by Mary Balogh
“As you cannot do in your own life,” she said. But that sounded insulting. “As none of us can do.”
“Being a writer does give one certain power,” he agreed. “The power to play God. But only on paper, alas. And only with people who do not even exist. Perhaps that is one of the attractions of writing fiction. It is therapeutic.”
She wished he would look away. His eyes were very direct on hers, very dark, quite unreadable. His voice was deep. Oh, what did that have to do with anything? He was not a comfortable man to be alone with. Not that she felt she was in any sort of danger. Just … uncomfortable. He was giving her glimpses behind the stark exterior that had so repelled her. She preferred to be repelled. She did not want to know him. For there was something about him that … disturbed her. She could not even put words to the unease she felt whenever she was in the same room as him.
“Why did you leave home?” she asked. “Before your father died, I mean. You did leave, did you not? Several years before?” She wished fervently then that she had not asked. She had just told herself she did not want to know anything more about him— especially about those years. Darkness lurked there, and it was none of her business. But her questions had not been written in pencil, alas. They could not be erased.
His eyes continued to bore into hers for a few uncomfortable moments before he turned his head away to look through the window again. His hands, clasped behind him, beat a slow, rhythmic tattoo against his back.
“All the gossip and wild stories have not satisfied you, Lady Estelle?” he asked her. “I assume there have been plenty of both in the neighborhood of Prospect Hall since the late countess and Maria went to live there after my father’s death.”
Because he had sent them there, apparently, despite the fact that the house just behind here was vast and he might have avoided them if he had so wished without sending them away.
“One cannot help hearing gossip when one is part of a community,” she told him. “Though I try not to give it too much credence unless I can confirm the facts for myself. But I do beg your pardon. I have no right to the facts in this case. They are not my business.”
His clasped hands continued the tattoo. “But you are my invited guest here,” he said, “and have a right to some knowledge of the man who persuaded you to come. I left here six years before my father’s death. He sent me away. Banished me, if you prefer the more dramatic but very accurate word. I was banished on a moment’s notice, with time only to gather the personal possessions I could carry with me. I was told not to return. Ever. Ever, of course, expired with my father’s life, for he could not disinherit me, only disown me while he lived. I learned of his passing four months after it happened when I checked at the place letters were sent me occasionally by two persons I trusted. No one else knew where I was or how to find me or communicate with me. So far I daresay the facts match closely with the gossip. It is probable that none of the others do. I did not, for example, spend a couple of years or even one day in chains or walking a treadmill or at hard labor in jail.”
One thing stood out in Estelle’s mind. His father had been dead for four months before he even knew it. The late earl would not have been able to rescind the sentence of banishment even if he had wished to do so. He could not have summoned his son home to his deathbed. Neither he nor anyone else— except two persons— had known how to contact him. No one had been able to find the new Earl of Brandon after the old earl died. What on earth had happened to lead to such severe circumstances?
“Did you always have an adversarial relationship with your father?” she asked. What sort of father, no matter how difficult his son, his only son, would banish him and tell him never to return? And cut off all lines of communication.
“On the contrary, we had an extraordinarily close relationship,” he said. “Until I was twenty-two years old, that is.” He looked at her again, his face harsh and forbidding. “Do not ask me what I did that was so heinous that he would cast me off forever. I daresay you have heard theories, each more hair-raising than the last. Perhaps one of them is Maria’s. I will confirm or deny none of them. Only two living people, apart from me, know the truth, and they will never divulge it because I asked them not to and they are honorable people.”
Two people. His uncle and aunt came to mind. Mr. and Mrs. Sharpe. They seemed extraordinarily fond of him and he of them. Mrs. Sharpe was his mother’s only sister. Were they also the only people who had been able to write to him at a prearranged place?
“That is fair enough,” she said.
The dog had got to his feet and gone to stand by his side. He nudged the earl’s hand with his nose until he smoothed his palm over the dog’s head and the dog whined and pressed close against his leg. It was almost, Estelle thought, as though Captain had sensed distress in his master. Or perhaps it was more than just almost. The Earl of Brandon had been very close to his father, but he had lost him—on a moment’s notice— six years before his actual death.
Oh, she did not want to know these things about him. Yet she was not being quite honest with herself. She had asked the questions, after all. He had not forced the information on her.
“Perhaps we ought to return to the house,” she said.
“Something occurred to me last evening,” he said, turning abruptly but ignoring her suggestion. He crossed to the bed, picked up one of the books there, and fitted it into an empty slot on a shelf of the bookcase. He stayed in front of it, his back to her. “It occurred to me that I hate Everleigh. It was once my home but ceased to be a dozen years ago. Even though it has been my property for six of those years it has never again been my home. It just looks vaguely like it. As though someone had re-created it but omitted the soul.”
“But it is beautiful,” she protested. “I have lived in or stayed at a number of stately homes, Lord Brandon, and none have been lovelier than Everleigh, either inside or out. I have not seen more than a fraction of it all yet, it is true, but it strikes me that it comes close to being paradise on earth.”
… but omitted the soul.
Perhaps she saw it her way because she had no emotional history with the house. He did, and that made all the difference. Whatever had happened when he was twenty-two must have shattered his world. Perhaps he was bowed down with guilt now. His father had never seen him again. There had been no chance for forgiveness or absolution. Oh, what if her father had died before they could talk things through with him, she and Bertrand, and so forgive him and begin a new life of love and happiness with him and their stepmother? It was unthinkable. Their lives would be so very different— and impoverished. And lacking in wholeness.
“I have looked at my aunt, my mother’s sister, and her family during the past couple of days,” he said, “and remembered all the visits I have made to their house, which is perhaps one-tenth the size of Everleigh but is ten times the home Everleigh is. This is not a home at all.”
“But it could be made into one again. It is people who make a home,” she said. But she stopped there. That was precisely the point, was it not? It was once my home but ceased to be … “Everleigh once was home?”
He reached out and half removed a book from a shelf before pushing it back. “When my mother was alive,” he said. “When we were a family.”
“You have a sister,” she reminded him. “And you have just insisted that she return here. To a place you hate. To a house that is not a home.”
“That was the very thought that occurred to me last evening,” he said. “That I have held back from making Everleigh my own. That I have neglected to make the earldom fully my own. There are responsibilities that come with being who I am, not the least of which is caring for my sister, whom my father loved. Whom I both loved and love. It is probably time I stopped resenting what I have inherited.”
Resenting? There was a whole world of meaning behind that one word, Estelle thought. How could anyone resent inheriting an earldom and a property like this and— probably— wealth untold? But it was very
clear there were heavy burdens from his past that he had shared with no one except two unnamed persons, possibly his aunt and uncle. And there was the fact that he had never had the chance to set things right with his father. There was the fact that he had sent his stepmother away to Prospect Hall before coming back here himself. There was the fact that Maria hated him and was seemingly unwilling to forgive him for whatever he had done to her and her mother. Had he sent them away just because they were not his blood relatives? But that would have been ridiculously petty, and Estelle could not believe it had been as simple as that.
It was becoming a bit tedious to keep telling herself that she really did not want to know, that apart from a natural sort of curiosity she had no wish to understand him better. But oh, she really did not want to like him. She really, really did not want to start finding him attractive. The very thought gave her the shivers. There was no warmth in him. Oh, but yes, there was. There was no light in him, though. He had admitted it himself.
The light went out of my life.
Twenty-four years ago, when his mother died.
Had he resented his father’s second marriage, which, if Maria was to be believed last evening, had been a sudden one and one in which there had been a great disparity in age?
“What I need,” the Earl of Brandon said abruptly, half drawing the same book out of the bookcase once more before yet again pushing it back into place, “is a countess.”
A countess. Not a wife. Even his chosen word was a bit chilling.
“But even in that choice,” he said, “there is little freedom. Only more responsibility. To choose someone of suitable birth and breeding. Someone who will know how to make a home of this place and be a welcoming hostess for visitors both here and in London. Someone who will be kind to my sister and help settle her into a meaningful life either here or in a marriage. Someone who will bear the children I am duty bound to beget. Particularly a son, of course. Preferably more than one.”
Estelle was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. “That can never be guaranteed,” she said. “Some women bear only daughters. Some are barren.” Sometimes the man is incapable. But she did not say that aloud.
“Nothing is certain,” he said. “Even an apparently settled life can change totally and without warning within an hour. Within a moment. But when one has great responsibility, Lady Estelle, one really ought to make a serious attempt at organizing oneself, doing one’s duty, planning a future as well as one is able for the security of one’s dependents.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is all very well, is it not, to consider the lilies of the field, which neither toil nor spin, as the Bible urges us to do, and conclude that we ought to model our lives upon their example and do nothing but enjoy life and allow fate to carry us along as it will? People are not lilies. People do need to plan.”
“I wish you would marry me,” he said.
For a moment she did not trust her ears. He had spoken rather softly. Also quite distinctly.
“What?” She stared, wide-eyed, at his broad back until he turned to look across the room at her. Or, rather, to frown across the room.
“I wish you would marry me,” he said again. “We are equal in birth. We are not very far apart in age. We are both unattached. At least, I assume you are, though it surprises me. You are past the first blush of youth and must have received any number of eligible offers. Your beauty alone would make that inevitable, but you have far more than just beauty to recommend you. Perhaps you have waited for love. If so, it would seem to have eluded you until you are past the age at which you can continue to expect it. I wish you would consider me, then.”
She had listened to a few proposals of marriage when she had not been able to avert them. She had never heard anything remotely like this one. And never before had a marriage proposal been so totally unexpected. She had always been able to prepare herself, plan something to say that would soften the blow of her refusal. This time, however …
“Lord Brandon,” she said, “I cannot think of anything whatsoever that would induce me even to consider marrying you.”
They gazed at each other for what seemed a long while before the pencil Estelle did not realize she was holding snapped in two and he nodded briskly.
“Then it is time I returned you to the house,” he said, striding toward her and taking the two pieces of pencil from her nerveless hands and tossing them onto the desk.
He looked into her eyes, his own dark and hard, the frown line still between his brows. He hesitated while Captain pranced and panted at the head of the stairs.
“Accept my apologies for insulting you,” he said curtly, and kissed her hard right on the mouth.
It was not just a brief peck of a kiss. It must have lasted for several seconds while Estelle stood in shock, burned by the heat of him, smelling some combination of shaving soap and leather, and somehow feeling the kiss from her mouth to her toes, but inside her body rather than outside, with a hideous awareness that threatened to rob her of both breath and control of her knees. She was aware of her hands dangling uselessly by her sides and of a ghastly temptation to set them on either side of his waist or on his shoulders or on either side of his face.
Then his mouth was gone from hers and he took half a step back and indicated the staircase with one hand, his eyes still holding her own. “After you,” he said, his voice still curt, just as though he had not recently stopped the world and set it spinning again in the opposite direction. And otherwise discomposing her. And outraging her. And …
And why had it not occurred to her to use her hands to push him away— and maybe slap his face for good measure?
She preceded him down the staircase, Captain panting at her side, and outside into a light drizzling rain.
Nine
It was not far from the summerhouse to the main house. Right now, however, it seemed an endless distance to Justin, though they hurried along, heads down against the light rain. Too late he remembered that there was an umbrella at the summerhouse. He doubted he would have brought it anyway, though. He would have had to offer her his arm and hold her close to his side so they could share it. As it was, there was a space of three or four feet between them. Captain was loping along in front of them.
Could he have orchestrated a worse disaster if he had tried? He very much doubted it. The idea had come to him last evening. Ideas, rather. Plural. First that Maria was going to need a respectable and socially connected female to present her to society next spring, but he did not have a candidate in mind. His aunts on both his mother’s side and his father’s rarely went to London, and had their own families to occupy them anyway. Maria’s aunts were not members of the ton. Her great-aunt was too elderly. His second idea had been that he could solve the problem— and a few others for good measure— by marrying and letting his wife sponsor Maria. The third idea was that he was looking at the perfect candidate. Except that she was an impossibility.
And he had realized that last evening.
Lady Estelle Lamarr, that was.
She was perfect. She was poised and charming, not to mention gorgeous. In company she knew how to take the lead when it was necessary, retreat into the background when it was not. She could talk with ease to anyone, listen with interest, smile with what looked like genuine pleasure. She never drew attention to herself yet somehow commanded it. She was elegant and graceful. She would be the perfect candidate for his countess in every imaginable way. Except one. She disliked him.
She had never made any bones about it, though she had, of course, always been polite. Courtesy under all circumstances had been bred into her very soul, it would seem. But even if they could have got past their first unfortunate couple of encounters, she would still never recover from her hostility toward him. For she had been poisoned against him by local gossip long before she even met him, despite her assurance that she believed it only when it could be proved with facts. Maria had probably supplied some of those facts, or what she had believed to be facts, courtesy
of her mother. And he had done nothing to help Lady Estelle change her perception of him. Even after six years back in society as the Earl of Brandon he was still stiff and gauche and uncomfortable and inclined to hide behind the morose armor he had built around himself after he was banished.
Last night he had struck Lady Estelle Lamarr from his mental list of prospective countesses. Not that there was anyone else on the list.
And what had he done this morning? He had mistimed his departure from the house and found that a few stragglers from the lake party were still up under the portico— including Lady Estelle. It had been perfectly clear that his cousin Sid was about to take her in pursuit of the others, but he had not yet done so. Justin had offered his escort instead— to the summerhouse. And she had accepted.
He might have known there and then that disaster was looming. The summerhouse was his domain, especially the upper level. It was the only place on Everleigh land where he felt fully at home and relaxed. And private. He had wanted the privacy this morning in particular because he had a very personal letter to write.
But, he had thought as they made their way there, he would not need to take her to the upper level. He had had a door and a lock installed at the top of the stairs. He could sit downstairs with her, let her see the view, relax for half an hour. So of course he had taken her up. He had even been glad about it for a while. She had liked it. She had been interested in his writing. She had asked him about his reason for leaving here twelve years ago and about his relationship with his father, and he had felt that she was genuinely interested in knowing the truth, even though he had not told her a great deal of it. And then …
Well, then he had made an ass of himself.
I wish you would marry me.
And as though that idiocy were not enough to embarrass him for the rest of his natural life even if he lived to be ninety, he had proceeded to explain his reason for asking … You are past the first blush of youth … Perhaps you have waited for love. If so, it would seem to have eluded you until you are past the age at which you can continue to expect it. I wish you would consider me …