His eyes and his face lit up with a burning intensity. “Is that so?”
“Is what so?” Mary raised her brow, more than slightly confused by his reaction.
He shook his head and Mary saw the veil of light disappear from his face as his eyes returned to a placid peacefulness. “My admirableness. Is that true?”
“No. Of course not.” Mary’s voice was slightly biting. “I thought it a fun, wicked game to tease you by lying.”
He obviously felt the nip of her voice. “Perhaps not so admirable after all. Apparently I can even turn a compliment against the person who gives it to me…”
Mary sighed heavily. “I’m afraid this says more for my admirableness than for yours. I have a tendency to be very strong willed and brash and—and—”
“And what of it?” he interrupted.
“Those are not very admirable traits in this world. Not for a woman anyway.” Mary breathed out briskly and shrugged. “Or so they say, anyway.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“You know.” Mary pointed around the room. “Them.”
“Them?” He laughed and moved his head from side to side. “Which ones? Perhaps you mean that man who insists on talking about nothing other than breeding practices of livestock?”
“Lord Sheffield? You poor man…”
“He was the first man I met.”
“You, poor, poor man…” Mary mused.
He nodded with a laugh and then continued on. “Or maybe you’re referring to that woman who laughs at everything every man around her says while she says nothing at all and pulls down the neckline of her dress. Or perhaps is it—”
“You’ve been very observant tonight.”
“I have,” he said quite matter-of-factly. “And I’m not so sure that I care what any of ‘them’ think.”
Mary felt her heart start to race again. “And why is that?”
“Because I’m not sure I can respect the opinion of anyone who can’t see the importance of traits such as yours.”
Butterfly wings tickled her insides. “Oh. My.”
“And I’m not sure that you care what they think either.”
“No.” She shook her head while continuing to look down. Her voice was soft and breathy. “No. I most certainly do not.”
“So then why discount yourself? That’s the very opposite of not caring…”
“There are not many who think as I do. A few close friends. Some family…” She let her voice trail off as a memory of her father flashed through her mind.
“Me.” He added to her list.
She couldn’t stop herself from smiling again. Her skin was very hot and she was sure that it was now a very bright shade of red. “That is very good to know,” she said as she tried to hide her face.
“If someone takes offense to your honest self then they do not deserve your time…”
“You still have not told me your name,” she blurted in a desperate attempt to change the subject.
This situation was becoming precarious and prickly. She liked the way she was feeling more and more but she was also more and more confused. She would not allow herself to let her guard down this easily, not before she had a better chance to evaluate everything that was going on inside her and around her.
“And my greenness shows again. Forgive me, Lady Mary.” He tipped his head towards her. “I’m Bradley Barnes, Viscount Hampton.”
“Oh, yes. I knew that.” She threw her hands to her mouth but the words still slipped out. Lord Hampton did not appear to mind her words. In fact he appeared rather amused by them.
“Then why did you ask?” he laughed.
“Why didn’t you just tell me in the beginning?”
“Fair enough,” he laughed again.
She smirked and nodded towards him. “But now I must ask you something.”
“Of course. Anything.”
“What was that?”
“What was what?” He cocked his head to the side.
“That look on your face and in your eyes. When I told you my name I saw something light up in them. I saw something change and become intense.”
“Oh,” he answered rapidly, obviously caught off guard that she had seen that emotion in him. “It’s just that—well—I’m sure that I have heard your name before. And I was trying to place it…”
Her stomach jumped. “What have you—”
“No.” He cut her off with a motion of his hand. “I’m sure I can’t remember what I heard or even if I heard anything anyway. Mary is a very common name…” He paused and twisted his lips as if he was trying to decide to say the words on his mind. After a moment of silence he nodded. “Besides, you said I am more admirable than most noble men and I should like to keep it that way. As such we can learn more about each other in our own words over a dance.”
Mary’s face lit up. “I thought you would never ask.”
He held out his arm to her. “Shall we, my girl?”
She felt her stomach jump again. Was that a very common phrase?
But she had no time to contemplate that for the dance was about to start and she was feeling very excited. So, like her earlier memory, she let this feeling float away too.
Chapter 5
Spring 1809
Mary remembered every detail about the day she lost her father. She took tea with him that afternoon—mint tea with shortbread and sweet little candied fruits—and they discussed her lessons and her plans for the day. Then, when they tired of such formalities they moved on to politics and philosophy and then wasted away the afternoon brainstorming the legal system of their own ideal and thoroughly utopian society.
When she closed her eyes really tight and thought really hard she could recall every moment with perfect clarity. The way his brow furrowed as she proposed new ideas and began to work her argument, and then the light and smile in his eyes when she finally connected her logic into a tight bow and won him over. The small, slow sips he made of his tea, as if he was holding off finishing it so that he could spend more time with her. And then at the end of the conversation the look of discomfort that came across his face.
She remembered the way he tried to hide it from her so she could finish her train of thought and the way he rubbed his chest as he finally excused himself, kissed her head, and said, “I love you,” and “You make me proud.”
Despite his efforts to hide them from her, Mary’s father always carried his emotions on the surface, and so she knew when she left him that he wasn’t feeling well. What she did not know, and neither did he, was that this was the last time they would ever see each other in this world.
He passed later that day. His heart simply gave out, the doctor told them.
How the heart of a man filled with such love could just give out on him was something that Mary would never understand.
Her mother was another thing that Mary would never understand.
Because when she closed her eyes and remembered her father, she also remembered her mother. And what she remembered the most about her mother was the way she had looked at her father. The first time Mary noticed this look it almost scared her. There was a depth and intensity in her mother’s eyes that Mary didn’t quite understand at first. But once she took a moment to collect her thoughts she realized that this look, this intensity and strength, was nothing to be scared of at all. It was love. Her mother was looking at her father as a lover looks at their other half. It was the first time that Mary understood just how powerful and all-consuming love could be.
And her father had looked at her mother in the very same way.
There was something about the way the room felt when the two of them were together. Their energy and feelings for each other were so powerful that they could not contain them and they overflowed out to touch everything around them. When one hurt, so did the other. When one was happy, their joy was multiplied. And when her father died the tears her mother shed at his funeral had real and directly from her soul.
Theirs had
been a love match.
They had truly been in love.
And that was what Mary just could not understand—when someone loved another as deeply and intensely as she knew her mother had loved her father—how could one move on? How could one even begin to imagine that life after such a love was even possible? How could one love again? How could one marry again?
When her mother met the Marquess of Brandon, Mary thought nothing of it. Why should she not have friends after all, even male friends if she so desired? But the passage of time soon revealed something new and alive between them. At first Mary was unsure exactly what it was that she saw, or perhaps it was that she had refused to let herself see it. But there soon came a point when she could not pretend anymore.
Mary remembered the day when her mother invited her to take tea with herself and Lord Brandon. They had never asked her to accompany them before and so she knew that there must be something very important about this day. When Mary thought back on it now she was sure that she’d known what was about to happen and why they had called on her, but at the time she forced herself into denial.
If only she did not acknowledge it, she’d thought, then perhaps it would not be true.
And though she recalled the day it was shrouded in a haze in her mind.
Mary remembered sitting down stiffly, her muscles tense and aching. She sipped her tea slowly as her mother made nervous small talk that had long since faded from memory. There was only one part of this memory that was clear and Mary frequently found herself playing it over and over again in her mind.
It began with her mother clearing her throat to get Mary’s attention. Mary looked up, silent, and connected eyes with her mother. Her first thought was that her mother was sitting unusually close to Lord Brandon…
“I—” her mother began before looking to Lord Brandon and smiling, “we have something we would like to tell you.”
“Yes?” Mary’s voice was monotone.
“We have decided to marry.” Her mother reached for Lord Brandon’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. They both smiled at each other.
“But—” Mary felt her illusion begin to disappear. She was coming to and staring to see what she had been hiding from herself. She was very confused. She wanted to ask her mother so many questions. But that never happened. Mary never asked her mother anything, because it was at that moment that Mary saw it and all of the questions were answered for her.
That look. That look in her mother’s eyes. Her mother was giving Lord Brandon the exact same look that she had given Mary’s father and Lord Brandon was looking at her the exact same way.
Mary felt like it was a slap in her father’s face and in his love.
“How could you!” she rasped out before running from the room.
That was the last thing and the only thing that she remembered from that afternoon and she had not spoken about it with her mother since.
Her mother tried to approach her many times in the days after to discuss what had occurred but Mary refused to speak with her. She knew all she needed to know. Her mother had traded her father’s love for that of another man. No, Mary decided, she had forgotten about his love, just thrown it out with the bath water as if it was nothing more than trash.
What did that say of her mother?
And what did that say of love?
When love could be tossed aside so easily, even a love as powerful as the one her parents had shared, how could she possibly believe in it?
***
To this day the smell of mint brought back memories of Mary’s father and their last moments together, which was exactly why it was mint tea that she chose to drink the morning of her mother’s wedding.
Just because her mother had forgotten about him did not mean that she would.
Mary frowned as she sipped.
“What are you brooding about over there, my girl?” Greg was eyeing her curiously from across the table. She knew that he was perfectly aware what she was brooding over which was why he’d come to see her this morning in the first place.
“Greg,” she began as she set her cup down and leaned her head against her hand, “what do you think love is?”
“Love? Well, I have no idea. I’ve never been in love. So how would I know what it is?”
“That’s not what I asked,” she responded with a shake of the head. “I didn’t ask if you’d been in love or if you know what love is. I asked you what you think love is.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Why yes,” she answered quite matter-of-factly. “A major difference.”
“I’m sorry my dear but I’m still not sure what you’re saying.”
She exhaled deeply and sharply. “I asked you what you think, not what you have felt. The first has to do with your brain; the latter has to do with the heart.”
“And wouldn’t the latter be a better judge of what love is?” He leaned back in his chair and contemplated her.
“Absolutely not.” She made this statement definitively.
“And why not? I’m sorry my girl, but again, I’m not following you.”
“Because when you let your heart get involved it can confuse things. Your heart can blind you from seeing what is right and what is real.”
“And isn’t that the whole point of love?”
“Well,” Mary also leaned back in her chair as she shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know at all which is why I asked you what you thought. So,” she prompted again, “what do you think love is?”
Greg leaned forward and rested his crossed arms at the edge of the table. “I guess—that is if I have to make a decision—”
“You do.” Mary smiled and Greg rolled his eyes.
“If I have to say I guess I’d say it’s when you feel an attachment to another person. Not just any attachment though. A deep one. One that joins two people at a profound emotional level.”
“But that could apply to so many different types of relationships… that can’t be right…”
“Alright then,” Greg raised his eyebrows. “Since you are so critical of what I think then you must have some idea of your own. What do you think love is?”
Mary twisted her mouth and said softly, “I used to think that it was the way my mother looked at my father, and the way he looked at her. I used to think that they were in love…”
Greg tilted his head and gave her a sympathetic look. “Can’t that still be the truth?”
Mary felt her eyes grow wide. “How can you possibly be serious? Have you forgotten what today is?”
“Not at all. Your mother is getting married today,” he answered definitively and then he added, “for love. She is getting married for love.”
“Exactly,” Mary spat out through a tightening throat. “If she ever truly loved my father she couldn’t possibly remarry… especially not for love…”
“And why ever not?” Greg asked.
“Because if she’s in love with Lord Brandon that can only mean that she wasn’t truly in love with my father. And that would also mean that everything I’ve based my understanding of love around is a lie.”
“Wait a second,” Greg stopped her before she could go any further. “You mean to tell me that you believe it’s only possible to love one person ever in your entire life.”
“Of course I do.” She frowned. “Don’t you?”
“No! Absolutely not!” He was almost laughing. “And wherever did you get that silly idea?”
She stood up and threw her napkin on the table. “Silly? I’m silly? I think you’re the one who’s silly. Everyone knows that love only happens once in a lifetime.”
“Oh, everyone knows this do they? It appears I’ve missed some critical lesson during my life. Please, I ask again, enlighten me. Who says that love only happens once?”
“Well, you know—Everyone!” Mary threw her hands around in front of her when she saw her answers hadn’t satisfied him. “Poets, authors. I suppose that’s who says so.”
“Oh.
Poets and authors is it? The writers of fiction? That’s who says so?”
“Don’t make fun of me, Greg. You didn’t give me enough time to come up with a proper example. I know poets and authors write fiction… but all fiction contains a grain of truth, does it not? Aren’t you the one who told me that?”
“I was,” he conceded. “But just because some of it’s true does not mean that it all is. You still have to find that grain amongst everything else.”
He was making sense. She knew that her emotions were getting the better of her and she was grasping at straws. It was obvious that Greg realized this as well.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think…” Greg began.
“And what’s that?”
“That the reason you couldn’t come up with a proper example is because there isn’t one. Because the idea that love only happens once in a lifetime is just as much a fiction as the works of poets and authors.”
“But—”
“Wait, let me finish.” He came to her and laid his hands on her shoulder to help her back to her chair. The feel of his fingertips gave her a sense of calm. “Let’s go back to what I said about love being a connection. I’ve been thinking about it just now and I think I might actually be on to something.”
Mary chuckled. “You’ve had time to think now?”
“Always.” He flashed her a smile. “So, you asked me what I think love is and I would have to say that love is connection. I’d say that love is when a person finds something inside of another that they don’t have inside of themself. Something that they need that only that other person can give them.”
Mary tilted her head, still not exactly sure what he meant. “Things such as… what?”
“Well,” Greg ran both hands through his hair and shrugged. “I suppose it might be any variety of things. A shared understanding. A common goal. A like mind.”
“But… those types of connections can happen every day. They do happen every day. With many people…” She titled her head and contemplated. “Say, I give you that: that love is simply about connections. With this premise accepted then I can understand how love can happen more than once in a lifetime. But then that presents another problem entirely! If love is so common then how can it be special? How can love have any meaning at all?” She felt her temper rising again.
Wicked Game 02 - Something Wicked Page 8