Season For Desire (9 page)

Yes
. But just as a pretty face and a biddable nature had caught Estella an earl forty years before, she had nothing but a fortune to recommend her now. “No. And I’m still in disbelief over your statement that a fortune wouldn’t benefit a pair.”

He shrugged. That
you’re wrong but I’m not going to argue about it
gesture again. “It probably depends on the pair.”

“And what if the inheritance was a fever dream after all? Because it’s obvious the box is empty.”

“Just because it’s empty,” said Rutherford, “doesn’t mean there’s no message inside.”

 

 

“Your sister will not be joining us today?” The Duke of Walpole frowned. “She usually does, for the sake of propriety.”

Charissa Bradleigh, third daughter of the Earl and Countess of Alleyneham, curtsied to her betrothed before retaking her seat in Alleyneham House’s fashionable Egyptian parlor. She always met the duke here, at the front of the house, where the gentle noises of Mayfair traffic rang through the silk-draped windows. The hoofbeats and whickers of carriage horses, the industrious
ching
of their metal harness fittings; the call of a master to a footman. It was impossible in such a space not to recall one’s proper place in society.

“Not today, Your Grace. Lady Audrina is”—Charissa fumbled for the excuse her mother had given her—“accompanying Lady Irving on a Christmas visit to friends in York.”

Don’t ask any questions
, Lady Alleyneham had said, a worried expression on her gentle round face.
That’s all you’ll need to know. Think happy thoughts, child! You’ll be a duchess soon.

That was indeed a happy thought. Charissa smiled, but Walpole didn’t smile back.

“I never heard Lady Audrina mention friends in York.” Walpole swung his ivory-handled malacca cane, a neat parabola of impatience.

The Duke of Walpole was of no more than middling height, but his face was as handsome and neatly carved as a Roman bust. He was the perfect gentleman in dress and elegance. The black waves of his hair would dare not fall over his brow; his cravat would not dream of wilting from its intricate arrangement.

Charissa herself was of no more than middling looks. Despite auburn hair, her gray eyes and colorless cheeks inclined her complexion to the insipid. Her teeth were good, though, and the habit of smiling a great deal and talking even more had served her well. A generous dowry made her more attractive, too: her hair more gilded, her laugh more silvery.

“They are Lady Irving’s friends.” Charissa recovered a bit of her usual chatter. “You know how her ladyship feels about Christmas, Your Grace. She cannot bring herself to stay in London unless she has family to stay with her. So this year, when she chose to travel, she asked if she could bring one of us. Lady Irving has always been fond of us.”

“That is quite a compliment to you.” The duke seated himself facing Charissa; the arms of his chair were tipped by Sphinx faces. “I was not aware Lady Irving was fond of anyone.”

“Oh—well, she is. Maybe because she never had daughters of her own. Or maybe because she was glad never to have daughters of her own? But that is why Mother said Audrina could go. I mean, I could not because of our marriage. Clearly.”

“Clearly.” The strict line of his mouth turned up at one corner. Charissa could hardly imagine it pressed to hers for a kiss, much less crying out with passion.

But it would, wouldn’t it? And soon.

She wished it were sooner.

She looked down at her hands, neatly gloved from fingertip to the blond lace cuffs of her sleeve. She was every bit the proper bride on the surface, and her London family was equally appropriate for a ducal alliance. Just as long as her future husband did not inquire too deeply into her thoughts—or into the nature of Lady Audrina’s departure.

“I do hope Lady Audrina will return in time for our wedding,” the duke said. “It would be most irregular should the bride’s sister fail to be present.”

“But Lady Romula and Lady Theodosia—” Charissa bit her lip. “My elder sisters might not be in attendance. That is, my parents invited them, but we’ve heard nothing about whether they actually intend to come. If they are absent, I don’t think it will be to give offense, but because they do not feel at ease.”

The two oldest sisters, Lady Alleyneham had put about, had suffered from a lung ailment the previous year. In truth, they had caught smallpox. Though their health had returned after a long convalescence in Littlehampton, their pale complexions had been pocked and scarred. Too badly to catch a titled husband, their mother said—which was quite all right with them, as Romula had fallen in love with her physician and Theodosia with a country squire.

The two older sisters had resigned themselves to a quiet life in the country, one with which they professed themselves happy. They did not even express much enthusiasm for the fashion plates Charissa sent to them every season, or the bolts of satin and the plumes for new bonnet trimmings.

And then there was Petra, the fourth sister. Dreamy and solitary, she had been in Italy for a year since the urge to study art had seized her with sudden violence. No one expected her to return for the wedding. Such a notion had not even been considered.

“Your two elder sisters,” the duke said as he seated himself facing Charissa, “have chosen a different sort of life. If they do not wish to return to the bosom of society, that is their right. But until Lady Audrina marries, she lives under your parents’ roof and should abide by their wishes.”

“She should,” murmured Charissa. She never had, though. Charissa herself had always accepted her parents’ wishes: to mix in society, to become a young lady of fashion, and to marry a duke.

“I am glad we are in accordance.” His Grace smiled, a curve of his stern mouth that made his dark brows and eyes soften. “Lady Charissa, I have been considering a matter of great consequence. Since we are to be married in little more than a fortnight, I wonder—but no, perhaps it would be asking too much.”

“No, please—Your Grace, ask me anything you wish. I am sure it will not be improper.”

“I hope not.” He folded his hands over the ebony head of his cane. “I was thinking that, since we are to be wed soon, you might call me Walpole instead of ‘Your Grace.’” His head tilted. “If you mind, you must tell me at once.”

His first name, she knew, was Roderick. Roderick Francis Matthew Elder, Duke of Walpole, Earl of Carbury, Baron Winterset.

So many names. Soon some of them would be hers.

“Mind? Oh, no—Walpole. Not at all. I should be very glad.”

His smile matched hers, soft and bright, and her heart gave a quick, flustered flutter.

She
should
be very glad as the future Duchess of Walpole. And if only she knew where her sister and her father truly were, she would be very glad indeed.

After an early evening supper and a cursory cup of tea—which the Dudleys, Lady Irving, and Richard seemed to enjoy far more than usual—Giles drew Audrina off in search of Sophy and her telescope. “You wanted me to look at the stars,” he reminded Audrina. “Well, I’m not going to do that unless you do, too.”

She raised a brow.

“No, sorry,” he said. “I can’t be intimidated by the movement of a few facial muscles. If you want me to sop up some unwanted knowledge, you have to come along and sop it up, too.”

This was nothing but bravado. The idea of being alone with her in a darkened room, with stars gloating down at them, was startlingly attractive.

As was taking the chance to prove to her that he had listened to, and remembered, every word of what she’d told him earlier.

Sophy was located in the library, as they expected. They found her seated in a ladder-back chair before an enormous secretary desk. A litter of scrawled notes, drawings of angles and radii and spheres, covered the surface of the wood. In the light of an Argand lamp perched precariously at one corner, the wood shone a burnished red. When Giles explained what they were after, Sophy’s pince-nez caught a silvery reflection that made her eyes impossible to see.

“You want to use my telescope.” Sophy’s face turned from Giles to Audrina, then back. “Now? Tonight?”

“Tonight did seem a better choice than tomorrow morning, yes,” said Giles. “I’m hardly expert, but I’ve been told it’s easier to spot things through a telescope at nighttime.”

Her mouth pulled up at one side. “You were told correctly. Have you also been told how to use a telescope?”

“What is there to know?” he replied. “Point one end up at the sky and look through the other. If everything looks smaller instead of bigger, turn it around.”

“Do not turn my telescope around, Mr. Rutherford. I assure you, I have the right end
pointing up at the sky
, as you put it.” Plucking off her pince-nez, she pressed at the bridge of her nose. “Are you any more familiar than he is, Lady Audrina? Really, I ought to adjust it for you. If the keys were to break—”

“We won’t adjust it at all,” Audrina assured her. “We will only look at whatever you have trained it on, then we shall leave it alone.”

Sophy looked startled, the first time Giles had seen that expression cross her capable features. “What would be the amusement in that? No, no, you must look at whatever you like.” With a tilt of her head, she indicated the telescope on a Pembroke table at the far side of the room, in front of a window. “This telescope has quite a good lens and mirror. You can spot the rings of Saturn and tell apart the different colors of stars. Do you want any gridded paper for drawings or measurements?”

“Yes,” said Audrina, just as Giles said, “Er—no.”

Sophy handed Audrina several sheets of paper and a string-wrapped marking pencil. Then she paused, shuffling her notes into a neat pile. “Right. Well. This should be a good evening for watching the sky. The sky is clear, and the moon will not set until morning. It’s waxing gibbous.”

“Don’t think I won’t ask you to explain that,” Giles said. “You’re probably used to English gentlemen who pretend to know everything, but I have no idea what that means.”

Shoving her papers into a drawer of the tall desk’s hutch, Sophy explained that the moon was tending toward fullness. “No matter the phase of the moon, winter is the best time to look at stars because the sky is clear. I like to think that they freeze, waiting for humans to look at them.” She ducked her head. “Just a fancy, of course. I know they do not change.”

“And why should they not?” Giles asked. “What do we really know about the stars?”

With steady hands, Sophy transferred the Argand lamp from the desk to her abandoned wooden chair. “We know, Mr. Rutherford, that they are unimaginably far away.” Tipping up the folding table on which she’d been working, she closed it away behind the doors of the desk. “Enjoy your time looking at the sky. Do try not to break the turn-keys while you are adjusting the altitude and azimuth.”

Giles decided it would be wiser not to say,
Adjusting the
what
?
“We won’t,” he said.

Once Sophy had departed the library, Giles motioned toward the telescope. “After you, Lady Galileo.”

Audrina smiled, then led him to the Pembroke table on which the telescope stood. Two of the table’s dropped leaves were opened, making of it a fattened semicircle much like the shape of the moon.

The telescope itself was smaller than Giles had expected, considering it was the focus of Sophy’s life. Two feet in length, with a diameter about that of Giles’s fist, it perched on a graceful brass stand with ornamental curves and a sturdy trio of legs. The surface of the tube was brass, too, shining as though Sophy polished away every finger mark.

If Giles loved something as much as Sophy loved her telescope, he would treat it with similar care.

“So why are we here?” he asked as Audrina trailed her fingers up the tube, not quite touching its bright surface. “Do you want to look at something in particular?”

“No, I just want to
look.
Without worrying that anyone will chase me away or tell me this is an unsuitable interest for a woman of my breeding.”

“I would never tell you anything like that, and Sophy certainly wouldn’t either. Go on, you take the first look.”

Audrina set down the papers and pencil; then stepping behind the telescope, she bent over its eyepiece. Several minutes followed in which she made nimble adjustments to a pair of skeletal brass keys below the telescope’s tube, checked the view, adjusted, checked,
hmmmed
.

Giles didn’t mind her preoccupation at all. Because while her posture was bent, the bodice of her dress dipped to an intriguing shadow. Such a curve of pale skin, like reflected moonlight, and then hidden secrets like the night sky itself.

He shook his head. Fanciful. He’d do much better to find himself a book about something useful. Like the peerage, upon whose whims his father hoped to build a new business. Or fashion plates to show him the sort of jewelry people were wearing these days.

With a shudder, he moved away toward the hearth. Every window in this sprawling castle seemed designed to leak in as much cold air as possible, and each was taller than a normal story of a house.

Though this room seemed warmer than the others in the stately home, maybe because the library was small. Or because it was insulated on all sides with massive bookshelves, with a heavy carpet underfoot. The draperies were pulled back, causing the room itself to feel like a telescope, all solid narrowness with a clear end, a beautiful view.

The sky, of course. The sky was what he meant. Not the woman in a gown the color of emeralds.

After a long interval of silence and staring—at the sky on her part, at her on Giles’s—Audrina stood. Stretching and rolling her shoulders, she squinted toward the firelight. “Giles?”

He returned to her side at once. “Do you like what you see?” He could have bitten his tongue. Or not.

Audrina blinked, then looked down at the telescope. “I don’t know what I saw. I don’t know the names of any of the stars, or how far away the planets are. But I finally got to
see
something. Saturn’s rings, and some stars that were almost red, and others I never knew were there at all.” She grabbed his forearm. “Take a look, Giles. Look at the moon. Did you know the moon was so dark and rough?”

She yanked at his arm—which was fine with him, really, and it was also fine that she kept hold of it while he crouched before the eyepiece. Sky filled his sight, blue-black and spangled.

“What do you see?” Audrina’s voice almost broke, as though she was swallowing her excitement. “Do you see the moon?”

“Not yet.” Remembering the keys beneath the tube that Audrina had turned, he nudged each with his free hand. At his touch, the telescope edged up or down, left or right.

He was aware, as he skimmed objects far away in space, how close Audrina stood to him. So close that he smelled the traces of evergreen that still clung to her from the needles they’d crushed earlier.

The telescope found the moon, sudden and huge and glowing. He reared back in reflex, then pressed his eye to the eyepiece again and scanned it. What seemed silver from afar was dull and gray up close, a steely pockmarked half pie of scarred rock.

Something within him gave a lurch of painful feeling. “It’s not the way I thought it would be.” He straightened, tugging his arm from her grasp. “Go ahead, look some more if you want to.”

His breath stirred a tiny wisp of dark hair at the nape of her neck. Her expression was all shadow—and then she smiled, a slip of movement in the moonlight. “I’m not as proper as I pretend to be, you said.”

And before Giles could say
Yes
or
Right
or
I’d like to think so
, she caught his hand again and tugged him down to sit on the floor. “If we had blankets, this would be like an indoor picnic.” Somehow she sounded as crisp and cultured as ever, each word a pearl.

“Just a second.” Giles leapt to his feet and, striding to the fireplace, lit a branch of candles from a paper spill. He found a cast-off shawl by Sophy’s abandoned chair and returned to Audrina. “Sunshine and a blanket. Have your picnic, princess.”

Within a minute, she had arranged the woven shawl on the floor and placed the candles at a safe distance. The shawl, Giles discovered when he seated himself on it, was laid in the perfect location to look out at the sky without craning one’s neck. And if one lay down on the floor and folded one’s arms behind one’s head—even better.

Audrina hesitated, then settled herself at his side. Giles estimated the distance between them at one forearm, one wrist, one hand.

He kept his hands to himself. The lady only wanted to look at the stars.

“It’s Christmas in less than a fortnight,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I have never been away from my family on Christmas before.”

Nor had he. Never since the births of his younger siblings had Giles been so long away from them.

Next year at this time, Sarah would be married. If Richard’s plans for a London jewelry shop worked out, Christopher and Isaac would be running the Rutherford Paper Mill. Alfred seemed inclined to study law. And Rachel—Giles missed Rachel most of all. The closest to him in age, she had been born small and early following Lady Beatrix’s bout of measles. With her sight and hearing limited, her speech delayed, Giles had thought to protect her. Coddle her.

And so, when she was four and he was six, she had thrashed him for telling her she
shouldn’t
or
couldn’t
. Giles never underestimated his sister again—though that didn’t keep him from keeping a close eye on her. On all of them. They were just beginning to build their lives; they had hardly gotten used to the absence of their mother. How would they get along this Christmas without Giles? Their third parent?

How would he get along if they didn’t need him anymore?

Giles didn’t think of Richard as someone on whom he needed to rely. Maybe the younger Rutherford siblings were feeling the same way about Giles himself.

Now that was a thought that brought on that lurch again, a pain right below his breastbone.

“Maybe you won’t be away from your family on Christmas,” he finally replied. “As you said, there’s plenty of time. Twelve days. By then, your father will have relented, and you’ll be—”

“No,” she cut him off. “No, he will not relent. Not with the family’s reputation at stake.”

At Giles’s side, she shifted. The nearby branch of candles cast warm gilt on her face; the moonlight left her skirts and neatly half-booted feet silvery-cold. “Never mind that. It’s all right. If I do not return to London, then I . . . then I will be somewhere else.”

“Nicely reasoned,” Giles said.

One of her feet kicked against his shin in what was surely not an accident.

“As it is almost Christmas,” she said in a tone of frightening cheer, “shall we look for a special star in the sky?”

“What, as though we’re Magi following it?” Giles shook his head, rocking it upon his folded-up forearms. “Sorry, princess. I wouldn’t know a special star from an ordinary one.”

“But would you follow a star? Or—a dream? If you were permitted to have one?” Her laugh was low and a little bitter.

Giles considered. “Following a star is no wilder than some of my father’s other schemes. He’s tried making paper not only from rags, but from wood pulp—what a disaster that was. And remember, we came to England solely because of a fortune that no one thinks exists anymore except for him. So if I’m willing to follow a whim that isn’t even my own, why shouldn’t I follow a star?”

“Because you don’t believe in it.” Her voice was low and soft. “You wouldn’t follow a star on your own. You wouldn’t be here on your own.”

Her words sounded like a criticism, echoing within his hollowness.
There’s nothing you want. Those dreams are all borrowed from someone else. You don’t have any of your own.

Maybe he didn’t anymore. He’d let them go when his wrists grew painful; the first of many things that would inevitably slip from his grasp, just as illness had taken everything from his mother.

But it wasn’t as though he’d done nothing with his life. He had made himself instead into the family’s valet, bootboy, governess—and Richard’s dutiful son, who could manage the accounts of a paper mill or design a new setting for an ancient jewel.

“If,” he answered, “I am willing to come along so a person of conviction doesn’t have to be alone, isn’t that worth something?”

“I suppose, if you do so for the sake of providing company.”

Not if you do it out of mistrust.
This remained unsaid. Did she think it, though? It was such a grimy thought that he shied from it himself. “If I can’t tell a special star from an ordinary one, maybe I’ll treat them all like they’re special. Or are we even talking about stars anymore?”