Happily, he had regained more than half of his sight. He could not see well and he could not see much, but as long as his household staff did not move the furniture about, he could walk unaided and with relative grace. It seemed that his eyesight was continuing to improve even by the day, and he hoped that this was not wishful thinking.
Will had not, however, regained any of his good looks. He had not been a vain man. And I am certainly not vain, now, he thought, but he had been aware that he was handsome, with elegant, nearly feminine features and curly dark hair. He took far more after his mother, who had been a legendary society beauty, than his father, who had held average looks at best.
He’d broken the heart of more than one debutante simply by forgoing to ask her for a dance.
All of that was well behind him.
His churning mind took him back in time. He remembered Peter carefully removing his dressings and the moment they both realized he was forever changed.
His friend literally held his breath. Will, who still couldn’t see anything at all, tried to lessen the tension by joking, “Come, now, Peter. I knew I was ugly before.”
Peter did not appreciate the attempt at levity. For a long while after, Will had simply been enjoying the fresh air on his face and trying not to think about the future. Peter stayed quiet. Will did not rush him for his assessment. They were back in England, in London, and, specifically, in the smaller parlor of Will’s townhouse.
Will had invited his friend to accompany him because he could not bear to be alone and, importantly, Peter was a doctor, too.
“Your Grace,” Peter said evenly. If Will had not known him well to begin with, he might have missed the slight wobble in the two words. “I take it you cannot see?”
“I cannot.”
“There is still time for your mind and eyes to adjust,” said Peter. “We shouldn’t conclude that you’ll never be able to.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Will, reclining gingerly in the enormous armchair that had been near the fire since he was a little boy. He envisioned it in his mind’s eye; it was deep oxblood and the leather was so worn in places that patches of brown had appeared.
“Do you want me to describe your face?”
Will was devoutly trying to keep his arms and hands on the armrests. He did not wish to touch his face, though he knew that, by now, he could if he wanted. It was stupendous what even just a few weeks in darkness had done to his hearing, and he could hear every tiny gesture of nervousness that Peter gave.
The hesitance in his breathing, the brush of his clothes as he fidgeted.
“I do not, because I can tell that whatever you are going to describe will be quite horrible.”
Peter just sighed and could not even muster an apology, not that Will wanted him to offer any trite platitudes.
He finally saw what he could see of his face a few days after Peter removed his dressings for the last time. Oh, he had washed and, therefore, surmised by way of his fingers that things were in an awful state—he had both of his eyes, so he did have to thank God for small favors, but they now protruded slightly in a grotesque manner. His eyelids were not useless, but they were not quite where they should have been, nor was his nose.
Breathing, actually, was almost harder than seeing, once his sight started to return.
Feeling the new arrangement of his face was far different from seeing it. Before he saw it, Will still had the illusion of himself that allowed him marriage, a family, and an existence that would not witness him branded a freak.
Despite what he felt under his keen fingers, he could still imagine himself as he was.
But the looking glass did not lie. He got almost nose-to-nose with it, inspecting, staring.
Then he struck it.
Will was not by nature a violent man. He had not gone onto the battlefield as a soldier, but rather as a healer. His older brothers were the ones who had fought, who were a little rough. This had played itself out in their early deaths and was how Will came into the dukedom. Samuel passed in an ill-advised duel over a doxy, then Bram was slaughtered in some deadly misunderstanding at the gambling tables. Will was almost prepared to swear that his mother actually had died of a broken heart, because she did not long outlive Bram. His father certainly had, because he did not outlive her for very long, either.
Though, Father’s health was not the best. Perhaps something gave out.
It was thus that quiet, unassuming Will found himself abruptly managing an enormous estate with his aunt as his only surviving blood relative.
With his emotions bleeding into one another like a bloodied rag that tainted clean water, he took a step back from the mirror, readied his fist, and hit the old, dappled glass with enough force to shatter it into glittering, sharp pieces that scattered to the floor. Peter heard the commotion and came running, and Will did not have to explain the situation to him.
He simply gazed at the shadowy form that was Peter and murmured, “I think that mirror has been in the family for quite some time.”
Peter, bless him, helped clear out the broken glass.
Will’s memories passed as he was brought back to the here and now. As Will stared at Diana impassively, or as impassively as a gargoyle could stare, he considered that his emotions were dangerously close to falling back into the category of tainted, bloodied waters. Nothing mattered to her but his face, it seemed. Not the commendation of Wellington himself, who had signed the papers saying Will was to be sent home. Not the respect of his comrades like Peter, who all sang his praises. Peter himself had told Diana how brave Will had been in the circumstances of suffering his irrevocable injury, but she had just sat across the table and watched Peter with all the interest of a bored cat.
Will had forgotten how snobbish Diana could be, and Peter was neither titled nor in possession of much wealth compared to him.
He held out his hand to her and she came across the small space of the first parlor. She did not mistake his meaning and he heard her unhook the small brooch he had given her as a token. He stood to receive it and its negligible weight settled in the flat of his palm. He could remember what it looked like, a delicate rose wrought out of gold, but it only appeared as a small and indistinct glimmer, now.
Diana made to rise with a small, soft hand to his face but, at the last second, she could not bring herself to touch him.
This wounded him more than he would admit to anyone.
“I am sorry, Your Grace.”
“You do not need to be sorry. You should celebrate,” he said with no small measure of bitterness. “You are free to live your life without a monster to encumber you.” The feeling went to his head as quickly as a strong liquor, and his tongue was loosened. “I wish you great joy with the next beautiful man whose path you cross. Perhaps another duke. Or an earl.”
Diana crossed her arms. “You cannot possibly expect me to accept…” she gestured reflexively, and Will could imagine her deep brown eyes gleaming in her high-boned face. “This. Stepping out with this, night after night.”
“It is a good thing we did not get to the ‘in sickness and in health’ stage of our relationship, isn’t it?” His words were glib, but his heart hardened as he spoke.
He thought Diana flinched, but couldn’t be sure. “Yes, things are far less complicated this way,” she said sharply. “We were never fully bound to each other.”
“Will you miss anything about me?”
“I already miss what you used to be.”
“Anything else?”
Will wanted to hear her say what he suspected was at the root of her enthusiasm for his proposal. He did not know if she would, but it also seemed that she did not feel the need to assuage his ego any longer. Things were over now.
“Do not make me say it, Your Grace.”
“No, no, I think it would be healthy for us to fully understand one another, my lady.” Will all but snarled the words. Inwardly he was flinching. He hated confrontation and although this was a necessary one, h
e knew he was making it unnecessarily vitriolic.
Part of him, the animal part of him, did not care. It was one small moment in which his face matched his emotions.
The rest of him would care again in the future. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow or as late as a year from now.
“I did look forward to living in comfort for the rest of my days,” Lady Diana said. She did not sound especially apologetic.
There it was.
“Thank you for telling the truth.”
She backed away from him as though she were frightened to turn her back. Will noted with some interest that his first impression of her was right. His aunt told him he was being harsh to call Lady Diana cold, and he’d agreed at the time that perhaps he was. But now? She thought only of her own reactions to him, and doubtless of the social awkwardness she would have to endure if she married someone whose war injury was so bluntly gruesome.
This was neither a missing limb nor an injury of the mind. There was simply no way to obscure it, save a mask, and that was sure to mark one just as starkly.
When she quit the parlor, Will went for the delicate cherrywood end table that had belonged to his mother. He could make out the familiar service items, the crystal decanter of sherry and little matching cups, and he was determined that he would not call for any help to serve himself from his own stores of sherry.
Fumbling, he poured himself a cupful and brought it to his lips.
One of the effects of his disfigurement was, oddly, that his nose was not only more sensitive to normal scents, it was much more vulnerable to the burn of alcohol. He ignored it and leveled the sherry into his mouth. Licking his lips gently, for it was harder to be neat about these things now, he poured himself another in the delicate glasses. If he had to live his life in a perpetual twilight, he sure as hell was not going to descend without the proper accompaniment. Utter intoxication would suit him well enough.
Chapter One
Six months later
Lady Jane Pippin appeared ready to collapse due to both the strength of her fervor, and the exertion of chasing her fully-grown nephew as though he were a young child in danger of falling down a well.
“Nephew,” she declared. “You must know that nothing short of seeing you entering into society again will make me happy.” She followed Will as he traipsed through the gardens. “Except, perhaps, for you deciding to stop taking these nighttime strolls.”
Will had heard these exact words countless times. Tonight, as with past nights, he elected to ignore his relentless aunt and continued walking in an easy, unaffected manner. It was an exceptionally mild, lovely night but, to him, all nights were beautiful, each holding its own grandeur. Stars twinkled above his head and he fancied that, if he wished, he could reach up and grab as many of the hazy things as he liked. The passage of time had bred the return of his old, innate sense of calm. He was pleased to say that it had returned in full without the use of opiates. He was not drugged or sedated.
The breeze was gentle as it caressed his cheeks and played with his hair. He laughed ruefully and looked back at his aunt. “I love the night, Aunt,” he said. “And I feel as though it adores me back… it’s the only time I ever feel like my, well, former self. You must forgive me if I find it easier to take constitutionals at a time when everything seems so ethereal.”
And it was strange, but the light did hurt him sometimes. All that he and Peter could make of it was precisely that his eyes were still healing. Therefore, it might be akin to exposing raw skin or a sunburn to the sun. Peter also offered the idea that some of the blindness was a trick of his mind. But regardless of which was truly the case, if he were to estimate how much of his sight had returned, he would say about eighty percent of it was back. With spectacles, which he did not have, he wondered if it might improve even more.
Aunt Jane did not share his reverence for the night. But in the past months that she had invaded, then moved into, his home, she never failed to walk by his side.
Needling him endlessly about his disappearance from society.
She meant well.
Society, according to his beloved aunt, was where a titled man belonged.
“When will you listen to me, William?” To her, he was always “William” and never “Will”. She thought the pet name was demeaning. She thought all pet names were. “This has gone on long enough. What could you possibly hope to gain from this self-banishment?”
The duke’s face curled up in a rakish grin that would have been heartbreakingly handsome but for his disfigurement. In the mild light of the moon, the smile almost looked like a wolf’s sneer.
“My design has nothing to do with gains, Aunt. As you well know, my coffers are sufficiently full enough.”
He easily heard the scoff of exasperation that followed this announcement. His aunt was nearing the point where she always gave up her fight in favor of completing their walk in stony silence. That, of course, was exactly where he wanted her.
“I am no stranger to your wealth, William. Your father was my own older brother. Do not brag. Will you not consider my nerves in this matter? I tear myself to pieces thinking you shall be all on your own after my demise.” She nearly tripped over a pink rose bush.
This is a new attack, Will thought. Her pronouncement surprised him. His aunt rarely referred to death on any occasion, even when someone had actually died. He couldn’t ascertain if she felt that speaking about death itself was vulgar, or if she believed she was invincible. She was turning sixty this year, and she was both spry and quick of mind.
Surely, she has enough vitality in her to scare off death for another century, at least, he thought wryly.
But no matter how irksome she could be to him, the thought of Jane departing the world brought a bitter taste to his mouth. He shook his head. It was true she had forcefully entered his life, but the kindly lady was his favorite relation despite her constant wheedling.
She was also his only relation.
Still, he couldn’t quite show that he took her seriously. It would not do.
“Is anything wrong with your health?” Will turned to her solicitously. “How do you fare these days? Do your knees bother you? Perhaps we should go back to the manor if you do not feel so well.”
Jane breathed out with such consternation that Will would not be surprised if it could be heard in the next county over.
“William Percy Ainsworth, my health is in excellent condition and you still have not satisfied my fears on many counts. We may continue this sort of walk that you are so blasted fond of.”
“Did you just utter an oath?”
“Perhaps I did, William.”
Fighting down a chuckle, Will kept his silence. If nothing else, his aunt’s conviction was enough assurance that she would try to take a paddle or her fist to his head should he mention a word about her health again. With the exception of her knees, which generally hurt only in the cold although she complained about them daily, his aunt took pride in her youthful appearance, as well as her vitality of spirit.
She detested any mention of illness in relation to herself.
“Very well, Aunt Jane,” he said, secretly very glad that Jane was markedly healthy.
“Do not ‘very well’ me! I know what you are up to, you rake, and I absolutely refuse to be outfoxed. Your self-imposed isolation is a curse that must be lifted. You must… ah! Lady Riverdale has sent us invitations for a ball on the grounds of her castle. I have it on good authority that every fashionable person of the ton shall make an appearance. It is certainly going to be one to talk about for months – not that I expect any less from Lady Riverdale.”
Will breathed a sigh of his own, listening inattentively to her prattle. “Huzzah for Lady Riverdale,” he muttered.
“William!” Jane nudged his arm rather forcefully. He grumbled. “This is exactly the sort of thing you need for your reintroduction into society. Nobody will gawk at you if there are other people to gawk at.”
“You are so very sensiti
ve,” said Will. He tried not to let his amusement creep into his tone.
“We must accept the invitation.”
“By all means, accept the invitation, as I can see that you are rapturous at the prospect,” said Will. “Just remind me to inform James, the butler, to go with you. You are such a handsome lady that it will be unwise to send you on your own, despite your…” Will smirked and thought that if his late uncle could see Jane now, he would be cackling with mirth. “Widowed status. I simply cannot trust that you wouldn’t be at the mercy of every lone male.”
It took Jane some time to sense his sarcasm.
She stuttered a couple of times before the power of speech returned to her.
“Of course, it is my wish that we go together!” she told him.
“And I have no such wish,” replied Will steadily. “You must go without me, and remember to tell Lady Riverdale that I appreciate the invitation. It’s common knowledge that I do not attend such events. I just don’t want to be thought of as rude.” He paused to smell one of the night-blooming flowers. His knowledge of botany was horrendous but, perhaps, he could ask the village apothecary, Croft, what the soft, yellow blooms were called. Of course, that would mean actually venturing into the village during business hours. “I appreciate her good manners.”
“What purpose would there be for me to go to a ball without you?” asked Jane gruffly. “I shall not go if you insist upon remaining behind. And what silly opinions you have of your friends! Even of your acquaintances! They would send you invitations to their parties if they had any reason to think that you were ever inclined to accept their attempts.”
“True,” said Will. He grinned at her. “Then I must say that bravery is the essential ingredient in sending a card ’round to the sad Duke of Ravenwood. I simply must send a note to Lady Riverdale, within which I shall express my admiration for her courageous act. She goes where many do not dare.”
Regency Scandals and Scoundrels Collection Page 120