by Carrie Lomax
“Are you skilled at mathematics?” inquired Edward with a gleam of mischief.
Harper laughed. “Quite the opposite, in fact. My mathematical knowledge is hard-won. But accounting is more than simple sums lined up in neat ledger columns.”
“Do you keep accounts at the asylum, Miss Forsythe?” the earl asked, with a raised eyebrow.
“It is one of my duties, yes. Mrs. Patton and I work together on the books. Dr. Patton has no head for numbers. He is a philosopher of the mind.”
“I see,” Charles replied, satisfied he had reminded her of her place. Harper’s position in the household was frustratingly ambiguous, not much different from that of a governess. She took meals with the family and occupied a small guest room, but as an employee, she could also be commanded at a whim. “Miss Forsythe, what exactly do you do with my son all day?”
“I listen.”
“To what?”
“To whatever Edward is saying, or not saying, in any given moment. For example, having observed Lord Northcote over the past several days, I can tell you how hard he is working to suppress his discomfort in English dress right now. I also observe how happy he is to have spent a productive few hours with his father, whom he wishes to please.”
The earl’s face turned pale, then red. “Yes. Well. Keenly observed. Carry on.”
After tea, Charles asked Harper to join him for a tour of the house.
“I sent a report yesterday to Dr. Patton,” Charles began as they walked down the long main hall past paintings of pickle-faced Northcote ancestors. “I expressed to him that I am most pleased at the progress you have made with Edward in such a short time. I admit I was less than enthusiastic about a female doctor, but you have behaved commendably, particularly in light of difficult circumstances.”
“You mean Richard,” Harper clarified.
“Yes. I regret to say that he has always been this way where Edward is concerned. Jealous, callous and conniving.”
“I admit I have been curious about the hostility between them. I don’t sense that Edward harbors any particular ill will toward Richard. If anything, he seems puzzled by his brother’s dislike.”
“The hostility is and always has been from Richard’s side. I suppose it was my fault, in a way. We doted on Edward as a boy, and his temperament made him an easy child to love. Richard was born a mere nineteen months after Edward, and it was an anxious time for my wife and me. Richard was born several weeks early, and he was colicky in temperament. Clara and I were terrified of becoming overly attached to Richard lest we lose him. Sometimes I think he must have sensed that, as young as he was.” Charles fell silent as they passed into an unused wing of the building.
Charles pushed open a heavy door. A grand ballroom ornately decorated with neoclassical plaster columns and large walls of mirrors opened cavernously around them. Harper’s breath caught.
“This was where we used to hold parties and balls. Oh, how Clara loved a party. We would dance every dance, all night long.” Charles held up his arms and waltzed several steps, smiling at the memory. The sight made Harper’s heart swell like water-soaked wood. What was it like to feel such love? How could he bear to lose it?
“Sometimes I still talk to her,” the earl said as he caught her in his arms and waltzed her awkwardly around the dance floor.
“Oh?” Harper stumbled. The earl’s sudden familiarity made warning bells sound in her head. She was not afraid of being alone with men, but she was also aware of the potential for danger.
“Yes. I write to her, in a journal. She was so easy to talk to, and you remind me of my late wife at times, Miss Forsythe. I have told her of Edward’s return, and how I miss her. It is painful to see him called such names in the press—the Beast of Briarcliff, really these mobs of scribblers will say anything without the least relationship to fact—but we shall show them yet! In a few weeks, we shall make a triumphant return.”
“So soon? Is that wise?” She stopped mid-twirl. The earl released her hand and continued dancing his way across the ballroom with an imaginary partner, presumably his wife.
“He can’t hide here forever. Edward must learn to take his place in society if he is to inherit the earldom. No sensible bride would marry the Beast of Briarcliff, so we must show the world that he is altogether changed since his inglorious arrival. Time is of the essence. The longer these rumors go on the more difficult it will be. You are a terrible dancer, Miss Forsythe.”
“A hazard of extensive scientific study, my lord. There is little time for learning social graces.” At the opposite end of the ballroom the earl swung open the door with a grand gesture. Harper trotted after him, her slippers scuffling lightly over the wood floor.
“This is the winter salon,” he said a moment later. “It gets excellent light in the winter, although in summer it’s too hot for use.” A lovely, cheerful room decorated in bright yellow and muted greens waited patiently for its services to be needed again.
“It’s beautiful,” Harper said honestly, glad that he had not asked her opinion of taking Edward to London, and relieved that the earl had confided his plans. She must find a way to prepare Edward. Her heart squeezed at the thought. She didn’t want him to change—not fundamentally. Edward was magnificent.
“Yellow suits you,” the earl commented. “It doesn’t, most people, but you are all honey tones. Given your dismal profession it is strange that you are such a cheerful sort. You ought to consider wearing cheerful dresses.”
Harper shrugged, aggrieved that her appearance had come under such scrutiny twice in the same day. She wore what was modest and reasonably comfortable. Having never had cause to dress for beauty, she wouldn’t have known how to go about it if she tried.
“You puzzle me, Miss Forsythe. Why do you want to be a doctor? Don’t you want marriage, a family?”
Yes. With your son. The thought came faster than she could prevent it from happening. She trailed one hand over the windowsill. “It never occurred to me that they were mutually exclusive. Dr. Patton is married, after all, and one of the other doctors at the asylum courts a girl in Leeds. I have meaningful work that genuinely helps people. I do not feel as though anything is missing from my life.”
Or hadn’t, until she met Edward. Now it seemed rather obvious that a great hole sat at the center of her entire existence. There was no one else like him.
“You are a singular young woman, Miss Forsythe.” Charles beckoned her through a side door into a nearly empty room. This room was also quite warm and bright, owing to the enormous glass panels making up two walls. “This is the conservatory. In winter, we bring in the more delicate plants from the gardens so that we can enjoy them year-round. A few live here permanently. They grew too large to go outside anymore.” Several bushes towered out of their wooden pots, and a real lemon tree stood twelve feet high, brushing the ceiling.
“This must be lovely in winter.” Harper brushed the leaves with her fingertips.
“It is.”
Something in the earl’s voice made her glance up. The man’s brown eyes glistened. He did not show emotion easily. Harper was touched that she’d won his trust.
“Miss Forsythe, can you restore my son or not?”
Chapter 9
“There is hope. You said yourself that he is improving.” Harper stalled, not ready to answer and keenly aware of the earl’s reaction to disappointment. The earl had a precise image of what restoring Edward meant—and Harper knew that achieving it would destroy Edward’s essential resilience and honesty.
“Yes. He wore decent clothes to tea and spent the morning studying. He hasn’t climbed the walls in a full two days. Yet I sense some reservation in your manner toward my son’s progress.”
Harper licked her lips. She had no reservations at all about Edward. That was the problem.
“If you sense any hesitancy on my part, it stems from my desire to be absolutely scrupulous in dealing with you and your family.” She paused, feeling her way through the minefield
. “Your lordship, I urge you to rethink your ambitions to send Edward to London this fall. If you push him too hard too soon, he will go right back to the behavior we are all working so hard to deter. Perhaps in a year—”
“A year is too long. He must be introduced as soon as possible, to quell the rumors. It is the only way he will ever find a wife.”
“A wife?”
“Yes. Edward needs a society wife who can polish away the stain of Edward’s savagery. If he can acquire a proper wife, I will feel assured that someone is watching over my son and the ancestral home. As selfish as he is, Richard is most certainly capable of attracting a wife. The lineage must be preserved, what is left of it.”
“You refer to the line being broken when you inherited from your brother.”
“Yes.”
“It is my opinion that a year is the minimum amount of time necessary to enable Lord Edward to return to society successfully. London would be overwhelming to him. You run a great risk damaging your son further.” Harper blew out a breath she had not realized she was holding.
The earl’s eyebrows furrowed over his long, aristocratic nose. It was Edward’s nose, Harper realized. Edward’s bones were those of his father, though Richard had inherited his coloring. Two sons, each mirroring elements of his father. She understood that the earl wanted reassurances, but she could not give them.
“If Edward is to avoid confinement, he must marry a lady of good birth, as soon as I can find a suitable match. Clara was an enormous help to me when I ascended to the earldom. I need proof that Edward is capable of continuing the line. Otherwise, it would be better to see him safely locked away and let Richard manage the earldom after I pass,” the earl continued.
“But you are hale. What is the rush?”
The earl glanced away. “If I were to meet an untimely end, Richard would imprison him in an asylum. He would do it for all the wrong reasons, in the meanest way, out of pure spite. I would take every measure to protect Edward, including sending him to an asylum if I believe him safer there.”
“It would be a ghastly fate for Edward,” Harper declared with conviction. “He is one who needs a great deal of freedom.”
The earl looked at her askance.
“Aren’t you the proprietress of an asylum?” he demanded. “Are you saying my son would be unsafe under Dr. Patton’s care?”
“I—” Damn. He’d caught her there. Harper leaned against the windowsill, her fingers gripping the wooden edge. “Of course, he would be safe. But surely you can understand why the constant company of people not altogether in possession of their faculties wouldn’t be the best place for an intelligent, restless soul like Edward. He needs his freedom.”
“Yes. On this point, we are in agreement, Miss Forsythe.”
“Until he is better able to control his reactions in a socially acceptable manner it remains dangerous to take him into a public setting. He gets overwhelmed and will do anything in his considerable power to escape. Society will be no kinder toward him than the writers of those newspaper articles. I know you have read them.”
The earl did not meet her eyes as he fingered his watch fob. “Of course, I have read them. There is only one way to ensure a positive outcome. You must come with us.”
Harper gasped. “Go with you? To London?”
“Why not?”
Yes, why not indeed? Harper was here, after all, far from home and out of her element. London was just one more step away from her past and toward her future. Toward her past, as well, for her mother’s grandparents had been a baroness and a baron. Most of the month of August loomed ahead as a vast time in which to extricate herself from this debacle. She could safely agree to go to London now, pray her letter reached her sister and had the desired outcome. She would tell Dr. Patton that a stronger hand was needed and to send someone else. There was no need to immediately refuse.
“If you insist.” Just because she was agreeing didn’t mean she had to feign enthusiasm for the idea.
“You don’t approve.”
“No. I believe I made my opinion clear.”
“I am unaccustomed to my servants expressing disapproval of anything I do.”
Harper blinked at the earl’s caustic words. “I serve, yet I must remain true to my own counsel to be effective.”
The earl looked chastened. “You make me doubt myself, Miss Forsythe. I am of half a mind to dismiss you and find a more biddable replacement.”
Hot anger and fear coursed through Harper. She breathed once through her nose and blinked once slowly to calm herself before speaking rashly. “Perhaps I shall save you the trouble. I would rather resign from a client who won’t allow me to do my work properly than compromise what I know is right for the patient. I have offered my advice freely. You might consider heeding it, your lordship.”
“I can’t. We are at a disagreement. You will prepare Edward to debut in London in September. I leave it to you to break the news to him.”
“I will not be the bearer of your plans.” The words were sour in her mouth. In addition to being utterly misplaced, jealousy was a wretched feeling.
“Fine. I will tell him. Later.”
The earl turned on his heel and stalked stiffly away, leaving her to find her own way back to the main house. Harper walked slowly down the grand halls of the mansion, considering her options. All were bad. She could not abandon Edward to his father’s demands and his brother’s interference, yet every moment she stayed near him, the more attached she became. Edward, for all his faults, had taken her profession seriously from the start. He had saved her life. But what drew her most of all was that the way he looked at her made Harper feel like the only woman in the world.
He wanted to kiss her again. She must say no, but she didn’t want to.
Along the way, she spotted Sara dusting a carved banister and asked if she’d seen Lord Northcote.
“Yes, miss. I believe he was reading in the library.”
“Thank you.”
Well. His lordship certainly seemed serious about acquiring the knowledge he lacked due to his neglected education. The library was dim and cool, the bright sun of a summer sun filtered through long gauzy curtains. Her quarry was sprawled across the sofa, one leg hooked up over the back, his head propped up on a pile of silk-tasseled pillows like a heathen god awaiting a supplicant.
Harper’s heart broke a little. Who could possibly want to change him? To her eyes, the man was perfect just as he was. Despite his imperfect dress—today he had condescended to don a waistcoat over his rumpled shirt—Edward Northcote looked every inch an earl.
He belonged at Briarcliff.
She didn’t.
Harper steeled herself and stepped silently over the soft carpet. Stiffly she lowered herself into an upright-looking chair.
“Wouldn’t the sofa be more comfortable?” asked Edward with hardly a glance in her direction.
“Yes, it would. Which is why I shall remain where I am. What are you reading?”
“A Treatise on Land Irrigation,” he read from the leather binding.
“Enthralling.”
Harper waited for him to set aside the book. He didn’t, so she idly picked up one of the two large books on the low table between them. They were accounts ledgers. Harper recognized them immediately. She had often helped Mrs. Patton reconcile the account books at the asylum. All too often they had shown a marginal profit at best, and sometimes a loss.
“Never mind that,” the good woman had said briskly when their efforts had revealed a monetary shortfall. “We do this work to serve our fellow man, not to line our pockets with gold.” They had cut and shifted and pinched and always, ultimately, had survived. When she glanced up, Edward seemed to have forgotten his interest in numbers and land irrigation. His attention was wholly focused on her.
Harper had to swallow past a sudden rush of nerves. He was so large, so leonine. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in his arms and feel safe. Protected. Yet she was the one who had to
protect him.
He lay there, watching her. No one else was in the room, and Harper wondered what he would do if she crossed the short distance between them and sprawled herself over his body. She shook away the thought with a shiver, as if a spider had climbed her neck. Hers was an impossible dream.
“Your father was dismissive of you this morning.”
Edward swung his legs to the floor and sat up. “When isn’t my father dismissive? Of me, of you, of Richard.”
“That is the privilege of being a lord. Your brother has mastered it, as you will.” Harper clapped a hand over her mouth. “Forgive me. I spoke too freely. I should not have said that.”
“Shouldn’t have said that, why?” Edward asked.
“It is not my place to judge the peerage,” she declared with false humility. Edward made a dismissive sound.
“You’re twice as intelligent as and a hundred times more compassionate than my brother. Judge away.”
Harper chuckled. “I’ll keep my opinions to myself in the future.”
Lord Northcote placed his book gently on a small side table and then rested his elbows on his knees.
“You have said enough to make your feelings toward Richard plain.”
“That was not well done of me.”
“To the contrary, you’re the only person who ever tells him he is anything less than an ideal gentleman.”
“Again, it is not my place to take sides against your family members. I have never worked this closely with a family before, and I admit that I am learning as I go. But I can’t help thinking that you belong here. You would manage the estate with integrity and an eye to the future, where Richard would only milk it for every farthing he can squeeze out of it.” Harper shifted her attention to the bookshelves. “This is not the conversation I came here to have with you. Your father has plans for you. You are returning to London this fall.”
She hadn’t wanted to deliver this message, but Harper had decided that preparing Edward for the news by breaking it gently would best serve him. Shadows clouded the wild lord’s eyes.