Chapter 1 #3
“Tsk, tsk. So formal. Aunty Gertrude informed you of my antics last evening.”
It was no secret in the household that Lord Julius Trafford and the Earl of Stirling had never seen eye to eye.
Trafford was a notorious dandy, given to ostentatious attire and irreverent wit, while the earl was the very embodiment of solemn tradition, his moral code as stiff as the starch in his neckcloth.
Audrey knew this well. She had petitioned the earl more than once to allow her to return home to Stirling, but he insisted she remain in Town to protect her reputation.
Under the law, she was still a minor, and she had little choice but to comply, despite the yearning in her heart for country quiet.
Audrey grimaced, glancing around for another spot on the terrace to remove herself from the embarrassment of eavesdropping. But there was no other bench in the small flagged area, only neatly potted shrubs with waxy green leaves and the orderly sweep of paving stones warming in the sun.
She looked down at the bird, feeling the tremor of its heartbeat through the linen. Moving her valise and the patient together without jostling the broken wing would be nearly impossible. She could almost hear her father’s calm voice reminding her of his most cherished principle.
“The needs of the patient outweigh any other considerations.”
Sighing, Audrey shook her head. There was no help for it. Etiquette be hanged. She would remain seated and tend the bird’s wing here and now. Trauma delayed treatment, leading to further harm and slower healing. She must not fail this small creature for the sake of propriety.
Being summoned to Lord Snarling’s study always provoked a slow-burning dread in the pit of Julius’s stomach, a familiar, wrathful churn that made his teeth clench behind his polite smile.
He fought the urge to twist his gold-and-emerald signet ring, knowing well his father’s sharp eyes would catch even the smallest betrayal of distress.
Instead, with the deliberate grace of a stalking jungle cat, he forced his lean frame into an insouciant sprawl on the stiff-backed chair, letting one elegantly shod foot rest casually over the other.
He studied the room as much as his father—dark walnut paneling polished to a rich gleam, heavy velvet drapes framing tall windows that let in the pale London light, and a faint tang of tallow smoke lingering from the lamp on the massive oak desk.
Lord Snarling sat behind that desk in uncompromising formality.
It had been nearly two decades since the man had devoted genuine attention to his son.
Julius could just remember the days when his father had offered easy laughter, teaching him to ride in the park or lifting him effortlessly onto his shoulders to watch processions in the Mall. Those days were long past.
Now the Earl of Stirling was a creature of rigid habit, cool reserve, and unsparing judgment. He served the Crown with tireless dedication, both in Town and, rumor claimed, across the Channel.
“Why did you attend the Smythe ball without an invitation?”
“I wished to do so, so I did.” Julius adjusted his cuffs minutely, the pristine white linen smooth against his fingers.
“Why were you in the company of such a scoundrel?”
Julius nearly laughed aloud, biting the inside of his cheek to stop it. Abbott, a scoundrel? The man was practically a sermon in boots. Moreland’s heir was stiff with integrity, the sort of man who apologized to furniture for bumping it. Julius was, in truth, growing rather fond of the Abbotts.
Last evening had simply been an inevitable disaster, given Abbott’s frankly ridiculous personal discipline. Abstaining from women at his age! Julius’s inquiries had confirmed the poor man’s lack of dalliances. No wonder it had all ended so spectacularly.
“Abbott is a good man. He offered for Miss Smythe, did he not?”
Lord Snarling’s expression did not shift so much as tighten, the lines bracketing his mouth deepening.
They were much the same height, father and son, but where Julius was all angles and lean grace, his father had the muscular solidity of a man accustomed to command.
His coat fit with military precision, seams perfectly aligned over a chest that brooked no softness.
The one thing they did share was the wheat hair.
Or some of it.
Julius tugged on the short brown locks behind his ear. Lord Snarling followed the self-conscious gesture, so Julius smirked and turned it into a condescending rub to accompany the roll of his eyes.
Never display weakness.
That lesson had been drilled into him long before the man across the desk had grown too busy for lessons of any sort.
Over the years, Julius had refined the art of masking his thoughts, of lacing every glance and remark with deflection and humor.
He would not give his father the satisfaction of seeing uncertainty.
“I fail to comprehend what you were doing there. You have persisted in your pursuit of unsuitable females, so why attend a ball with marriageable young women?”
Julius thought about his fears for Brendan Ridley and the danger that the new baron and his wife were in.
He would never admit anything so personal to Lord Snarling.
Confide in his father? The same man who had so thoroughly abandoned his family to their solitary fates in the name of duty to the realm?
What of his duty to their own household?
The thought coiled and burned in his chest like a brand.
This was the anger that never left him, a companion as familiar as his signet ring.
Anger for what had been, for what was lost, for the warm presence of a father who no longer seemed to exist. Lord Snarling was far too occupied for such trivial matters as love or loyalty to one’s own blood.
It was why Julius valued his friends as he did. Brendan was a man of integrity who had earned that loyalty. A friend worth standing by at any cost. In a world of polished hypocrisy and mercenary alliances, his companions were the only true riches worth treasuring.
“I was bored.” Julius shrugged with a studied languor, letting the stiff wool of his coat stretch as he shifted, feigning nonchalance even as fury seethed beneath his waistcoat.
Lord Snarling’s jaw tightened, a muscle leaping in his clean-shaven cheek, eyes narrowing as he studied Julius with surgical coldness. He let the silence drag until the tick of the mantel clock was the only sound in the paneled room.
“You are willfully irresponsible,” the earl finally pronounced, his voice low and fatigued, as though even this reprimand cost more effort than Julius was worth.
“And you are sufficiently priggish for both of us,” Julius replied in a controlled tone that disguised the rage threatening to spill from every pore.
“Do you take anything seriously?”
“Do you ever flex a smile?”
Lord Snarling’s expression hardened, the pale lines around his mouth furrowing deeper with disapproval. Julius saw the next words coming, practically watched them form before his father realized their weight.
“Your mother would be ashamed of whom you have become.”
For one reckless, unguarded moment, Julius felt savage triumph. He had made the great Lord Snarling react, had cracked the granite facade to expose genuine feeling. Huzza!
But the words themselves landed like a musket ball.
They slammed past his armor, straight into his heart. Julius felt his spine stiffen, fury rising like bile. He surged upright in his chair, shoulders thrown back, voice ringing with outraged disbelief.
“My mother is ashamed of whom you have become!”
Lord Snarling’s eyes flashed once, then shuttered. He turned away sharply, boots thudding on the fine Aubusson rug as he faced the empty hearth and the portrait above it.
Lady Stirling smiled serenely down on them from her gilt frame, the artist’s careful strokes capturing her fair hair pinned with pearls, the luminous grace in her eyes that no brush could fully render.
More beautiful than any woman had a right to be.
More lifelike than any Da Vinci or Michelangelo could have hoped to achieve.
Gone. But not forgotten.
They had reached another of their many impasses, the room suddenly cold with unspoken hostilities. Neither father nor son would cede so much as an inch of ground.
But Snarling had broached the unspoken wound. The rage Julius fought to restrain cracked open, spilling in a rush too long suppressed.
“When was the last time you spoke with your daughter? I have not seen Penelope since I left for my Grand Tour six years ago! She is a debutante now who just enjoyed her come-out in Paris. What of your wife? My mother? When did you last speak a word to her? And Pierce remains at Oxford or spends his holidays with friends, because there is no one to come home to. I had to attend a house party simply to spend any time with my own brother.”
Lord Snarling’s back remained rigid, but Julius caught the subtle hitch of breath. An infinitesimal flinch. Bravo. It was well-deserved.
Lady Stirling deserved none of this cold neglect. She had been a magnificent countess, known for lighting any room with her grace and gentle humor. Since her marriage to Lord Snarling, she might as well have been titled Lady Smiling, friend to all.
His beloved mother. The woman he had not seen since before the Grand Tour, because she had chosen to remain in France, visiting her diplomat brother at the embassy rather than return to this mausoleum of unspoken grievances.
Even her good humor had reached its limit after years of neglect from her husband, who had become increasingly preoccupied with important dealings.
Too busy to spare time for those nearest to him.
It was hardly a surprise, Julius thought grimly, that Lady Smiling had decamped to Paris.
And when the time had come for her return, she had simply remained in France with his little sister.
Julius could not truly blame her. He liked to imagine her enjoying herself in the city of bonhomie across the Channel, strolling the broad boulevards, listening to lively salons and music, after years of miserable attrition in their hushed London townhouse.
She deserved joy. Even if it made his chest ache to think of their fractured family, scattered by silence and cold duty.
It was why he never wanted marriage himself. He refused to become the grave husk his father had become—empty of laughter, stripped of warmth. He would not trap himself in a stifling union with a partner who ignored him while he withered in dutiful misery.
This house had once been alive with laughter, the scent of orange pomanders hanging in the halls at Christmas, the crackle of cheerful fires on snowy nights, his mother’s gentle voice reading poetry aloud.
He remembered it too well. That memory was the reason he slept at his clubs or Aunty Gertrude’s increasingly often.
It was too bleak to return here and be confronted by echoes of better times.
He would not allow his own soul to freeze into icy oblivion as Lord Snarling had.
“You know not of what you speak.” His father had found his voice at last, though it was low and harsh as gravel underfoot.
“I know you had a wife and family who loved you,” Julius bit out, controlling the tremor in his voice, “but you discarded the true wealth you possessed in service to the state. All those diplomatic missions, those closed-door negotiations—was it worth it? You have lost your closest. Instead of collecting your wife and daughter from Paris, apologizing for your selfish neglect, you have let us all drift apart in the name of duty. What of your duty to us? We were a family once.”
Lord Snarling remained unmoving, the line of his back rigid beneath his perfectly tailored coat, eyes fixed on the unlit hearth as though it held answers he could no longer summon.
Julius felt the blood pounding in his ears at his own temerity. He had never dared speak these words aloud. It was a revelation and a relief, the flood of truth too long buried.
“What are we now?” His voice cracked with scorn. “The answer is simple. We are nothing. There is no we.”
His chest rose and fell unevenly, fingers tightening into white-knuckled fists at his sides. He had reached the limits of patience, of dignity. He would not break further. Exposing this raw weakness was humiliation enough.
Without waiting for a reply that would never come, Julius spun on his heel and stalked toward the terrace doors, the soles of his polished boots thudding dully on the thick rug. He wrenched them open and shut them with a crisp, final click that reverberated through the hush of the study.
The afternoon sun hit him like a slap, dazzling after the dim interior. He blinked rapidly, vision swimming as he tried to find his bearings. As his sight cleared, he started at the figure before him.
Miss Gideon.
She was his father’s ward, perched on the terrace bench, surrounded by spilled contents of her small leather valise.
Her silver-gray eyes widened in alarm beneath the brim of her straw bonnet, a fragile starling trembling in her careful hands.
Julius’s gaze swept over her instinctively—those curling flaxen locks escaping their pins, that small upturned nose he had once tweaked in childish mischief.
Little Audrey had grown into a lovely young woman.
He noticed, despite himself, her womanly form and the faint blush on her fair cheek.
And immediately cursed himself for it. She was a good girl—precisely the sort he had sworn off with all the discipline he could muster.
He would not fall into that trap and end like his parents, with hearts ground to dust.
“Miss Gideon.” He offered her a polite bow, trying to reassemble his carefree mask despite knowing she had overheard his rawest truth.
“Lord Trafford,” she returned quietly, dipping her head, her bonnet tilting with the motion.
Julius straightened, chest tight with mortification, and turned sharply away. He left the terrace with as much wounded grace as he could muster, well aware his failings had been witnessed by not one but two people today.