Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Remmy excelled at failing. As middle child of eleven, he was neither oldest nor youngest, tallest nor handsomest. The most interesting Ives siblings were the two sets of twins.
His eldest brother was the heir so most important, and his youngest brother was the baby, so most beloved.
And both, currently, were beating him at billiards.
But neither could spin the stick like a windmill in one hand or looked quite as dashing as Remmy. He knew how to go to extremes to be seen.
“You are thirteen years of age, Timothy,” Remmy said, leaning against the wall. “How is it you are beating two men who’ve been playing since before you were born?”
Timothy had the same dark hair all the Ives men possessed, and he swept it back with the kind of grin the Brazen Belle would mark with suspicion should she ever see it. “I am forever bored, brother, and when one is bored, one takes entertainment where it is on offer.”
“You’re skipping lessons with your tutor, then,” Kit said, “and hiding out here. Does Father know?”
Timothy dropped his cue stick and pressed his palms together. “Please do not tell him.”
Remmy laughed. Timothy had grown two inches since he’d last seen him. He careened between manhood and boyhood, swaggering toward adult vices with confidence one moment and giggling over flatulence the next.
Kit ruffled Timothy’s hair, his own dark hair coming out of its careful backward sweeping line. “I’ll keep my silence if you promise to stop skipping lessons.”
“Very well,” Timothy grumbled.
Kit leaned low over the table, stick in hand, and lined up a shot.
His eyes crinkled at the corners, and the scruff of his almost beard was grizzled with gray.
He wore an expression of hard concentration much better than the one of blank grief he’d worn over the last few years since the death of his wife.
He sank a ball in a pocket, then rounded the table to the other side.
“Tell me, Remmy,” Kit said, lining up another shot, “what is this business I hear about The Rake Review?”
“Oh, nothing much.” Remmy buffed his nails on his jacket. “Only I’m the June rake.”
Timothy’s eyes shone a little too brightly. “You’re not!”
“I am.”
Kit sank another ball and straightened, his mouth pursed. “It’s true then. I thought you were concentrating on the theatre.”
“It’s for the theatre. Infamy will fill the seats faster than anything else.”
“Will it?” Kit grumbled, lining up another shot. He missed, shrugged.
Remmy eyed the table, the constellation of possibilities there. “I know what I’m doing.”
“How’d you do it?” Timothy asked. “How’d you catch her attention?”
Remmy lined up his shot.
“Do not answer that,” Kit said.
Remmy pulled his stick back and struck the cue ball. “Damn. Another miss.”
“I think the whole thing is a miss, brother.” Kit wandered to the window and propped his hip up on the sill. “I do not know what you hope to achieve by acting so reprehensibly.”
Remmy thunked the end of his stick on the floor between his boots. “Attention, notoriety. I care only about the Folly’s success, and I’ll cultivate it using every trick I’ve got.”
“Yes!” Timothy sank another ball.
Still looking out the window, Kit said, “That appearance you made yesterday… Father almost exploded. Mother is humiliated. She sent Meg and Peg and their husbands home with baskets of food and apologized for your bad behavior.”
“So that’s where they’ve gone.”
“Then there was the scene with Tessa.”
“She swooned. I helped her.”
Kit raised a brow, his only hint of emotion. “You cannot… play with the rector’s daughter as you used to. I’d hoped the time apart would quiet your feelings for her, but I suspect that has not happened.”
“What feelings?” Remmy scraped the end of his stick back and forth on the polished floor.
“Those.”
“Bah.” A distracted sort of sound because he was thinking of Tessa spread beneath him. Her lips warm and brandy spiced. No doubt she’d already forgotten. The cue stick creaked, and Remmy loosened his grip on it, unsure when it had gotten so damn tight.
“Who’s that?” Kit tapped the window. “In the garden with Tessa?”
Timothy sank another ball and did a little jig as Remmy joined Kit at the window.
He saw her immediately, her vibrant hair a riot of color against the green of the garden below.
She walked almost shoulder to shoulder with a blond-haired man Remmy did not recognize.
They seemed to be chatting amiably, and when she stumbled on a rock or stick or some other invisible hazard, the man reached out to steady her.
Her fingers—gloveless, wrapped around his arm.
Remmy worked his jaw side to side until he could say, “Who is that?” Each word as sharp as it was quiet.
“I’ve no idea,” Kit said. “But I’m glad to see Miss King making friends. Something else I’ve heard…”
“What?”
“Lady Chattaway is engaged to marry Lord Brawly. She will soon no longer need a companion. And Tessa will need a new position.”
Timothy joined them at the window. “Maybe she’ll marry. She’s pretty. I’d marry her if I were old enough.”
“No you would not.” Remmy slammed his stick down on the billiards’s table. “I’m done.”
Both brothers stared at him as if he’d put his head there instead.
Timothy shrugged. “I’ve already won, anyway. Not that either of you noticed.”
Remmy made for the door.
“Brother,” Kit called after him, “do you happen to know how many marriage proposals Tessa has turned down in the last six years?”
“How the hell am I supposed to know? I assume there have been none since that curate.”
Kit shrugged. “Leave her alone, please. If you are right, and she’s only received one proposal, she may soon receive her second.”
Remmy tore out of the room and down the corridor, then the stairs. Once outside, he blinked in the blinding summer light. Where was she? He needed to see the sort of man Tessa King could fall for.
Her voice rolled toward him on the wind. Near the rosebushes. He could just see her and the man over a box hedge. They faced one another as the man pulled a small knife from a pocket and unfolded it. He cut a rose from a branch then used the blade to strip it of its thorns. He handed it to her.
And she accepted, her agile fingers twirling the flower.
“It’s perfect,” the man said, “like we will be.” He was dressed immaculately if plainly, and in his shirtsleeves, messy cravat, and waistcoat, Remmy felt rumpled in comparison.
Tessa looked up at the man but kept her expression guarded. “Perfect is not always desirable.”
“There we disagree, Miss King,” the man said. “But small disagreements will add… spice to our arrangement. Do not you think?”
Remmy picked up his pace. “Tessa! There you are!”
The man looked up. If he was surprised at the interruption, it did not show. Tessa, however, dropped the rose, her eyes wide with shock.
Remmy picked it up and handed it back. “I was hoping you might have a moment to speak with me.”
He’d never seen such wariness in her eyes, not while looking at him. She took the rose carefully, too, as if afraid he’d maul her. And considering their previous interaction, she had every right to caution.
“Do you mind, Mr. Tilbury?” she asked.
“Not at all.” He bowed to Tessa, nodded at Remmy, then ambled off. So bloody amenable.
And the air between them so thick and awkward as she clasped her hands before her and fixed her gaze on some point behind his left shoulder.
“What is it you wish to speak of?” Smile bright, voice strong, but shoulders stiff, and her hazel eyes would not meet his.
“Kit says Lady Chattaway may soon wed, and she will no longer need a companion. Is he correct, or is it idle gossip?”
She exhaled, her shoulders loosening. “Yes, it’s true. Lady Chattaway is marrying Lord Brawly. And I am in search of a new position.”
“My mother can help.”
“No.”
“She knows many ladies of the Ton, and—”
“No. I… I am considering marriage.”
“Marriage?” He couldn’t hear himself speak over the buzzing in his ears.
“It has been suggested that I marry Tilbury instead of taking a new position. Forgive me. I should not bore you with my worries.”
“Is Tilbury a worry?” He surged a step closer to her. “Has he been ungentlemanly toward you?”
Now she met his gaze. “He has been everything gentlemanly.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Lady Chattaway yesterday?”
“I didn’t have a chance, did I?” She said it oh-so quietly. An accusation.
“You cannot truly be considering this. You barely know him.”
“I am. My parents…” She tugged at the little puff sleeves of her muslin gown. “It would please them.”
“Bugger your parents. They don’t care for you.”
She reared away from him, her lips parting on a gasp.
When he reached for her, she flinched away, and he raked his hand through his hair instead. “I will not apologize, Tessa. It’s true.”
She turned her back to him, and it was better than a solid oak door with a heavy lock for barring him out.
His fingers ached to settle on the lovely slope of her shoulder, the rosy skin just barely visible through her flimsy fichu. But oak doors didn’t relish caresses. He dropped his hand to his side. “I only wish to help.”
“Help? Ha. You’ve done nothing but what you shouldn’t in the last twenty-four hours.”
“The kiss? I assume you refer to that.”
The glance she cast over her shoulder was sharp and sent him reeling. He stepped closer because stepping away seemed so damn wrong.
Slowly she turned, lifting her chin and dropping each word as if they did not matter.
“A kiss? What ki— Oh. Do you mean when you were foxed? I do not hold that against you.” She patted his hand as if he were a child then marched right past him, down the path and through the first door she encountered, the very picture of indignant poise.
Almost. Her hands were tight in her skirts, her shoulders slightly bowed, and she moved more quickly than she should, almost running. It was an escape.
From him.
He followed several steps, then forced himself to stop. Even if she’d never care for him as he did for her—yes, as he still did for her, damn it—he didn’t want to hurt her. But he had, and he was terrified by how eager, how desperate, he was to put it right.