All You Could Ask For

by Angeline Fortin

  Since the box contained many other scrolls, they had also made love to Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3. Having never had a passionate encounter set to the sound of music, he would forever remember how they had followed the music. The initial passion of the first movement had whetted their appetites before becoming playfully passionate for the second. The languid power of the third before the fourth sent them to the finale.

  It was a memory that he would relive again and again. However, with his vivid recall of the night, he would also remember the desperation with which she had clung to him. It was a desperation he had shared. He hadn’t wanted to let her go and had held her tightly in his arms until the last moment. It had torn him apart to leave her, and though he knew she had put on a brave façade to send him off, he had seen the tears in her eyes.

  To his surprise, he’d felt the sting of tears in his own eyes as she had waved him off. It had been just a pair of weeks since they had met once more. Though he had confessed that he thought there was much between them that was worth exploring, Richard couldn’t quite comprehend how Abby had come to mean so much to him in such a short amount of time.

  But he had needed to leave her, to look to an immediate future where he only foresaw more opportunity where the ship’s name might come to bear. For devastation was what he felt when he thought about what he would discover in the days and weeks to come. Richard was glad that he had Francis with him as they ventured to the unknown, that he wouldn’t face this challenge—where he felt more pessimism than optimism—alone. His fears were shared ones but together they would also share a determination to do everything within their power to find his lost comrades.

  They were escorted below decks by a young seaman to the cramped quarters that they would share on this journey. The small room had been given up to them by a pair of junior officers who would be bunking with the rest of the crew for the short trip. Together, he and his brother, both large men, crowded the cabin that was barely large enough for the meager furnishings that already occupied it. They were not even able to both stand at the same time without bumping shoulders. It was a far cry from the sort of accommodations the Earl of Glenrothes was used to, though Richard had often been transported in such sparse fashion over the past several years.

  “You mind if I take the bottom bunk?” Francis asked with a wry smile after a long moment of silence during which his expression had changed from surprise to dismay.

  “Don’t think you can handle the heights, old man?”

  “Not at all, it’s simply that I’ve never slept on such a narrow slab before,” his brother responded with a half-hearted grin. “I’d simply like the fall, when it comes, to be a short one.”

  Richard couldn’t help but grin. “You get used to it.”

  Francis just snorted. “I rather doubt that.”

  They stowed their bags in the small wardrobe provided before Francis dropped down on the lower bunk and Richard took a seat at the only chair the room provided. A horn blasted above them, signaling the beginning of their journey, and moments later the humming vibration of the steam engines changed, roaring to life, and the ironclad battleship convulsed into motion.

  They were underway.

  “Did you notice that there wasn’t even a mast above?” Francis said. “No back up sails if the engine fails.”

  Realizing that his brother was making small talk, Richard said only. “You need to get out of Glen Cairn more often, old man. This ship is more than a dozen years in service.”

  “The ships of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy are not exactly my forte,” he responded, adding, “The Devastation.”

  Richard nodded, knowing that Francis saw much more than he ever let on. “Let us hope that it’s not an omen of things to come.”

  With a grimace, Francis reached into his coat and withdrew a small flask. “Let’s drink to that.” Unscrewing the cap, he took a short swig before handing it to Richard.

  Richard took a drink, feeling the burn of the fine Scotch as it made its way down his throat before hitting his stomach. The nerves that had been racking his gut all morning settled, and with some satisfaction, he took another swallow before handing it back.

  They fell into silence as they passed the flask back and forth. The sound of the engines rumbled beneath them. It was an intrusive yet somehow comforting pulsation.

  Releasing a huff of rueful laughter, Richard finally said, shaking his head, “Not exactly how I imagined spending my honeymoon.”

  “Did you ever imagine having a honeymoon at all?” Francis asked with a sardonic chuckle.

  Richard couldn’t help but join him. The entire situation was quite beyond anything he’d ever envisioned for his future. His brother’s marriage had left a sour taste in his mouth for the whole institution, but on the other hand, unlike some of his younger siblings, he remembered his parent’s marriage. He remembered what it could be if two people wanted it badly enough.

  He did, and he wanted that with Abby.

  They had made a good start—a hasty beginning, to be sure, but a good one—and he could only hope the future would be as kind to him. Only time would tell for certain.

  “You know,” Richard said after a long while of brotherly camaraderie, “there was a moment there, a moment when all the problems, worries, fears…everything faded away and I was left with nothing more than a moment of contentment, joy even. Do you know what I mean?”

  A look crossed his brother’s face then, softening it as if he were recalling some distant but pleasant memory. Richard couldn’t recall ever seeing look of such peace on Francis’s face. “Aye, I do. I do understand what you mean.”

  “It just happened too fast, though,” Richard added. “I feel like it can’t be real. Such a feeling of…an attachment of that sort short should take time. Don’t you think?”

  To Richard’s surprise, Francis shook his head. “It can happen in a day, I think. In a single moment.” Feeling Richard’s curious gaze on him, Francis chuckled softly. “There was a lass I met once. Years ago, in fact. Och, but she was a bonny thing. You have no idea. I literally ran into her on the street…well, she ran into me at any rate. I gave her my hand to help her up and just knew. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”

  “What happened?” Richard asked after a long pause. The joy and peace that had flooded his brother’s expression had faded into sorrow.

  Francis chuckled humorlessly. “What do you think happened? I was married. I had no choice but to let her go.”

  Richard felt his brother’s pain then, felt his own heart tense in a tight ache. He’d never known any of this, never heard Francis talk of woman that way. He’d thought that Vanessa had stripped Francis of any tender sentiment. “Perhaps once the divorce is finalized…”

  “I wouldn’t even begin to know where to find her,” Francis said dully. “You’ve a chance that I never had. I’ve seen how Abby looks at you and how you look at her. You have a chance to…” Francis broke off, leaving Richard to wonder what he had been about to say. “You’ve simply a chance. Don’t wait too long to embrace it or you might miss it.”

  “I’m doing what I have to do,” Richard responded defensively. Surely, Francis agreed that saving Vin, Jace and the others must come first? “Besides, Abby said she’d wait if she had to.”

  “What choice did she have?” Francis argued, then shrugged. “You never know what life will bring, Richard. I’m just saying, you shouldn’t forget that.”

  “We’ll have all the time in the world once this is done,” Richard said confidently.

  Francis just snorted again, swigging down the remainder of the Scotch. “You’re a fool to think so, brother. A bloody fool.”

  Chapter 35

  Never be bullied into silence.

  Never allow yourself to be made a victim.

  Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.

  ~ Robert Frost

  114 Mount Street, London

  The following week

&
nbsp; “Daughter.”

  Abby looked up from her book to find her father standing at the drawing room door. For a moment, she did nothing but stare at him in flabbergasted silence. She couldn’t remember a single occasion in her lifetime when her father had come personally to seek her out.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “What is it, Angus?” Oona asked at the same time as if she simply couldn’t wait to have her husband respond to Abby.

  Haddington silenced his wife with a stern glance before turning that glower back to Abby. “Aylesbury is below.” With a sharp slice of his hand, he silenced his wife’s squeal of delight. “He has asked to pay his addresses to you. You will accept him.”

  Abby merely regarded him with mild surprise. “You shouldn’t have encouraged him to do so, Father. Not when you already know what the result will be.”

  “I asked the favor.”

  “Despite all evidence to the contrary,” she said pleasantly. “Besides, our bargain was for Cambridge’s unconditional support, if you recall.”

  “Whatever are you two arguing about?” Oona wanted to know. “Aylesbury is below waiting to ask for your hand. It is everything I’ve been working for all this time. Both Sara and Catharine are engaged. All that is left is you, Abygail.”

  “I can’t imagine why he is even here,” Abby said. “I have made an effort this past week to hint to him that I would not be receptive to this sort of question.”

  “Which I assured him was merely nerves on your part,” Oona told her. “Yes, I overheard you telling him how much you respected his friendship. I went straightaway to let him know otherwise. You must marry him.”

  I’m already married! Abby wanted to scream at them. She wanted to stand at the top of the highest mountain and declare it to the world, but she couldn’t…or rather wouldn’t. Even if it meant sparing herself a moment such as this. She’d had been on the receiving end of enough gossip to know she never wanted to be subjected to it again. When Richard returned, they would make the announcement. She would be free of this life and able to embrace a new one with him. Until then, she would say nothing of it.

  Still, she couldn’t stand for her father and Oona to think they had any say in her life any longer. “You had no right, Oona,” Abby exclaimed. “You do not rule my life. Nor do you, Father. Who and when I marry will be my decision.”

  “You live under my roof, lass! You will accept him,” her father bellowed, as if asserting his status would change anything.

  He was too late to even try, even if Abby were free to wed. She had changed, a complete metamorphosis from the fragile, weak-willed ninny she’d been just weeks before. She had known for months, even years perhaps, that if any of her friends would have seen her that way, that they would have demanded that she develop some spine. It might have taken all three of them months to accomplish what it had taken Richard only days. Looking back, Abby nearly rolled her eyes in self-disgust at how far she had sunk, simply because it had been the easy thing to do.

  Now, she’d become the person she was meant to be. She wouldn’t take the easy path any longer. Giving her father a stiff nod, Abby said, “I will remedy that for you this very afternoon, Father. I’ve been bullied by this family long enough. I shan’t stand for it any longer.”

  “Where do you think to go, lass?” Haddington laughed derisively.

  “Perhaps I shall visit my friends as I haven’t in an age,” Abby told him. “Eve lives just an hour away by rail, yet I’ve never visited her new home. Or I could go to Moira. To New York or Europe. Perhaps I shall just go to the moon, Father. I have a fair fortune of my own after all.” She strode to the door in long strides. Her fists clenched tightly.

  “If you leave this house…”

  “I shall leave this house, Father.” She spun around in response to his trailing threat. “And like Jack, I doubt I shall ever return.”

  “Angus, do something,” Oona cried as Abby left the room.

  “I plan to,” Haddington barked. “Now sit down. There’s something I need to say to you as well.”

  * * *

  Abby paused with her trembling hand on the doorknob to her father’s study. Her blood was thrumming through her veins with the euphoria of announcing her independence from her family. It was the most daring thing she’d ever done, and perhaps the cruelest, but she couldn’t find it in herself to feel sorry for it. Her family had served her many wrongs over the years.

  It was time for her to set her life to rights.

  Now, thanks to Oona, there was one other thing that needed to be set right as well. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

  “Harry?”

  Aylesbury stood, greeting her with a wide smile. “Abby, you’re looking wonderful today.”

  “I…thank you, Harry.” She rubbed her suddenly damp palms down the front of her skirts. The marquis had been a good friend to her these past months. In any normal situation, his suit would have thrilled her. Gads, but she hated Oona for forcing this upon her. “Harry, I…”

  “No,” he interrupted. “Me first, if you please. I think you know why I’m here. What I’ve come to ask. Will you marry me?”

  “I cannot, Harry. I am so sorry,” she said with true regret.

  “May I ask why?”

  He was an incredibly handsome man, Abby thought. Tall and handsome. His inky black hair that curled about his ears and contrasted with the brilliant blue of his eyes. Eyes that were filled, in that moment, with disappointment. She would have given anything not to hurt him. Before Richard’s return, she had wished that she might have been able to love him. Harry was the perfect man, perhaps too perfect sometimes. What he truly needed was someone who managed to make him just a tad imperfect.

  “You have been a wonderful friend to me, Harry. I have said as much though I understand that Oona has deliberately given you reason to think that it is more than that. I do not want to hurt you, or lose that friendship, but it doesn’t reach any farther than that for me.”

  “Friendship such as ours is an excellent basis for marriage,” he persisted, taking her hands in his.

  “Even if I wanted to at this point, I could not,” Abby told him of her bargain with her father, adding her sincere apologies for using her relationship with Aylesbury so callously. “I fear I made a bargain with my father and he did not come through. It’s the principal of the thing, you see.”

  Aylesbury looked down at her, his expression a mixture of chagrin and perhaps a dash of amusement. “I don’t like to think I was being used as a bargaining chip, but I would wager a thousand pounds that that isn’t truly the reason, at all. Why don’t you tell me the truth?”

  “That is the truth, Harry.”

  Most of it, at least.

  “But there is a greater truth, I think,” he argued. “I have seen a change in you this past week or more. You’ve become more vivacious than ever but more confident, more outspoken as well. While you don’t crave the limelight, you don’t run from it any longer, either. But lately, there has been sadness in you, and I believe the suddenly absent Captain MacKintosh to be at the heart of it all.”

  Abby shook her head in amazement. Aylesbury had always seemed to be remarkably observant and intuitive, but she had never imagined that he read her so well. “If you knew, why did you still ask me to marry you?”

  He shrugged. “Because I like you very much.”

  A half-laugh escaped her lips. “I like you, too, Harry. It’s very hard not to. But I-I love him. I have loved him my entire life. I should have realized before you even started courting me this Season that time wouldn’t change that. I could have spared you this, at least.”

  “Is he going to marry you?”

  She faltered, not wanting to blatantly lie to him.

  Aylesbury shifted his weight from foot to foot before adding, “Forgive me for asking, it is none of my business, of course, but is there any reason to suppose he should?”

  Abby’s eyes widened. “I don’t know what you…oh!” She blus
hed from head to toe as his insinuation sank in. “Oh, Harry! That is not in the least amusing.”

  “My pardon for making assumptions.” He bent and brushed a soft kiss across her check. “Should you need a husband for any urgent reason, I hope you will call upon me.”

  She shook her head with affectionate exasperation. “You are an excellent friend, Harry.”

  “And you are an intriguing woman, Lady Abygail.” He picked up his cane and hat.

  “I’ll be moving into my grandparent’s tomorrow.” Abby told him a brief, edited version of what had occurred and earned a smile of commiseration in return.

  “If I can endure the long walk over, perhaps you will have me for tea?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Lifting her hand, Aylesbury kissed it, adding a roguish wink. “Until then. I’ll see myself out, shall I?””

  Abby stared blankly at the study door after Aylesbury left. Was she so obvious to everyone or just the ever-perceptive Harry Brudenall? Perhaps she would tell Aylesbury the truth in the days to come. It would help to have a friend who knew. Someone she could confide in. Also, she didn’t like to deceive him. The truth would out eventually. There no need to hurt Harry further when it did.

  The door slammed back against the wall then and she jumped back at the sudden intrusion, her thoughts shattering into pieces. Oona was at the door, her face red with fury. She looked for all the world as if she were about to burst.

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I told him ‘no’, just as I said I would.”

  “Not Aylesbury! What did you say to your father?” Oona clarified at a near screech.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she offered the partial truth. She had said many things of late to her father that she had never dared to say before. Which of those things in particular was of upset to Oona truly was a mystery to her since her stepmother was notoriously easy to upset.