Come Near Me (25 page)

And her own?

No. She was happy. Really, she was happy.

~ ~ ~

Adam put down his wineglass and clutched at his
stomach, doubled over with laughter at Richard’s unexpected joke at
the Prince Regent’s expense. What made the joke, one he’d heard
before, so much funnier was that Sherry quite obviously hadn’t the
faintest idea what Richard’s mention of cherry brandy had to do
with anything, so that her polite, puzzled smile sent Adam into
whoops all over again.

As Geoff leaned over to whisper in Sherry’s ear,
explaining the Prince Regent’s recourse to cherry brandy in order
to try to screw himself up to the sticking point—quite literally—on
his wedding night to an unappealing bride, Adam turned to grin at
Richard. “You’re a bad man, Dickie. A very bad man. And now I
believe my brother is corrupting my dear, innocent wife.”

“Oh, I very much doubt that your sweetest Sherry is
easily corruptible, my dear Daventry,” Richard said in that easy
way he had of complimenting and at the same time giving the feeling
that he was speaking of something deeper. “In fact, I believe I’m
counting on it.”

“Counting on it?” Adam shook his head. “I don’t
understand.”

Richard’s smile was devoid of artifice. “It’s simple
enough. I have never before met a woman so marvelously invulnerable
to my charms. You may not have noticed, being a man and all of
that, but I’m rather pretty.”

“I have a friend who’d offer to break your nose for
you, make you less pretty,” Adam said, grinning.

“Why, thank you, Daventry, I’ll give that some
thought. It’s a curse, you understand, this pretty face of mine. My
winning manner, all of it. Caused me no end of female troubles. But
Sherry doesn’t care about any of that. She only laughs at me, and
considers me to be her good friend. It’s refreshing, having a
female as a friend, such a boon companion over these past weeks.
But you hold her heart, my dear Daventry. Completely and totally.
It must make you very proud.”

“Grateful would be a better word, Dickie,” Adam
said, motioning for his friend to rise and follow him outside, into
the lush rose garden, leaving Sherry and Geoff behind to gossip,
something Geoff enjoyed very much. “I’ve been meaning to ask you
something these past weeks,” he said, once they were standing on
the flagstones, looking down at the profusion of perfect blooms
that seemed to glow in the moonlight. “You don’t have to answer me
if you don’t wish to but, when you were in London did you perhaps
make the acquaintance of the duchess of Westbrook?”

“In your gardens the evening of your ball, you’d
have to mean, as I was only in London for the one night? Oh, dear.
I do recall a noise, and my companion’s concern that perhaps we
were not alone. Was that you, then, sharing a bit of romance and
moonlight with your own wife? How wonderfully romantic of you,”
Richard responded, grinning at Adam over the top of his wineglass.
“But for shame, Daventry, asking me to betray a confidence,
compromise a lady’s honor.” His grin widened. “Which I just did,
didn’t I? Thank goodness Sherry, bless her, appears not to have
made the connection.”

“Which I pray she never will, as she’d probably then
be too embarrassed ever to see you again,” Adam said, smiling a
little at the memory of what had been a most enjoyable evening.
“Tell me, are you rusticating to hide from tradesmen, or from the
duke? If it’s the latter, it may ease your mind if I were to tell
you that he has long since ceased caring what his wife does.”

“Poor Melinda,” Richard said, sighing theatrically.
“Such an unhappy creature, so unsatisfied with her lot. Someday, if
I feel in the mood for tears and trembling lips, I shall have to
ask her what she wants. Although I believe I know.”

“Everything?” Adam suggested, pulling two cheroots
from his pocket and handing one to Richard. “That’s what she has
always wanted, you know. Everything.”

“Yes, most people do,” Richard agreed, accepting the
cheroot, then bending to light it from one of the small flambeaux
that hung against the wall. “Money, power, beauty, good luck,
health, the destruction of their enemies. Fame. Immortality. No one
is ever completely happy, totally content.”

“I am,” Adam said, drawing deep on his own cheroot.
“I can’t think of a thing I’d want different in my life. Not a
single thing.”

“And Sherry,” Richard said, nodding. “She feels the
same. In fact, my friend, the two of you are almost sloppy in your
perfect happiness. Geoff said as much to me yesterday as we were
trying out his new pair when you were called away to tend to that
wagon that got stuck in a puddle, or some such thing. Have you even
seen Geoff’s new pair? They’re smack up to the echo, Daventry, just
ask him.”

Adam felt the familiar pang of guilt that assailed
him whenever he thought about Geoff. Between the unusually heavy
press of estate business—there seemed to be a new emergency every
day of late—and the hours he spent with Sherry, there was precious
little time for brotherly companionship these days. If he had a
regret, Geoff was it. “I’m grateful Geoff has your company,
Dickie,” he said, blowing out a thin blue stream of smoke. “My
marriage has made a few fairly drastic changes in our lives, all of
them at my brother’s expense, unfortunately.”

“I enjoy his company,” Richard said, sticking his
cheroot between his teeth, smiling around it. “In fact, all three
of us have been having quite a jolly time while you labor so
dutifully in the fields. Did Sherry tell you about our picnic the
other day? She goaded Geoff and me into building kites and racing
across the field with them. Geoff ran into a tree.”

Adam laughed. “You mean his kite got tangled in a
tree, don’t you?”

“No,” Richard answered, his grin wicked. “Although
Geoff might try to tell the story that way one day. The truth is,
he was so busy watching his kite that he quite forgot to pay
attention to where he was going. Then the kite got caught up in the
tree.”

Adam tossed his cheroot out over the balustrade,
watched its glow as it arched high, then dropped into the gardens
where Augustus would no doubt find it the next morning, and shake
his head sadly at the discovery. “I would have paid a monkey to see
that,” he said consideringly. “You know, Dickie, I think I’ve been
neglecting my brother shamelessly, don’t you? What do you say we
plan something for tomorrow? Can you suggest anything?”

Richard smiled, tossed his own cheroot after Adam’s.
“Oh, I suppose I could think of something. After all, I promised
your wife I’d be court jester for the summer.”

“You did?” Adam asked. “Why?”

“Why? My goodness, Daventry, do you know you
suddenly resemble a thundercloud? I don’t in the least mind amusing
your brother and your wife while you go about the business of being
lord of the manor, or whatever it is you do. In fact, I’m having
quite a marvelous time, even better than I could have hoped when I
first rented Frame Cottage.”

Adam leaned against the balustrade, his head dropped
against his chest as he inspected his toes. “I’ve never had a
summer this busy,” he said, speaking almost to himself. “One
problem tumbling on top of the next, all of them requiring my
presence. During the Season, I could be with her every day. Sherry
assures me she’s happy, totally able to amuse herself, but she’s so
young, and without a drop of experience at running a household like
Daventry Court.” He looked up at Richard Brimley. “Not that she
wants to, you understand. Tell me, what do you and Sherry and my
mischief-loving brother do all day, Dickie?”

Richard shrugged. “Besides watching Geoff run into
trees, you mean? Well, I suppose we just amble, and talk, and
inspect the world. There’s a lot of it out there, you know, other
than your cultivated fields and the rest. And, we have fun, just
for the sake of it. Tomorrow, for instance. Geoff has challenged me
to a curricle race, to show off his new pair. To get into the
spirit of the thing, Sherry has kindly gifted Geoff with her
colors, which he’ll wear on his arm as I beat him all hollow. Mere
children’s games, Daventry, I promise you, while you do all the
serious work. I’d be ashamed, if I weren’t enjoying myself so
thoroughly.”‘

He tipped his head, looking at Adam curiously.
“Hasn’t Sherry told you all about it? The race, I mean, and the
rest of it?”

She hadn’t, actually. She didn’t tell him much of
anything. Sherry only told Adam that she’d had a lovely day, and
then he’d tell her a bit of estate business, all of it boring, and
then they’d fall into bed and make love, which was of infinitely
greater interest than walks around the estate or crop thinning.
They were very good at making love. They weren’t, it now occurred
to him, quite so proficient at talking to each other.

Adam pushed himself away from the balustrade,
heading back toward the doors to the drawing room. “You know what,
Dickie,” he said as he stopped, to allow the other man to walk
through the doorway ahead of him, “I have a fairly decent pair of
my own. What time is this race tomorrow? I think it’s time I taught
your pretty face a little humility.”

~ ~ ~

Adam smiled as Sherry burrowed closer against him
beneath the covers, the two of them happily tired and replete after
making love. He kissed the top of her head, slid his fingers into
her hair. “Happy, love?” he asked automatically. All he wanted from
life was that Sherry be happy.

“Ummmm,” she mumbled, sliding her arm across his
waist. “That, I believe, sir, would depend upon your definition of
the word,” she then said teasingly, taking them both back to the
day they’d met, as he’d sat rump-down in the stream, and she’d
asked him if he was very wet. “I’m not sad. Not in the slightest
bit melancholy. Then again, happy may be too mild a
definition.”

Adam slid down the pillows slightly, to grin
straight into her face. “Give me a few minutes to recover, minx,
and I’ll see what I can do about making you ecstatic.”

She smiled, put a hand to his cheek. “Oh, Adam, I do
love you,” she said, then kissed his mouth. “So very, very
much.”

He picked up a lock of her long hair and twirled it
around his fingertip. “Tonight, Dickie said nobody seems content
with their lot in life. That they always want more. Until I met
you, darling, I would have agreed with him.”

“But not now?”

“Not ever again. Daventry Court, my title,
everything could disappear tomorrow, and I wouldn’t miss it. As
long as I still had your love.”

Sherry pressed her cheek against his palm. “That’s
also what Dickie says.”

Adam tensed. “I beg your pardon?”

She looked at him curiously for a moment, then
giggled. “Oh, no. No, Adam. I don’t mean he feels that way about
me.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Adam said, lying back
against the pillows once more. “For a moment there, I thought I’d
have to climb out of this nice, warm bed and go kill the
fellow.”

Sherry sat up, reached for the dressing gown that
still somehow managed to remain lying at the bottom of the tangled
covers, and slipped into it, covering her most delightful
nakedness. She left the bed, returning a few moments later with two
half-filled glasses of wine.

“Dickie’s very deep, isn’t he, for all he tries to
pretend he’s silly and shallow?” she asked, handing one of the
glasses to Adam, who now sat propped against the pillows, bare to
his waist beneath the covers, looking at her in wonder. He thought
they had been about to make love again, and now it appeared they
were going to have a talk. He’d wanted to talk, but he also
wondered if he really wanted Richard Brimley to be the subject of
their conversation. He’d wanted to tell her he planned to join them
tomorrow for the curricle race. And yet, suddenly Richard Brimley
interested him more.

“Deep? I’d say he’s muddled. Telling you he’d give
up everything, gladly, for true love, and telling me that no one is
ever happy, always wants more, even if they have everything good in
abundance. Don’t you find that contradictory?”

“No, Adam, I find that sad,” she told him, taking a
sip of her wine. “It’s because he lost at love. He’s become jaded,
cynical, and whatever other words you can think of to describe a
sad, sad man. He told me all about it.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Adam sat up more fully,
holding out his arm so that Sherry could lean against him. “And now
you’re going to tell me, aren’t you? Unless that would mean
betraying a confidence?”

“I don’t think so. Besides, Dickie told it to me as
a fairy tale, or an epic poem like those Mrs. Forrest used to
insist I read, pretending it didn’t happen to him at all.”

“So perhaps it didn’t, darling. Perhaps he was
simply telling you a story. Did you ever think of that?”

Sherry twisted around to look up at him in that
long-suffering way of women who know that men can never understand
anything unless it has something to do with war or crops or hunting
dogs. “Do you want to hear this, or don’t you?”

“I am hanging on your every word, darling,” Adam
teased, kissing the tip of her nose. “Now, to begin. Once upon a
time...”

“Wretch,” she countered, sitting back against his
shoulder once more. “All right. Once upon a time there was
perfection. Complete happiness. Beauty. Truth. And the most perfect
creature in the midst of all this perfection and truth and
beauty.”

“In other words, Dickie was in love and seeing the
world through a lover’s eyes. Yes?”

“I suppose so. He was so happy, so in love with this
perfect creature. There couldn’t be a more perfect happiness. Until
one day, one horrible, terrible day, this perfect creature decided
there should be more. That it wasn’t fair that this perfection be
seen and enjoyed by so few. That this perfect happiness, this
perfection, must be shared.”