The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (39 page)
Read The Sins of Lord Easterbrook Online
Authors: Madeline Hunter
“Do you want to go?”
“I do not want to, but it is finished now. I cannot put off this parting.”
“You said you would have no excuse to stay once it was finished. I expect that is true.”
No, she had no excuse.
“However, you do have a reason, Leona. This.” He kissed her. “And this.” He kissed her again. He held her face to yet another kiss. “You will stay with me.”
“You are seducing me away from my duties again, Christian. You are very good at that.”
He looked in her eyes. “You will stay with me.”
“My brother relies on me. More than you know.”
“Your brother must be his own man. It is time. He is of age, but he will lean on you as long as you are there. Send Tong Wei with St. John's offer and advise him to take it. Your brother will learn your father's trade from St. John's factor and agents. He and his business will be protected.”
She yearned to grab his reasons. Her heart had always been weak with him.
“Stay with me. Stay so I do not lose myself inside myself. I am not at the mercy of this curse as much anymore, and that is due to you. I no longer assume that it owns me.”
His words touched her. It moved her that this man would reveal his fears, and speak of the pain that he still fought to master.
“Stay with me, darling. Stay because I need you. Stay because I love you. I will wear a cravat every day
if you want. I will take you to balls three times a week. I will sit and accept callers with Aunt Hen if I must.”
She had to laugh, but tears stung her eyes too. “I do not want you to change all your habits for me. You do not need to be other than you are. You can still be half mad and a little eccentric and mostly a recluse. As long as you do not retreat from me too, Christian.”
“I could never do that. I am only my true self when I am with you.”
He really believed that. She could tell he did. And she knew these words, all of them, did not come easily to him. He was Easterbrook, after all.
“I suppose I could stay for a while. I could send Tong Wei back to my brother with St. John's proposal. I want to see Gaspar, but I do not yearn to return to China yet. I can at least stay until the jade runs out.”
“Leona, I am not asking you to stay for a while. I want you to stay forever, as my wife.”
The proposal did not surprise as much as it should. Perhaps that was because she was certain he loved her. She just
knew.
“I thought that was ill-advised.”
“For you. Not for me. I know it is selfish to bind you to me. If you do not want it, we will find another way. And if you must return to Macao, if you want to sail the China Sea and fight pirates forever, I will come with you. We will do this any way you want, but.… I would rather we be together in marriage, if you can bear it.”
“I can bear it. However, I assumed you believed that your sensibility was inherited and you did not want the next Easterbrook to have it.”
“I am seeing this affliction less darkly now. If it is inherited, we will explain it to our child, so he knows
what it is and learns how to live in the world with it. We will make sure he is not alone with it.”
He appeared so serious. So determined and.… hopeful.
She allowed herself to picture that child, and others. She imagined life with Christian, and experiencing the love and excitement forever. She saw the difficulties too, but her confidence in their intimacy made her smile at the thought of his habits.
I love all that you are.
“Are you sure that you want to do this, Christian?”
“I am sure about you. You are my only certainty, Leona.” He kissed her once more, and used all of his power over her in that kiss. “Say that you will stay with me.”
It was not really a request. Nor was it entirely a command. There was only one answer that he would accept, however, and only one that she could give.
Her heart accepted the truth first, as it always had done with him.
“I could not be happy without you either, Christian. We will stay together.”
I
have decided that I should do the right thing.” “It has taken you long enough, Miller.”
Miller's face flushed. “Yes. That was cowardly of me.”
Christian nodded. It had indeed been cowardice that had prevented Miller from doing the right thing by Isabella for over three years now. An understandable cowardice, perhaps, but still cowardice.
They stood on the terrace of Aylesbury Abbey, looking down at the garden party spread below. Most of the guests were family, gathered here to celebrate the visit of Leona's brother. Gaspar sat with his sister in the sun, looking far more English than she. He played with the next Marquess of Easterbrook while the two of them talked.
“You understand that Isabella has nothing. No fortune,” Christian said.
Miller nodded. His gaze remained on the woman in question. Isabella followed her daughter through the
garden. She stayed far enough away to allow the child her fun, but close enough to prevent accidents.
“Being brave instead of cowardly will not change the reality. People will still say things. She looks more Chinese than European,” Christian said.
“People will say things, but no person will say anything twice.”
Miller's jaw tightened. Christian guessed that a few persons had already learned what Miller would and would not accept when it came to Isabella.
“We would like your blessing, and that of Lady Easterbrook.”
“You have it, not that it is required.”
They walked down to the garden together. Miller went toward his lover and daughter. Christian aimed for Leona and her brother.
“It has gotten worse,” Gaspar was saying as Christian drew near. “Big ships full of opium lay anchor at Lintin now. Chinese smugglers go out to them. Everyone knows the Mandarins all along the coast are complicit. Anyone can trade it openly in Macao, and the Chinese officials turn a blind eye. It is pouring into China.”
Leona glanced at Christian. It had been pouring in for decades. The only real news here was that Gaspar had developed a better comprehension of Oriental trade.
“Perhaps another series of letters is called for,” Christian said. “I am sure the publisher of
Minerva's Banquet
would print them.”
That publisher was over at a tree, instructing her husband to pluck a little girl out of it. The child had just
learned to walk, but had managed to get as high as her mother's head in a blink. Elliot laughed while he pried the imp loose. Phaedra literally tore at her hair in exasperation. Nature, in a fit of humor, had blessed Phaedra with a daughter as willful as herself.
“I will write them, but they will do no more good than your speeches in the House of Lords, Christian,” Leona said. “The devil is busy, and we do not have enough angels.”
No, not nearly enough. He would make those speeches, however, even if this would get worse before it ever got better.
The evidence was that the people of England counted on distance and discretion regarding the opium trade. Leona's last letter had suitably soiled the reputations of four dead lords and one living cleric. Society was shocked that people they knew dirtied their hands with this immoral trade. Then, after an appropriate period of gossip and disgrace, everyone had gone back to drinking their China tea. The hole left by sudden absence of the Four Corners ships had quickly been filled by others at Lintin, but that company's demise had caused bigger disruptions in smuggling elsewhere.
In the case of the last Easterbrook, that scandal had only primed the pump for the bigger one. The bait had been swallowed and the blackmail demanded, most indiscreetly. The name of Easterbrook had been forever linked with murder in the trial that just ended, and the blackmailer was on his way to New South Wales.
Gaspar's attention shifted abruptly from his nephew to a young lady walking down a garden path toward them. Blond and dazzling in the summer sun, Irene
Longworth tilted her head to listen to her sister, Rose, who walked with her.
Gaspar clumsily tried to hand over the child. “I think I might—that is, I will take a turn, I think—”
Christian bent down and took his son in his arms so Gaspar could make good his escape.
He settled himself down with Leona while his son squirmed and wrestled. Aiden was beginning to talk, and there could be no mistaking he had emotions. Specific ones. Varied ones. There was no indication that he had inherited any curse, however.
Christian could not tell if his awareness of the child's feelings was at all unusual. Leona seemed to know Aiden's moods as well as he did. Much like Denningham, little Aiden was an open book.
That would probably change as Aiden got older, but it appeared that no special sensibility was needed when it came to one's own child. Or rather, nature instilled that sensibility in every parent when it came to that child. One only had to choose to pay attention.
Leona watched her brother hail Irene and Rose. “He has been spending a lot of time with her,” she said. “The Bradwells do not seem to mind.”
“Mrs. Bradwell is delighted, and hopeful that a proposal is imminent.”
“You are certain about that?”
“Most certain. Alexia says so.”
“So Irene's sister is hopeful and my brother is hopeful. What of Irene herself?”
“She appears agreeable. Look at how she smiles at him.”
“I do not want your opinion of how she appears. I
can see that, and it might just be politeness. I need you to
know.”
Aiden squirmed down. He ran off to Hayden and Alexia's two girls, who played with Elliot's son. Aiden barged in, did some pushing, got pushed back, swung his little fist, and found himself under a pile of legs and arms and ringlets and squeals.
“Are you asking me to intrude, Leona? To direct unseemly attention to her emotional state? These things take their own course and it would be unwise and unfair for me to—”
“Oh,
please,
Easterbrook. What good is it to be married to a man with your gift if I cannot even learn if my brother's intentions will be welcomed? Now, go over there and—and—well, do whatever it is you do to know these things.”
He laughed and reached for her hand. He kissed it. “I have reason to believe that your brother will be successful. Even the mention of moving to the other side of the world does not dim Irene Longworth's love.”
Leona smiled with contentment. “I knew I could count on you, Christian. You have made great strides in controlling that ability. I know that you choose to avoid it, but on a question as important as this, a little slipping can be excused.”
He
had
made great strides in controlling it. He liked to think he used it sparingly now, by his own will, and only for the best reasons. The truth was there were times when he still could not block the perceptions.
Still, a more public life had become tolerable, and most people almost so. He did not isolate himself so
much now. He only had to retreat to Leona's oasis if the world exhausted him.
“Speaking of pending nuptials, Miller is going to propose to Isabella,” he said.
“I am relieved, and surprised. She brings him nothing.”
“She brings him her love and herself, which is what you brought me.”
“You had no need of a fortune from me. Miller is not so well off that a settlement can be ignored.”
“We will settle something on her, darling, but he did not make his decision in hopes of it. I am sure of this.”
She smiled. “A little more slipping, Christian?”
“A very small slip.”
She laughed in the way that always brought memories of Macao, and of a dark-eyed girl in a night garden who had soothed his soul. He still wanted her as much as he had ten years ago, and still loved her as much as he had during a week of bliss in Aylesbury Abbey.
The various groups in the garden had converged. They created a thick knot of adults surrounded by a whirlwind of children. The din of grown-up chatter and childish screams rose and fell on the breeze.
Leona stood, with her hand still in his. “Shall we join the others, Christian?”
The real question showed in her eyes.
Are you ready? Can you bear it?
“Of course,” he said.
He stood, and together they walked toward the joyful noise.
The Charter Act of 1833 abolished the remaining trade monopolies of the English East India Company and essentially ended its commercial activities. It continued functioning in a political and administrative capacity until its dissolution in 1874.
After 1833, the established Country Traders in the East expanded and grew restless with China's closed borders. The trade in opium also flourished until 1839, when the incorruptible Chinese official Lin Zexu (Lin Tse-hsu) was sent by the emperor to end it. Under his direction, 2.6 million pounds of opium were confiscated in Canton and destroyed.
There followed a series of diplomatic and commercial crises that ultimately led to the First Opium War of 1839. China was defeated by the British and forced to open its five ports to foreign trade and cede the territory of Hong Kong. The British people were not unified behind this war. Considerable moral outrage was expressed with the protection of opium trafficking being the main point of criticism. The goal of forcing China's
borders open to foreign trade had been achieved, however.
Throughout the novel, I have used the transcriptions of Chinese names that were common in English texts published in the first half of the nineteenth century, during the period when the story takes place.
The process of transcribing Chinese language characters into the Latin alphabet is called Romanization. Today the standard system of Romanization is Hanyu Pinyin, commonly called pinyin. It was first introduced in China in 1956 and widely adopted internationally by the 1980s.
The old anglicized transcription “Canton” is written in pinyin as Guangzhou and that of “Macao” as Macau.