The Trouble With Being Wicked (44 page)

He frowned. Lucy, the sister closer to him in age and the most likely to understand him, even when
he
didn’t, was off somewhere in the wilds of Bath, establishing herself as a headmistress. He couldn’t forget whose fault that was.

Delilah was here, with her husband. Whom Ash must tolerate, even if he didn’t approve of him.

Mr. Conley came to his feet. Ash crossed the room to shake hands with the bull of a man who’d stolen his sister. “Mr. Conley. Welcome to Worston Heights.”

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, my lord.” Conley’s large frame had been boxed into a dark blue superfine coat. His hair swept away from his broad forehead with a heavy dab of pomade and his cravat was pleated into an elaborate fall of linen. He couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable, but to his credit, he didn’t seem to mind. He’d clearly done it for Delilah, and for that, Ash couldn’t find fault in his appearance.

Nordstrom materialized to issue their call into dinner, thereby saving Ash from needing to form a response. In fact, it would have been a perfect break but for Delilah’s flags of color as she visibly struggled to decide who she would prefer to escort her in.

Conley nudged her toward Ash. “‘Tis what’s proper,” he whispered against her ear.

Delilah’s lips pursed as if she would argue, but Conley’s visage discouraged her with a speaking glance that firmly said,
Woman, I’ve warned you about harping
.

To Ash’s great surprise, she turned to him and smiled pleasantly. “There will come a day when we are both married, and then I will miss being led into dinner on your arm. I already miss it, in fact. Dear Mr. Conley is always so good to remind me of the things I forget.”

Conley’s lips twitched. His eyes shone with approval and that glazed, slightly stupid look that Ash was coming to understand meant devotion.

Ash offered her his sleeve then started them down the long corridor to the dining room. “I trust your rooms are to your liking?” He mentally kicked himself. She was his sister. Had he always sounded so formal?
 

He had a sneaking suspicion he had. When had he started to notice?

“Yes, thank you,” she replied. She craned her neck to look over her shoulder. “We think them splendid, don’t we, Mr. Conley? It was kind of you to think of separate rooms. Married life can be so tedious, when one is parked right atop the other.”

She hadn’t become so sweet-natured that she’d lost her wit. The irony of it was, he hadn’t had a thing to do with their separate rooms. Because quite frankly, the thought of them having
any rooms anywhere quite put him off his dinner. Now that she’d mentioned it, however…

“If it were up to me, you would be on opposite sides of the hall,” he said. He startled when Conley gave a bark of laughter.

“I’ve five sisters of my own, my lord. I know how you feel.”

Ash frowned. He didn’t need one reason to actually like the fellow who had all but kidnapped his sister. Let alone five.

Five
was
a plague. Hell, he’d been ready to give up at two. “Are they younger?”

Conversation paused as they entered the cavernous room and found their seats. Delilah sat to his right, her husband to his left. A snug room like the breakfast room at Celeste’s terraced house would have been more appropriate for their little party. But that was an odd thought, wasn’t it? He’d dined like this with his sisters every night for a decade and never once wished for more closeness.

“My youngest charge is but fifteen,” Mr. Conley said when the turtle soup had been brought out. “The eldest is three and thirty, a year and a half older than myself.”

“Fifteen is a dreadful age,” Ash said absently. Then he paused. Delilah had married a man older than him. A sobering thought. Lucy had expended untold energy trying to convince him that Delilah had reached a mature enough age to know her own heart. He’d dismissed her every time. But the truth was here now, sitting beside him at dinner. His youngest sister had married a man not that much older than he and not much older than herself, but old enough to be, well,
older
.

If Ash really wanted to be put off his turtle soup, Mr. Conley was almost as old as Celeste. Not that he cared about her age, for he didn’t; he didn’t care about her at all, if he reminded himself enough of it. But of a sudden, they seemed to have all become adults without meaning to. Childhood antics had given way to real concerns. For the first time, he realized Lucy had been a bit justified in claiming to be past the point of marriage. Not because she couldn’t marry. Delilah was only a few years younger than she, and Celeste a few years older, and both had found men who wished to spend their rest of their lives with them. But because Lucy was old enough to know her own mind, and if she said she wouldn’t marry, then… Well, perhaps she was old enough to decide that for herself.

“We weren’t so bad, were we, Trestin?” Delilah asked as she stirred her spoon through her soup.

“Ha!” Conley’s eyes glinted knowingly. “I’m sure not.”

“If I recall correctly,” Ash replied, pushing his untouched bowl away, “fifteen was the age when you decided you desperately required your own conveyance. Never mind I couldn’t afford it, or that you had nowhere to go.”

Conley gave a commiserating snort.

Ash caught his eye briefly. Then he addressed Delilah. “So you stole my curricle and my two best carriage horses. And promptly ran them all into a ditch.”

“Oh, Trestin, you’re still not holding that against me, are you?” Her wide eyes playfully importuned him to have mercy.

He chuckled at her overly innocent appeal. “Somehow, when I came into the title, I didn’t expect to become a nursemaid as well.”

Her lips formed an O. This time, he didn’t think it was feigned. “But you didn’t! We were already
grown
when—”

Whatever she’d been about to say was cut off with another look from Conley. She instantly demurred. “I suppose you
did
think you were almost a man, and ready to go to university, and were not expecting to take on responsibility for two girls right out of the schoolroom. I’d never thought of it that way, until Mr. Conley said so. His sisters are ever so exasperating! Only one is older than I, and she is so practical as to be impossible to get on with. A bit like you, I think.” She said it without accusation. “It
is
nice, sometimes, to be the one others turn to for advice, and other times, it makes one feel as though one doesn’t know a thing at all.”

Never in his life had Ash expected to have a rational conversation with Delilah. Something had happened to her. He didn’t want to believe it was Mr. Conley.

Mr. Conley smiled and reached across the table. Their hands met near the candelabra set between them. With a gentle stroke over the knuckles of her bare hand, he murmured, “They adore your insight, as do I.”

Ash rolled his eyes. If the man wasn’t already under his sister’s skirts, he would have called him out for such an asinine declaration.

* * *

Later, when Delilah left to take tea in the drawing room, Ash was obligated to share his port with Mr. Conley. Conley wasn’t precisely an ugly man, but he was no gentleman. His children would be too tall. His thick shoulders bespoke years of wielding iron and flame. But he had a certain easiness about him, as though he’d never cared a whit what others thought. And mayhap he didn’t. He certainly had nothing to prove to Ash tonight, for he’d already married Delilah.

Conley rubbed his brawny fingers against the spindly stem of his port glass. He looked at Ash directly. “We should have met earlier.”

“We might have. Except you didn’t come to ask my permission to court my sister.”

“You wouldn’t have given it.”

Ash couldn’t agree more. He sipped his port and waited, unwilling to apologize.

“’Tis not easy,” Conley said, swirling the finest port Ash could afford, “to be here right now. Not because I care if you like me—you’re just one man. But my wife cares, and it means the world to her that you’ve allowed me to dine at your table. So thank you.”

Ash paused, momentarily moved. He’d never admit it because in the end, Conley had done him an ill. But he did care that his sister had found a husband who valued her happiness above his own. Ash felt a trifle guilty; he’d made no part of taking their long meal together tonight easy.

“Why didn’t you try to meet me?” Conley asked.

Ash poured another fortifying round for them both. He supposed Conley could be endured, if not outright liked. His directness was refreshing, after all the underhandedness that had gone on of late.

Family was family, after all.

That didn’t mean Ash must hold his tongue entirely. He set the bottle down and leaned back in his chair. “Because I don’t care if you’re a bloody vicar. You’re not good enough for my sister.”

Conley snorted. “Ain’t that the truth.”

“You don’t deny it?” Ash admitted with surprise. Conley was growing on him. Still, the man deserved to know how he felt. It had been hell.

“Of course not,” Conley said. “She’s so far above my station, I should never have looked twice.”

 
“Damned right. The last thing I wanted for my sister was for her to marry a bounder.” Ash leaned forward again.

“Oh?” Conley drawled. “Then you might have done a little inquiring. Settled your nerves. I’m a blacksmith, I don’t deny it. But I’m not crass. I go to church on Sundays and help the poor when I can. I don’t steal, lie, or cheat. I’ve never been married. I’ve wenched—what man hasn’t? But I’m also above the age when a man finds that sort of pursuit entertaining. It’s sons I want. And daughters.” His eyes met Ash’s in another probing gaze. “I’m not worthy of her, but that’s because of who she is, not who I am.”

Ash wanted to call that a ridiculous, romantic statement. But he couldn’t. So he concentrated on what he knew to be fact. He
wanted
to be angry. He deserved this chance to bring Conley into his hellish world for a minute. “You’re not good enough for my sister, so you courted her in secrecy and lured her away to seal the deal. Are those the actions of an upstanding man?”

Conley shook his head, unaffected by Ash’s bad humor. “No, but I would do it again. Because if you don’t mind my saying so, my lord, you wouldn’t be sitting here now with me, taking your port, if I hadn’t. I think you like me. Not because I’m good enough for her, for I’ll never be. But because I did what you were scared to do. I took what I wanted and I damned the consequences.”

For once, it didn’t make Ash feel superior to know he’d turned his back on Celeste. What good had leaving her done? Had he proved anything? To anyone? His sisters had gone on to behave exactly as they wanted to. Delilah seemed happier now than ever. And he? He was miserable. Morals were cold company.

Conley shouldn’t know about Celeste. Damn Delilah.

He took his leave of Conley soon after. It irked him to know that the man knew his secrets.

Unfortunately for his sister, he came across her on the landing as he made his way toward his bed. She ushered her maid along down the hallway, then turned to him. “Well? What do you think of my husband?”

Ash wanted to rebuke her for sharing his private pain with a stranger, but his fear she’d walk out again weighed more than his violated privacy. “If you must know,” he said grudgingly, “I think you two will do well together. I wouldn’t have chosen him for you, but maybe that’s for the best. I’m coming to realize that I don’t know any of us as well as I thought.”

Her eyes widened. “How true! I thank God every day that Miss Smythe came when she did. We were at each other’s throats, you, Lucy and I. If she hadn’t come, I think we would have done irreparable harm to one another.”

Miss Smythe.
Ash couldn’t smile. “It wasn’t as bad as that.”

“Then you’ve no idea how frustrated I was.” Her laugh caught in her throat. “Truly, I’ll never be able to repay her for what she’s given me. I’m so happy now, I can barely stand it.” Delilah watched him carefully. “Miss Smythe showed Lucy and me the way to follow our hearts. I think she showed you, too.”

His jaw worked, but surprisingly, it wasn’t because he was angry with Celeste for inspiring his sister to elope with a commoner. Sometime in the last few days, he’d begun to see the world wasn’t as black-and-white as he’d always believed it. If he could feel compassion for Lady Elizabeth, whose loss he’d come to feel personally, and happiness for his sister, who’d aligned herself with a man he’d never intended to respect, then perhaps his grudging gratitude for the immoral lessons of a lightskirt wasn’t a surprise.

Delilah’s eyebrows lifted. “I can see you have much on your mind. Good night, then.”

“Wait.” He reached a hand to stay her. Her upper arm was firm, not fragile as he’d always imagined it to be. She was strong, his sister. Somehow, he’d never realized it. “Why do you think Mother was unfaithful?”

She blinked. “Did Lucy tell you that?”

He dropped his hand from her arm. “Yes.” The single word expressed all the isolation and betrayal he felt. How was he to trust anyone when so many had lied to him, allegedly for his own good?

Delilah hugged herself, touching the place he’d grabbed her arm. “I
am
sorry. You loved her so much, and we never wanted to take that from you. It seemed unfair to vilify her after she was already gone. But I can see we hurt you by hiding it. Not just because we shut you out, but because it affected the way you perceived events. Please, forgive us.”