With This Kiss, page 164
C.
Lucien leaned forward, set the note on a table, and kneaded his brow. So he’d married her. Good. But as he gazed out over the rainy, night-shrouded downs and thought of them all off in London, he could not take pleasure in his success. Leave it to Gareth to bring his family to a whorehouse, of all places. God only knew where he’d take them tomorrow.
He rose to his feet, pacing slowly back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. Was he right to have placed any faith in his brother? Was he right to have any faith that the girl could turn him around, make something of him? And why had she consented to stay at a whorehouse? Lucien swore softly beneath his breath. If it weren’t for Gareth’s fierce pride—and Lucien’s own dwindling hopes that, through adversity, Gareth would finally straighten himself out—he’d order Armageddon saddled, ride to London, and drag them all back here himself. Nerissa had begged him to do it. Andrew, who wasn’t speaking to him, had threatened to go himself. And now to hear that Gareth hadn’t taken his family to respectable lodgings but to a damned brothel.
He shook his head. No. He would not intervene, no matter how tempted he was, no matter what lows his brother had sunk to. He had to give Gareth this chance to prove himself.
Had to allow him this chance to grow up.
He picked up the candle, pocketed the missive, and moved silently from the room, the meager flame glowing against Blackheath’s ancient stone walls as he moved through the silent, shadowy corridors. He began to climb the stairs. Sleep might evade him, as it often did on these nights when the wind moaned around the castle and he relived that terrible moment when he’d discovered his father dead on the tower stairs all those years ago, but at least he could find peace in one thing: Gareth might be up to his usual depravity some miles away in London, but through his informer, the Duke of Blackheath was watching over him most keenly, indeed.
He had already lost one brother.
By God, he would not lose another.
* * *
In a lavish bedroom at de Montforte House, a humble young woman from the colonies lay dreaming on soft, goose down pillows. A thick, fluffy counterpane warmed her body, her skin was silky after a bath in lavender water, and the fire that crackled in the hearth filled the room with heat and light.
On a cold stone floor in a nearby mews, the heir presumptive to an English dukedom also slept, his pillow the hard leather of a saddle, his blanket the wet surtout that covered his shivering body. His skin was damp and raw, and the rain that beat down outside found its way in through the leaky roof, creeping beneath his sleeping body via grooves and channels in the filthy stone floor.
The horizon greyed with the approach of dawn. The night man came in leading his tired horse, a lantern in his hand. He saw the nob lying apparently drunk on the floor, stepped over his huddled body with indifference, and put his horse in its narrow stall. A few feet away, the drunk was mumbling something in his sleep, tossing fitfully.
But Lord Gareth de Montforte was not drunk. He was dreaming.
You are lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless. You are an embarrassment to this family—and especially to me. When you grow up and learn the meaning of responsibility, Gareth, perhaps I shall treat you with the respect I did your brother the respect I did your brother the respect I did your brother.
Gareth tried to storm away. But this time he could not just go riding off to escape Lucien’s savage rebuke, could not just laugh in his face and go find some other trouble in which to involve himself, because this time it was a dream, and there was nowhere else to go. Instead, he tried to escape by clawing toward wakefulness, but the dream held him in its clutches like an iron shackle around a prisoner’s leg, and there was no getting away.
And still, Lucien, gazing down his nose at him with the highest contempt, those damning words echoing over and over.
Lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless.
“Oh, just sod off, will you?” Gareth cried, lashing out at that austere, forbidding face. “Bugger off and leave me the hell alone!”
He turned over and saw Charles.
“Hello, Gareth.”
He froze, staring in open-mouthed shock. Then his heart began to beat in sudden, fragile excitement. He blinked, disbelieving. “Charles?” he croaked.
Charles smiled. He was in his regimental uniform with its blue facings and shining gorget, his sword at his side. For a long moment he looked at Gareth, his face tender with brotherly love; then he shook his head, gave a tolerant little smile, and, turning on his booted heel, began to walk away.
The command to follow was an unspoken one. Gareth picked himself up, shot Lucien a triumphant glance over his shoulder, and dashed off after Charles, hardly daring to breathe.
Incredibly, Lucien did not try to stop him.
His brother led him through the fields, never turning to see if Gareth followed, never pausing to wait, but continuing on his way as purposefully as if he were leading his company into battle. How long they walked Gareth did not know. Where they were going he could not even guess. But eventually Charles paused, and as Gareth came up beside him, he stood back and pointed to something just becoming discernible through a drifting envelope of gray mist. Gareth gasped. It was their mother, having tea in the garden with Perry’s mother, her smile as gentle, loving, and heartwarming as he remembered. His heart leaped. Mama! he cried excitedly, but she went right on talking to the Witch, never hearing him, never even knowing he was there. And as the mists cleared even more, Gareth saw that a fine summer day surrounded them, with the pond sparkling like a blue mirror in the distance. Far off in the muck and bulrushes that ringed it, he could just see a bit of color: himself as a little boy, hiding in the weeds with Perry and giggling in preparation for their grand prank.
He glanced excitedly at Charles. His brother inclined his head, directing Gareth to turn his attention back to this long-ago scene that was unfolding before them.
“Really, Mary,” Lady Brookhampton was saying waspishly, “I don’t see why you defend him so. I don’t think his antics are charming at all! He’s a mischievous brat, and he’ll cause you nothing but heartbreak and embarrassment. Charles is the one who will be the heir if anything happens to Lucien, Charles is the one who deserves your time and efforts— not that horrid little hellspawn!”
Not that horrid little hellspawn.
Charles looked pained. He gazed quietly at Gareth, who faltered, undone by the blatant love in his brother’s eyes. He knew that Charles had hated the comparisons between the two of them as much as he did, if not more. He knew that Charles had always felt guilty about coming out on top, as though it were his fault that he and Gareth were made so differently. The sympathy in Charles’s gaze was almost unbearable. Pretending to be cold, Gareth shifted his feet and shivered. And then Charles turned and began moving once more, leaving the two women in their cozy summer scene far behind. Like an obedient dog, Gareth followed.
“Where are we going?” Gareth called after him. “Are you a ghost or a memory? Where are we? Charles!”
The scarlet-clad figure neither turned nor answered, merely kept moving, the sunlight glinting off his accoutrements and catching the gold in his hair. And when he stopped again, it had grown dark, and the two of them stood before the statue in the village green.
Gareth knew immediately what he would see: Chilcot with the bucket of purple paint in his teeth, Cokeham rooting in the grass and making pig-noises, and all of them foxed out of their heads on Irish whiskey. An involuntary burst of laughter escaped him, for it really was quite funny.
He glanced at Charles.
His brother wasn’t laughing. He looked infinitely sad.
The guffaw died abruptly in Gareth’s throat. He cleared his throat and looked away, suddenly ashamed of his behavior. While he had been running wild over Berkshire, his brother had been off fighting for his king. While he had been up to his usual drunken debauchery, his brother had been dying a lonely death in a land far from home. Suddenly, Gareth could not bear to meet Charles’s gaze. Could barely force himself to raise his head and look again at what Charles had brought him to see. And when he did, he saw himself clinging to a rope slung from the statue’s neck, a paintbrush in his hand and a foolish, drunken expression on his face that now made him cringe with embarrassment. He heard his silly words, saw his friends acting like fools, felt Charles’s infinite despair as he stood quietly beside him.
“Please, no more, Charles,” he said, turning away from the scene of mayhem. “This is damned embarrassing.”
Charles merely studied him for a moment, thoughtfully, then turned and began walking again.
And when he stopped once more, it was in the Spitalfields church where Gareth had married Juliet just that morning. The Den members were laughing and insulting each other, the vicar looked harassed, and everyone was behaving as though marriage was some grand joke. Everyone, that is, except Juliet. There she stood, alone, looking sad and mature beyond her years, pledging herself to a man who didn’t know the meaning of the word “responsibility.” There she stood, still and silent, facing the adversity that was marriage to Lord Gareth de Montforte with the same stoic resolve with which she must have faced everything else in her young life. She, who had crossed an ocean to secure a future for her baby; she, who was putting her entire faith, trust, and future in the hands of a fellow who was sadly undeserving of any of it.
Gareth swallowed, hard, and looked away. He did not deserve her. He was everything Lucien said he was, and he did not deserve her.
He put his hands over his eyes, overcome with shame and self-disgust.
You are lazy, feckless, dissolute, useless. You are an embarrassment to this family, and especially to me.
He bent his head to his balled fist, seeing all the stupid things he had recently done, seeing Juliet—his sad, woebegone little Juliet—standing trustfully in that church once again. Oh, God He did not know how long he stood there, rocking silently back and forth in his self-imposed agony. But when he finally looked up, the scene was gone, and he and his brother were alone in the deep quiet of a Lambourn night, the stars pricking through the black sky that arced up over the downs, the insects humming all around them.
Charles was staring out over the downs, his hawkish profile dim against the night sky. And then, for the first time since this strange journey had begun, he spoke.
“You have two choices,” he said, quietly. “You can either abandon your pride and go back to Lucien—or you can make something of yourself.” He turned then, his clear, intelligent gaze holding Gareth’s own. “Whatever you do, I trust you not to let her down.”
They stood looking at each other for a long, silent moment, two brothers, two friends.
Then Charles turned and walked down the hill, leaving Gareth all alone. And this time he knew he could not follow.
He stared after that scarlet-clad figure, growing smaller and smaller, now fading into the darkness. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Pain gnawed at his heart. And now the wakefulness he’d tried so hard to reach was starting to drag him away.
“I’ll prove myself!” Gareth shouted into the darkness that had swallowed up his brother. “I swear it, I will! I’ll prove myself worthy of Juliet’s loyalty, her trust, and her hopes for me! I’ll be a good husband and a good provider! By God and heaven, I will, no matter what it takes!”
He opened his eyes. The dream was still very near, Charles’s quiet words still ringing in his head. For a moment he lay there in the darkness, disoriented. Then he heard the rain drumming on the street outside. He felt the cold, hard stone beneath his back, smelled the pungent aroma of horses, and knew that he was still in the mews, where he’d been all along.
And Gareth suddenly knew what he must do.
A finger of early light was just creeping toward him through the open doorway, stretching across the dirty hay scattered across the floor, the patches of bare stone, and bits of litter until it finally glowed against a crumpled white wad that lay several inches from Gareth’s face.
His heart pounding, he reached out and picked it up.
It was the card that Snelling had offered him earlier.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I think you should go straight back to the duke,” the Dowager Countess of Brookhampton declared, setting down her teacup with an abrupt clatter. “Here it is, nearly two days since he dumped you here, and where is that reprobate you married? Probably lying drunk in a gaming hell somewhere—or in the arms of some woman of sin. You’ll not see the likes of him for another fortnight, I tell you!”
Perry’s mother had come round on the pretense of a social call, but Juliet knew that was just an excuse; like the dozen or so other nosy harridans who’d called at de Montforte House since word had got out that the Wild One had married, Lady Brookhampton and her daughter wanted to glean information for the gossip mill, see for themselves the woman Lord Gareth had wed, and take the opportunity to malign him to his new wife.
Lady Brookhampton was a particularly unpleasant creature, and her daughter, Lady Katharine Farnsley—a tall, icy blonde whose beauty made Juliet feel shadowed—was equally mean-spirited. As they all sat down to take tea, it became glaringly obvious that Perry’s sister had set her own cap for Lord Gareth—and was deeply resentful that Juliet had got to him first.
“I suppose it’s just as well that you married him,” Lady Katharine mused, stirring sugar into her cup and eyeing Juliet’s plain clothes—and baby on her knee—with raking contempt. “After all, Lord Gareth did ruin his share of young women, and he’s not likely to change. Better you have to worry about him than me, is that not so, Mama?”
“Indeed, my dear. You can do much better than that libertine.”
“I understand he’s currently having an affair with Lord Pemberley’s wife.”
Juliet smiled tightly. “Not anymore he’s not.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that after all, he’s not here with you, is he?”
Juliet bounced Charlotte on her knee and leaned sideways so the baby couldn’t make a grab for her teacup as she picked it up. She was not naive; it was evident that these two troublemakers wanted nothing more than to sow dissent in the newly-tilled garden of her marriage. Still, she could have done without their taunts. She had seen neither Gareth nor his friends since that rainy night he’d brought her here, and she was worried enough about his safety without these two giving her something else to be concerned about. Surely the man who had made such tender love to her—she blushed even now, just thinking about it—on their wedding night would not be in the arms of another woman. Surely he had not abandoned the wife and daughter he’d gone through hell and high water to wed, in favor of someone else.
Had he?
Juliet said, “You misjudge my husband. He’s a fine man.”
“A fine man?! Ha, did you hear that, Katharine? Ha, ha, ha, she says he’s a fine man!” Perry’s mother raised her brows, much affronted, and turned her stare on Juliet. “Let me tell you, gel, I’ve known the Wild One since he was a little boy, and he hasn’t changed one bit!”
And with that, Lady Brookhampton related the tale of a summer afternoon nearly seventeen years before, when Lord Gareth had been a mischievous blue-eyed prankster who’d been anything but innocent. The duchess had come by for tea in the garden, bringing Charles and Gareth with her; Charles had sat cross-legged on a blanket beside them, studiously reading a book while Gareth and Perry had gone off to play.
“Oh, I can still see it all so well!” Lady Brookhampton said, holding her cup out so that Juliet could pour more tea. She went on to describe the scene: the duchess pregnant with Nerissa, smiling and rubbing her swollen tummy, her nanny suddenly charging up the lawn, skirts high as a strumpet’s and screaming that little Lord Gareth had tumbled into the pond and disappeared beneath the water. The alarm was raised. Mass confusion and chaos had ensued, with servants—even those who couldn’t swim—leaping into the pond, dashing to get the small boat, racing this way and that. Even her husband, the Earl of Brookhampton, had come running, shedding his waistcoat and diving into the brackish water in search of the boy, and as he’d come up for air, Lord Gareth—with Perry following reverently behind—came strolling out from behind one of the ancient yew trees, soaking wet, and laughing at having tricked some fifty people into thinking he had drowned.
“He should’ve been whipped!” Lady Brookhampton declared vehemently. “But the duchess wouldn’t hear of it; why, I doubt he got anything more than a gentle admonition not to do such a thing again. Had she punished him as she ought to have done, perhaps he would have turned out all right, but no, he was her favorite, you know, her wild child, and he could do nothing wrong. She didn’t even punish him when he turned six and shocked everyone in Ravenscombe by offering threepence to any of the village girls who would let him look beneath their skirts!”
“What about Charles? Did she ever punish him?” Juliet asked, with faint sarcasm.
“Of course not, Charles never did anything wrong. But Gareth—he was too charming, too full of naughty, sparkle-eyed innocence for anyone to take him seriously … or remain angry with him for too long. He’d do something awful, and his mother would just smile and say that the years would cure him of his uncontrollable ways. But they never did. If anything, he grew more daring, more outrageous the older he got—especially after the duchess died.”
“Perhaps he did those ‘awful’ things for attention,” Juliet said flatly, her teacup coming down a little too hard. “Especially as everyone seemed to pay more of it to his brother.”
“That is because his brother deserved it!”
Charles, she was told, had remained studious, serious-minded, and unfailingly polite, but Gareth had become the black sheep of the family, the bane of the Lambourn Downs—and, much to Lady Brookhampton’s dismay, Perry’s closest friend.
