The man who looked exactly like Fitz might not remotely resemble him in temperament or inclinations.
“I am curious, Mrs. Englewood,” he said, “how would your life have been different had Lord Fitzhugh not inherited his title?”
“Other than the fact that today I might still believe myself fortune’s darling? Probably not very much. Fitz had wanted to be a cavalry officer. The man I married was also a cavalry officer.”
“Does this mean I am not your first replacement for Lord Fitzhugh?”
Her nerves pulled taut. But he did not sound peevish, only genuinely curious.
“It might look that way, but I never set out to marry a different cavalry officer. When Fitz married his heiress, I was cast adrift. My mother and my sister convinced me to not let life go by, to at least go to London and see what other choices I might have. That London Season led me to Captain Englewood.”
She smiled a little the memory of meeting her Lawrence for the first time, of the way his eyes had followed her the entire night. “It wasn’t until I’d accepted his suit that my sister asked me whether I was trying to duplicate the life I would have led with Fitz. I broke down and cried myself to sleep. The next day I woke up and vowed to never think of Fitz again for as long as Captain Englewood and I both lived.”
“Not an easy promise to keep.”
“No. At the beginning of our marriage, whenever Captain Englewood did something that I didn’t like, I would instantly wonder how different things would have been with Fitz—how I would have never experienced a single moment of annoyance or dissatisfaction. But I’m proud to say I pushed those thoughts away quite diligently and did my best to love Captain Englewood for himself, rather than as a second choice when my first was no longer available.
“It became easier after a while. He was a good, devoted husband. We had two lovely children. I enjoyed life in the cantonment and made friends with the other officers’ wives. It wasn’t the life I’d planned for, but it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, I was feeling quite fortunate and grateful, when Captain Englewood and I both caught a tropical fever.”
She stopped for a moment, unable to help the tremor in her voice. Mr. Fitzwilliam gazed at her steadily, as if in encouragement. She took a deep breath and went on.
“He was the hardiest man alive, never a cold, never a toothache, never even an upset stomach. Soon he seemed to be on the mend, while I took a turn for the worse. In what I thought would be my last moment of clarity, before I descended into delirium, I told him how thankful I was that he came into my life when he did, how much I adored him and our children, and how I wished I could grow old with him and together welcome our grandchildren into the world.”
Mr. Fitzwilliam sat straighter. She clutched her wineglass with both hands. “I woke up two days later, weak as a newborn, and so confused I barely knew where I was or even who I was. When I did remember, I said a long prayer of thanksgiving—I was alive, I was well, the life that I had painstakingly rebuilt had remained intact. Only to then be told—”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. He was instantly before her, holding out a snow-white handkerchief. “Thank you,” she murmured, accepting the handkerchief and hastily dabbing her tears away. “I’m sorry.”
“Be glad you can cry. There are those can only sit dry-eyed with pain burning in their hearts.”
Was he speaking of himself? She wanted to ask but didn’t know how. “I’m sorry,” she repeated herself. “I have been going on and on about myself. Please understand I am only belatedly trying to appear halfway sane.”
“I never doubted your sanity—what we do in moments of heartbreak isn’t always rational or explicable,” he answered, his voice as gentle as it was authoritative.
She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so grateful. Impulsively she reached out and touched his hand. “Thank you, sir.”
He rested their combined hands against his chest. The lapel of his jacket was warm and soft upon her skin. Then he let go and returned to his seat. “So you grieve for Captain Englewood, you wonder what would happen to yourself, and you remember your old sweetheart. Except he is no longer your sweetheart.”
“Then you appeared out of nowhere, and I thought my prayers had been heard.” Memories of their kiss tumbled back. The firmness of his hand at the small of her back, the scratch of the beginning of stubbles upon her cheeks, the sounds of enjoyment that he made as she pressed wantonly into him. She cleared her throat. “Well, you know the rest.”
“Not everything.” Mr. Fitzwilliam tilted his head. “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Englewood, did you really intend to take me to bed?”
Her face warmed, but his tone was not the least bit judgmental, as if he were inquiring into nothing more controversial than whether she had intended to offer him a box of chocolates.
“I had convinced myself of it at one point.”
He smiled. “Until I appeared in person, you mean.”
She couldn’t help reciprocating some of his amusement. In hindsight it was funny, what had transpired this night. “I couldn’t delude myself as much as I thought I would.”
“You have done very well tonight: Instead of a lover you’d be ashamed of in the morning, you now have a friend.”
Did she? Her stomach fluttered at the bond friendship suggested, that he would not be a transient figure in her life, here tonight, gone tomorrow. But she did not dare let herself hope too much. “Isn’t it premature to pronounce yourself one of my intimates, sir? I know nothing of you.”
He shook his head. “That is patently incorrect, Mrs. Englewood. You know I am one, eminently good natured, and two, gentlemanly enough to not take advantage of a damsel in distress.”
She was amazed now that he had come at all. He didn’t want you to be all alone, tonight of all nights, the thought dropped into her head. It was like being given a thick blanket and a hot cup of mulled wine, when she’d expected to shiver by herself in a corner for a long, long time.
Not quite knowing what to say, she turned to making fun of herself. “I doubt you were ever thinking of taking advantage of me. Quite the opposite, I dare say. You probably brought the wine so you could use the bottle to smack me on the head, should you need to get away from my frenzied grasp.”
The corner of his lips lifted. “Believe me, if I were that worried I wouldn’t have come.”
There was nothing blatant to his expression, just that of a strapping young man being confidently unafraid. Yet she felt a shock of warmth in her abdomen, an understanding that had she propositioned him under less questionable circumstances, now she would be beneath him.
Naked.
She poured the rest of her wine down her throat.
Chapter Four
MRS. ENGLEWOOD SET THE GLASS ASIDE, and exhaled from parted lips. Those lips were quite red, her breath just noticeably uneven. The sight and the barely audible sound of it made Ralston’s body tighten rather pleasurably. He shifted in his chair.
She, on the edge of the bed, sat straighter, as if better posture would cut the sudden tension in the room. But it only drew his attention to her beautiful neck, above the collar of her nightgown and the lapels of her dressing robe—then down to her bare feet on the carpet, the most substantial evidence that she had indeed meant to take him to bed, for a lady’s feet were never bared except in the most intimate of circumstances.
She arched one foot, her instep high and shapely. He had a vision of himself holding that foot, holding both her feet, in fact, one in each hand, drawing them apart—
He rose before his thoughts could get away from him and replenished her glass. She murmured a “Thank you,” as her toes delved rather deeply into the fibers of the carpet. The strain in the tendons of her foot made him tighten further. He pulled in a deep breath as he sat down again, trying not to dwell on unprofitable notions.
She needed a friend, not a lover.
“Do you remember what you said to me when we first met—that you are interested in my story?” she aske
d, returning his attention to the conversation.
“Yes?”
“Why are you interested in a story that you could already tell was full of torment, as writ large on my face?”
Because I recognized your grief, he wanted to answer, as if it were my old friend, too.
But he could not quite bring himself to say it, so he shrugged.
“I see,” she said, narrowing her eyes slightly. “Do you know now, Captain Englewood sometimes came home aching from a day in the saddle—and wanting to be fussed over. But he could never tolerate the sound of himself complaining, so his devoted wife had to deduce where and how much he hurt and then pamper him accordingly.”
She was more perceptive than he had given her credit for. “Are you suggesting, Mrs. Englewood, that I have the appearance of a man staggering across the threshold, groaning?”
“No, I am suggesting that you have the appearance of an otherwise stoic man who is perhaps ill-served by his stoicism. And now allow me to be like that fictional detective—what is his name?”
“Sherlock Holmes.”
“Indeed, I will be Mr. Holmes and divine the story of your life. And if I am right, you have but to take a sip of your wine.”
“And you, will you drink when you are wrong?”
“I shall take the liberty to imbibe either way—it is an excellent night to be tipsy, perhaps even outright intoxicated.”
As if to underscore her point, she drank from her glass, then focused her attention on him. He did not fail to notice the quick blinking of her eyes, which happened almost every time she looked full-on at him—she still had to make an effort to untangle him from her Fitz. It was an odd feeling: whether anyone cared for his face or not, he’d never been consistently mistaken for someone else. Particularly not in such a manner as to yank the beholder’s emotions left and right, for he could see them on her face: confusion, a flicker of involuntary hope, then resignation, the three bundled now in such a tight package that they were but one fleet shadow upon her face, chased away the next moment by a conscious resolve on her part to appear normal and unaffected.
She touched the rim of her glass to her chin. “The color of your complexion indicates that you have been abroad a great deal in hot, sunny places.”
He took a sip. “Good, but a low hanging fruit. What else can you guess?”
“You have been to India.”
He obliged with another sip. “That fruit was so low it had already landed on the grass and been pecked over by all the birds of the orchard.”
“North Africa, too.”
“Slightly less low hanging. Logical deduction, or lucky guess?”
“Somewhere in between. Let’s see. You are not a member of the diplomatic corps—these gentlemen do not go out in the sun much.”
“Indeed I am not.”
“And you are not a soldier. I have been around a great number of those; I can tell one from a furlong away.”
“Not a soldier.”
She blew out a breath. “It is the end of low-hanging fruits as we know them. Now I must actually climb the tree—or shake the branches awfully hard. Do you happen to be an adventurer?”
“No.”
“I have no other ready guesses. What are you then?”
“I am a cartographer.”
She sucked in a breath. “All the mapmakers I have met are secretly spies.”
“Not surprising, given that mapmakers who pass through military cantonments are likely in the employ of the empire. But mapmaking also has legitimate civilian uses. No construction of roads, railroads, and canals can proceed until those in charge have the most accurate maps possible.”
“I don’t doubt that, but what are you?”
“Not a spy,” he answered honestly. “Though I will admit, on certain expeditions the local embassy has been known to insert one or two gentlemen as ‘observers’. Those gentlemen, I imagine, are indeed spies—or at least better trained in covert arts than I.”
“I’m surprised the spymasters didn’t exert greater pressure on you to swell their ranks. They are not always scrupulous in their recruitment methods.”
“I am lucky: I can name myself the Duke of Perrin’s heir.”
Her eyes widened. Most ladies, upon learning that he was in line to inherit a title, glowed with greater interest. Her reaction, however, was all alarm. “Are you? I hope you will be one of the more fortunate peers who will not need to marry an heiress to keep a roof over your head.”
“Thankfully, the Perrin estate has always been in excellent repair—not to mention the current duchess is a very wealthy woman.”
She exhaled and raised her wineglass. “A toast then: to becoming a duke without becoming a pauper.”
Wine seemed to affect her swiftly. Her cheeks were already flushed, a flirtatious shade of pink, like that of a woman freshly pleasured. “A toast,” he echoed and drank deeply.
No one ever said being a gentleman didn’t have its costs.
“So…” She twirled the stem of her wineglass. “Have you been overseas so diligently to avoid the scheming mamas?”
She winked at him. All of a sudden he saw her as the girl she must have been once, bursting with vitality and thirst for life, ready to make her mark on the world.
Abruptly her expression turned somber. “No, no, what was I saying? Of course you haven’t been running away from the matchmakers. You have been running from something else altogether—that which you could not bring yourself to speak of earlier.”
HE DID NOT SAY ANYTHING. He didn’t know whether he wouldn’t or couldn’t.
This time, it was Mrs. Englewood who rose, lifted the wine bottle by its neck, and refilled his glass. The hem of her dressing robe brushed against his trousers as she sat down in the chair next to his.
“As a rule I don’t pry,” she said, her voice quiet and solemn. “But I don’t believe you came here to not speak of it. So if you will forgive me, whom did you lose?”
He breathed hard. To calm himself, perhaps—or to hungrily inhale her faint scent of fresh rose petals.
“Is it a lady?” she asked, her instinct unerring.
It was a long time, or at least it seemed so, before he could nod.
“What is her name?”
Now he had no choice but to speak. “Charlotte,” he said, his voice sounding almost rusty. “Her name was Charlotte Fitzwilliam.”
She flinched a little at his use of the past tense. “Your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Were you married long?”
He shook his head. “Three months.”
Two of them absolutely glorious, the last filled with despair and denial. He’d remained by her bedside almost every minute of the day, holding her hand, trying to keep himself together, unable to comprehend the possibility that he might become a widower at twenty-two.
“When she died, I refused to let her body be prepared for burial. I had to be forcibly removed, shouting at the top of my lungs that putting her into a coffin would suffocate her and I would never allow it.”
He looked at Mrs. Englewood and attempted to smile. “So you see, your action can never compare to mine, when it comes to grief-driven irrationality.”
Her eyes glimmered—her tears were again gathering. She rested her hand on his cheek. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
He placed his hand over hers. And now that he started speaking, he couldn’t shut up. “Do you know what I regret? Mrs. Fitzwilliam wanted to visit the Faroe Islands during our honeymoon. She’d read all about their misty greenery and those brightly painted houses against a gray Atlantic. But we married in October. I told her the weather would be harsh so late in the year and promised to take her the next summer.”
But Charlotte had not lived to see the next summer. “I went myself—it was an almost eerily beautiful place. I should have taken her that October, so she’d have had her heart’s wish.”
Seven years had passed, but that regret had remained as constant as the sea.
Mrs. Englewood cupped his face with both hands. “No.”
He stared at her, not sure what she meant.
She gazed into his eyes, her own swimming with unshed tears. “I cannot speak for Mrs. Fitzwilliam, but I don’t believe she minded the Faroe Islands. I have always wanted to go to Mykonos and Captain Englewood had promised me he would take me there someday. He died before we could go and I would have gladly given up all chances of ever visiting Mykonos if it would have saved my husband—or just kept him on this earth for a few more hours, to say a proper goodbye.
“So if Mrs. Fitzwilliam had any regrets, it would be that the rest of her life was too short to spend with you—because that was her heart’s desire, not the Faroe Islands, and not anything else.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks. The strangest feeling overtook him. It was a few seconds before he realized that he had a lump in his throat.
“You did say a proper goodbye to him,” he told her. “He went to his rest knowing that he had the love of his wife and children. It would have been more than good enough for me.”
Her lips parted in a slow smile, even as another drop of tear made its way down her cheek. “Thank you.”
He touched his thumb to her cheek, wiping away her tears. Then, to his shock, he realized she was doing the same to him: The tears that had eluded him all these years were falling freely.
And through his tears, she was as beautiful as a dream.
Almost without thinking, he pulled her to him and kissed her.
IT WAS A SWEET KISS, almost like a whispered “thank you” in the ear, a squeeze of the hand, or an umbrella held out in a downpour.
Sweet and brief.
When they pulled apart, Mr. Fitzwilliam did not apologize or explain himself—he had done exactly what he meant to, it seemed, and no words were needed. For a few seconds, they existed in perfect camaraderie, her hand on his cheek, and his hand on hers, two friends who had shared the most intimate details of the heart.
A Dance in Moonlight Page 3