Chapter Seven #2
“Gone, for now,” Wilfred said with a false cheerfulness that even she could see through. “Shall we walk?”
‘Shall we walk’?
What, was she merely to be a temporary replacement for this Miss Fletcher while he could not walk with her? Was she, Irene, second choice to Miss Fletcher, but Wilfred would make do with her while his true love was absent?
The nausea rolled in her stomach. Wilfred’s true love.
It should not have upset her like this, of that, Irene was certain. It should not have upset her at all. It was not upsetting. It was just that Wilfred had found a woman whose company he enjoyed more than hers and she was never going to recover from it.
“Irene?”
Irene blinked. Wilfred was offering his arm.
Well, she took it, of course. She could hardly not. Besides, she wanted to discover everything about this Miss Fletcher immediately.
“Where did you meet her?” Irene asked as they started to walk slowly across the park.
Wilfred glanced at her curiously. “Who?”
“Miss Fletcher, you dolt!” It was all she could do not to laugh. For some strange reason, if she did not laugh, she was liable to cry. “Honestly, one would think that you hardly knew her, the way you talk about her! Or…”
Her voice trailed away. Or, she had been going to say, or that you know her so well that you want to keep her to yourself. That you don’t want to share her, not even with me.
It was a most disorienting thought.
“Miss Fletcher is a lady of my acquaintance whom I…I respect and admire greatly,” Wilfred said stiffly, as though he were being forced to reveal his pocketbook spending to a stranger. “And that is all.”
He does not need to say the last part, Irene could not help but think, unless that is not, in actuality, all.
Was he engaged to her? Was that why the lady’s chaperones seemed to be more lax than some?
Surely, the whole of Society would have known if the Duke of Aynor were engaged!
But then, Wilfred had never been one for pomp and ceremony.
Perhaps, then, the lady’s family would have complied with his wishes.
He was not the sort of man to send notices to newspapers and demand recognition.
A smile, small yet cordial, crossed her lips. He was not that sort of man at all.
Still, where—when—would he have even met her? He spent far more time with Irene, of that, she was certain.
“She asked about you.”
If Irene had not had her arm linked through Wilfred’s, she would certainly have ended up on the ground, her nose in the soil. “Wh-What?”
Wilfred nodded calmly, as though this were a perfectly normal thing to say. “Yes, she asked if you were my best friend.”
Irene’s smile was weak. “Oh. Oh, good.”
He had nodded at the lady’s whisper, she remembered, and Irene supposed it was good that Wilfred had owned her to the woman he loved. It would have been mortifying if he had denied her.
But still, Irene could not help but think as the icy wind rustled through the mostly bare trees and a few passersby pulled their greatcoats and pelisses tighter to them… Best friend. She had always loved that title—when she had thought about it at all.
But now…
“And we are best friends, aren’t we? We have been for years,” Wilfred said with a wry smile. “Do you recall the time I had to rescue you from that bull?”
The nerve! “It was not a rescue. It was a…a tactical retreat,” Irene retorted, all thoughts of Miss Fletcher nearly forgotten as she nudged her best friend. “I had the situation perfectly under control.”
“That bull was about to charge at you, and I picked you up bodily and lifted you over the gate,” Wilfred said, chuckling under his breath. “And you still went back the next day!”
“I wanted to look at him,” she said, trying not to smile but finding it difficult. “He was the new bull at Stanphrey Lacey and Uncle William had said—”
“Your Uncle William threatened to whip me within an inch of my life if I let you go back there again.”
Irene glanced up, curious. “I did not know that.”
“I did not tell you,” said Wilfred with a shrug. “And yet he did not whip me when you did just that the following day. He knew no one could tame you.”
There was nothing intrinsically provocative in what the man had said, but for some reason, heat was billowing through Irene, and she found that she was quite warm enough even in the chilly air.
‘Tame’ me?
“I do suppose I owed you one for that assistance,” she admitted as they rejoined the path in the park and started to meander slowly along it. “But then, I have rescued you, in my own way.”
“Rescued me?” Wilfred’s laugh poured molten honey into Irene’s spirits. “When have you ever done that?”
“Do you remember that first ball we both attended?” Irene said. “Lady Romeril’s, I think, though goodness knows she does not host many. You asked my cousin Maude to dance, though you insisted later you were only attempting to be gentlemanly.”
She had expected the groan but could not have predicted the look of genuine anguish—the wide grimace, the squinting eyes—that splattered across her friend’s face.
“Oh, God.”
“And she said—”
“‘Not in a month of Sundays,’” Wilfred finished for her, wincing at the memory. “I had completely forgotten that. Thank you for reminding me.”
“Well, I rescued you,” Irene said primly, squeezing his hand.
This time, it was Wilfred’s turn to roll his eyes, not something he did often, as they passed by a couple who were clearly trying their best not to kiss in public. The older woman keeping an eye on them by trailing a few feet behind probably helped with that. “You did not rescue me!”
“I danced with you!” Irene shot back, remembering the moment.
The haze of the candles, the chatter in the ballroom, the way her heart had thudded…
“And then in the ladies’ powdering room, I waited until the Miss Quintrells were there and spoke very loudly of your elegance and charm at dancing, and your great wit and conversation, and how anyone who had the opportunity to dance with you was fortunate, indeed—ouch! ”
For the second time that day in Sydney Gardens, Irene’s walking companion had halted suddenly, causing her arm to be jerked back.
She withdrew it from Wilfred, rubbing her elbow. “What was that for?”
“You really did that?” he said urgently, as though the matter were of great import. “At Lady Romeril’s ball, you did that?”
“Well, of course I did,” Irene said, looking at her arm as though she could see through the layers. “That might leave a bruise, you know.”
“You did not have to do that.”
The statement was so matter-of-fact, Irene found herself saying just as bluntly, “And I did. Because I care about you.”
They stood there for a moment, two people trapped in amber, and Irene looked into Wilfred’s eyes and thought that in the right light, the man was more than merely good-looking. He was passably handsome.
The thought disappeared as soon as it had come.
“Besides, you’d saved me from bulls!” Irene teased, taking his hand and entwining his fingers with hers as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Because it was. “Bulls are far more frightening than balls.”
“Perhaps for you,” Wilfred said, pulling her along with him as he started to walk, taking another circuit of the park. “But I was truly humiliated that day. I thought I would never live it down, yet I have never had another woman decline my hand. To dance, I mean.”
Irene saw a flash of understanding in his eyes and wondered why she had never mentioned this before. Why, because it had been nothing. A few minutes of thought, a few sentences spoken aloud. It had been the least she could do for her best friend.
“I have never thanked you for such a service,” Wilfred said softly.
There was such heart in his voice, Irene hardly knew what to do with herself. “I… You would have done the same for me.”
“I suppose I have, in my own way.”
That was sufficient to catch her attention. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I—nothing,” said Wilfred hastily.
Far too hastily.
Irene frowned. “Wilfred Matthew Kirk Chesterham Zouch, Duke of Aynor—”
Her best friend winced. “Are you truly going to full name me?”
“Well! It is not ‘nothing.’ I want to know,” Irene said fiercely, though she was almost certain she already knew. “Come on, tell me.”
Wilfred looked hunted as they halted underneath a wide oak tree, its branches bare, but its structure still magnificent. “I would rather not.”
And that answered all her questions. “It was about my father, wasn’t it?”
It was not an enquiry, and Wilfred did not treat it as one. “Yes.”
Irene inhaled deeply.
Her father. He was the man she admired the most in the world, yet so much of the world looked down on him due to a mere circumstance of birth.
He was illegitimate. The old Duke of Cothrom, her grandfather, had fathered a by-blow then scandalously brought the child to live with his three lawfully born sons.
Her father and his three ‘better’ half-brothers. Oh, Irene knew the world looked at the Viscount Pernrith and sneered sometimes, but that hardly ever happened! Why would Wilfred have had to…
It hardly ever happened now. Up until three years ago, it had all the time.
Irene narrowed her eyes. “Wilfred Matthew Kirk—”
“Look, I did not like the way some of the gentlemen at White’s were speaking of your father.
Of your father, your brother, your whole family,” said Wilfred shortly, his ears turning pink, as they always did when he did not like what he was saying but felt he had to say it. “Eventually, I… I snapped.”
Oh. Well. That was understandable. There was only so long a man’s temper could—
Wait a moment. Irene’s lips parted. “When you say snapped, you… You don’t mean that you snapped at them, do you?”
Wilfred would not meet her eye. “Not exactly.”
Oh, goodness. “What did you do?”
“It only happened once,” Wilfred said hastily, as though that resolved the matter.
They were still holding hands. Irene tugged his arm as she said fiercely, “You have to tell me, Wilfred. You’re… You’re my best friend. The person I trust most in the world. You shouldn’t have to defend our family, but you did, and I want to know just how significantly we are indebted to you.”
The fact that he would still not meet her gaze spoke volumes. “I called out Mr. Lister.”
“You—You what?” Irene’s voice broke as she pushed the man behind the oak tree so that the other people enjoying Sydney Gardens would not have to hear them. Lowering her voice to a hiss, she said, “You called out Mr. Lister?”
“He was speaking absolute rot. You should have heard him! Truly disgraceful things about you, about your father. I could not—”
“Wilfred!” Irene said in shock.
Calling someone out in this day and age…it was not just that the queen did not like it. Her uncles did not like it, either. Dueling had been forbidden for… Well, forever, as far as Irene was concerned.
And Wilfred had taken his own life into his hands for her and her family?
The man looked most uncomfortable. “I didn’t hurt him. Not really.”
Oh, dear God. “When was this?” Irene demanded.
Wilfred sighed. “About three years ago.”
Yes, that would line up with the sudden decrease in insults from the bounder!
Irene reached out and placed a hand on Wilfred’s chest to steady her. She would have grasped at the tree, naturally, but Wilfred was closer. “Did not Mr. Lister suffer a broken arm about three years ago?”
The guilt in his eyes told her enough, but Wilfred said quietly, “Not a break. A bullet. But that stays between you and I.”
It was difficult to comprehend. Gentle, easygoing, sometimes a little slow on the uptake Wilfred had…shot a man?
“You did that for my father?” she whispered.
“I did that for you,” Wilfred said quietly, his voice steady and his focus fixed on hers. “There is a great deal that I would do for you, Reeny.”
Irene swallowed. She did not have the breath to correct him, and for some reason, in this moment, she had no desire to.
Wilfred had dueled a man, shot him, to defend her father’s honor. To defend her own. He had risked not only his reputation, but his liberty, his very life, to ensure no one would speak ill of them.
“You must never fight a duel on my behalf again,” she said, her voice shaking slightly at the very thought. “I can’t—I mustn’t lose you, Wilfred. Mere words, even foul words, are not worth the risk.”
His hand had covered her own as it splayed against him. “Yes, Reeny. I promise.”
Irene drew in a deep inhale and tried desperately not to think of that kiss as she shivered.
He was her friend. Her best friend. And he was clearly in love with this Miss Fletcher, whoever she was. His defense of her name was for her whole family, not just her.
“Come on. You’re cold,” came Wilfred’s voice as he released her hand and started walking to the gate. “Time to head home.”
Irene hesitated for a moment, then nodded as she followed him in silence.
Not that she needed conversation. She had a great deal to think about.