The Gentleman Spy: A Guardian/Ward Historical Romance

Chapter 27

‘Oh.’ Emerald’s breath caught. ‘I beg your pardon.’ She had come into the portrait gallery on the second floor, intending to take up a seat across from the previous Lord Avon’s picture as she often had at Oakmoss when puzzling through something occupying an inordinate amount of space in her brain. Except the thing taking up residence in her mind was sitting on the bench in front of her. Beau made no response, but slid over, making room for her next to him.

She hesitated. Her thoughts were muddled, and had been for much longer than the night at Almack’s, if she was at all prepared to be honest with herself. After parting on the steps once returned from Gunter’s, Emerald had seen nothing of him for two full days. His empty seat in the breakfast parlour had felt conspicuous, and the dowager had gone so far as to remark on his absence at a poetry lecture, saying he’d planned to attend.

Beau was a man in possession of arresting good looks, whose countenance she would describe as intimidating, inscrutable, or, on a good day, apathetic. But the man on the bench wore a pensive expression, and when he finally let her see his face, his clear blue eyes appeared clouded with sadness and pain, perhaps even regret. Picking her steps carefully, as if a tree branch might swell up from the floor and trip her, she joined him.

Emerald took it upon herself to open the conversation, confessing in little more than a whisper, ‘I sometimes speak with his portrait in the long gallery at Oakmoss.’

‘Does he reply?’

‘Not always.’

‘I am one-and-thirty and only just learning how little I knew him, will ever know him.’ There was a hint of bitterness underpinning his words and something else she couldn’t pick out, but which made her want to comfort him all the same.

‘Who can claim a comprehensive understanding of their parents? I certainly cannot. We polish and tarnish their memory by turns. Today you feel he is a stranger to you. Tomorrow you’ll realise you pinch the bridge of your nose when your thoughts are faraway, the very same way he did.’ His eyes shifted to her. ‘You do, you know. And when you sit in the chair behind the desk in the study, and the light shines in just so—’ She cut herself off with a little shake of her head.

‘How did it happen?’ Beau dropped his gaze to his interlaced hands, hiding himself from her again.

It mattered not. She’d spent long enough with him to know that asking the question hurt him, and no matter the answer, hearing it would hurt too.

Emerald rubbed her chest, painful memories she had shoved down from that time quick to resurface at the slightest provocation and wrap around her heart like the thorned stem of a rose.

‘We were at dinner, the four of us, like any other evening.’ She paused, her throat constricting as she remembered thinking Lord Avon looked a little strained as the covers were removed and the first course laid out. She had glanced from him to Louisa to Lady Avon, wondering if the others noticed his wan countenance as well, but the conversation had remained casual and comfortable. ‘I looked down to my plate. There was artichoke soup and turbot and lamb. Your mother was saying something to Louisa about how fine her drawing of the home wood was. My thoughts had turned to Whichwood and how very far away my life there felt. The clang of a fork hitting a plate drew my attention.’

The sound, startling and abrasive to her ears, had caused her to whip her head up. Lord Avon had wilted at the head of the table. For the space of a breath, everyone had sat stunned. Then, chaos erupted. Her ladyship had thrown back her chair, words of frightened concern ringing out, each louder and more frantic than the one before.

Lord Avon had looked across at Emerald. It could only have lasted a second, but time had stretched long between them. The moment would haunt her forever. His stare hadn’t been frightened or confused as perhaps she’d expected. It’d been regretful, mournful even, and he’d opened his mouth as if he would say something. Before any sound had a chance to wend its way out, his whole form had slumped from the chair.

‘Your mama tried to rouse him, and Buddle was already sending one of the footmen for the physician while directing two more to carry your father up to his rooms. Everything that could be done had been done in a trice. Even the physician appeared as if summoned from the air.’

None of it had mattered.

‘Poor Louisa was too shocked to even remove herself from the table and was carried up by one of the footmen. Her ladyship sat with him through the night, only sleeping on the chaise in his room when I insisted and took her seat in the chair. But by dawn—’ Emerald choked on the words she was trying to say. ‘By dawn—’ On her cheek, she felt the warmth of a soft handkerchief. She couldn’t remember when she’d begun to cry or even when she’d turned away from Beau, whose typical staid expression was twisted with compassion, sorrow for their shared loss.

‘He was gone.’ Beau finished the sentence for her, and she nodded in confirmation. ‘Did the physician say why? Did he have any idea? Papa was so healthy.’

Emerald noticed the pitch of his voice change. Not in the way that sometimes happened when people couldn’t comprehend a loss. It was tight, searching. So were his eyes as he watched her and waited for the answer.

‘The physician said your father had, for the better part of a year, been mentioning some tightness in his chest.’

A trace of relief softened his hard features. She would have missed it, had she blinked or sneezed or done a thousand other things that took less than a second to complete. It was curious, and when she was less embedded in her own grief, she hoped she would remember to ask him about it.

‘We should have known. I should have. I should have made him do something.’ The previous Lord Avon had not treated her as an equal. No one would have expected him to do so, but he had listened to her and considered her ideas, questions, and requests with fairness and an open mind.

Emerald had discovered that the pain of losing one parent was not multiplied when losing another. Rather it took on new colour, grew new tangents, was expressed in new ways.

‘There was nothing for you to do.’

She shook her head and sniffled. In the drawing room before dinner that awful night, while she and Louisa had been looking through a book of illustrations, she had heard Lady Avon ask his lordship if he was all right. The worried note in her voice had caught Emerald’s attention. Even as Lord Avon reassured his wife he was quite well, Emerald had noticed him clearing his throat several times and rubbing his chest. Lady Avon had looked as if she would’ve protested, but the door had opened and dinner was announced.

‘I’d seen him press a hand to his heart. I can’t say how many times, but enough that I shouldn’t have ignored it.’ Emerald was powerless to prevent one sob from tumbling into another until her whole body shook.

A pair of strong arms wrapped around her, and she turned her head into Beau’s waistcoat, trying to muffle the awful, ugly sound coming out of her.

‘Let it out, my darling girl. Let it all out.’ His words were soothing, reassuring, and Emerald released her hands from her face to curl them into his coat, as if she could bury herself inside his warmth and strength. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘It is.’ Her voice was hoarse, her words muffled.

‘It isn’t.’ With care, Beau pried her away from him, taking her puffy, tear-stained face between his hands so she could not hide from him. ‘Look at me,’ he insisted. ‘No matter how good the person, we all walk this earth for a limited time. You are not at fault for my father’s death. Or for your own’s.’

‘Why?’ She hiccupped on the word. The wound now open was impossible to close, and her body shook like wiry boughs in a bruising storm. ‘My mother, my father, your father. What is it about me? Why won’t people stay?’

His thumbs smoothed her brow, the anguish in her cheeks. ‘You have my mother and Lou.’

‘Lou until she’s married. Your mother until Lou has her first confinement. All these years are just…waiting, waiting to be left again.’

‘Me.’

Between his palms, Emerald shook her head, her face twisting in an ugly grimace as she spoke. ‘You until you find a wife.’

‘Me.’

‘You until you go away again.’

‘Me.’

‘You until?—’

‘Me, dear one. Always.’

Emerald closed her eyes against the burn of fresh tears and was grateful for the little mercy Beau showed by pulling her close once more. He rubbed her back and murmured calming sounds into the hair at the crown of her head. But even as her weeping abated, she hesitated to pull herself away from him. One more minute, she promised herself, again and again until everything faded but him holding her, his arms a shelter from the storm within. Each rise of his chest a reminder of the living, a lifeline to forgiveness, hope, the sublime.

She had cried herself to sleep and only realised it when her lashes beat against her cheeks. Emerald knew in an instant where she was. Being held close to his chest wasn’t a sensation her body would ever let her forget. She mumbled out a quiet protest.

Beau shushed her. ‘You are mine…’ The rest of his words faded, and a minute later, he was letting go and she was sinking into something soft and snug.

She grasped the lapels of his coat. He folded his hands over hers, and with gentle movements released her hold. There was a pulse of something warm, soft, on her forehead, and then he was gone.

When she opened her eyes again, it was to the low glow of a candle. She was in her bed, unsure if she was waking from a dream or in one, the sprigged muslin dress she’d been wearing replaced by her nightclothes.

‘You’re awake, miss,’ Gwen said, coming to the bedside and holding out a cool compress for Emerald, who turned a questioning look at her maid. ‘You had yourself quite a cry, if the puffiness about your eyes is any indication. When this one begins to warm, I’ll trade it with another. Half an hour or so should set you right. Then we’ll call for a tray and get you settled for the night.’

Emerald peeked at the clock before she adjusted the compress over her eyes, becoming aware of their heaviness as Gwen spoke. The events that had brought her to bed at seven in the evening took a firmer shape in her mind.

‘Such a right one, his lordship. He waited for me to respond to the bell and seemed quite concerned for your well-being.’

Emerald was thankful for the cloth over her eyes, obscuring any reaction that may have given her away.

‘I hope you’re feeling more the thing, miss. I know a good cry always sets me right. A good cry and a hearty meal. I’ll let Cook know you’ll be ready to eat within the half hour.’

Blood pounded in Emerald’s temples. She wished the memory of their exchange remained buried—not so she might relieve herself of the chagrin that accompanied the knowledge she’d ruined Beau’s cravat and allowed him to witness her in such a miserable state, but because she wished to ignore the brilliant turmoil of her mind as she turned over one thought with frightful clarity again and again: She had shown him the shadowy part of herself, and he had answered not with his own darkness but with light. A voice she would hear always, anywhere. An answer, a vision, a beginning.