To Love the Brooding Baron

TWO

TWO

Arabella Latham stood by the sitting room window, watching as the one—and only—gentleman to propose to her that Season turned a disappointed but amicable smile at her before dashing out into the rain to climb into his carriage. He was a good and amiable man, and she’d told him as much in her gentle refusal, but he didn’t stir in her the feelings she knew she was searching for.

She’d gone her entire first Season searching for a spark. For a fire that would consume her and tell her beyond any doubt that she’d found love.

“Mr. Fulton did not stay long,” her mother said, sweeping into the room as if she’d not been listening by the door the entire time.

She wore a simple gray dress. Her mother always wore gray. The sudden and unexpected death of Arabella’s father almost two years ago had been hard for her mother to bear, but secretly Arabella had hoped by now to see her in a shade of purple. Her father had always loved her mother in softer colors. He used to say it brought out the rosy hues in her cheeks, and then her mother would always blush.

Theirs had been a love match, born from a spark, that had warmed their lives and brightened the lives of their children. To feel such true and abiding love was a blessing Arabella did not take for granted. She knew such love wasn’t a standard of the ton. Marriages were meant for making alliances and elevating one’s family’s status or wealth.

Her father on his deathbed had been adamant that she and Emerson marry for love, wanting to know before he took his last breath that his children would find happiness. Emerson had kept his promise when he fought for and married Olivia, and Arabella fully intended to keep her promise to her father as well.

“He made an offer I felt I needed to refuse,” Arabella said, turning away from the window to face her mother, uncertain how she would react to the news.

“I see,” she said with a nod before moving to the sofa, where she retrieved that morning’s paper, and, beneath it, her bowl of marzipan. She’d quickly hidden it beneath the paper when Mr. Fulton had been announced.

“That is all you have to say?” Arabella asked, stunned.

Mr. Fulton had courted her the entire last month of the Season, and she’d thought her mother liked the gentleman.

Her mother stared at her over her paper with a single raised brow as if the answer were obvious. “You said you did not feel anything. I know better than anyone that you do not do anything that you do not feel.” She lifted the corner of her mouth to remove any sting her words might carry.

Arabella returned the smile as she moved to sit on the sofa set opposite her mother. She was notorious in her family for getting a feeling about something and immediately acting upon it without fully thinking it through.

“It does mean, however,” her mother continued, picking up a cream-colored piece of marzipan from the bowl in her lap, “that you shall be unable to avoid Lady Bixbee’s machinations.”

Arabella’s back stiffened. She’d forgotten about that. “I thought the nephew or grandson or whoever she wished to introduce me to was ‘detained on a matter of importance’?”

“Grandson,” her mother clarified before taking a bite of her marzipan. “She wrote this morning to say he was detained no longer.”

A flicker of panic shot through Arabella’s chest. The indomitable matron had spent the entire Season expressing her desire to introduce Arabella to a member of her family, which was both terrifying and flattering. If Arabella could feel a spark with Lady Bixbee’s chosen gentleman, all would be well, but if she didn’t ...

An angry and disappointed Lady Bixbee wasn’t an adversary she wanted to face.

“I see,” Arabella replied, the room falling into a heavy silence.

After an awkward moment, as Arabella’s nerves continued to thin and fray, she suddenly shot up from her seat. “I think I will go to the study and get a book.”

“Of course, dear,” her mother said, unsurprised, her attention remaining fixed on her paper.

Telling her mother she would return shortly, Arabella made her way to the study. She paused just inside the doorway, the familiar scent of old books, wood polish, and the undefinable something that was distinctly her father filled her senses. Even after Emerson had taken over the use of the study, a part of her father remained, and she prayed it never left.

Her father could often be found in his study. As a child, she would join him, reading on the sofa in front of a large window. He would eventually abandon his work and sit next to her, and they’d discuss recent events reported in the newspapers or share their favorite passages from the novels they had read.

A tightness formed in her throat and chest that felt as real as the day she watched him draw his last breath.

It was because of him that she’d discovered her love of Shakespeare.

At a time when her governess could no longer take her asking why about anything and everything, her father had given to her The Comedy of Errors.

“Tell me what you discover,” her father had said, handing her one of Shakespeare’s shortest comedies about two sets of twins who’d accidentally been separated at birth and then years later were reunited after a series of mistaken identities and unfortunate events. From it, she’d learned the importance of family and, more importantly, of her father’s love for her despite what her governess called “her vexing and undesirable spirit.”

Which play would he suggest for me now?

Arabella wished she knew.

Swallowing back the melancholy that threatened to overpower her, she followed her feet to the bookshelves. She could continue her search for love next Season; she would just have to find a way to distract herself until then.

She skimmed her fingertips along the familiar rows of books, easing into the comforting motion. She knew without having to look the moment she touched the volumes of Shakespeare’s works. The leather covers were all dented or scratched, and the gold lettering had faded in places. But instead of stopping to select a book, she continued across the rows of bookshelves until she reached the blue-patterned wallpaper. A few steps more, and she came to the fireplace mantel, above which hung a portrait of her young father and mother.

“What will I do if I cannot find my spark?” she asked the portrait, wondering, for the first time, if perhaps she’d read too much Hamlet, considering how easy she found it talking to a ghost.

No answer came, of course, so she turned to collect one of her books. She stopped mid-turn, her eyes catching on a very familiar shade of green.

Hanging over the chair behind her brother’s desk was an evening jacket that was unmistakably her father’s.

How had it come to be there? Had Emerson or her mother arranged to have it brought down? Was that why her father’s scent never seemed to fully leave the room?

Unable to ignore the pull toward something that was once her father’s, she moved toward the chair, craving that connection. It was just as foolish as believing she could talk with a ghost, but she still gently stroked her fingertips across the material, her memory flooding with images of her father before his illness suddenly took him.

Lifting the jacket from the chair, she swung it over her shoulders, her eyes closing as her senses anticipated the feel of her father’s warmth.

But it wasn’t there. The jacket was cold, vacant, and the garment hung so limp and loose over her, she couldn’t even feel the cuff of the jacket’s sleeve with her fingertips.

“If you are trying to pass as your brother, you make for a poor look-alike.”

Arabella’s head jerked up to see Mr. Bradbury with his hands upon his hips, standing in the doorframe to the study. He wore his all too familiar teasing smile as he assessed her up and down.

“But perhaps if you did something with your hair and dress, you might be able to pass as a younger cousin in desperate need of a tailor.”

A smile tugged at her lips. Mr. Bradbury was one of her brother’s oldest and closest friends, and he could never resist an opportunity to have a little fun—especially at someone else’s expense. “I do not know whether I should take that as an insult or a compliment, sir.”

“Sir? Why, Miss Latham, you wound me.” He playfully grabbed his chest. “Have I been so negligent these past four months in my shared duties to watch after you and your mother that you have completely forgotten who I am?”

“I doubt anyone would be able to forget you, Mr. Bradbury.” She shook her head and laughed.

“Should I take that as an insult or a compliment?” He winked.

She didn’t know who was more ridiculous, her in the oversized evening jacket or Mr. Bradbury with his teasing. “To what do my mother and I owe this great honor, Mr. Bradbury? As you said, it has been some time since we last saw you.”

He flinched. “Ah, yes, I suppose I do owe your mother a visit.”

Arabella nodded, knowing her mother looked upon Mr. Bradbury as one of her own. He had, after all, been friends with the family since he and Emerson were at Eton.

“I shall go and see her the moment my business here is done,” Mr. Bradbury replied, reaching into his jacket and removing a small stack of banknotes. “I bring your brother’s earnings from our last wager.”

“What was the wager?” she asked, eager as always to discover what Emerson and his friends were up to inside their gentlemen’s club.

“A gentleman never reveals such secrets.” He grinned. “Especially when you are the one asking.”

She gave an exasperated huff and folded her arms. Only instead of looking annoyed, she imagined she looked rather ridiculous with the excess sleeves of her father’s jacket flopping about her.

Mr. Bradbury made a strangled sound in his throat that sounded an awful lot like repressed laughter and quickly turned away.

Squaring her shoulders, Arabella waited for him to look at her again. “If you have nothing further, Mr. Bradbury, you may leave my brother’s earnings on the desk. Heaven only knows what secret wagers await you next.”

“I am afraid that is not possible,” he replied without moving from the doorframe.

“Whyever not?”

“I make it a priority never to enter a room where only a young lady is present. Deuced impossible to be accused of compromising a woman if I was never in the room.”

Arabella looked heavenward. “How could I forget your fear of matrimony?”

“It’s not fear,” he said with all seriousness. “It’s common sense. Not every man wants to be shackled into something so binding only death can free you.”

“That was not the case for Henry VIII.” Arabella couldn’t help but argue, though she knew it would be futile. Mr. Bradbury would never change his mind about marriage.

“Weren’t some of his wives beheaded while the rest conveniently died?”

“Not quite. He had to rid himself of the Catholic Church and then form the Church of England to divorce his first wife.”

Arabella always wondered how Shakespeare would have written his play had he included the monarch’s six wives and not just the first two. Although, it was said that the fourth marriage was annulled on the grounds that the marriage was never consummated. So should it only be considered five wives?

“That would still make it ‘til death did they part,’” Mr. Bradbury argued. “For heaven’s sake, the man ended the reign of an entire church.”

She shrugged, if only to frustrate him as he’d frustrated her. “If you will not bring the winnings in, shall I collect them from you?”

The tension in Mr. Bradbury’s shoulders eased, and a familiar teasing glint entered his eyes. “And risk you pulling me into the room so that you may compromise me? I think not.”

Her shoulders quaked before a snorted giggle burst from her lips. Mr. Bradbury’s laughter joined hers.

“You sound ridiculous,” she said.

He puffed out his chest. “So Northcott likes to inform me.”

Lord Northcott was the third friend in her brother’s infamous Brooks’s Brotherhood—at least that was what she’d once overheard Mr. Bradbury call the trio.

“But I think it is because he is in denial about how much he cares for me,” Mr. Bradbury continued. “One day I am determined to crack a smile on the Brooding Baron’s face.”

All sense of laughter fell from her lips, replaced by the confusing stir of emotions she had about the baron. She’d first been introduced to him when he and Mr. Bradbury had accompanied Emerson to their home in Berkshire after her father had first taken ill. She’d thought the baron reserved and perhaps too serious, but upon further acquaintance, she’d begun to see glimpses of a different side of him.

As her father’s health continued to decline, whatever time she didn’t spent by his side was spent in the library.

Lord Northcott had often come to the library too. He never spoke to her but simply read in a chair not overly close to her sofa but in her line of sight, as if he knew she was trying to hold on to a piece of her father, who was slipping away, and offering her comfort in his steady and constant breaths.

It wasn’t until she saw him again, after the mourning period had ended and she’d arrived in London for her first Season, that she learned the ton had a much different opinion of him. They called him the Brooding Baron, whispering dark tales about his family and portraying him in a beastly light.

She often wanted to ask him about the stories, but it never felt right to do so when he’d shown her such kindness. A part of her doubted he would answer if she did. He rarely said more than a few words to anyone. She could never truly get a sense of who he was because he always remained so stoic. Perhaps that was what unsettled her most.

He was such a dark and handsome towering wall of man surrounded by mystery.

“Is it true, what the ton says about his family?” she found herself asking before thinking the better of it.

For a moment, Mr. Bradbury’s gaze darkened as though thinking of something unpleasant. “That is something you shall have to ask him if you wish to know. Your brother and I still have not discovered the full extent of the answer.”

“What have you discovered?” she asked, wanting even a small piece of information to try to understand the mysterious baron.

Mr. Bradbury shook his head. “I have as much desire to talk to you about that subject as I did about Brooks’s.”

“You only make me more determined to discover both answers with your continued refusals,” she replied.

“Believe whatever you wish, Miss Latham. But I am afraid that even if you used a disguise”—he gestured to the evening jacket she still wore—“you will never discover the secrets inside Brooks. You are a woman, and women have certain”—he waved a hand uncomfortably up and down her form, no longer able to directly meet her eye—“attributes that cannot go unnoticed by any warm-blooded man. I’d wager you would be outed before you even crossed the threshold.”

“I see,” Arabella said, smiling. She suddenly knew how she could distract herself until the next Season.

Mr. Bradbury made a valid argument. Even with a disguise, she would most likely never make it through the front door, but what he didn’t understand was that she’d read Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night many times. And therefore, she understood what was necessary to pull off the cleverest disguise.

She would take him up on his unintended wager and prove once again that, regardless of the situation, Shakespeare was always the answer.