Gareth: Lord of Rakes (24 page)

As Felicity found a gazebo in a shaded back corner, she considered becoming Gareth’s mistress for a time and putting off the parting that loomed so close at hand. In the moral labyrinth that was his sense of honor, he’d likely be appalled if she suggested such a thing.

As appalled as she’d be when Mr. Brenner or some equally discreet, well-paid intermediary presented her with a tasteful, expensive parting gift.

She bent to sniff the gentle, sweet fragrance of a daffodil—the floral symbol of chivalry. Better by far to love a garden than to love the passionate, difficult, dear man who owned it.

***

When Gareth returned, he found Felicity sitting on a bench, knees drawn up, her expression thoughtful.

“You designed this garden, didn’t you?”

How could she know such a thing? And could she look any more lovely and sad, perched on a simple bench? He took a seat on the bench, not touching, so he might fix the picture of her in his mind more firmly.

“It’s my design. As a younger man, I fancied myself the next incarnation of Capability Brown, only better than he, of course. I loved to be outdoors, though even in my family, if I’d announced my intention to become a gardener, it would have raised eyebrows. So I designed gardens, and when nobody was looking, I planted a few.”

“You should resume your hobby, Gareth,” Felicity said, twirling a lemony daffodil between her fingers. “You have talent, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you were happy digging here in the dirt. How old were you?”

What odd advice, and yet he’d put all of his offices, estate rooms, and personal chambers where they would afford him a view of the gardens. Why hadn’t he noticed this earlier?

“I would have been fifteen when this garden was put in. Somebody has done a good job with it, though. Since then, everything would have had to have been dug up, divided, re-spaced, fertilized. A garden is a lot of work.”

She closed her eyes and tipped her face up to the afternoon sun, probably courting a crop of freckles and heedless of her peril.

Gareth tried to imprint that image on his heart, too. “We have some time before dinner is served. How would you like to spend it?”

“You are trying to make amends for our quarrels, but this charm is… Gareth… I have no defense against it. None.”

Is that what he’d been up to? “I never mean to quarrel with you. Your silences shred my defenses, Felicity.”

He’d meant to please her with a confession—a man could make confessions to a woman from whom he’d soon part—but she looked more sad than pleased.

“I would like to sit out here with you, maybe on a blanket, and talk. I know this is no small boon I request of you. Your staff will likely remark that we’re spending time in a manner wholly unproductive of anything except, possibly, a greater understanding of each other.”

“I would like that too.” He’d
love
it, though her suggestion was as ill-advised as it was brave. “I’ll be back.”

When he returned a few minutes later, he had a thick quilt folded over his shoulder and a small wicker hamper in his hand. “Miss Worthington, choose your spot.”

If she’d ever had proper suitors—regular, proper suitors—they would have addressed her as such.

She took the request seriously, picking out a place in dappled sun, the trees around it having only begun to leaf out. A hedge of flowering forsythia ran around three sides, making her choice—at ground level—quite private. She led Gareth over to her preferred location, and he spread the blanket, got her situated, then joined her.

He started to tug at his boots, then paused, feeling a bit… sheepish. “Do you mind if I take off my boots?”

“I won’t mind if you don’t mind me doing likewise,” she said, unlacing a half-boot. When they were in their stocking feet, Gareth realized that callow-swaining was something with which he had no recent experience.

“Now what?” he asked, leaning his weight back on his arms.

Felicity smiled at him, that soft, benevolent, glowing smile. Then she curled herself up to rest her head on his thigh.

“Now,” she said, sighing and closing her eyes, “we have a nice visit.”

He smoothed a hand down her jawline, feeling a welling tenderness for his favorite spinster and inconvenient envy for the swains who would court her properly. “What do we visit about?”

“Suppose you tell me about your father? You never talk about him, but I gather he was a fine gentleman.”

“I have shied away from thoughts of my father,” he said, tracing the feathery contours of her hairline. “He was, as you say, a fine gentleman. But I am curious why you characterize him thus?”

“Because Lady Heathgate loved him so, and hasn’t found his like in almost ten years. I doubt she’s even thought to look. I also know he was a fine gentleman because of how you and Andrew are with each other, and how you have both turned out. And you miss him.”

“That, I do,” Gareth agreed, plucking a stem of grass and tickling her nose.

She batted his blade of grass aside. “What about your older brother? Stop that, Gareth, or I shall be forced to take stern measures.”

“Merciful saints, not those again,” he teased back, then fell silent for a moment before answering her question. “I miss Adam the most, of all of them. He was a lot like Andrew, a more blithe spirit than I, even to the point of lightheartedness. He looked like Andrew too, not quite as hulking as I am.”

“You are not hulking, Gareth. You are more muscular than Andrew.”

“Adam was a peacemaker, full of charm and kindness,” Gareth went on, accepting her chiding. “When he died, I was at an age when an older brother was a real asset. An older brother is ideally suited to conveying certain things about how a young fellow is to go on in life. He had a grace about him, an ease. He could explain to me how to deal with losing at cards, how to parlay with a lady of easy virtue, how to treat an overindulgence of spirits, and he did it with such a generous nonchalance I never felt like the gauche stripling I was.”

“And you provided that same guidance to Andrew,” Felicity guessed, shielding her eyes to peer up at him.

She had the most beautiful, sincere eyes. “I tried, but to be honest, I avoided Andrew after the accident. He would come down from university between terms, and I knew he wanted to spend time with me, but I was too busy, or off trolling at a house party, until he gave up on me.”

To put that history into words caused an ache in the vicinity of Gareth’s heart, but gave him a goal, too.

“I don’t think Andrew gave up on you so much as he grew up on you,” Felicity murmured. “Do you and he ever talk about the accident?”

“We’ve mentioned it in passing to each other occasionally, but he blames himself for being able to save only Mother. I don’t bring it up, because I don’t want to cause him hurt.”

“And he doesn’t want to cause you hurt, so the whole topic sits there like a lame horse in the middle of a thoroughfare,” Felicity said, rubbing her cheek against his thigh. “You make a very firm pillow.”

“Well, then here.” Gareth laid himself out flat on his back at right angles to her, so she might make a pillow of his stomach. “Better?”

“Marginally,” she said in tones suggesting she was being diplomatic. “So what happened that the boat capsized?”

The sky above was a beautiful canvas of blue and white, the breeze scented with flowers, and Felicity’s voice a melody against Gareth’s body. In nearly a decade of being haunted by the accident, Gareth had discussed it with not one other soul, and yet he wanted to answer her question now. Needed to.

“I have never questioned Andrew about this, but there was, of course, an inquest. The court concluded it had simply been a matter of sudden rough seas and high winds overcoming a pleasure vessel that should never have been out in such weather, and certainly not so far from shore. What the court discreetly omitted from its report was that an enormous quantity of alcohol had been consumed, at least by those gentlemen older than Andrew, and the family had been quarreling bitterly for much of the day before this outing.”

Though Julia Ponsonby had not been family, and Gareth had been quarreling with her even as his elders debated the merits of having him offer for the woman.

“Did you remain ashore to avoid the continued contention?” Felicity asked. He felt her rolling to her side so she faced his feet. Her change in position allowed him to stroke her hair, teasing the occasional pin from its assigned location.

“I don’t know why I stayed on shore,” Gareth said softly. “I’ve puzzled over it at great length. I am not a good sailor, for one thing, and being very proud at that age, I did not want to be the butt of the ribbing I would get. I was also quite disgusted, as only young people can be, with the inebriation and posturing of my elders. And finally, I wanted badly to be alone. Even then, I had little tolerance for being told what to do, what to wear, and with whom to dance. My parents cut me a wide berth, but my uncle and my grandfather tried to improve upon me and provide me direction constantly.”

Felicity pushed up onto her elbows and regarded Gareth with a frown.

“You describe the family gathering from hell. What was everybody quarreling about?”

“Family matters.” About the scandal Julia promised to rain down on them all, claiming she carried the heir’s child, when what Gareth knew of the woman suggested paternity might be ascribed to any one of several different titled fellows—if she were truly carrying.

He laid his forearm over his eyes, blocking out the lovely sky. Beneath the perfume of the flowers, he caught a hint of lavender. “They quarreled about me, about Andrew, about investments, about my cousin’s education, about whether the little creature who spooked the horse was a hare or a rabbit, about anything and everything. My own family was not much for undignified discourse, but Grandfather was a shouter, and I believe my uncle and my cousin became shouters in sheer self-defense. They had been shouting at me regarding holy matrimony, which topic I yet find trying.”

“I am forming a picture in my mind,” Felicity said, “of the young man you were: shy, determined, smart, hardworking, and serious—a fellow who loved peace and quiet, flowers, and order. A fellow who would sit for a portrait obediently enough, though he’d rather be off inspecting the home farm or reading an improving tome when he wasn’t—cautiously, and under the protective watch of his older brother—dipping his toe in the tamest of vices young men indulge in.”

She fell silent, a kindness on her part. She’d described a young man completely unprepared for the cruelty and artifice of titled Society.

Something turned over in Gareth’s mind and in the center of his chest.

Viewed through Felicity’s eyes, that young fellow deserved not scorn, but compassion. He deserved respect for surviving the tempest of Society’s cruelty, for making his way to shore in any condition at all.

“You,” Felicity said, sitting up and lifting a leg over Gareth’s belly, “have endured much.” She snuggled down onto his chest, right exactly where he wanted her. He settled his arms around her and kept his eyes closed, the better to feel the glory and comfort of her.

“This recitation of yours makes me feel protective of you, sir, and quite angry with all those relatives who left you alone to face the lions.”

“I suppose I was angry at them too,” Gareth said, his hand cradling the back of her head.

“You
suppose
?” she shot back. “They left you to face an inquest, shoulder the title, parent Andrew, comfort your mother, and learn how to deal with the predators of Polite Society, when all you should have been doing was designing gardens. If they weren’t dead, I’d be tempted to see to it myself.”

He smiled and did not open his eyes. Felicity would make somebody a wonderfully protective mother, and a very loyal wife, but not him. Never him.

“You are so fierce,” he murmured, leaning up to kiss her briefly, because for all the misery of their discussion, he also felt curiously happy. “What about you? Are you angry with your parents for dying?”

Felicity nuzzled his throat then sighed. Her hair was gathering the afternoon sun, warming Gareth’s fingers as he loosened her braided bun.

“I was furious, particularly with my mother, because I was quite young at the time. She was an unfashionably involved mother, spending far more time with me than was thought wise. My father left my upbringing to her, of course, but I don’t think he disapproved.”

Felicity, young, motherless, and angry. How he wished their paths had crossed sooner—much sooner. “Was your parents’ marriage a love match?”

“Good heavens, no.” She fell silent, thinking thoughts Gareth was not brave enough to probe. “They came to have affection for each other, but my mother’s general approach toward my father was gratitude that he would have her, for she brought only a dowry to the match, whereas he had the title. She made no demands on him whatsoever and went out of her way to make sure I knew what a worthy man he was.”

“Was he? Worthy, I mean?”

The answer mattered more than it should. The fellow was long dead, but his inability to manage was indirectly responsible for the dubious manner in which Felicity had come to Gareth’s doorstep.

“Like another young man we recently discussed, he resented being told whom to marry, where to live, when to produce a son, and so forth. He had a rebellious streak he did not outlive,” she concluded. “I do know he came to regret how little effort he’d put into his marriage. He told me once, shortly before he died, he’d wasted the love that could have grown between him and my mother, trading it in for reckless pride. He made poetic statements like that frequently, but he didn’t live a particularly poetic life.”

“Were you upset to see him go?” Gareth asked, sliding his hands down along Felicity’s rib cage.

“Of course I was. He was the only parent I had left, and he wasn’t a bad man or a bad father. Fortunately, it took some time for the financial ramifications of impending escheat to manifest—we had an aunt of last resort, at the time—or I probably would not have been able to cope at all.”

An aunt of last resort, and Felicity had been comforted by that.