He paused outside his room and thought about having another drink, but he pushed the temptation aside and opened the door. Oh, he planned on indulging in another drink or two, or possibly half a dozen. But he would face Winnefred sober.
He found her just as he had left her—standing in the middle of the room. Unable to bring himself to meet her gaze, he busied himself with locking the door behind him. When stalling failed to settle the gnawing in his gut, he caved and took the bottle to a small writing desk to pour a drink. Two would hardly render him drunk, he reasoned. It might render him something of a coward, but not a drunk.
“Why don’t you sit down, Winnefred?”
“I’ve done enough sitting for one day, thank you.”
He finished the liquid in a single swallow, blew out a long breath and turned to look at her. She didn’t appear to be angry or insulted as he felt she really ought. She looked heartbreakingly vulnerable . . . and very, very determined.
“You’ve been hiding a great well of patience,” he said softly. “You should have slapped me and been done with it.”
She gave him a tentative smile. “The temptation was there. But you looked to be adequately slapped already. I don’t approve of kicking a man when he’s on the ground.”
He set down his empty glass. “Even when he deserves it?”
“No one deserves it.”
“Oh, there are men who do,” he assured her. And the fact she wasn’t aware of that only threw the differences between them into sharper contrast. She shouldn’t be here, he thought. He had no business dragging her further into the ugliness of his past. “I apologize for my behavior. There is no excuse—”
“I will accept your apology,” she broke in, and to his considerable dismay, she crossed the room to stand before him, “if you will tell me what put you in such a state.”
He shook his head and suddenly wished the desk was not set against the wall. There was nowhere for him to retreat. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve already said that.”
“Your concern, and your patience, are appreciated, Winnefred, but—” Without thinking, he caught her arm when she would have turned away from him in obvious frustration. “I do not mean that to sound so much like a dismissal. I am grateful for your concern. I am, truly. But the dreams . . .”
He would have to tell her something, he realized. It was foolish and selfish to expect her to walk away now with nothing more than another apology and evasion. He let his arm fall and bunched his hand into a fist.
“You are right,” he heard himself say, “they are dreams of war.”
She nodded again. “Is it the same dream every time?”
“Yes. No.” He didn’t know how to explain. He’d never tried before. “It is the same battle, the same . . .” The same boys. The words hovered on the tip of his tongue. He bit them back. “It is the same people. The same day. The dreams change.”
“Is it the battle in which you were injured?”
He shook his head and leapt at the chance to change the topic. “That came months before, in a small skirmish off the coast of Spain. Took six men to pull me out from under a yardarm.”
She tilted her head at him. “You sound proud.”
“I am, of my men.” Here, at least, was one story he could tell. “They pulled me free in the midst of battle. Lord Emmeret lifted with one hand and used the other to pull out his pistol and fire a shot . . . I had fine men.”
“It doesn’t sound a small skirmish.”
“It was, in the grand scheme of war.”
“And the battle you dream of?” she asked softly. “What was it in the grand scheme?”
“Of the war? A moderate clash.” In his life, it was everything.
“And the people you spoke of, they were lost in the battle?”
“Yes.”
“And you cared for them.”
His next words came without thought. “I should have done.”
A line formed across her brow. “I don’t understand.”
And she shouldn’t, he thought. She should never be asked to understand. He shook his head. “Perhaps another time, Winnefred.”
He waited for her to argue, but she surprised him by stepping close and placing her hand against his cheek. “I am very sorry, Gideon.”
He reached up, intending to draw her hand away, and found himself holding on instead. She looked at him with such kindness, such understanding . . . such beauty.
It was tempting, unbearably tempting, to lose himself in those soft amber eyes. If he thought of nothing but that, nothing but the beauty of her, he could pull her closer. He could bend his head and cover her warm mouth with his own. For a time, he could forget everything else, everything but her.
It would have been simpler if she had argued.
Through a force of will he didn’t know he possessed, he drew her hand from his face, gave it a gentle squeeze, and let it go. “I’m sorry as well.”
What happened in that battle?
What did you see by the bridge today?
Who did you lose?
A flurry of questions raced through Winnefred’s mind, and she ruthlessly shoved each and every one of them away. She had come to Gideon’s room determined that he would tell her something of what troubled him, and she had accomplished that. He dreamt of war and of the people who fought beside him. That was enough for one night.
Time and work, she reminded himself.
Still, she hesitated a second before she turned around and headed for the door. She’d never shied from work, but waiting on time had always been a problematic endeavor for her.
“Winnefred?”
“Yes?” She turned back to find him watching her with a steady, unflinching gaze.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “You are important to me as well.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, smiled, and left.
She had taken a chance tonight, pushing her way into his room and into his privacy, but the way her heart sang at the sound of those seven simple words told her it had been worth the risk.
Chapter 23
The following morning, Winnefred stepped out on the front steps of the inn to find the carriage and outriders ready and waiting, and Gideon sitting on a small stone bench at the side of the yard. A large dog with a shaggy black coat, cropped tail, and floppy ears rolled about at his feet. Gideon bent over and indulged the animal with a hearty scratch of the belly.
“You can’t take him home,” she called out, descending the steps to meet him.
He straightened and looked at her, squinting into the sun. “Good morning, Winnefred.”
“Good morning.” She took a seat next to him and stroked the dog’s head when he stood up to nuzzle at her knee. “How do you fare today?”
He gave her a wry smile. “That is the question I intended to ask you.”
“Not quite as well as yesterday morning.” The euphoria had returned, but was markedly decreased in intensity. “But no doubt better than I shall this afternoon.”
“We’ll stop often. Whenever you like.”
“Hmm.”
A short, weighted silence hung between them until Gideon jerked his chin toward the dog and said, quite out of the blue, “Do you suppose his tail ever itches?”
Bemused, she looked at him, then the dog. “He’s been clipped. There isn’t much there to give him trouble.”
“That’s what I mean.” He gave the dog another scratch, then sat up. “I have a friend in London, Andrew Sykes. He lost his arm to amputation and says the pain of it no longer bothers him, but the itch will drive him mad.”
“I hadn’t realized amputation causes itching,” she commented, more than willing to encourage a silly conversation to make him feel better.
“It’s the part that’s gone that itches, only there’s nothing to scratch.”
“The part that’s gone? How is that possible?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“How awful.”
She frowned at the dog and leaned down to scratch at his tail. “I always feel a mite guilty knowing our bull calves are turned into steers. Now I feel dreadful. Although, given the physical composition of cattle, I suppose they’d not be able scratch even if we left—”
He broke into a roll of deep laughter that took quite a while to fade. “Damn if you don’t do wonders for me, Winnefred.”
No other compliment could have given her more pleasure. She grinned at him and decided she didn’t care one jot that she’d not actually meant the comment to be funny.
“Delighted to be of service.”
He chuckled again and reached for his cane. “As much as I hate to cut short such a pleasant interlude, we should be off.”
“I’ll fetch Lilly this time.” She brushed her hands down the lavender skirts of her gown and rose. Then she hesitated and turned back.
“Gideon?” She spoke before she could talk herself out of it. “What’s a comedy . . . lar . . . larm . . .”
“Ah.” He grimaced and looked away. “Comédie larmoyante. It’s an old kind of theatrical production. A maudlin comedy, for lack of better description.”
“Oh. Well.” She thought about that. “That’s not so very bad. In the future, however, you might wish to confine your insults to terms readily understood by the intended recipient.”
He must have heard the amusement in her voice because he looked at her again, and his lips twitched. “And why is that?”
“To avoid the risk of finding yourself being treated in kind.” She gave him a sweet smile. “My knowledge of livestock physiology is quite extensive. Would you care to be called a lippet?”
“What is a lippet?”
A word she’d made up on the spot, but she wasn’t about to it admit to that. She smiled instead, winked, and walked away.
The day of travel passed peacefully, as did the days following, but their journey to London was a long one, and the constant battle against illness left Winnefred a little more tired each day. By the morning of the last leg of their trip, she felt as if she she’d been traveling for weeks and sick for half her life.
It didn’t help that the more weary she became, the more difficulty she had staying awake on the carriage, and the more she fell asleep on the carriage, the sicker she became, and the sicker she became, the wearier she grew . . .
“Vile, endless cycle.” She mumbled the words with her eyes closed. Gideon had nudged her a few moments before, and after countless naps against his shoulder, she no longer troubled to check if she had drooled on him. She was simply too tired to care.
Just as she was too tired to open her eyes at present. She needed to, she really did. Every second she waited was another second for the illness to grow, but she couldn’t seem to concentrate long enough to get the job done. Her mind wandered in and out of sleep until, finally, it wandered in and stayed.
She dreamt she was standing in a ballroom filled with people, only she wasn’t dressed for a ball. She was wearing her trousers, which made sense, really—she always put them on when there was work to do. And pulling Claire away from the refreshment table took a considerable amount of work. The other guests didn’t seem to appreciate her sensible attire, or her goat. They were laughing, and yelling, and pointing at her.
“There’s no need to shout at me.”
“What?” Gideon’s voice sounded in her ear. “Winnefred?”
She woke with a start and might have toppled forward if Gideon hadn’t reached out and caught her. “Winnefred. What is it? What’s wrong?”
His words didn’t register. Nothing registered, in fact, except for the realization that she had fallen asleep in one world and woken up in another.
“Good heavens, where are we?”
“We’re in London. Have . . . I woke you ten minutes ago. Have you been sleeping sitting up?”
“Yes.” She was too stunned by the unfamiliar scene around her to bother trying to figure out if he was amused or appalled.
She was surrounded by buildings. They were pressed right up against each other, and separated from the street by only the thin ribbon of a sidewalk. There were no lawns, no trees, no green of any kind that she could see. Just house after house, shop after shop.
And all of it was filled with people. There were hordes of people going in and out of the buildings, calling to one another, laughing with one another.
“You need a full day’s rest,” she heard Gideon grumble.
“What? Oh, no I’m fine, really.” She wasn’t, really. Her stomach was a knot of nerves and nausea. “How long was I asleep?”
“Including the last ten minutes? A full three hours.”
“Good heavens.” It was a miracle she didn’t feel worse. “Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”
“It’s a steadier ride on cobblestone streets,” Gideon explained. “I wanted you to rest a bit longer. Are you certain you’re all right?”
“Yes, of course. I’m just overwhelmed, that’s all. I can’t believe we’re here. In London. Oh, Lilly must be in raptures. I wonder—” She broke off, sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. “What . . .” She sniffed again. “What is that?”
Gideon chuckled softly. “That, my dear, is the aroma of civilization.”
“Well, civilization could use a wash.”
“In more ways than one.” He produced a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “Breathe through this. The smell will improve once we reach Mayfair, I promise.”
It didn’t take long for Winnefred to discover this was true. Within a half hour, the streets began to widen. The shops disappeared and the houses grew larger and further apart. Finally, there were lawns and trees and gardens. And the smell improved considerably. There were less people about as well. Well-dressed men and women strolled along the sidewalks in groups of twos and threes.
It wouldn’t be such a hardship to spend a few weeks in a place such as this, she thought.
The carriage began to slow and for a moment she thought they were going to stop in front of a respectably sized house with cheerful green shutters on the front windows, but they turned instead and into yet another world.
The houses weren’t respectably sized and cheerful here, they were enormous and daunting. And the carriage stopped in front of the largest and most daunting of them all—a three-story brick building that looked to take up a third of the block.
“Your aunt lives here?” Her voice sounded weak even to her own ears.
Gideon climbed off the carriage, turned, and assisted her down. “It doesn’t meet with your approval?”
She honestly didn’t know how to answer that. Fortunately, Lilly’s emergence from the carriage meant she didn’t have to try.
Grinning from ear to ear, Lilly practically skipped over to take Winnefred’s hands in a viselike grip. “We are here. Can you believe it?”
“It does seem rather fantastical,” she admitted.
“It seems marvelous,” Lilly returned. She looped her arm through Winnefred’s and fell into step behind Gideon when he headed toward the house. “What do you think, Freddie? Will it do?”
“It is not what I had expected,” she hedged. It was all so much more. The house was bigger, the gardens more extensive—though they did not, she was relieved to note, appear to have any peacocks in residence—and the front door looked stout enough to keep out an army. When they were admitted into the house, she discovered that the front hall was large enough to fit the whole of Murdoch House, and quite possibly the gardener’s cottage.
She’d never been exposed to such wealth before. Even the country manor she had visited as a child with her father could not compare to the extravagance of Lady Gwen’s London home.
Even Lady Gwen herself wasn’t what Winnefred had expected. In an effort to squash her fears about staying with a stranger, Winnefred had begun to picture Gideon’s aunt as a short, plump woman with round, rosy cheeks and a friendly disposition. It seemed reasonable to assume she would have to be at least a little friendly to ha
ve agreed to sponsor two young women who were completely unknown to her.
Unfortunately, Winnefred’s assumptions turned out to be so far off they would have been laughable, had they been at all funny.
Lady Gwen descended the wide stairs into the front hall with the physical bearing of a fair-haired Amazon, and the dress and manner of royalty. She looked to stand somewhere near to six feet, and though Winnefred estimated a full three inches of that height was owed to the heavy mass of hair that had been pinned up in thick curls and fat ringlets, the woman was still undeniably tall. And severe . . . She looked to be very, very severe. Which is why Winnefred felt no desire to laugh.
Lady Gwen stopped before them, acknowledged their curtsies and her nephew’s greeting with a regal nod of her head, and then proceeded to walk a slow circle around her two new charges, eyeing them down the length of her rather prominent nose in the same manner Mr. McGregor eyed their yearly calf.
Winnefred glanced at Gideon, but he was too busy speaking with the butler to notice. Tired, irritated, and insulted, she clenched her jaw to keep from speaking out and stared straight ahead until Lady Gwen had completed her circle.
“Well, they certainly are not fresh misses, are they?” Lady Gwen gave a quick nod of her head in approval. “Thank heavens for that. Foolish business, wedding giggling infants before they have a chance to know their own minds.”
She stepped a little closer to Lilly. “The hair is too dark for fashion, but I daresay the rest is more than adequate. You are fortunate in your eyes, Miss Ilestone. That shade of blue is not often seen.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
Lady Gwen harrumphed by way of reply before turning sharp eyes on Winnefred.
“This one looks green.”
Gideon cast a look over his shoulder. “Winnefred? Didn’t I mention this is her first season?”
“Not green, you buffoon. Green.”
He lifted one dark brow. “Of course, green. What was I thinking?”
“I believe she means ill,” Winnefred informed him and immediately regretted having unclenched her jaw, because now that she had allowed herself to speak, she found she couldn’t stop. She turned a haughty face toward Lady Gwen. “I’ve ears, a mouth, and a reasonable grasp of the English language, my lady. I’ll thank you not to speak of me as if I’m deaf, mute, and stupid.”
Nearly a Lady (Haverston Family Trilogy #1) Page 20