Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“ W ell? Is the deed done?” His younger sister, Pomona, was occupying the library in much the same way that Napoleon’s army had occupied large swathes of Europe. Her resupply operation—stacks of paper, spare quills, a plate of cakes, a pot of tea—was evident all over the big wooden worktable.
“Er… well… no.”
“ No? ” Her face lit up. “Then you came to your senses?”
“Pomona.”
“Or she came to hers? Though I grant you that that is unlikely.”
“ Pomona. ”
“Well, for heaven’s sake! What happened?” She threw a ball of crumpled paper at him. It bounced off his arm. “You look dreadful. I should never have suspected Miss Spry of having such a strong right arm.”
“Hah.” Keynsham flopped down into a large leather armchair and put his hand over his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I am not certain that I myself know what happened.”
Pomona rose and held a candle closer to his face. “Oh dear! It is worse than I realized. There is blood on your lip and on your cheekbone. Shall I ring to see if cook has some ice?”
“No, but I would not say no to one or two of those rout cakes.” He hadn’t had a chance to eat all evening.
She brought him the plate. “I thought that gentlemen were not supposed to hit each other above the neck or below the belt.”
“I was not fighting gentlemen. I was fighting ruffians.”
“Ruffians?” She narrowed her eyes at him, apparently trying to work out whether or not he was serious. “Oh. I see. You are bamming me. But I suppose that that is all you will tell me.”
“You suppose correctly.” He hadn’t realized how damaged his face was until he tried to eat and found that his swollen lower lip wouldn’t move properly. “How goes the book?”
“The book is… Oh, I suppose that it is nearly done. Do not change the subject. If you were not with Miss Spry, where were you? You have been gone hours.”
He wished that he could tell her about Miss Ryder. But Pomona was a romantic. She was bound to become impassioned and entreat him to follow the urgings of his heart, or something equally poetic and impractical.
Besides, he couldn’t tell her about the Grafton Street house. Pomona didn’t know—at least officially—that their father had kept mistresses… although Keynsham suspected that she wasn’t quite as ignorant about such matters as their mother hoped.
“I did see Miss Spry. But before I could propose, she fainted and had to be carried from the room.”
She narrowed her eyes. “No, but really.”
“That is what happened.”
“What?” She began to laugh. “How perfectly ridiculous! What did Lord Lotion say to that?”
Keynsham frowned. “I know that many in the ton call him that. But he is a decent man, and—well, it is nothing but snobbishness.”
“Yes. You are right. I am sorry.” She considered. “But it has been dragging on. Has it not? It is all very odd.” She frowned. “Do you know—I have the strangest feeling that the marriage will not come off after all.”
“Well, the solicitors are hard at work drawing up the marriage settlements, so that seems unlikely.”
She sat down again and began sorting through a large stack of closely written pages. There were ink stains on the heels of her hands. Her brown hair was haphazardly fastened into a knot, and she wore a plain gown of dark figured calico. “Well, if mama suspects that there is any difficulty she will fall into hysterics. She spent most of dinner talking of how Miss Spry’s thirty thousand pounds is to be spent—on a ball, on adding a conservatory, and on hiring more servants and a French maid for me.”
He snorted. “It certainly will not. It will be spent to redeem the mortgages and put the estate to rights. Why is she talking of a ball? And why does she wish you to have a French maid?”
She sighed. “She said that I look a quiz. She said that I always look a quiz and that I have humiliated her long enough. She said that Great Aunt Theodosia has turned me into a bluestocking, that bluestockings are ladies who are too lazy to do their duty and marry and bear children, and that she will not suffer to have me lolling about imagining that I am a writer. Oh, and that if I am still thinking of Mr. West I may think again. It was a perfectly lovely meal.”
Keynsham frowned. “Have you been crying?”
“No.” She looked down at her papers.
Keynsham stared into the fire. He would have to ensure that their mother stopped scapegoating Pomona… and that his sister’s future was a happy one. But how?
A little over a year before—just after Keynsham had met Miss Ryder, in fact, and just before the death of the fifth viscount—Pomona had announced that she had fallen in love and wished to marry. The happy man was to be Mr. Gabriel West. He was the stepson of Sir Randolph Graham, M.P. and aspired to a career in politics himself. And he’d been part of Keynsham’s circle of friends since Cambridge.
But when Lady Alford learned of the attachment, she was furious. West had good prospects but little money. And Sir Randolph was only a recently-created knight, and not wealthy. She called West a fortune hunter, and ordered Lord Alford to forbid the marriage.
The couple eloped—but their disappearance was discovered after only a few hours. Lady Alford sent Keynsham after them with the promise that if Pomona would come back to London, she and West could be married properly, and all would be forgiven.
But that was a lie. When Keynsham brought Pomona back, Lady Alford had punished her. “Gretna Green! How common ! I shall never forgive her. Never! I only pray that this may be hushed up.” And in just three days she’d had a weeping Pomona packed onto the next ship for Ostend, on her way to live with their Great Aunt Theodosia in Augsburg, Germany. Keynsham had tried to prevent it. But Lord Alford, who found the entire matter tedious, refused to intervene.
And then, only a week later, Lord Alford had died unexpectedly, after a night of heavy drinking at Cheltenham, where he’d traveled for the races. The family solicitor had paid the new Lord Alford an urgent visit. Learning for the first time of his father’s mismanagement, he’d been plunged into a desperate scramble to save the estate.
Meanwhile, if Lady Alford gave any thought to her daughter at all, it was to imagine her in a most miserable European exile—perhaps not exactly like the Prisoner of Chillon, but… well… not entirely unlike him, either.
Eventually, however, disturbing information began to filter back to London. Instead of starvation and sorrow, it seemed that Pomona’s days were filled with concerts, literary salons , and dressage lessons on a very pretty Hanoverian mare. Lady Theodosia had taken her great-niece to Salzburg. They had attended a lecture by someone called Mr. Goethe.
Lady Alford made inquiries, and learned that he was German who had had several children out of wedlock. “It is not suitable!” She’d stormed into Keynsham’s study, waving a letter from an acquaintance who was visiting Germany. “Theodosia is spoiling her! I did not send Pomona to Augsburg to enjoy herself!”
Keynsham had looked up from the ledger books with a sigh. “What can you wish me to do, ma’am? Forbid her to smile?”
Lady Alford applied a handkerchief to her face and pretended to cry. “It was your father’s fondest wish that she be well married!” (If Lord Alford had ever given a thought to his daughter, it was news to Keynsham.) “It is very hard for me now that he is gone, and… and I am a widow! Besides, Pomona must have a London season. I only want what is best for her ! It is my duty! I am her mother !”
Despite Keynsham’s misgivings—not to mention the seasickness involved in a winter crossing of the North Sea—she sent for Pomona and brought her back to England.
Keynsham had been worried about his sister’s low mood ever since. “I still do not understand why she is talking of a ball. She knows that we must be very careful with our expenses at the moment.”
Pomona sighed. “She says that I must have one for my come-out. But my friends came out last year or the year before—and are married now, besides.”
“Well, that does not signify. You will not be the first lady to make her debut late, after a death in the family.”
“But I do not want a ball at all! She is the one who wants a ball. All I want is for her to leave me in peace so that I may finish my book—and to stop throwing West in my face. I never wish to see him again in my life! I am sick of his very name!”
“But West is not to blame for?—"
“Yes, he is . And that is the last I will say about it.” She gathered her papers and stalked to the door. “Good night .”
For five generations Alford House had been the home of the Viscounts Alford. Yet as he toiled up the sweeping marble staircase, his body bruised and aching, Keynsham wondered how much longer the family could afford to live in it.
Once, he’d been an optimist—a believer that hard work could solve any problem. But a year of sifting through the rat’s nest of bills that his father had left behind, trying to understand exactly how bad things were, had ground him down.
He found his bedroom in near darkness, the curtains still open. The fog was as thick as ever. The streetlamps were dim orbs illuminating nothing, and the other side of the street had all but vanished in the dense mist.
He was about to turn away when he had the sudden premonition that someone was out there in the dark watching the house. The intuition was so strong that he froze. There. At the mouth of the alley across the street, a shadow moved—the corner of a well-cut greatcoat, perhaps.
He didn’t know why, but he had no doubt that it was Wilkes. He burst out of his room at a run—his aches temporarily forgotten—and charged down the stairs. He nearly skidded across the entry hall floor, flung open the front door, and was down the steps and nearly at the gate before he even had time to think. Did he hear footsteps—or only the echo of his own pounding feet?
He came to a stop, listening. His pulse was pounding in his ears. “Your lordship!” A lantern bobbed down the steps, borne by Martin, the first footman. “What has happened?”
The lantern illuminated nothing but swirling white vapor. Yet there was a charge in the air—the same sense of watchful malice that he’d felt in Grosvenor Square. The last time he’d seen Wilkes, the man had been holding a pistol. And the lantern made him—or rather, Martin—an easy target.
“Nothing. That is, I thought that I saw something. Let us go back inside.”
Martin checked the locks. “Old Partridge thought that he saw someone hanging about the stables—not long before your lordship returned. But when he went to check, there was no one.”
“I see. Thank you.”
He went back upstairs. It could be coincidence, of course. Or it could have been Wilkes. If he’d traced Keynsham here already, he was dangerous indeed.
The only consolation was that if he’d been lurking outside Alford House, he hadn’t followed them to Grafton Street.
The bruises on his ribcage and lower back throbbed as he sank into the steamy water of his bath and closed his eyes. His valet, Rogers, took his ruined jacket—with exclamations of dismay over his bruised and swollen face—and left him alone at last. His mind was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion.
When he spoke with Miss Ryder tomorrow, he must be careful to make no more references to things that she’d said over a year ago on the night that he’d met her. It would make him seem… unhinged. Obsessed. Sad, even.
He covered his eyes with his hand. Well, he’d brought this upon himself. He was the one who’d allowed himself to moon over Miss Ryder—even when he’d known that it was a bad idea.
It had begun on a night not long after his father’s sudden death, when he’d discovered a wad of unpaid bills hidden in the back of an old ledger book—which itself had been hidden behind another book at the back of a shelf in the study.
He’d sat smoothing the bills with his hand, mentally reeling. It appeared that the fifth viscount had been single-handedly keeping the capitol’s jewelers in business. Garrard. Charman. Grey’s. Antrobus. Rundell, Bridge and Rundell. Every one of them was owed hundreds—if not thousands—of guineas.
He began mechanically sorting the bills into stacks. One part of his mind kept a running tally of the total. And the other… well, the other wandered into a tempting thought: What would it be like to simply close his eyes, go to sleep and simply… not wake up again? Would it be so very bad?
After all, there could be no shame in dying in his sleep. No one could blame him for that. Instead, they’d shake their heads and say how sad it was that he’d been driven into an early grave. He’d be buried respectably in the Alford family vault—not in the unsanctified corner of the churchyard with the suicides and the un-baptized infants, the way he would be if—oh, just for example—he were to put a pistol in his mouth…
He propped his head on his hands, closed his eyes, and prayed earnestly for the mercy of sweet oblivion.
But for some reason, instead of Death, the figure who appeared in his mind was… Miss Ryder.
He wondered later if his exhaustion had been so great that he’d actually drifted off to sleep sitting at his desk. If he had, in those few moments, slipped into the most vivid dream of his life. He found himself back in the long-ago inn yard in which he and Miss Ryder had said goodbye to each other. The chaos of shouting ostlers and porters, clattering hooves, and impatient passengers seemed to surround them once again. And once again, she threw her arms about him and kissed him.
He could have sworn that something happened as her lips met his. Strength seemed to flow into him. His whole body felt lighter—even warmer. She put her mouth to his ear and spoke one word: “Courage.”
His eyes flew open. He returned to reality with a jolt. What in God’s name…? He was still seated at his desk, the candles burning low. But the warmth of her embrace seemed to linger. The painfully tight muscles in his shoulders and neck had loosened. He felt, for the first time in weeks, as though there were some tiny chance that he might actually survive this.
Over the months, the fantasy Miss Ryder became the one person in whom he could safely confide. And what had begun as mental relief became a habit. He seemed powerless to banish her from his thoughts. She was always with him. She always laughed at his jokes. She believed in him.
Was he going mad? Well, maybe a little… or a lot. Still, having an imaginary friend was better than blowing his brains out. And by the time he realized that was making himself more—not less—lonely, it was already too late. He wanted Miss Ryder—and only Miss Ryder.
And that was the reason that his fantasies turned… heated.
He’d imagine what she would say if she could see his latest awful discovery. “My father sold off three Vermeers—and yet he bought his mistress a diamond and sapphire parure and did not pay the bill,” he’d tell her, for instance.
The fantasy Miss Ryder wouldn’t flinch. Instead of wringing her hands, she’d lighten the moment with a teasing reply. “Indeed, darling? But you would do the very same for me, I have no doubt.” The candlelight would catch the soft curve of her cheek as her dimples flashed.
He’d say… hmm, what would he say? In his fantasies he always thought of a witty rejoinder. So, he’d say that yes, of course he would—if only his father had left him with so much as Vermeer to sell.
She would say that she did not long for jewels—because she already had him. And he would say that she was the most beautiful woman in the world—with or without a matching tiara, necklace, earrings, bracelet, and shoulder clasps.
“Shoulder clasps!” she’d tease. “You did not tell me that there were shoulder clasps . That puts rather a different face on things, I must admit.”
“Is that so?” He’d rise from his chair, draw her to him, and kiss her soft lips until her breathing hitched and her body was pliant against his. “But if you were wearing shoulder clasps, I might not be able to do this.” And he’d kiss his way down her neck and begin to ease her gown from her shoulders.
“That would be terrible,” she’d breathe.
“Yes. It would be terrible.” He’d push her back onto the desk, scattering the cursed papers to the floor. His lips would travel from her neck to her shoulders as he rucked her skirts and petticoat upward, his hand traveling over the soft skin of her thighs until…
Good God . This had to stop. He snapped back to reality and climbed out of the bath. He would never have taken such liberties with the fantasy Miss Ryder if he’d known that he would see the real Miss Ryder again.
And now she was here. And he would see her again tomorrow. And he was no longer free to claim her.