Chapter 21
… I’ve four separate letters from Lydia in Sussex assuring me that she is well. Does that strike you as… ominous?
—from Theo Hope-Wallace to Jasper Hope-Wallace
“Ouch—bloody— fuck !”
Arthur wrestled himself out from underneath the shortish blond fellow who was doubtless one of Lydia’s ten thousand brothers. Despite his significant disadvantage in both height and reach, this particular Hope-Wallace fought like a deranged tiger. Arthur had felt teeth , for God’s sake.
He planted his boot in the man’s midsection and shoved. Something tore. He felt a draft on his shoulder.
“Ned!” Lydia seemed to be shouting, but only in a whisper. “Stop it! Calm down, you blockhead!”
Ned paused, panting from exertion. “Going to—murder him—for you—Lyddie—”
“For heaven’s sake, why ?”
Despite the fact that his arse was on the ground, Ned appeared to be gathering himself for another spring. “Look at you! What has he done to you? You’re bleeding , Lyddie! Your husband , Jasper said—but Theo looked him up—he’s a damned penniless fortune hunter!”
“I’m not bleeding, you Bedlamite! Do you ever stop talking and listen to something beyond the wind howling between your ears?”
Arthur’s eyes had flown toward her at Ned’s words—she was bleeding — where —how had he missed—
She wasn’t bleeding, as it turned out, though she was scrubbing rather frantically at the jam on her arm. But the guilt that had coursed through him like a torrent at her brother’s words did not falter.
A penniless fortune hunter. That’s what Ned had called him.
He wanted to defend himself—he would never take advantage of her—he would never take from her—
But—God. He’d felt a great wash of shame and inadequacy as they’d arrived at the Hope-Wallace residence. The town house—if that was even the word for it—was palatial. She had been raised here, on this elegant street with its neat foliage and carefully trimmed shrubbery.
All he had to offer her was a half-ruined castle, and a name and title he was not proud to own. Her fortune would be a help to him—to the people of Strathrannoch and the villagers he supported. He could not pretend it wasn’t so.
And he’d hated, too, to sneak her up the stairs, all travel-worn and secretive. He wanted—
He scarcely knew what he wanted. Ridiculous things. He wanted to march into her family home with her on his arm and declare her his wife.
But he did not know how to speak to her now, here in this beautiful house. He didn’t know how to tell her that he’d gone about everything backward, that his heart was hers to keep or trod upon, that he wanted her, in every possible way, forever.
A fortune hunter . How could he ever make her believe it wasn’t true?
Lydia towed Ned into one of the chambers down the hall, a quick gesture of her head indicating that Arthur was to follow.
The three of them crowded into the room. Arthur supposed it was Lydia’s bedchamber: He could see evidence of her everywhere. The political and historical tomes that spilled out from the bookcase, the escritoire nearly overflowing with pamphlets and notes. On top of the little desk’s second shelf were three or four inexplicable decorative items that looked like the things she wore sometimes in her hair.
Beneath the bed lay a pair of floppy pink-and-orange slippers knitted to resemble clouds at sunrise.
Lydia shoved Ned down onto the bed, and despite his emotional tumult, Arthur found that he wanted to laugh. Her habitual reserve had altogether vanished with this young blond brother.
“Sit,” she hissed. “Listen. This is Arthur Baird, the Earl of Strathrannoch—”
“Your husband?” Ned interjected. “You eloped?”
“I—we—” Her gaze flicked toward Arthur, her big blue eyes uncertain.
“Yes,” Arthur said. “Lydia is Lady Strathrannoch.”
If there was any chance—any chance at all—that she thought he would hesitate to make her his wife, he meant to disabuse her of the notion. If she needed certainty, he could give it to her. If she needed him to steady her, then by God, he would never leave her side.
Ned’s face had gone somewhat red. He appeared to color as freely as his sister. “And why in hell does she look like she’s been run over by a cart, Strathrannoch?”
“I was,” Lydia put in. “Er, that is, we had a carriage accident on the way here. And we were, ah, also robbed. By highwaymen. Arthur was quite heroic.”
Arthur wanted very much to protest this description of events, but it did not seem the opportune moment.
“Jesus.” Ned pressed his fingers briefly over his eyes. “Jesus, Lyddie. How did this all—and when—” He broke off in evident turmoil.
Lydia moistened her lips and looked at Arthur. “I… read something he wrote. About the Clearances. I… I traveled to his castle and met him there. We… determined that we suit.”
Ned glanced at Arthur and then back to Lydia. “Trust you to fall in love with someone over their political beliefs. Good Lord.”
Arthur felt a cold discomfort in the pit of his stomach at Ned’s words.
She would. She had.
Only it had not been with him.
Lydia winced. “We can dissect my personal flaws at a later date, if that’s all right. Is Jasper here? We need to speak to him immediately.”
Ned shook his head. “He was here for a day and then off again. You know how he is—always flitting about between his friends and his ladybirds and his Venetian holidays and whatever else he does.”
Lydia’s voice when she replied was measured. “Indeed. I do know how he is.”
“Mother’s been off her head ever since he dropped in and told us about your elopement.”
Lydia collapsed onto the bed beside her brother and groaned. “Of course.”
“Have you heard that you’re a countess now?” Ned’s initial outrage seemed to have faded into a kind of irrepressible good humor. “Because I have. About a thousand times.”
Lydia scrubbed her hands over her disheveled hair, an action which did remarkable things to her barely concealed breasts. Arthur tried desperately not to think about her breasts, here in her bedchamber with her brother .
“Do you think there’s any chance that Jasper might turn up tonight?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I haven’t been keeping his social calendar for him.”
Lydia made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a snort. “Of course not. Well, we’ll see if he does. If not, I have other ideas about how to track him down.”
Ned’s gaze sharpened upon her. “Why do you need Jasper so desperately? Is it something to do with your pamphlets?”
“Something, yes. I’ll tell you everything after I talk to him.”
Ned looked unconvinced by her words, but he nodded shortly.
Lydia glanced between Arthur and her brother and then turned back to Ned. “Listen, while I dress, can you take Arthur and”—she made a gesture that seemed to take in his whole person—“fix him up? Perhaps find him some clean clothing? We lost everything to the, ah, highwaymen.”
Ned looked extremely put out by this suggestion. “I can’t say as I’ve got anything that will fit a giant.”
“Be resourceful,” Lydia said and patted him on the cheek. “You’re my favorite brother for a reason. And—Ned?”
He paused in his dubious appraisal of Arthur’s person. “Yes?”
“Can you try not to trifle with my husband?”
Perhaps she had called him such before, but Arthur did not think so. His spirits shot upward so decisively that even the bloodthirsty look Ned shot him could not dampen them.
“I can’t make any promises,” Ned said darkly.
By the time dinner began, Arthur had met the rest of the Hope-Wallace brothers and concluded that they ought to be separated from one another for the general safety of the British Isles. Preferably via incarceration.
Once he had removed Arthur from Lydia’s chamber, Ned had come out with the revelation that the only suitably sized clothing he could procure on short notice would have to come from a footman.
An hour later, Arthur was clean-shaven and more or less indistinguishable from the crimson-liveried male servants in the house, except that he’d refused the white wig and the tricorne hat. Ned had made an extremely cogent argument for the wig, but Arthur had glowered at him until he subsided.
Eventually Ned had hauled him downstairs to a spacious sitting room, which sported a tasteful wall-covering of fruits and birds, several old and no doubt priceless rugs, and a glassily polished pianoforte.
Lydia was there already, sitting beside another of the innumerable brothers at the piano and laughing—that sweet soft laugh he loved—with her elbows pressed to her knees.
His gaze fell on her and held there, like the point of a compass drawn to magnetic north. Somehow, quite without his realizing it, she had become the pole by which he was guided.
She looked so lovely, warm and comfortable beside her brother. She’d exchanged the precarious dress for one of her own, which was all white lace and miles of skirts. She looked pristine, exquisite, perfectly at home here in this expensive house with its matching servants.
He wanted to drag her upstairs and find her body beneath all those yards of snowy lace. He wanted to take down her hair, muss it, kiss her until she was flushed and tousled and dazed. He wanted—
Jesus, things he ought not want whilst dressed in silk knee breeches that were slightly too small.
He was introduced to the other brother at the piano—this one was Gabriel, the physician. He was as blond as the other brothers had been, though more sober-faced, and his grip on Arthur’s hand was viselike.
Lydia, for her part, alternated between sympathetic grimaces in Arthur’s direction and furious glances at Ned, who pretended not to see her. Presumably she had noticed Arthur’s patently absurd costume, but was too decorous to point it out, in case he did not realize how ridiculous he looked.
He thanked God that he had not been talked into the wig.
“Gabe, you may be interested to know that Arthur is a great patron of the mechanical arts,” Lydia said, with perhaps more loyalty than accuracy. “Perhaps you could tell him about your—”
Gabriel did not seem to be listening. “Do you vote your seat in the Lords, Strathrannoch?” he asked abruptly. “I have some legislation I want to introduce on the disposal of refuse in urban districts, and I—”
“Oh Jesus,” said Ned. He threw himself down onto a settee and balanced his boots on the wooden arm. “It has been, quite literally, less than two minutes, and you’ve already brought up fecal matter.”
Gabriel scowled. “It is an issue of public health, as you well know, and I will take support wherever I can get it.”
“No one wants to bring out your shit bill, Gabe. It lacks a certain refinement.”
“It is not a shit bill —”
“Lord Strathrannoch votes by proxy,” Lydia cut in. She had the timing of one long-practiced in interruption.
Ned and Gabe fell silent and turned identical dismayed looks upon him.
“Oh bollocks,” Ned said. He swung his feet down and sat up, which Arthur felt was not a good sign. “Don’t tell Theo. He thinks proxy voting should be abolished. Enables corruption, something something, political cronies, and so forth.”
“I prefer to remain in Scotland,” Arthur said grimly.
In fact, he could not afford to travel to London and stay for the duration of the parliamentary session, but he would have rather chewed off his own arm than admit such a thing to Lydia’s brothers.
“Do you?” inquired Ned curiously. “And Lyddie wants that too?”
He looked helplessly to Lydia. He thought she did. He hoped she did, as preposterous as it seemed here in this opulent sitting room.
“Yes,” she said softly into the silence, and his heart leapt.
He wanted to pull her into his arms. He wanted to run his fingers through her hair. He wanted to ask if she was certain, if she could possibly be certain. He wanted—
To his mingled relief and dismay, their locked gaze was broken as two more Hope-Wallaces entered the sitting room. He turned reluctantly away from her.
The final brother was a buttoned-up sort of fellow, auburn-haired and of a height with Jasper and Gabriel. He looked to be a handful of years older than Arthur, and he had on his arm a tiny, fairylike woman in perhaps her midfifties with silvery-blond hair and familiar dark blue eyes.
Lydia was on her feet and in the arms of this eldest brother in an instant.
“Theo,” she mumbled into his jacket, “I’ve missed you!”
After a moment, Theo set Lydia back away from him and gave her a thorough once-over. “I’ve missed you too,” he said gravely, “Lady Strathrannoch.”
Lydia went red to the roots of her hair and then slowly—like a woman facing the gallows—turned to the petite blonde at Theo’s side. “Mother.”
On a sob, Mrs. Hope-Wallace snatched her daughter into her arms and buried her face into Lydia’s hair. “My baby! My little girl! I’ve been beside myself!”
The Hope-Wallace brothers emitted various scoffs and groans.
“Come off it, Mother,” Ned said. “You thought she was in Sussex like the rest of us did.”
“I knew,” said Mrs. Hope-Wallace damply. “I felt it in my heart that she had left England. A mother always knows.”
After submitting to her mother’s attentions for longer than Arthur would have thought possible, Lydia wrestled herself free. “I’m fine, Mother.” She half turned to Arthur, though she did not close the distance between them. “Ah—let me—that is, allow me to…”
She seemed slightly at a loss for words.
“The giant is her new husband,” Ned put in. “Your baby outranks you, Mother.”
Lydia visibly blanched.
“Despite his appearance,” Gabe said blandly, “I have it on good authority he is not one of our footmen.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Ned. “He’s not wearing a wig, is he?”
“Mother,” Lydia tried again, “this is Arthur. The Earl of Strathrannoch, and my… husband.”
Mrs. Hope-Wallace had one small hand pressed to her breastbone. She dropped it, stepped forward, and, to Arthur’s absolute stupefaction, threw her arms about his waist. And hugged him.
“My dear boy,” she said, “welcome to the family. You must call me Mother.”
There was an instantaneous and vociferous round of heckling from the brothers.
And Arthur felt—
As though he were on precipice, balanced a thousand feet in the air. He did not know where to turn. He was afraid to take a step. Everywhere he looked seemed to augur a long and breathless fall.
How many times had he told himself that he did not want this very thing?
Family. Home. Love in all its forms, burdensome and overwhelming, generous and kind.
He had almost stopped wanting Davis back in his life. He had almost stopped wishing for things that were never to be. He had Strathrannoch Castle and his tenants and his barbican, and he had told himself it was enough.
But would it be enough for Lydia?
It seemed impossible, fantastical—she who had grown up in this wealthy, loving, boisterous family, the youngest, the most cherished. How could he ever give her anything like this?
How could he stop himself from wanting it too?
They lingered in the sitting room for quite a while, but Jasper did not arrive. Eventually Mrs. Hope-Wallace seemed to surrender, and they made their way into the dining room. Perfect identical footmen served perfect identical courses, one after another after another. Arthur scarcely knew what to make of them.
The brothers traded more and less clever remarks, Mrs. Hope-Wallace presided with affectionate absurdity, and no one ran too roughshod over Lydia. He had been prepared to pull her aside if she grew pale or anxious, as he had done at Kilbride House, but here, in the circle of her family, she did not need him.
Except once.
In the middle of a conversational odyssey between Gabe and Ned—which had meandered from gooseberry cream to something about Catullus that made Theo grow even more poker-stiff over his stewed celery—Mrs. Hope-Wallace broke in.
“Lydia, my love, won’t you tell us about your wedding? My first child to marry—and I missed it. You did not even wear my lace shawl.” She appeared to bravely fight back another round of tears. “Were you at least in blue? You know how fetching you look in blue. Tell me you didn’t wear primrose. And, oh, my dear, did you have flowers? Did you have a bridal attendant?” A faint look of alarm crossed her face. “Are you… a Papist now?”
“This,” muttered Gabe, “is why the rest of us are unmarried.”
“Ah,” said Lydia. She’d begun to blink furiously. “It was nice. Lovely. It was… in Scotland.”
“That’s specific,” said Ned.
“In… October,” Lydia managed. She was staring down at her stewed celery as if for inspiration. Every single inch of skin Arthur could see above the top of her bodice was carnation-pink.
“We were married at Strathrannoch Castle,” he heard himself say.
The five Hope-Wallaces turned to look at him.
“In Scotland,” he said, “there’s no requirement of banns or license, only a bit of plaid and two witnesses. We had everything we needed.”
He had not realized how clearly he’d pictured this—Lydia’s hand in his, her elegant fingers and his scarred ones, wrapped together in a strip of his blue-and-green tartan.
“We stood on the ramparts under the sun,” he said, “and Lydia wore a crown of meadowsweet in her hair.”
He had seen her there. He had taken her to the top of the castle and wanted her—wanted it all—even then.
“Her dress was white”—it had been, that day on the ramparts; he remembered everything—“and her wee spangled slippers caught the reflection of the sun. She looked—she looked as though—”
But here his imagination faltered. How would she look at him, were she his bride?
His gaze caught on hers. She was staring at him, her face gone pale. Her fingers were locked on a piece of polished silver, clutching the stem of the fork like a lifeline.
“Lydia,” he said.
She shoved her chair back from the table and stood. Her fine linen napkin fell to the floor.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I—I beg your pardon, Mother, I have to—I must—”
She closed her mouth, turned on her heel, and fled.
Heedless of the Hope-Wallaces, of the rules of polite society, of the choked sound of amusement from one of the brothers, Arthur was on his feet after her in an instant.