“I told Victoria I was protecting her from him. That is all she ever need know.”
“Why?”
“Susie,” Tom muttered, “it’s of no consequence now.”
“Because of your pride? Your likeness to Mr. Darcy defies belief.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I know you hate what our father’s profligacy did to the family, yet you can barely speak of how it affected you, or Charles, or me. Or her.”
He ran his hand through his hair; he certainly thought of it enough. “What good could come from rehashing it?”
She shook her head. “Does it not occur to you that you injure others besides yourself by never speaking of these things?”
“I do try—” He had tried the other day with Vicky, but it hadn’t made him feel better. She had at least seemed to understand why he’d had to cease their friendship.
Susie tilted her head when he didn’t continue. “Mr. Darcy doesn’t speak of his sister’s attempted elopement with Wickham to keep her reputation intact, but if he had, Wickham wouldn’t have been able to run off with Elizabeth Bennet’s sister. You do harm others by keeping these secrets, Tom. You harm yourself by remaining such a mystery to those around you.”
Tom shook his head. “Father is gone. He cannot hurt anyone else.”
She sighed. “Yet he has brought you to this.” She gestured to the paper in front of him.
Tom winced. Could all this have been avoided? He cast his gaze at the ceiling. Devil take it, he’d go mad if he continued this way.
“Perhaps I should have told her. But it wasn’t because of my pride. It was—” Shame.
“Then again, why would you tell her the truth just because you’re in love with her?”
Tom’s eyes snapped up. “What?”
Susie regarded him with raised brows.
After a few seconds, Tom broke the silence. “I simply cannot see her marry Carmichael.”
“Why might that be?” she asked with a tip of her head.
“For too many reasons to count! The man is a lout. An arrogant, swaggering, self-serving—” He felt heat rising under his cravat, so he shut his mouth and took a deep breath. “I would pity any woman he married.”
Susie folded her hands in her lap. “Would you fight a duel for any woman?”
He caught her gaze. She stared back with a delicately arched brow. “Very well, I care for her.” He’d spoken louder than he’d intended. In a more regulated voice, he said, “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
She angled her chin down. “That’s evident. Since you’ve been spending time with her, you’ve been happier than I’ve seen you since we returned to England. Clearly, you care for her. The question is, how much do you care?”
Tom raked his hand through his hair and held it there. Damned if he knew. Enough to feel physical revulsion at the idea of her marrying Carmichael—or any other man of their acquaintance, he knew that. But Vicky knew her own mind, and the type of marriage he’d offered wasn’t enough for her. It shouldn’t have to be.
“Tom, Father is dead. You are free to live as you please. What reason do you have to keep hiding your emotions?”
He met her penetrating look. “They do me little good. They never have.” They’d only ever caused him or those he loved pain.
Susie shook her head. “That’s not true. They led you to me. They led you back here to your family.”
“That was duty, Susan. My honor. Not some elusive sentiment.”
She scoffed. “If you really believe that, you are a fool. You would risk your life tomorrow because of duty?”
He made no answer. “I am a bloody fool, Susan. You’d best make your peace with that.” He took his pen from the stand.
She stood and walked to the door. “You better not give up, Tom Sherborne,” she said with another shake of her head. “I will not allow that.” She exited the room, leaving Tom staring down at his barely begun letter.
The image of his body lying bloodied in the park assailed him again, and with it, a picture of Vicky in Carmichael’s arms.
Tom made a fist, cracking the pen and breaking off the tip. His hand shook as he forced it open. He peered down at the pen’s remains, then slammed the pieces onto the desk. He cradled his head with both hands. He couldn’t give up—not if he wanted to keep Vicky safe.
Chapter the Twenty-Eighth
She was overpowered by shame and vexation.
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Vicky awoke with a start, gasping in huge breaths. Her heart thrummed in her chest. A thin line of moonlight streamed through a crack in the curtains and tiny embers glowed in the grate. Her crumpled sheets lay in a heap at the foot of the bed, the work of yet another nightmare. She pushed herself up to recover them, then turned onto her side and tucked them around her.
With an exhale, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. But her mind returned to the sound of her name echoing through the house as Tom called for her today. What a coward she was, unable to face him. What if he’d wanted to say something important? He would hardly have behaved in such a way for anything trivial. She knew him better than that.
Today Tom had called for her, and she hadn’t come. Then she’d had a dream where she’d needed him, and he didn’t appear.
She rubbed a hand over her forehead. The image of his clear gaze staring down at her as he proposed flashed through her mind. For one moment, he’d made her feel as though the world existed for them alone. As though the hopes she’d treasured when they were children could finally be set free. As though their futures lay together. A tear rolled down her cheek.
She shook her head and let out a short, frustrated grunt. She could no longer think of Tom in that way. Those dreams had been the fancies of a naive little girl.
A scratching at her door interrupted her thoughts. She sat up slowly. “Who’s there?” The door opened a crack, and she saw Sheldon’s white head illuminated by candlelight in the doorjamb.
He did not come in or even peer inside the room, but whispered from the doorway, “My lady, a girl is at the servants’ door asking to see you.”
Vicky frowned. “What is the hour?”
“A quarter to four, Lady Victoria.”
“What could she possibly want?”
Sheldon cleared his throat. “She requests an audience. She says Lord Halworth’s life is at stake.”
Vicky’s breath caught. What could this mean? “Tell her to wait. I’ll be down at once.”
She waited for Sheldon to close the door, then jumped out of bed. She threw a thick shawl over her shift and collected a candle from her dresser. After lighting it in the fire’s embers, she hurried downstairs.
Sheldon stood at the foot of the back stairs waiting, looking remarkably well-groomed and awake despite the hour and being obliged to do his duty in a dressing gown. As Vicky approached, he escorted her to the kitchen. He motioned to the door leading to the mews, then opened it and stood aside.
Vicky stepped to the threshold to stand face-to-face with a young woman in a dark cloak. As the girl saw Vicky, she pushed the hood of her cloak all the way back until it fell around her shoulders. Strawberry-blond ringlets framed her oval-shaped face.
“Lady Victoria?” the girl asked.
“Yes,” Vicky said cautiously.
The girl frowned. “Forgive me for calling at such a strange hour. My name is Susan Naseby—”
The girl paused. Vicky stared at her. “Yes?” Vicky prompted. “How are you acquainted with Lord Halworth?”
The girl took a breath and lifted her chin. “Lady Victoria, I am Tom’s sister.”
Vicky gaped at the girl for countless seconds before regaining her composure enough to shake her head. “That’s absurd. Tom has no sister.”
“We did not even know of each other until our father forced him to leave Halworth Hall.”
Vicky stepped backward. “Are you quite certain?”
Miss Naseby nodded.
“Good h
eavens.” Vicky spotted a chair near the doorway and plopped into it. “So you met him when?”
Miss Naseby took a tentative step inside the doorway. “Five years ago, just after Tom left Halworth Hall, he came to London. He found his old nurse who was in service there. She let him stay with her. Mrs. Robbins also knew my mother, and she’d persuaded her mistress to employ Mama as a seamstress. When my mother grew ill, I delivered the pieces between Mrs. Robbins’s lodgings and ours. One day when I went to Mrs. Robbins’s, Tom was there. He must have thought me too young or too small, because he insisted on walking me home.
“When he saw my mother, he recognized her as having worked as a maid at Halworth Hall when he was a boy. He asked Mama where my father was. She told him my father was a gentleman from Hampshire.”
Vicky’s eyes widened.
“I’d never known anything about my father. Mama would say no more, but Tom encouraged Mrs. Robbins to speak. She told him my father was, in fact, Lord Halworth himself. Tom offered to take care of me if Mama needed help.”
Vicky closed her eyes, imagining the fourteen-year-old Tom discovering he had a sister he’d never heard of. He wouldn’t have hesitated to help her. Miss Naseby spoke with conviction; the girl believed the story she’d told to be true.
Vicky stood, telling Sheldon he could retire. She faced Miss Naseby with what she hoped was a clear head. “Miss Naseby, I do apologize if I was rude earlier. Please come inside and tell me how I may be of help.”
The girl smiled. “Please call me Susie. I feel I know you so well from listening to Tom’s stories of you.”
Vicky smiled. What had Tom told his sister about her?
“Do come upstairs, where it’s warmer.” She ushered Susie through the kitchen and led her upstairs to her bedroom.
Once safely behind closed doors, Vicky asked Susie to sit while she stoked the dying embers to provide them with more light. “Do you still live with your mother?” she asked over her shoulder.
For a moment, she didn’t answer. “Mama died some time ago.”
Vicky swallowed the lump in her throat and moved to sit on the bed beside her. “I’m so sorry.”
Susie looked into her lap. “Tom took me to Mrs. Robbins’s. We stayed there for a fortnight. Then Tom got word from his mother saying his uncle would take him in, and with the money his mother sent, Tom brought me to Solothurn, hoping his uncle would be charitable enough to take me as well. He did, but we both had to work in the family hotel: I was a maid, and Tom worked at the desk.”
Vicky felt her eyes welling with tears despite herself. She looked down at her hands and folded them together.
Susie tried to reassure her. “I needed to tell you this so you could understand. Tom always wants so badly to do what is right, but he feels thwarted at every turn. And because he feels all his efforts fail, I think he doesn’t believe he deserves happiness.”
Vicky pressed her lips together. She could well believe it.
“This business with Mr. Carmichael hasn’t helped things.”
Vicky stiffened at the mention of Mr. Carmichael. How much had Tom told Susie? “It was all very unpleasant the other night,” Vicky admitted.
Susan nodded. “That’s why I came here. In the space of a day, Mr. Carmichael has put a stop to Tom’s hotel and has ruined his credit. It appears to me that Mr. Carmichael has been trying to goad Tom into a duel since they met, and now he’s finally succeeded. You must help me stop it.”
The blood rushed from Vicky’s cheeks. “A duel?”
“At St. James’s Park this very morning.”
Vicky shook her head. “But why would they fight a duel?” Her throat went dry as she remembered Mr. Carmichael’s words in the garden. I will return. Which is more than anyone can say for Halworth. “Not . . . over me?” she whispered.
“I believe so,” Susie said softly.
“Why would Tom do such a thing? It’s so unlike him.” She looked into Susan’s eyes. “Isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yes. But he loves you.”
Vicky’s breath hitched in her throat. “Loves me?”
Susan nodded again.
“How do you know?”
A dimple deepened in Susan’s cheek as she smiled. “It is quite plain to anyone who knows him well.” Then she sobered. “He would not do this otherwise. Though he cannot realize it himself,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Vicky looked down at her hands. “He told me he couldn’t love me. That he felt cold inside.”
Susie shook her head. “Everything he endured with his father and the aftereffects of his death have kept Tom from realizing what he wants. He said he told you he was protecting you from the earl.”
Vicky looked up and nodded.
“Did he tell you anything else?”
Vicky shook her head
Susie sighed. “My mother was not the first the old earl seduced. Nor was she the last.”
Vicky’s stomach lurched.
Susie eyed her. “The day you saw his father beat him, Tom was trying to save a maid from his father’s attentions. Tom gave her money so she could leave before . . . before the worst could happen. Whenever the earl realized the women he’d violated were with child, he dismissed them without references.”
Vicky’s gut churned with disgust. “Like your mother?”
Susan nodded. “The earl recognized what Tom was doing and dismissed the maid anyway. That was when he put Tom out.”
Vicky swallowed, remembering Tom’s face as Lord Halworth had knocked him to the floor when she’d entered the room that day. How she hadn’t known what to think, but still knew Tom couldn’t have done anything to that girl. Vicky shut her eyes, imagining what Tom must have witnessed and endured all those years. Her nightmares were the reality of Tom’s past.
Tom had been trying to help that poor girl. But despite his efforts, he hadn’t succeeded.
After that day, he’d stopped speaking to Vicky as well. All so he could protect her. She didn’t really know if the earl would have threatened her had she continued to go to Halworth. She’d been far more sheltered and protected than any servant in his employ, but clearly Tom had thought he might. Tom had been protecting her then, and he was protecting her now. But who was going to protect him?
“When is the duel?”
Susie frowned. “At dawn.”
Vicky sprang to her feet. She glanced at the clock above the mantelpiece. It was a quarter past four. The sun would be up in less than half an hour.
Vicky scratched at Althea’s door, and, at hearing her sister’s voice, she entered. Althea sat up in bed, looking bleary-eyed but concerned.
“You were right about Tom. I should’ve listened to you and spoken with him when he came here today.”
Behind her, Susie coughed politely.
“I cannot delay. I’m going to St. James’s Park to stop Carmichael and Tom from killing each other.”
“What do you mean?” Althea asked.
“They’re dueling at dawn.”
Althea blanched. “You shouldn’t go alone.” She threw her legs out of bed.
“Susie—Miss Naseby”—Vicky gestured at Susie, who bobbed a curtsy to Althea—“is accompanying me. She’s Tom’s sister.”
Althea frowned, then looked at Susan, then inclined her head. “Hello, Miss Naseby.”
“I’m sorry we haven’t time for introductions,” Vicky said. “We must go.”
“Of course,” Althea said. “I’ll call for a guard to accompany you.”
“There’s no time to wake anybody,” Vicky said, casting a glance down the hall. “With any luck, we’ll be back soon.”
Althea shook her head, but Vicky dashed through the door with Susie following at her heels.
Chapter the Twenty-Ninth
This was the end of it.
—Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
The sun had not yet risen, but the darkness had waned enough for the first vestiges of dawn to illuminate the thin layer of fog blanketing St.
James’s Park and its early morning inhabitants. The mist would probably burn off in a few hours, but Tom couldn’t help thinking it might be an ominous portent of what was to come.
Near him, Silby and Charles, acting as Carmichael’s and Tom’s seconds, loaded and examined the pistols. Dressed in a black coat and trousers, Carmichael stood beside Silby, watching the process. His stance was relaxed, but his jaw clenched and unclenched. The requisite doctor stood farther off, rummaging through his medicine bag, presumably ensuring he possessed all the necessary instruments to treat a bullet wound.
Tom turned from the scene, half of him unable to grasp that he actually waited to live or die. Despite the heaviness of his greatcoat, the chill of the morning air seeped into his chest.
He’d spent the previous evening thinking about what a mess he’d made. Susie was right. He should have told Vicky everything—about his father, about Susan, about how it had all affected his family. He’d also managed to make a mess of things with Charles. Tom should have cared for him better.
Had Tom continued thinking, he barely would have slept an hour, so he’d finished reading Pride and Prejudice. It had taken his mind off his troubles temporarily, but he’d again concluded that Susie was right. Like Mr. Darcy, Tom had caused countless people pain by not saying anything about his father’s behavior and shouldering his family’s secrets alone. He didn’t know whom he could have told, but the fact remained that he had done little and people had suffered for it, which was something he’d have to live with for the rest of his days.
Tom closed his mind to the imaginary laughter of his father echoing in his ears. If the rest of Miss Austen’s novels were anything like this one—where the well intentioned were redeemed and the villains revealed by their own actions—he couldn’t blame Vicky for preferring the world of her books over reality. Reality was never so simple.
“Everything is prepared,” Charles said.
Tom’s stomach dropped. He turned and faced his brother. He looked impeccably well put together in a matching brown coat and trousers and a green, striped waistcoat. They hadn’t spoken since the debacle at Carmichael’s club yesterday, but Charles’s features were composed and somewhat unconcerned—as though today were any other day.
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