“Impossible.” Garrett laughed. “We all live in sin every day. I want you both to be happy.”
“I do not see how it could work.” Her eyes filled with tears again. “I want my own way too much and he is too harsh. Once the fun of sex wears away—though I cannot imagine that happening, but it must—it would be like when he was in Mexicado, but this time there would be no chance of escape.”
Mr. Garrett stopped short and looked at her in amazement. “Has he told you about Mexicado?”
“Only a little.” She would say no more, not wanting to speak of a secret, if that’s what it was.
“With God all things are possible,” Garrett declared with a laugh of pure delight.
She’d heard that before somewhere. From Miss Horner.
“Dear God, woman, don’t you know that even a little of the story is more than he has ever told anyone but me?”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Garrett said with emphasis. “It is a nightmare he does his best to forget.”
“He has not told me everything about his time there.”
“And he may not ever, but please know that if he has spoken of it, you are not some casual flirtation.”
“Perhaps not casual.” She thought of Janina’s mother and her long affaire de coeur with their father. All Mr. Garrett wanted was to have her agree to marry David so the Pennistan family would be at peace again.
“You do not believe he could love you.” He shook his head. “Of course you don’t. You are a woman and must hear the words. You do not understand how a man says ‘I love you.’”
“And I suppose you are intimately familiar with it.”
“I’m a man, aren’t I?”
“Oh, yes,” Mia said. “You certainly are. Beneath your priestly title, I think you are very much a man.” She hoped she didn’t sound flirtatious.
“Exactly. So I speak with authority on the subject.” They were at the door that led to the duke’s apartments, and continued their circuit, now passing marble busts of long-dead Pennistans. “After you left the duke’s study this morning, David told Meryon that he would never accept a guinea from him as long as you were made to feel unwelcome.” He nodded. “That was quite a declaration from a man who came to beg for a small fortune to build his mill.”
“How could he even consider such a sacrifice? There are so many people depending on him. He must not give up.”
They were in front of a picture of four young men. Lynford, David, Jessup, and Gabriel, the four Pennistan brothers in their youth. It must have been before Olivia was born.
Lynford Pennistan looked no more than sixteen. Which would make David twelve. Even before his maturity, David looked too serious. This must have been just before he left for the navy. Had they had the portrait painted in case he never returned?
“Take a few minutes and think of all the ways David has said ‘I love you.’”
Garrett wandered off as Mia sank onto a bench and stared at the young David.
He had given up his mill for her? Well, he would change his mind about that. It was too important.
But he had come to her last night when Nina had asked, even though he had no doubt she was safe. With that insight, the memories came so fast that they were a jumble in her heart with the refrain “all things are possible.”
He had been there when she awakened from her illness and held her through her awful dreams. He had punched Franklin so she would not bruise her knuckles. He had carried extra handkerchiefs in case she should need one.
He took time to explain the workings of his cotton mill when he must have had more important things to do.
Then there was the time he had stuffed a branch of roses into the carriage so that she would have “something live” to talk to. Could his love be traced back that far?
And, Dio mio, most of all when they made love. The truth came out when they were in each other’s arms and it always would. In those moments she had never felt more desired, more treasured, more important than anything else.
A door down the hall flew open and a woman, Olivia Garrett, came running down the hall. She ran into her husband’s outstretched arms and kissed him on the cheek. “Michael, Michael, go find the duke. It’s a boy, a very healthy boy! And Elena made it look easy!”
Chapter Thirty-six
“A SIX-HOUR LABOR!” Mia knew very little about childbirth, as was appropriate for an unmarried woman, but even she knew that such a short labor was not common.
“Let’s find Lyn!” Olivia insisted. And when Mia would have bowed out of the group, Olivia grabbed her hand and pulled her along. “You are part of the family in all the ways that count! Lyn will be delighted to have you join him.”
Clearly Garrett did not share everything with his wife.
They found Meryon in the receiving room of his suite, looking both dazed and elated. According to this very proud father the boy was already showing his temper, crying—“bellowing” was the word the duke used—to be fed.
The duke was a different man. Almost jolly in his happiness. It gave Mia hope that Meryon would reconsider his refusal to help David.
After a few minutes of back-slapping and congratulations, Meryon announced, “Elena insists that we have a party this evening in her sitting room. That way everyone can meet the newest Pennistan and we can all toast Elena’s good health.”
That was the signal for all of them to depart. The castle was as alive now as it had been quiet before. Maids hurried down hallways, bobbing curtsies and smiling. The footmen stood alert and volunteered information even when no one asked. Mia debated trying to find David, but then decided it would be better for him if they were not seen together, because, in fact, nothing had really changed between them.
Janina had already laid out four different dresses for the evening. Mia chose the most modest. The color, a pale green with lavish lace ruffles, elevated it from ordinary. She’d thought it too young but now decided it perfect for the occasion at hand. Leaving her hair down, she used two combs fixed with incredibly lifelike artificial flowers, and hoped there would be no mistaking her as the only unmarried woman in the party.
Which was, of course, not the same as innocent, but for tonight she was sure that the duke’s opinion of her affair with David would not even occur to him.
Mia arrived later than the rest the family proper, slipping into the room as champagne was being poured.
The duchess’s bedchamber was filled with people, including the duke’s two other children. Rexton was old enough to take part in the conversation, but he was standing near the window with David. They were both watching something outside. Alicia was still young enough to hide behind her nurse’s skirt and suck on her knuckle.
Besides the children, it seemed that “family” included any number of upper servants, too, and Mia was sure the younger women were nurses for the various needs of the newest family member.
She accepted a glass of champagne and moved to a spot where she could observe but not intrude. No one called to her to come over and see the child, so she would wait for a quieter moment.
“God save the King!” the duke began. “To Elena!” Everyone cheered and drank again.
As the toasts continued, to the newborn and to the Pennistan name, Mia looked at David and realized he was still standing by the window, but now alone, looking as much an outsider as she was.
He must have felt her gaze because he looked her way. She raised her glass and smiled. “To life.” She murmured the words and he responded in kind. They both drank their own quiet toast, separated by a dozen people but as close as they had ever been.
“TO LIFE!” DAVID THOUGHT. Here he stood, thinking about the failure of his dearest plan, and Mia reminded him that life is a celebration.
I love that about her, he admitted to himself. I love her sense of adventure, her vanity, her interest in people, her choices, both silly and wise. I love the way she gives herself so completely to her music, to fishing, to the people she cares about, t
o me.
The crowd began to thin and he noticed that the servants had left and the children, including the new babe, had been taken to the nursery.
The duke sat at the foot of Elena’s chaise with that look that David always thought of as a fool’s smile, the besotted expression of one hopelessly in love.
Mia, Olivia, and Michael were smiling fondly at the tableau, and David realized that he was, too.
“I am never going through that again,” the duke declared as though he had done all the work.
“Oh, yes, you are,” Elena exclaimed. “The consequences do not bear thinking about.”
“What consequences? I think that three children are quite enough.”
“You dolt,” Olivia said.
David noticed that Olivia’s insult shocked Mia.
“Lyn,” Olivia went on, “you do know how these things happen. Are you saying you prefer celibacy?”
“I think it’s time to put the champagne away, my dear.” Elena took the glass from her husband’s hand and set it on the table. Lyn tickled his wife’s toes and then kissed her hand.
David wondered if he had ever before noticed how much more relaxed Lyn was when he was with his wife, as though he shed his ducal shell and the person David had known as a boy came out again.
He watched Olivia and Garrett. He could hear Olivia insisting that despite the long day she wanted to prepare something special for breakfast. Her husband took her hand, kissed it, and said no. They seemed to bicker about it for a moment, and then Olivia nodded grudging agreement.
Is that what the best marriages were? Two people who kept each other in balance, like playing on a seesaw, and seeing how long it could stay level before swooping one way or the other?
Not very long, but if the game was with the right person, he imagined the seesaw could be a lot of fun.
He considered his short but intense time with Mia in terms of the seesaw. Up and down, with very little balance except for their time in bed. And when the horses had taken the carriage on that wild ride. When she had played the guitar that night, aware that he was listening nearby. The time Dilber’s dogs had threatened them. When they had stood before the duke. Had it only been that morning?
He watched Mia and Elena with their heads together, exchanging a proper hug, and then Elena’s farewell. “I will see you tomorrow and you can tell me your plans.”
I’m going to be part of those plans, David decided. He had thought it once of Bendasbrook: He would be a fool to let this woman go.
But he had to come up with a way to let her think she was making the choice to marry him, instead of doing exactly what he wanted.
With no clear idea how he would make that happen and the briefest of farewells to Lyn and Elena, David left the couple who, at this point, only had eyes for each other.
Mia had already disappeared from sight. He had an idea where she would be, but the music room was dark. When he sent a footman to her suite, the man came back to report that the rooms were empty.
All right, so he did not know where she was. Damn times ten naked nymphs, the woman never made anything easy. As he rounded the corner to his room, he realized he had not yet checked the most likely spot.
“What took you so long?” Mia asked as he came through the door from his bedroom into his study. She stood near the door to the corridor, as though not fully committed to staying. How unusual.
David went to his desk but remained standing. What took him so long? David didn’t answer her. The question could be considered on so many different levels.
He asked a question of his own. “What are you doing here?”
“Was that not the most touching moment between Elena and the duke?” She walked to a shelf and touched a piece of pottery, a rock, and a statue of some ancient Mayan god he had never been able to identify.
“Which moment was that?”
“When the duke tickled Elena’s toes,” she answered as she turned to face him again. “It was such a sweet, intimate gesture. Not at all what I expected from the ogre he is when he thinks like a duke.”
He’d be happy to tickle Mia’s toes anytime she wanted. With great effort he managed not to say that aloud. “I was thinking something similar. That when they are together he is the boy I grew up with before the dukedom so weighed him down.” He straightened, pointlessly, a stack of papers on his desk. “Interesting that we both saw the same thing.” The seesaw was in balance for just a moment.
Mia walked to the center of the room and made a slow turn, taking in all the bits and pieces he had collected. “How can you work in here with all these strange statues watching you? They must be from Mexicado.”
“From Mexico.” The seesaw swung him high so that she was on the ground and in control. This was not a conversation he wanted to have.
“There is nothing from Mexicado?”
“Memories” was all he said.
“Oh, yes, and they cannot be given away or hidden, can they?”
The seesaw swung back, in balance again.
Chapter Thirty-seven
MIA UNDERSTOOD THE REASON for the one-word sentences. David did not want to talk about this. So she would.
“I think we all have some of those. When my father was dying I was desperate for medical care for him but all the medicos had gone to the front.” She drew a bracing breath. This was not at all easy. “Papa and I were alone in a dark, cold, empty house. The servants had gone to watch the fighting or to see to their own families. Janina had gone for help and had not come back. I was afraid she was hurt, or worse.”
Mia closed her eyes and waited until the tears that threatened subsided. When she continued, tears filled her eyes anyway. “I knew Papa was going to die, sooner than he had to, and all I could do was tell him how much I loved him and beg him to stay with me. Help came, finally, only he had been dead for hours. That is a memory I would gladly give away.”
He nodded, his face filled with sympathy.
You see, she thought, we are not that different. But she kept the thought to herself for fear he would laugh at her.
“This room is filled with memories, David. Would it not be easier to forget if you began to make new ones?” With me. Again, she kept that to herself.
“These,” he waved at the statues and jars, “are the good memories. As you say, the bad ones are with us in a place that is impossible to expunge.”
“Tell me one.” Let me share the burden. Mia stood very still, afraid that if she made any gesture of affection or understanding she would scare him away.
David looked away from her and stared at a wall plaque, a figure that looked like a rising sun full of power and glory, possibly a god from some ancient times. She saw him pat his pocket as if smoking would help, but either he did not have a cigarillo with him or he remembered how much she hated them.
He went to his desk and sat down, shuffling some papers until he uncovered a small shaped piece of stone which he held tight in his hand, still saying nothing with eyes or words.
Mia gave up. Hell, she thought, quite deliberately. This man does not even want my love. His words cut into the tirade forming in her head but not yet spoken.
“I had as hard a time obeying authority as a slave as I did as a midshipman. Whenever I broke a rule I was punished, but I was a very valuable commodity, a strong, healthy male. When punishing me physically did no good, the overseer took one of the other slaves and made them suffer in my place.”
“How awful. I’m so sorry. It would be like punishing one of the footmen every time I said no.”
“Worse than that, much worse.” He looked away from her, and she was glad she could not see the agony in his eyes. “He would always pick someone that I cared about.”
Loved, she thought.
“Not just men, but women, and the children of people I knew. It would be like someone killing Janina because of something you did.”
She felt vaguely ill at the thought and wondered how many times this had happened.
“Is that a bad enough memory to satisfy you?”
Mia was taken aback by his angry tone and could only nod.
“Telling you does not make me feel any better.”
“Then we will never speak of it again.”
He had no answer for that.
“But you see, David, I feel better for hearing it. It brings me closer to you in a way that has nothing to do with making love.”
“What are you doing here, Mia?”
She did not want to tell him. She did not want to be the first one to say “I love you.”
“I wanted to speak with you in private and I knew eventually you would come here. What took you so long?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Really!”
Before he could answer her, there was a tap on the door.
“Enter,” David called out, and the Duke of Meryon joined their small group. He seemed surprised though not completely shocked to see Mia there.
“We were just talking, Your Grace,” Mia said in a rush of words as she curtsied deeply to him.
“Yes, I can see that. I appreciate your discretion.”
As was almost always the case, Mia could not tell if the duke was being kind or still regarded her with contempt. “If you wish to talk to Lord David, I will leave.”
“Please stay, Mia.” David glanced at the duke. “I have no secrets from you.”
Mia’s heart skipped a beat. If he truly meant that … If …
She sat in the chair nearest the door and listened while the duke explained that he had given David’s situation further consideration.
Someone had changed his mind. Mr. Garrett? Elena? Mia did not care who, but pressed her lips together to keep from laughing out loud. Her mind spun off into an adventure worthy of Jane Austen until David’s terse voice called her back from the happy ending.
“Then I am exactly where I was before, Your Grace. If you are only willing to provide half the funding then I must spend months, if not years, finding other financial support. It is as good as you saying no.”
She wanted to shout at David to accept it with thanks and make the most of what the duke offered. The man could be so stubborn. There were ways and ways of finding the money he needed.
Mary Blayney - [Pennistan 04] Page 28