Elisabeth Fairchild (2 page)

Chapter Two

Seventeen-year-old Patience remembered.

Memory gathered about her like the colors of the evening, fragile as the petals of a delicate flower: rose and violet, the walls on one side of the street touched with gold, the other side fallen into darkness, a visual echo of past and present, one so clear to her, the other cloaked in shadow.

A warm breath of a breeze caressed her curls, played with the heavy satin of her new scarlet domino, lifting it like wings, kicking the hem across Richard’s thigh as she took the cast-iron step into his brother’s canary yellow coach. Nine years had passed. Nine years in which she had depended upon the unshakable support of his gray-gloved hand.

She had kept the memory of that afternoon—with all its potential—close through the passage of the years. She had relived the promise of it, the pulse-racing sense of the forbidden, the heat of Pip’s breath at her knee, the cat’s-paw warmth of his hand at her ankle. Her secret, like a caged bird, freed for no one, trusted to no one. Not even Richard.

She had imagined—oh, how much she had imagined, heart fluttering, thoughts atwitter—what every following encounter with Pip would be like.

And tonight she would find out again. Richard meant to take her to him. To her dear, beloved Pip.

Tonight would be a magical night—she knew it. The thrill of possibilities, of potential, gathered along her spine, the base of her neck, in the tips of her fingers and toes. It stirred butterflies in her stomach and rib cage.

“Pretty domino,” Richard said quietly, with the same observant intensity he had possessed since childhood, with the same ageless moss agate eyes.

“Thank you.” Patience gathered the luxurious folds of material around her, smoothing the satin that draped her knees as she settled against the squabs. She was so much older, so much wiser than she had been that long-ago afternoon.

A better player, she thought.

He followed her in, the coach dipping and swaying until he settled, the sun catching him full in the face, revealing in harsh detail features she knew as well as her own. He smelled of cedar and lime, tangy and crisp, the scent he always wore.

“Color suits you,” he said.

Trust Richard to notice. Dear Richard. Dependable Richard. He was still her mother’s favorite.

The domino was a costly wealth of deep scarlet, fully lined in black. Red brought out the roses in her cheeks, and deepened the rather ordinary brown of her hair. Patience loved to wear red whenever she could, though her mother considered it far too flamboyant a color for a young woman of taste. Quite proper for a young girl’s Christmas dress, not at all the thing for a young woman’s masquerade domino. And yet Patience had held out for it, and at last Mama had relented despite Papa’s protest that it was a foolhardy expense, that she could just as easily wear her sister, Pru’s, hand-me-down yellow.

But Mama knew canary yellow did not suit Patience’s complexion. The domino had never looked good on Pru. Papa had relented.

Richard’s compliment was well appreciated, therefore, but it was not Richard’s compliments Patience sought. He was too ready with them. Whenever they encountered one another he made a point of saying something politely complimentary. It was his way.

She would much rather hear compliments from another who was less generous with pretty words.

“Are you sure he will be there?” she asked, sitting forward. She bounced a little in anticipation, which was not at all ladylike, but Patience had never found it easy to be ladylike every single moment of the day.

“I am absolutely sure.” Richard turned to look out the window at the dark and light shuffle of houses, like a great deck of brick-faced cards. Shadow and sunlight played across his features, making a mystery of the familiar. Dark and light colored his voice as he said, “Pip never misses an opportunity to impress.”

Pip. Dearest Pip. She had not seen him—how long had it been?—could it be more than four years? Thirteen she had been the last time they had climbed trees together, and played backgammon and chess. Thirteen, and still not as ladylike as her mother had wished. Indeed, she had felt completely green in that last encounter, awkward and spotty. Pip and Richard had seemed so much older at sixteen. Beyond her touch. Especially Pip, who seemed to avoid all awkwardness as he grew, the years so very kind to him in every way but one.

His father had died at an early age, as had Richard’s. She could not fathom such a painful loss. Her own father was a picture of health and happiness, ruddy cheeked and clear eyed. She could not imagine life without him.

She had heard much of Pip, of course. His bereavement had vaulted him to fresh position and wealth. Everyone in London spoke well of him. Handsome Philip Yorke, recent heir to the Royston title and fortune, able guardian of his younger brothers’ futures. He was an earl now. Clever Pip. Lucky Pip. The
ton
’s darling. Catch of the Season. Rumor flew he was soon to be snared. That a certain wealthy young lady had captured his heart.

Patience had so long imagined herself in such a role that she had been startled and pained to discover her opportunity lost.

“Is he in love with her, do you think?”

If anyone would know it would be Richard—dark, quiet, sensible Richard, who had stood by Pip through the pranks he had been famous for at Eton, who had convinced him not to gamble away all of his fortune on the horses, who reminded him often that he set an example for his younger brothers.

Too bad, really, that Richard held no such sway with his elder brother, Chase, heir to the Cavendish fortune. Chase was very like Pip. He liked to gamble. He was often to be seen in the company of low women. He drank to excess. Rumor had it he ran through the family fortune with unseemly haste, no thought for the future—no example for his younger brother, who did his level best, as his brother’s bookkeeper, to salvage the family’s waning fortune.

Richard turned from the window. His lips thinned as he said carefully, “Pip has always possessed a great capacity for falling in love.”

Generally with the most unsuitable women, Patience had heard her mother complain. There had been a dreadful rumor that Pip had run away to Gretna Green with a beautiful ballet dancer the week before his father died—that Richard had gone after him, that he had hushed up the whole affair. When she had asked Richard if it was true he had said, “You must not believe every mean-spirited bit of gossip you hear, Patience.”

“Will she make him a suitable wife?” she asked with trepidation as they turned a corner, wheels rumbling.

Richard nodded, frowning against a sudden onslaught of sunlight. It bathed his face in gold, made his features seem suddenly masked. “Completely unobjectionable,” he said. “He breaks pattern. But then, Pip is always full of surprises.”

Patience did not know whether to take heart from such a remark or to fall prey to despair. “Do you think he will be glad to see me?” she asked wistfully as the coach crossed Westminster Bridge, the Thames agleam with brassy light, the sound of flowing water soothing.

Richard looked at her without speaking, his eyes like polished agate, the sun gilding his lashes, jaundicing his complexion. It glared too starkly upon his Roman nose, a king’s nose, such bright emphasis not at all flattering. But then his mouth twisted in a most winsome smile—the smile of their youth—an expression she saw far too infrequently these days. In that fleeting moment his features were transformed, shifting from blatantly unattractive to compellingly handsome, as if he were clay, remolded by a hand of light.

They rumbled away from the bridge, into the sudden shadow of narrow lanes and tall warehouses. For a moment his shape was indeterminate, swallowed by the darkness.

“Pip will be thrilled to see you, Patience.” When he spoke, nothing but light in his tone, the sun found him as if drawn, and he was Richard again, just plain Richard. “How could it be otherwise, my dear? Is that scent of jasmine I smell? Quite captivating, I assure you.” A faint flush stained his cheeks, as it had when they were children and he was in some way flustered.

Blinded by a sudden shaft of sunlight, she smiled with the idea that Pip might find her equally flustering now that she was grown. She was not a beauty, as her mother was all too ready to tell her, but Papa had said on more than one occasion, “Patience is pretty with youth, my dear, and a dab hand at choosing colors that suit, holding a proud posture, and arranging her hair.”

She liked her hair. It was thick and lustrous, and while it had not much natural curl, one might, with the assistance of a curling iron, coax it into whatever shape one desired.

It dangled in ringlets now, gathered in a dark knot above her right ear, with crimped bangs to soften the height of her forehead. She had taken pains. It was a flattering style. Richard had approved. He glanced at the cluster of curls once again as they turned onto Kennington Lane.

“Time to don your mask,” he said. “Shall I help you in tying it so you do not crush your curls?”

“Please do.” She turned her back to him, pressing the beribboned bit of scarlet silk and pasteboard to her face.

He fumbled for the ribbon, fingers grazing the edge of her ear, the sensation sending a thrill down her spine. She wondered, with a deep sigh, what it would feel like to be touched so by Pip.

“I must say I am surprised your parents agreed to your coming to Vauxhall.” Richard drew the ribbons tight, his touch gentle and sure. “It is a more dangerous haunt than in their youth.”

Behind her mask Patience flushed, ashamed. Her cheeks felt hot to the touch. “I did not precisely tell them, Richard.”

“Oh?” He sat forward abruptly and gently turned her so that he might look into her eyes, his expression, as was his custom, all too serious. “What exactly did you tell them?”

She hoped that the mask overshadowed her guilt; She could not look long into that delving green gaze, could not bear the disappointment that pulled down the corners of his mouth and gave flight to blackbird brows.

“Only that you had asked me to accompany you to a ridotto alfresco, and that you promised to have me home before midnight. Mama never questions where I am going when you have agreed to escort me, for she says you would never allow me to fall into bad company.”

He exhaled heavily, stirring the curls over her ear. “And what will she do if she discovers I am the bad company?”

“You?” She was startled he should say so, that he should think so. Mama was always singing Richard’s praises:
Dear, dependable Richard
, she called him.
A credit to his mother.

“How are you bad company?”

Richard patted impatiently at the brocade pockets that lined the door. “In agreeing to this foolish whim of yours to go to Vauxhall for no more reason than to surprise Pip with your presence in London.” His expression, even the tone of his voice, was distastefully serious as he plucked forth his mask, satin over pasteboard, like hers. “I am touched by your parents’ trust in me, and in honoring that trust you must promise to stay close the entire time we are here, for there are pickpockets and scalawags aplenty in the gardens.”

Patience nodded, curls bouncing, lower lip thrown out rather mulishly. She did not like it when Richard took such a scolding tone, when he treated her as if she were a little girl. Could he not see she was a woman grown? Old enough for marriage and children was surely old enough to decide she wished to go to Vauxhall for an evening.

Her petulant gloom was of momentary duration. Through the window, as Richard quietly donned his mask, she saw the little porched doorway he had described—in the midst of a redbrick wall, the entrance to Vauxhall—and streaming into it through the double Dutch doors, in the brilliant glow of the sunset, a line of similarly masked and dominoed guests.

In a sudden rush of crushed satin she pressed her nose to the window and cried out with irrepressible anticipation, “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Richard nodded and tapped his silver-topped ebony wood cane against the roof of the coach, which drew to a halt as he threw open the door and leapt out, extending his hand to help her descend.

“Make haste,” he said when she paused in the doorway to gape, anticipation rising, leaving her giddy with impending possibilities. “We must not hold up traffic.”

“Catch me,” she called lightheartedly, and flung herself out, knowing he would catch her as he had always caught her in her leaps from the oak tree they had climbed as children. Dear, dependable Richard.

Pip had been too small to catch her then, a head shorter than she, while Richard towered above the two of them, lanky and lean, broad of shoulder and strong of arm—stronger than she and Pip put together.

He had always caught her, swinging her as he did, so that her skirts belled about her ankles, and she felt as if she were flying.

He did not disappoint her. His arms were ready and waiting, the sturdy brace they had always been, a warm well of cedar and lime. He lifted her, whirling, cloak belling, so that it seemed she flew on scarlet wings, as if it were yesterday, as if they were children again. Dizzied, laughing, she fell against his chest, and he laughed as well—but not a carefree laugh. It was a nervous chuckle, and he wore an undeniably shocked look in the instant that he clasped her to him, preventing a certain fall. Before he could scold her for her unladylike behavior, she whirled away laughing, pulling him out of the street, tucking one demurely gloved hand into the crook of his elbow. “That was fun! Been back to the tree of late?”

“Right before I set out for London,” he said, as he patted his pockets for his change purse. “Took the dogs for a long walk, visited all our old haunts.”

She smiled and twirled giddily toward the entrance, domino flapping at her heels. She would make it fly again. She was ready for adventure, ready for the reuniting of their threesome—no more caged feelings, no more waiting for things to happen.

“And have our initials survived the years?”

“As if it were yesterday,” he said evenly.

She smiled, pleased. “Too many years since I have climbed our benevolent old oak.”