by Lynn Messina
The image of the Countess of Abercrombie going from room to room to lie languidly on each divan for a few minutes before rising to move on to the next one made her smile, which she assumed had been the widow’s goal in describing the absurd scene. Slowly, the trembling in her limbs began to subside, and Bea felt grateful for her ladyship’s tactics, for appealing to her sense of humor was by far the best way to calm her down.
“Thank you,” Bea said brusquely, “but I’m sure I have something that will suffice.”
Her ladyship nodded. “Very good. Then should we talk about diet? I recommend lots of sweets such as marzipan candies and chocolates. Your impulse will be to shun food, but there’s no value in wasting away to nothing. It will only undermine your efforts when you are recovered and meticulously working your way through your list.”
As Bea dutifully amended the picture of Lady Abercrombie in her head to include marchpane cakes and imagined her carrying a plate of brightly colored treats from couch to couch, she wondered what her ladyship meant by “your list.”
“My list?” she asked.
“Of suitors,” the countess explained. “For your new love affair. We will draw up a list of gentlemen who will do and then thoughtfully rank each one using a variety of criteria, including suitability, likeliness and what I’ve taken to calling the Lord Byron factor.”
The creation of such a list appalled Bea, not in the least because she couldn’t conceive of how any gentlemen would remain on it after likeliness was calculated into the equation.
Interpreting her stare of horror as surprise, Lady Abercrombie said with defensive heat, “Just because you’re in the doldrums, there’s no excuse to be scattershot about your future. We will be fastidious and thorough.”
Her tone was confrontational, but her eyes twinkled with humor, and Bea knew she was merely teasing with her talk of a list. Suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude, she clasped the other woman’s hands in her own and said, “Thank you.”
Lady Abercrombie smiled and said, “Just wait until you see the catalog of suitors I compile, young lady, then you will know the true meaning of gratitude.”
Bea’s confidence that the list was merely a ruse to distract her slipped a little at this assurance, but she stayed focused on her intent. “Truly, my lady, I had been at risk of humiliating myself and you saved me. I don’t know how to thank you enough.”
Now Lady Abercrombie shook her head. “You don’t have to, my dear. You are Clara Leighton’s daughter, and it’s my greatest pleasure to help you. I’m only sorry I did not seek you out sooner. I knew you’d been left with Richard’s miserly brother and his wife, a more joyless person I have yet to meet, but I was too overcome by grief to do anything but be sad and mournful. Even all these years later, I still miss her. What a waste. They were so full of life and then…I will never understand how it could have happened. Your father was such an experienced yachtsman.” She paused as if trying once again to make sense of an impossibility and then said with alacrity, “But I’m here now and we are going to get you bracketed by the end of the season. Yes, you are correct, I’ve pushed back our schedule by several weeks to account for this minor setback, but we will nevertheless succeed.”
Discovering the depth and intensity of Lady Abercrombie’s affection for her mother gave Bea a sort of solace she’d never expected to find. It also explained why she had taken a sudden interest in a twenty-six-year-old spinster. Knowing the widow hoped to expiate her guilt at not seeking out her dearest friend’s daughter twenty years ago put Bea’s mind at ease, for previously she had been unable to comprehend her attentions.
Hesitantly, Bea said, “I don’t know much about either of my parents, as my aunt barely knew them and my uncle believes the quickest way to get over a loss is not to wallow in it. My mother had two brothers, as you may recall, but they both live in Boston and have shown little interest in me other than a card at Christmas. Would you mind very much if I called on you sometime in the near future and you could tell me about my mother?”
“Would I mind?” the Countess of Abercrombie repeated in a shocked voice. “My dear, I would love nothing more. I will gather her letters so you can read them and will reread my diaries from that time to remind myself more forcefully of the details. Oh, you poor darling, you have no idea what you’re subjecting yourself to. A veritable orgy of remembrances. I will talk for so long, you will be glancing pointedly at the clock for several hours before I allow you to leave. Indeed, I will prattle about your remarkable mother to such an extent, you will beg me to stop.”
“No,” Bea said firmly, fully aware of how impossible that was, “I will not.”
Delighted, Lady Abercrombie announced her spirits much restored and suggested they return to the company, which made Bea laugh, as it had not been her spirits that were in need of restoration. But of course she agreed, for she no longer felt quite so desolate herself. Yes, she was still miserable, and the thought of Kesgrave and Lady Victoria still caused her breath to hitch. Despite the countess’s bracing certainty, she could not believe her heart would ever recover, let alone by the start of the following week. And yet she had things to be thankful for, and she found herself capable of counting her blessings: She had the widow’s kindness and the prospect of learning about her mother and even the investigation into the untimely death of Mr. Wilson. Her life might have been absent of love, but it was rife with purpose, and as she rose to her feet, she decided the latter was a surprisingly satisfying consolation.
Her optimism was high, fueled by the belief that her future would be more interesting than her past, and when Lady Abercrombie pointed to Viscount Nuneaton and identified him as number six on her list of suitors (“Alas, his Lord Byron factor is much in need of improving”), Bea agreed to allow the countess to maneuver him into dancing with her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Although Beatrice knew it was a gross mischaracterization to say the Duke of Kesgrave had waited in the shadows to ambush her, she did think it was striking how quickly he’d appeared at her side the moment she was alone. Flora had barely taken two steps toward the refreshment table before he’d materialized beside her and demanded that she apologize at once.
Having spent the past two hours meticulously and resentfully picking apart every aspect of Lady Victoria’s appearance, from the vacant expression in her dark eyes to the awkward way she tapped her toe out of time with the orchestra, Bea felt a shot of terror at these words. Did Kesgrave have access to the deepest reaches of her mind now?
Aghast, she shrieked, “What?”
“For the letter,” he said.
The intense stab of relief she felt when he didn’t say Lady Victoria’s name—of course he couldn’t read her thoughts!—was immediately supplanted by confusion, as she tried to decipher what letter he was talking about. It was particularly vexing because her original and most persistent complaint against him was his pedantry. The Duke of Kesgrave loved nothing more than to pontificate on any number of topics for any length of time, and now, when the circumstance would be improved by a few details, he turned cryptic.
“What letter?” she asked.
“Exactly,” he said with satisfaction.
Bea stared at him and wondered if he’d lost his mind in the interval since she’d last seen him. Was this what courting a diamond of the first water did to a man? “I cannot speak to what thoughts are actually forming in your head, your grace, but I wish to assure you that the ones coming out of your mouth make no sense at all. I cannot tell if this defect is a recent development or one you’ve been experiencing for a while and your peers were too overwhelmed by your importance to point it out. Perhaps they don’t listen to your words because they are so content to bask in the glory of your presence. Regardless, you clearly need a few minutes to sort out the problem and I’m happy to wait here silently while you do so.”
“No, Miss Hyde-Clare,” he said with a firm shake of his head. “You will not cajole me out of my temper. You will apologize.”
“Surely, even with your diminished capacity you understand that I can’t possibly offer an apology until I know what it is for,” she explained calmly.
If she thought this straightforward explanation of the problem would result in a sensical reply, she was sadly mistaken.
“Three weeks,” he said maddeningly.
“Kesgrave!”
“It has been three weeks, Beatrice,” he said, finally consenting to explain. “Three weeks. Your injuries, although certainly brutish to behold, were fairly benign and should have healed within a week, maybe two at the very most, and yet you were confined for three weeks. Every inquiry to your aunt was met with a vague explanation that you had yet to recover. She would provide me with no details, just the same assurances that you were on the mend. Naturally, this left me no recourse other than to worry that your injuries were far more severe than I’d originally supposed. I began to fear that your eyes had been permanently damaged or your brain had been injured. It was very disconcerting and quite unpleasant, and all it would have taken to relieve my anxiety was a letter from you assuring me you were all right. Even if your bruises hadn’t taken an unusually long time to heal, a missive apprising me of your progress would not have been amiss. It was, after all, my fault that you had been so abused, as it was in my company that you suffered the attack. You had always struck me as a decent woman, disrespectful of your betters, of course, and far too curious for your own good, but thoughtful and considerate and awake to your duty, which in this case included a letter to put my mind at ease. And yet I received nothing. So, yes, I’m fully expecting an apology for your oversight, and I’m happy to wait here silently while you figure out how you would like to word it. I would advise starting with a timeless classic such as I’m sorry, but you must do what feels right for you.”
Beatrice got stuck at Beatrice.
She heard every word of the duke’s impressively long speech—the criticism of her aunt, the concern for her welfare, the objection to her silence—but she could not assimilate a single thing he said because she was too distracted by his use of her name. Beatrice, he’d said, with authority and familiarity, as if they were collaborators or conspirators. Beatrice, as if they had established a bond. Beatrice, as if they were partners in an endeavor. Beatrice, as if they would be partners for years to come.
Impatient, Kesgrave huffed irritably and took a step forward, drawing her attention back to him, and she looked at him, almost surprised that he was still there.
“I know you take exception to what you describe as my fondness for pedantry,” he said with a mix of exasperation and annoyance, “but I’m now compelled to explain that my assertion that you should take all the time you need to figure out how to apologize was sarcasm. I was actually saying the opposite of what I meant, as I could not conceive it would take you long to formulate a response. All you have to say is ‘I’m sorry.’ In fact, I gave you the entire script.”
“I’m sorry,” Bea said at once.
But it wasn’t the apology he sought, as the words had tumbled out of her automatically in response to his complaint. Now, however, she determined to dismiss her fixation on how he’d said her name and consider the validity of his argument. The core of his contention was accurate: She had not sent him a note apprising him of her progress. But his reasoning was off, for there had been nothing unintentional about it. Far from a thoughtless oversight, her lack of communication had been part of a deliberate effort to remove him entirely from her mind, an objective he undermined time and time again by calling on her aunt. Having discovered the depth of her feelings for him, all she had wanted was the opportunity to fortify her defenses so that the next time she saw him—in a ballroom dancing with a beautiful heiress, for example—she would not humiliate herself.
It was such a minor goal, and yet she had fallen well short of it.
As calculated as her decision not to send him a note was, it had not occurred to her to wonder if there might be a reason for him to expect one. Given the situation, she did not think she’d been obliged to, and although she wasn’t sorry to have failed to consider the matter from his point of view, she did regret his worry. That Aunt Vera’s manipulations had caused him genuine anxiety struck her as just as surprising as it was unfair.
He did indeed deserve an apology.
Believing he’d received it, Kesgrave dipped his head in acknowledgment.
“No, wait, that wasn’t it,” Bea insisted. “That ‘I’m sorry’ was for not replying to your request, which I felt required some consideration. You are no doubt accustomed to instantaneous replies and as such probably do not recognize the furrowed brow of deliberation. No matter. You are correct, your grace. My aunt, who still questions the stability of my mental faculties, saw an opportunity to keep me at home and did not hesitate to use it to her fullest advantage. As you said, the discoloration was entirely gone by the middle of the second week, but every time I claimed to be fully healed, Aunt Vera would detect evidence of bruising and insist I remain inside. It did not occur to me that you would interpret these events as a sign of significant damage, and for that I’m genuinely sorry.”
“Thank you,” the duke said with unexpected gravity. “And I’m sorry that I wasn’t more suspicious of your aunt’s motives. If I had been a little less concerned, I probably would have noticed how deviously imprecise her answers were. Truly, she’s as evasive as a damned spy. If we had sent her to Elba, we would have known Napoleon’s escape plan before he boarded the Inconstant.”
Although the image of her aunt consorting with Napoleon’s generals on the Mediterranean island to gather secret intelligence was without question amusing, Bea summoned instead the unpleasant memory of Lady Victoria twirling happily in Kesgrave’s arms. She recalled the grace and elegance in every line of their beautifully matched forms.
Cultivated like orchids, she reminded herself.
This extreme measure was taken in a bid to smother the spark of hope that had flared when the duke admitted that his concern for her had clouded his ability to think. She knew it was only his sense of responsibility that had made her seemingly slow recovery feel dire—he’d even said so himself during his long speech—and she silently repeated, Common decency, common decency, a few times in her head until she was on firmer footing.
“And you will now, I trust, tell me the rest,” Kesgrave said, throwing her once more into confusion. “Ah, I see you’re furrowing your brow once more. Thanks to your earlier consideration, I know you are deliberating again. Do note, Miss Hyde-Clare, how quick I am to process new concepts and apply them to practical situations.”
The glint of humor in his eyes revealed that he was enjoying one of his favorite pastimes: mocking himself as a way of teasing her. As charming as she found it, the tactic provided no elucidation and she remained puzzled. “Ah, but this is the wrinkled brow of bewilderment. I do not know what you mean by the ‘rest.’”
“And now you are being deliberately obtuse,” he said accusingly. “Recall, if you please, my last glimpse of you: bruised and swollen and wearing your cousin Russell’s clothes as you stood on the top step waiting for the butler to open the door. How did you explain your appearance? I cannot believe you told your family the truth.”
As much as Bea wanted to take his continued interest in the mundane details of her life as proof of his regard, she knew it was ordinary curiosity. Anyone who had seen her disappear into her aunt’s house that day would want to know how she’d escaped punishment. “Mr. Davies,” she said.
Kesgrave understood at once and nodded with approval. “An excellent fellow. Is there no end to his usefulness?”
“Presumably, his funeral is the decisive end,” she said, “but if I find myself in another difficult position he may have to be exhumed.”
“I gather his funeral was a rather unrestrained affair?” he asked, then immediately went on to answer his own question. “Let me guess, one of his brothers objected to your presence at what was a family event and inferred
from your lewd glances at his sister-in-law that you intended to take advantage of a grieving widow.”
“His father,” she corrected, surprised by how closely his explanation mirrored the one she’d used. She didn’t know if this resemblance was because their minds functioned in a similar way or because he knew how her mind worked, but it filled her with delight. Feeling the warmth of perfect accord, she smiled brilliantly at him.
No, Lady Victoria, she reminded herself forcefully.
Kesgrave drew his brows together—the wrinkled brow of confusion!—and she realized with horror that she had spoken aloud.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
The hot flush that covered her cheeks was instantaneous, and she felt a sudden, intense desire to run away. The only thing that kept her rooted to the spot was her conviction that fleeing would be tantamount to making an admission. Determinedly, she tried to think of a plausible reason for spouting the mortifying non sequitur. No, Lady Victoria.
“No Lady Victoria, I see,” she announced a little too vehemently when inspiration struck. “She is absent from your side. I understand from my aunt that you live in each other’s pockets. How did you manage to separate yourself?”
The question sounded slyly disparaging to her own ears, but Kesgrave noticed nothing amiss and simply said, “I have my ways.”
Of all the possible responses he could have given, Bea thought this was the most damning, as it was informal and offhand, indicating a long-standing familiarity. She could hear him saying the exact same words to the heiress on their tenth wedding anniversary when she opened a gaily wrapped box to find the stunning sapphire necklace she’d long desired. “How did you know?” she would ask in coy surprise. Then he, with a mysterious smile and a shrug: “I have my ways.”