Chapter 9
James cursed himself for a fool as the sound of his boots clicking against the stone corridor echoed in his ears.
Damn.
Damn.
Damn.
What the devil was wrong with him? He rounded a corner but neither hastened his pace nor slowed his stride. Yet his inner turmoil continued. He was a fool and a goddamned coward.
That was the ugly truth of it.
She'd been just a few feet away, her eyes beckoning him to say whatever it was he'd meant to say, silently begging him to say something...
But twice he had said nothing and then fled like the veritable coward that he was. He hadn't bolted like he was in a foot race, but he might as well have done so.
James' heart pounded in his ears even as the sound of the rain and the wedding breakfast fell away behind him. And then he was at the staircase, his hand on the banister. And he let the cool castle air and the stillness of this abandoned part of his home wash over him.
He took a breath.
He was the Duke of Linthorpe, for pity's sake. He managed four thousand acres. He sat in the House of Lords. He had told men things they didn’t wish to hear and without any particular difficulty.
But this... talking to her? Telling her that she meant something to him, even if he didn't understand it...
James made his way to his study and then closed the door behind him. He stood for a moment in the silence of a room that asked nothing of him, which was more than he deserved at the present.
He hadn't summoned the courage to speak to the woman. But she was more than that, wasn't she? She was—
A stack of letters on his desk caught his eye, and James was relieved for the distraction from his own thoughts, even if he wouldn't admit as much to himself.
He went to his desk to work through the stack because work was something he could do, something he was good at when life failed him. It should be just methodical enough to crowd out the image of Cori's face from his mind. Her lovely face.
James snagged the first piece of foolscap.
Turlow's report on the south pasture. Then there was a bill from the chandler in Helmsley. An invitation to a shooting party in Northumberland which he would not attend. The quarterly accounts from the home farm.
And at the bottom of the stack was a letter in a hand he recognized instantly. In all the years that James had known his friend, the man's penmanship had never improved.
A name scratched onto the envelope — Major John Hawkesworth. Cambrai.
James broke the seal.
My dear Linthorpe,
I write from Cambrai where the summer has been no summer at all. In fact, it is cold and thoroughly miserable, which the French seem to find a personal affront to them specifically.
Wellington keeps us well enough occupied, though I confess peacetime soldiering sits oddly after the years before it. One adjusts.
I had the news from Forsby that your brother has finally been caught in the parson's mousetrap, though he was characteristically vague on the details. My sincere congratulations to Lord Daniel and his bride. I hope Acklan will be suitably festive.
We had rather a dull fortnight before last. I was in Valenciennes twice on regimental business.
It is a decent enough town with a good hotel on the main square.
On my second evening there, I believe I spotted the Earl of Chopwell at dinner.
I did not know he was in France. He looked well, though I did not speak to him.
The regiment moves to winter quarters in October, and I expect to be in London by Christmas, at which point I hope to find you there and claim that supper you have owed me since 'fourteen. Do give my regards to Lord Daniel.
Yours,
J. Hawkesworth, Major
4th Regiment of Foot
Cambrai, 29th July 1816
James read the letter twice. Then he set it on the desk.
I believe I spotted the Earl of Chopwell at dinner. I did not know he was in France. He looked well.
Hawkesworth had moved on to winter quarters in the very next sentence.
It was, to him, a passing observation, a mildly interesting sighting of a familiar face in an unfamiliar city, no more significant than noting the weather or the price of wine.
He couldn’t possibly know that the mere mention of Chopwell’s name would affect James in any way.
James stood.
He went to the window, because the window was there, and looked at the moors through the rain.
Valenciennes. A good hotel on the main square. He looked well.
Eight weeks. Eight weeks since the Hadleigh Fair when Darling had found Cara Beckett in that room with that monster.
Eight weeks since Chopwell had fled across the Channel rather than face what was coming to him.
And now the bastard was enjoying nice dinners in a good hotel in a French town, looking well, while Darling carried the memory of what he had walked into, while his wife rebuilt herself quietly in London, while Laura—
James thought about his sister.
Their father had told them both eventually, of course.
James at twenty, Daniel at nineteen, home from university, old enough to finally know.
It was the sort of truth that, once said, could never be unheard.
It had rearranged certain things in both of them permanently.
But Laura had suffered the worst of it. Young, innocent Laura who had never hurt a soul but who'd had the course of her life changed in little more than an instant.
Remarkably, she had built something from the shards of what she'd been left with.
She'd found the gentlest of souls in Thomas Fairleigh, who loved her beyond reason.
Together they led a peaceful and purpose-filled life in Middlesbrough, but it hadn't been a simple thing to accomplish.
And just seeing that fiend's name made James' blood boil anew.
Chopwell. Looking well in France.
Only a handful of them knew that the monster had moved on to other victims. Cara Beckett had survived an attempt by the villain, but Darling had come upon them and rescued the woman he ended up making his wife a few weeks later. He'd also challenged the cur to a duel, but the coward had fled.
Looking well in France, indeed.
Darling would need to be told this news, but not today. Not on his brother's wedding day. That conversation would keep until morning, when the house was quieter and there was room for the kind of exchange the situation would require.
James folded the letter and locked it in the top drawer of his desk.
He stood for a long moment with his hand still resting on the wood, looking at nothing in particular, thinking about a man at dinner in Valenciennes who looked well. The absolute intolerable fact of it settled over him like the weather, cold and grey and entirely without remedy, for now.
James was good at waiting. He had always been good at waiting.
After a while, he realized that his brother’s wedding breakfast was still in progress below. His absence would eventually be noted. He was the Duke of Linthorpe. Acklan was his home and he had obligations that would not pause because his mood had shifted.
He straightened and then left his study to fulfill his duties as host.
Billiards Room
Acklan Castle
Cori carefully lined up her shot.
"You’re thinking too much," the Duchess of Hythe told her.
Cori looked up from the billiard table. "I’m thinking."
"You are calculating when you should simply trust your eye." The duchess tilted her head, the picture of patience. "Your father didn’t teach you to think. He taught you to see."
“I dare say—” Cori looked back at the table “—he taught us to do both.” Then she stopped thinking about angles, let her eye settle, and hit her ball cleanly into the red. “The key is knowing when to do which.”
The duchess grinned at her, a bit of pride sparkling in her eyes. “Exactly, my dear.”
"My father would’ve said the same thing," Emma Atherton said, from the window seat where she had stationed herself with her embroidery a while before, but had since done very little of it. "Though about horses, not billiards."
"The principle is universal," the duchess agreed.
Lady Upwell settled near the fire with a glass of sherry she had been nursing since shortly after the wedding breakfast had come to an end.
She made a sound that might have been agreement or might have been a woman grateful to be sitting.
"It was a very fine shot," she said. "You do seem to have the touch. "
"High praise from Harriet," the duchess said, surveying the table.
"Do not push your luck, Margaret," Lady Upwell replied without heat.
The billiard room had been the duchess’ suggestion, which had surprised no one who’d spent more than an hour in her company.
She had a gift for steering people toward the unexpected choice and making it feel entirely natural.
By the time Lady Upwell had raised an eyebrow and looked as though she might object, the group was already inside the room with the duchess selecting a cue with a rather pointed focus.
It had been the right choice. The afternoon beyond the windows was grey and wet, the rain still coming steadily against the glass, and the wedding breakfast had wound down into a restlessness following a long and emotional day.
The billiard room was warm, welcoming, and asked nothing of anyone except attention to the table.
Cori had been glad of it.
She’d expected, once the breakfast ended, to spend the afternoon turning over the events of the morning in her mind.
James had said her name. Twice. And he had started to say something else but stopped, and then he’d walked out of the great hall without so much as a backward glance.
Cori didn’t know what to make of it or whether it meant anything at all.
Her heart had stung from it, though, and that sting hadn’t faded.
The duchess’ suggestion of billiards had been brilliant as far as distractions went. Cori could go stretches of ten or fifteen minutes at a time without thinking about James Westham.