Hadrian (22 page)

“Hart Collins has cost me my family, unless you count the few winter months when Vim trades off with Fen for the pleasure of keeping me company. I could not abide it if that man costs me you, all over again.”

“All over again?”

“It’s getting late,” she said, focusing on the laces of her boots. “Tomorrow will be another long day, and I don’t want to spoil a lovely evening with more argument.”

Hadrian ducked when she flung his coat at him. “You’ll dance with me?”

“Do you never give up? I don’t dance, Hadrian. One waltz with Fen at the shearing party—with Fen, who has danced with Gran Carruthers and old Maudie—and there was talk enough. I cannot bring attention to myself that way without shaming my family.”

“The shame lies with those who begrudge you the right to any pleasure.” He stood and helped her to her feet, kissed her nose, then bent to retrieve the blanket. They shook it out and folded it, stashed the towels, soap, and liquor, then shook out and folded the oilskin on top of the hamper.

“I will never see this pond with quite the same eyes.” Hadrian slung his coat over his shoulder, his shirt gaping open in the moonlight. “I understand better now why the Romans had sacred groves and grottoes.”

“You blaspheme,” Avis responded, lacing her fingers with his.

“I do not,” he countered, taking a firm hold of her hand. “You’ve damned near enshrined Hart Collins’s disrespect of you, Avie. Allow me to do the same with a much happier memory.”

His words hurt, in part because they had the ring of truth, but also because they identified with ruthless clarity the distance between Avis and Hadrian. She had been the victim, he had not. She was the object of pity at best, scorn more often, and he was a favored local son, returning to take his proper place among the best families in the shire.

Avis forgot Collins’s disrespect at her peril. Many others were all too happy to remind her of it, and of her responsibility for what had happened that day.

“I should not have said that.” Hadrian’s voice in the darkness was laden with regret. “I speak out of frustration on your behalf.”

“You speak out of frustration with me.” While Avis was frustrated with her entire life.

“We’re exhausted,” he said, “and I am not entirely comfortable with allowing you to pleasure me, when I made no effort to see to your needs.”

“You’ve seen to my needs.” Needs she’d tried to ignore—for affection, companionship, and much more.

“Twice in twelve years, Avie? I deserve to have my proposal turned down if I regard that as adequate.”

“You deserve to be happy.” She needed for him to be happy, in fact. Also safe.

He brought her fingers to his lips. “Then you do not reject me. You merely play out the line.”

“You’re not a trout.”

“I rather felt like one.” His gaze on their joined hands was soft. “Dazed, gasping for breath, hopelessly undone.”

“Hush,” she chided, for they would soon be out of the trees, and his pleased expression was a scandal in itself. “Did Harold say anything else in his letter?”

“He said he loves Denmark and he’s already spent time with our second cousins, renewing old acquaintances. They assure him the winters there aren’t that bad.”

Hadrian drew her into his arms at the edge of the trees, then pressed his mouth to hers. “I haven’t kissed you enough.”

She leaned into him. “We kiss and my wits fail.”

So, of course, she kissed him and kissed him and kissed him.

“Do you know,” Fenwick said, as the crowd on Blessings’s back terrace shifted to create room for dancing, “some thieving miscreant has raided our stash by the pond?”

“Do tell.” Hadrian’s gaze was on Avie, who was demurely attired in a pale green frock with a raised waistline. The dress accentuated her willowy lines and made him long to smooth his hands down her curves. She could be in sackcloth, though, and he’d suffer the same impulse.

“Bothwell, you are in danger of becoming pathetic.”

Hadrian hoped he was in danger of becoming remarried. “I drank the damned brandy. Avie had a sip too.”

“Doubtless she was inebriated on your charms,” Fen murmured. “Have a care that Miss Prentiss doesn’t track you to your trysts and idylls. She was ready to trudge up that hill on the pretext that Avis needed her shawl.”

The last thing Avis Portmaine needed was a shawl. She needed fun, and freedom, and respect, and a husband who could ensure she had them in abundance.

“Thank you for dissuading dear Lily from her quest.” Where had Lily been when the ale station had needed packing up? “Just how bad is the gossip?”

They stood at the edge of the terrace, which had been pressed into service as a makeshift dance floor, while the gardens were full of picnic blankets for those who’d enjoyed the buffet. The fragrance of summer flowers mingled with the scent of a crowd enjoying its exertions, creating a uniquely bucolic, happy perfume.

Had these voluble, carefree people begrudged Avis Portmaine the joys they themselves indulged in without limit?

“I’m not the best person to ask about the gossip surrounding your lady.” Fen sipped his ale and tapped his toe the same as every other yeoman in attendance, but his gaze was keen, as if he contemplated mischief, and though the occasion was social, his knife was tucked into its sheath at his side.

“People have learned to watch what they say around me,” Fen went on, “and some of the talk is sympathetic. Most if it is judgmental. Avis pretends to virtue no longer hers, she puts on false airs of respectability, she’s after every man under the age of eighty, and so on. Avis is friendly and approachable to those beneath her station, and some see that as providing a basis in truth for the gossip.”

Fen was likely being diplomatic.

“She does nothing to earn such viciousness,” Hadrian said. “I don’t understand it.”

Gran Carruthers went skipping by in the arms of a ploughman who had to be less than a third her age. Who was leading whom seemed up for debate.

“What don’t you understand, Bothwell?”

“I grew up here,” Hadrian said. “These are not cruel people. They help each other, they work their land, tend their shops, and try not to offend God or neighbor with their failings. They take in foundlings. Hart Collins was a scourge as a young man, sent down from one school after another, the stories increasingly bad. At the time of the incident, I’m certain nobody of any standing blamed Avis for what happened to her.”

Though he couldn’t know that for a fact, because he’d spent the rest of summer affixed to Avie’s side. Then he’d gone haring south to be a scholar.

A randy scholar.

“She was engaged to Collins,” Fen pointed out. “She was the most envied young woman in the shire—a lady by birth, well dowered, and pretty, with a titled husband in her future. That alone would have made her a target for envy.”

Envy was a fleeting, unchristian thought, a remark one was ashamed of in hindsight. Envy should not be the ruin of a blameless woman’s happiness.

An older couple came spinning past, the male half of which looked none too steady on his pins. He swung his lady too vigorously, so Fen had to scoot back while Hadrian caught the lady, righted her, and spun her back to her fellow.

“Collins had family in the area, and they must have blamed Avis,” Fen said when the dancers went reeling on their way. “His mother still dwells at the family seat, and mothers can be blind to their children’s failings.”

“Collins’s parents were the ones sending him to disreputable boarding schools. He made it impossible for them to keep help when he was home.”

Or that had been the rumor before Hadrian had gone off to university.

Fen discreetly poured half his ale into the roses. “He was the heir, and Avis likely had high spirits, and no mama to show her how to go on. I’d guess breaking her engagement with Collins wasn’t her first misstep. Vim had already started to travel, and Benjamin would have been enjoying the fleshpots of London.”

Avie had been high-spirited, also strong-willed. Hadrian had adored that about her, and still did.

The musicians switched to a lively strathspey, and a whoop of approval went up from the dancers.

“I feel the urge to cut a dash,” Fenwick said. “And I see Miss Prentiss succumbing to the same impulse, though her partner is Sir Walter Monteith’s darling boy.”

Fen passed Hadrian the remains of his drink and had old Maudie on his arm an instant later, as if by prearrangement. He lurked with her in the shadows until the lines formed, then joined the far end when the introduction sounded. Sure enough, when the figures changed and Lily saw who her next partner would be, her dismay was plain on her pretty face.

Hadrian set Fen’s drink down and ambled away, rather than watch Fen at his games. The moon was up, the party gathering momentum, and all Hadrian wanted was to find Avie and walk with her up to the pond.

Which, of course, in present company, would be remarked by all and sundry.

He took a bench between the roses and the privet hedge and contented himself with admiring the scent of the garden by moonlight.He’d just closed his eyes when his peace was cut up by voices from beyond the privet hedge.

“No better than she should be, as usual.” The words carried the buoyant malice of a woman intent on a good gossip.

“She’s the hostess, Hortensia, nominally,” a second voice reasoned. “She has to be in evidence and ordering the footmen about.”

“But patting them on the arm?” Hortensia verbally shuddered. “And that Mr. Fenwick thinks he can stand up with whomever he pleases, now that she’s let him waltz her.”

Shock held Hadrian still, for it appeared Avis was, indeed, crucified for imaginary transgressions, just as she’d told him she would be.

“Maudie is the one who stands up with anybody.” The second woman’s voice held humor. “Fen’s being gallant.”

“He’s Lady Avis’s lover,” Hortensia retorted. “They say his brother’s in line for an earldom, but Fenwick hangs about here because Lady Avis has bewitched him.”

Like the worst gossip, that sentiment had elements of truth—Fen’s brother was an earl’s heir, and Fen was loyal to Avis.

“For pity’s sake,” the second woman said. “Fen stays here because he’s well paid and good at his job. I think you have your eye on Mr. Fenwick.”

“That great, hulking brute?” Hortensia’s footsteps scraped to a halt mere yards from Hadrian’s secluded bench. “Knowing he’s dallied with a slut like Avis Portmaine makes him beneath my notice, yours too.”

“Where do you hear these things, Hortensia? You never used to be so spiteful.”

“Not spite—truth. I speak from the
best
authority, Delia. My lady’s maid is friends with the governess at Holderness, and she knows everything from Lady Holderness’s abigail, who goes with her ladyship everywhere.”

“Avis is only a couple of years older than we are,” the second woman chided. “She was in our catechism classes. We sang in the choir with her and feared for her when her engagement to Collins was announced. Doesn’t she deserve a little peace?”

A
lot
of peace, for God’s sake?

“She led the poor boy on, enticed him, then tossed him over,” Hortensia retorted. “He’d be taking his proper place as baron if she hadn’t treated him so ill. All these years he’s been kept from his birthright by her vindictiveness. No wonder she hasn’t had a single offer from a proper gentleman, despite her title and wealth.”

Hadrian rose, though what would it serve for him to storm around the hedge and deliver Hortensia Dillington a rousing scold? He’d wanted to know what was said about Avis, and what he heard rendered him motionless and silent in the shadows.

“Do you really think, Hortensia, that the shire would be a better place were Hart Collins dancing up on the terrace tonight?”

“He’s not married yet.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Hart Collins is not married,” Hortensia insisted in an excited whisper. “Reformed rakes make the best husbands. His staff is preparing his rooms, and it’s said he’s soon to visit his seat.”

“He wasn’t a rake,” her companion said. “He was an out out-and-out bully, and I for one think Avis Portmaine paid much too high a price for her brothers’ willingness to betroth her to the man. Now come along, or the men will have eaten all the best desserts.”

They moved back toward the terrace, while Hadrian wrestled a seething urge to kill, to wring the necks of all who had nothing better to do than condemn Avis for Collins’s crimes. He wanted to wring Vim’s and Benjamin’s necks too, for betrothing Avie to the monster in the first place, and he wanted to wring Hortensia Dillington’s gossiping neck for good measure.

As the evening wore on, Hadrian caught other snippets of talk, mostly among the women, regarding Avis and her every gesture and glance. The sheer maliciousness left him hurting for her, and disappointed in his neighbors.

Though he was also puzzled.

As a former vicar, Hadrian knew well, too damned well, how powerfully the gossip mill could churn in any community. People would talk, as surely as they would sin and grow gardens and fornicate. Nonetheless, they’d seldom spend twelve years talking about the same old scandals. New gossip was much more entertaining than the old tales, and his own arrival back at Landover was fresher grist than Avie’s wicked past.

No one talked about him; no one talked about Harold’s extended absence. No one talked much about the haying, the Regent’s extravagances or even the weather.

Interesting.

What could a man intent on protecting Avis Portmaine’s well-being give his neighbors to talk about that would end their spiteful gossip regarding the woman he dearly hoped to marry?

“Dance with me.”

Hadrian’s voice came from the shadows to Avis’s left, and she wasn’t sure he was even speaking to her. The evening had been long, but busy enough that she hadn’t had to think much—to
feel
much.

“In the garden shadows?” Avis replied when Hadrian stepped closer. “Enough people are strolling that we’d be recognized.” Enough people had also stolen off into the garden to engage in behaviors Avis could only envy.