The Gentleman Spy: A Guardian/Ward Historical Romance

Chapter 8

Emerald couldn’t sleep, but she often stared wide-eyed into the canopy of her bed until the first faint rays of dawn peeked through the heavy brocade curtains. After her father died, grief had refused to let sleep claim her. Even as grief dulled to a constant ache, and the ache faded to an abstract sense of loss, sleep remained elusive. Some nights, she’d float through the halls like a spectre, stopping in the long gallery to speak to the portrait of the previous Lord Avon, or she’d bring a candle to the orangery. There was a magical quality to the moonlight streaming through the pitched glass roof, and the tangy scent of citrus transported her far away.

In the lambent light of the candle, she could see the small hand on the clock pushing towards the one; the long hand following close behind.

Her eyes traced the gold embroidery on the deep blue fabric above her, the looping vines, the pointed leaves bent this way and that, the flowers so tiny they looked more like stars scattered among the night sky. She was still reeling from Beau’s sudden return—the way he’d reappeared without word or warning to upend her life once more—from the way he’d spoken to her at the assembly, and the meaning she wished to read into his words. Worse still was the staggering realisation her feelings of the past weren’t a thing of the past at all.

Despite him having been hundreds of miles and countries away, he had remained a fixture in her mind. Every morning when she rode out with the steward to look at something broken or breaking. Every time a tenant’s chicken coop was burgled by a fox. Every year when she held her breath until assured of the yield from the harvest. Every dispute she resolved, every sick child to whom she delivered pork jelly. Every letter from him the dowager read aloud over breakfast in which he wrote of dinners and balls and hunting parties and theatre and opera and art on the continent. Every moment she’d carried the full weight of his responsibilities.

She had never, not even for a day, stopped thinking about him, where he was, what he was doing, with whom. Emerald tried to keep her anger close. It was the only thing protecting her traitorous heart, which pounded an unsteady beat whenever he drew near. But living in her upset became a greater challenge the longer he was home. She relished the way he challenged her, appreciated the way he spoke to her as an equal, and craved his notice.

With the kind of sigh that could sweep every leaf from a tree, Emerald climbed out of bed and tied a delicate dressing gown over her nightdress. She plucked the lit candle from her bedside table and then made for the study. Work didn’t soothe her the way playing the pianoforte did, but it could at least provide some distraction.

A soft light emanated from the open door, and she wondered if one of the footmen had forgotten to put ash on the fire. Her soft steps came to an abrupt halt in the doorway, the candleholder wavering precariously in her hand. Beau sat behind the big masculine desk, head bent, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, a glass of brandy within easy reach. Even with some distance between them, she could see black lines snaking up his left forearm and found herself leaning forward, desperate for a closer look.

‘A little late to be up and about, is it not?’

She jumped at his voice. Her eyes flew from his bare arm, but he wasn’t looking up. ‘The same could be said of you.’

He gave her his attention then, and whether it was just a trick of the shadows in the room she couldn’t say, but it seemed his eyes grew darker and more intense as they roamed over her. A chill ran down her neck despite a healthy fire burning, and her free hand clutched the bodice of her dressing gown; she was painfully aware of how dressed down they both were.

‘I’m glad for a few moments alone with you, Miss Doubleday. I’ve been going through the ledgers and have some questions you might be able to answer.’

Emerald lingered on the threshold, hesitant to step into the room. He unsettled her, always had, but there was something both vulnerable and powerful about him in this informal state. Something she wasn’t sure she could trust herself to be around.

‘All right.’ She took one uncertain step and then another till she was standing in front of the desk.

‘Here, the haberdasher’—he pointed to a line in the book—‘and a little ways back the tailor. I believe you settled and closed the accounts given my absence and my father’s passing?’

She couldn’t read the ledger from her vantage point, but she had paid off the bills after his father’s death and so nodded in agreement.

‘There is a new line, beginning two years ago in December.’ He flipped about halfway through the volume. ‘And some writing here I cannot make out. It’s not so elegant as yours, but I trust you’ve been able to make sense of it?’

Emerald inhaled a wobbly breath—he’d noticed her handwriting, thought it elegant—as she went round the desk to stand at his side, letting her eyes fall to where the tip of his finger rested.

‘The writing is Gwen’s, my lady’s maid.’

He lifted his head, a brow raised in inquiry, but she couldn’t see past his sculpted jaw, his full lips. Her fingers went to the thin gold chain round her neck, fiddling with the delicate cross hanging from it for a moment as she recovered her thoughts.

‘There was a brief period of time where she completed the entries for me.’

‘Because?’

She wet her lips, her hesitation evident in the prolonged intermission between his question and her forthcoming answer.

‘Because I fell off the ladder in the library. I broke my wrist and experienced a mild concussion as well.’

‘No one thought to make mention of the incident? To inform me my ward had injured herself?’ His tone was razor sharp, but two lines of concern drew his brows together.

‘’Twas nothing, really. Very likely, no one thought it worth the postage.’

‘I do.’

Emerald’s breath swelled in her chest. ‘The headaches lasted only a few days, and my wrist would have been healed by the time you received the missive.’ She worried she might crumble under the scrutiny of his close, keen stare, and allowed her own gaze to settle once more on the mesmerising ink winding up and around his taut skin. Under the black, hard planes of muscle, the soft, rolling ridges of veins.

Some books in the library included mentions of tattoos, but she’d never seen one in real life. Until such a moment, she had always thought them reserved for sailors or pirates. He was speaking again, but she couldn’t pull her attention from the oak tree wrapping up his arm. It looked just like the ones lining the drive. Its narrow, stable base sat just above his wrist, sure to be hidden by the cuff of his shirt. From the trunk grew several sturdy branches, but several more disappeared under white cotton. Her eyes burned with effort to see through the fabric.

Beau turned his face up to her. ‘Miss Doubleday?’

‘Did it hurt?’

‘Did what hurt?’

She nodded at his arm.

His eyes followed hers. ‘Yes, but often we feel pain and gain strength in equal measure.’

At her side, her fingers stretched, desperate to trail along the long limbs reaching out over the corded muscle of his forearm.

Quiet filled the room. She knew it was her chance to ask what he’d been doing in Broadstairs the other day, but she was spellbound by the privacy of their exchange. Her mouth refused to form words that would do nothing but wreck whatever alchemy was holding the moment together.

‘When?’

‘Three years ago.’

After his father died. She gave a bewildered little shake of her head, her mind unable to make sense of the man in front of her. ‘But you stayed away.’

He leaned back in the chair, taking one arm with him but leaving the other on full display. ‘Love and hate are most easily distinguished in their simplest forms, but the truth is the parameters of each are as fragile as gossamer. Passion cares nothing for your resentments; disdain can be overcome with understanding. We are capable of feeling both at once and in equal measure.’

Emerald was too plagued by a chaotic surge of emotion to speak, and she was spared the necessity to do so when Beau looked from the ledger in front of him to the room at large and then to her, his eyes never giving anything away. ‘Would you care to play a game?’

‘A game?’

Beau tipped his head towards the chessboard sitting on a table in the corner of the room. She hadn’t touched the pieces since before the previous Lord Avon died.

She wandered over and picked up a knight, running her thumb over the cool marble mane as the piece sat heavy in her hand.

‘That’s a yes, then?’

Emerald sucked in a sharp inhale, surprised at how close and how low his voice was as the deep timbre rolled over the bare flesh of her neck. She agreed, stepping away from him to take her place in one of the two chairs. When he sat, he stretched his long legs to one side of the table. His stockinged feet were mere inches from the tip of her slipper. She stared, trying to recall if she’d ever even seen a man without his shoes. How easy it would be for her to close the distance, to touch her toes to his. Instead, she turned the board so the white pieces sat in front of him.

He opened the game, and she responded with the Sicilian Defence. They had both learned from the same man, so it was no surprise each countered the other’s moves with intelligence and strategy, or that after dozens of turns, the match was still even.

She surprised herself when she said, after having a quiet moment to study him, ‘When I first came here, I thought you looked just like your mother, in features if not so much colouring, but the longer I sit here with you, the more impossible it becomes to see her rather than your papa. Or perhaps it is due to the way you play.’

He glanced at her with casual interest. ‘And which of your parents do you most resemble?’

Emerald drew circles over the top of a pawn she’d taken as she studied the board. ‘My mother, I suppose, although I’ve no way to be sure. My father had fair colouring, not unlike the dowager. There were no pictures of my mama at Whichwood, and my father rarely spoke of her. She died the same day I arrived in the world.’

‘You know nothing of her?’

She gave her head a little shake. ‘Very little. They were happy, I think. Sometimes, he’d get this faraway look, and a little smile would grace his serious face. I always knew it was because he was thinking of her. But when I asked questions, it seemed a subject too painful for him to speak on. I thought perhaps when I was older, when more time had passed, but then…’ But then he’d gotten sick and sent her to Oakmoss and she never saw him again. She forced herself to swallow the sorrow in her throat.

‘Why didn’t he wish you to remain with his wife when he passed? Surely some male relation could have acted as a testamentary guardian.’

Surprise at his question quickly ceded to pique. ‘If you’re hoping to pass me off?—’

‘Swallow your rebuke, Miss Doubleday. My question is borne of genuine curiosity, and as your guardian, can we agree I’ve a right to know how I became so?’

Emerald pulled in a slow breath, filling her lungs completely and using the moment to recover her equanimity. ‘The second or third cousin who inherited through the entail has six children of his own to provide for. It is doubtful he wished for any more responsibility, nor were he and my father particularly close. With regards to your first question…’ Her sentence tapered off, but she began again once she completed her turn. ‘My father’s wife was never unkind to me, but I always felt like a guest who had overstayed their welcome. Her concern was with herself, with giving my father an heir, and eventually with my two half-sisters many years younger. Your father, I suppose, was the only one who wanted me. That you became my guardian is a misfortune shared between us.’

They drifted into silence. Her attention was on the board, but she could feel him staring at her, studying her.

‘Have you ever looked at me other than to find fault? Have you ever looked at me before at all?’ The question came out soft around its edges, as did his answer.

‘No one looking at you, Miss Doubleday, could ever find fault.’

Her eyes lifted swiftly to his and dropped just as quickly as she felt colour rush into her cheeks.

Across the room, the fire popped, the sharp noise underscoring the tension growing between them. Never before had all his attention been so focused on her and for such a lingering length of time. As a girl of sixteen, all she had wanted was to be seen by him, but she could feel herself unravelling under his incisive blue eyes.

‘We can call it a draw, if you’d like.’

She narrowed her eyes across the board. ‘No,’ she said, smothering a yawn. But another fifteen minutes on, no end was in sight and she was struggling to keep her eyes open.

‘Go to bed. We can leave the board as is and finish the game another day.’

‘Fine.’ She hadn’t meant to sound so short, but thought she noticed the corner of his lip tug upwards.

He stood first, coming to her side and offering her his hand. She stared at his upturned palm before setting her hand in his, dizzying as a current of warmth threatened to overtake her. Heat radiated from his skin, power from his touch. His arm brushed along hers as they walked to the door. Emerald’s fingers crept up to stroke her throat, a hot flush burning a path up her exposed skin.

They paused in the doorway. She watched his Adam’s apple bob with a thick swallow—fascinated by the movement, bewitched by his proximity.

‘Miss Doubleday,’ Beau murmured softly into the hush of night.

Emerald stared up at him. He was so close she could taste the oaky notes of the brandy on his breath when he said her name. She ran her tongue along the seam of her lips. A ribbon of wanting tied her stomach into knots.

‘Pleasant dreams,’ he said, releasing her hand.

Had she imagined the gentle caress of his fingers as he let her hand go? Through the sound of her heartbeat throbbing in her ears, she wished him the same.

Hours later, she wondered if he’d been more successful to that end than she had herself. Once in bed, sleep proved hard to come by, particularly as her mind caught on the twisted branches of an oak tree every time she closed her eyes.