tightened on her left hand. ‘Will you keep a different one? It belonged to my mother.’
‘Yes. Your sister told me how a grandfather of yours had it made for the woman he loved.’