Chapter 3
Gage found me some hours later standing before one of the tall windows of our bedchamber staring broodingly out at the lake at the edge of the southern lawn.
By all rights, I should have been preparing myself for dinner, but I’d delayed Bree McEvoy, my lady’s maid, asking her to return in a quarter of an hour.
There was someone I needed to speak to first.
My husband rested his hands on my shoulders, lightly kneading them as I watched a family of ducks waddle down the hill toward the water.
The evening sky was painted with shades of azure, mauve, and apricot.
The clouds almost appeared tipped in gold.
I began sifting through various pigments in my mind, trying to decide which I would combine to recreate each color.
It soothed some of the frayed edges of my temper.
“You did not expect him to be any different, did you?” Gage murmured gently, pressing a kiss to my temple.
I’d known better than to think my husband would be unaware of the main source of my discontent. “No. Your father behaved precisely as I thought he would,” I replied stiffly. “But…” I broke off, too vexed to even finish the thought.
“That doesn’t make it any easier,” Gage construed.
I heaved a sigh, knowing part of my impatience was directed at myself for nursing even the smallest hope otherwise.
As fellow hosts, we had joined Lord Gage earlier in the soaring great hall to greet his political cronies as they arrived one by one or in pairs.
The first was Baron Foley of Kidderminster, a young and promising Whig, who had been taken under the wing of the second arrival, Lord Melbourne, who currently served as home secretary.
Another Whig, Baron Brougham and Vaux, and his wife clattered up the drive next followed by a man I’d believed to be his rival—the Tory Lord Lyndhurst—and his wife.
Last to arrive was a pair of Tory Conservatives, the Scottish Earl of Strathblane and his young protégé Lord Milngavie.
While not overtly frosty, Lord Gage’s treatment of me during these receptions had not been warm.
Not as it had been in recent months. I tried not to let this bother me, though I couldn’t deny it stung to feel his disdain directed at me once again.
However, his warnings about Mr. Birnam’s intrusion into his home and the reason for his being there grew ever more biting with each recitation.
All of the guests had reacted with either resignation or sangfroid, none being so impolite as to visibly recoil at the Birnams’ presence, but I’d been forced to grit my teeth when more than one had chosen to praise Trevor’s shrewdness in nabbing a girl with such an immense dowry.
I knew how marriage was viewed by the aristocracy.
Most matches were arranged to either bolster familial connections, increase wealth, or consolidate power, irrespective of the compatibility of the couple.
As the grandson of a baron and the great-grandson of a duke, with a minor estate and no title of his own, Trevor would not be expected to capture the hand of a nobleman’s daughter.
This meant he should either aim to secure a bride of equally genteel lineage or a woman possessed of a large enough dowry as to overlook her ancestry.
But Trevor, Alana, and I had not been raised to view marriage in such a transactional fashion.
Our parents had been a love match, as had our maternal grandparents and a number of our aunts and uncles.
It was true, most of them had not strayed far beyond the boundaries of expectation, but that had not been their chief consideration.
Alana and Philip had also married for love, or else my sister might not have been deemed to be of sufficient rank to secure a powerful earl.
In truth, among our family my first marriage had been the exception, for it had decidedly not been a love match.
I could only believe this had contributed to the fact that it had been a complete and utter disaster.
Fortunately, my second husband, Gage, and I were wholly devoted to each other and far happier.
I knew Trevor had been searching for something similar.
So to hear his courtship and any possible affection he might feel for Matilda reduced to such mercenary terms set my teeth on edge.
It was a refrain that was undoubtedly to continue.
Suddenly weary, I allowed myself to lean back into Gage’s embrace. “If this afternoon was any indication, it’s going to be six very long days.”
“Yes, but then the rest of our friends and family and neighbors will be joining us just in time for the ball. And they will be remaining while Father’s cronies return to London.”
“That’s true.” I was looking forward to seeing them all. It had been several months since I’d laid eyes on many of them. But we still had the intervening days to endure.
I heard a rap on the outer door to our suite of rooms and then the voice of Gage’s valet, Anderley, bidding my brother to come through.
I’d been expecting him and turned to make my way toward our private sitting room, where I’d intended to receive him, but Trevor met me at the door to our bedchamber, looking harried in his dark evening wear.
“I know why you asked to see me,” he announced before I could speak. “Please, allow me to explain.”
I blinked at him, surprised he’d inferred as much, and wary of what his agitated state meant.
I advanced past him into the sitting room, gathering my composure and forcing him to turn and follow.
The chamber boasted a lovely wallpaper of twining roses, and furniture upholstered in a shade of pink that strongly resembled the gemstone thulite recently discovered in Norway.
As in most of the rooms at Bevington Hall, as well as Lord Gage’s London town house, there was an ample number of gilt accents to be found in the picture and mirror frames, surrounding the fireplace, and decorating the chandelier.
Sinking down on a chair angled toward the southern-facing windows, I gestured for Trevor to speak while he claimed the seat opposite.
He leaned toward me, his hands spread wide and his deep lapis-lazuli blue eyes, so like my own, imploring.
“I do not know why Mrs. Birnam spoke of my guidance to Matilda in such an unpleasant manner, but I was not warning her about you. Or rather, I was…” He grimaced as he broke off, raking his fingers through his chestnut brown hair. “But not because of you.”
I stiffened, for this was not what I’d expected to hear.
Gage had remained in the connecting doorway, leaning against its frame, and I could feel his questioning gaze, but I remained focused on my brother.
He appeared to be struggling to find the right words as I waited, hoping he would say something to soothe the old wounds Mrs. Birnam had reopened.
“I warned her because…Matilda can at times be a trifle self-conscious about other people’s opinions of her.
” His eyes lifted to meet mine, pleading for understanding.
“And I did not want her to leap to the wrong conclusion if you did not respond as…” he seemed to search for the right word before settling on “…effusively as she hoped. She wants so much for you and Alana to like her, and I worried she might misunderstand.”
The knot in my stomach loosened upon hearing this explanation, for I knew that there were times when I did not react as expected.
That there were times when the social cues that everyone else seemed to read so easily eluded me.
I had improved in the years since my awkward first attempts to mingle with society, but I suspected I still missed at least half of the innate inferences that others caught.
Of course, this also enabled me to observe things that others ignored.
Things that enhanced the quality and lifelikeness of my portraits.
Things that had proved invaluable to Gage’s and my investigations.
Things that had made me realize that given the choice between being like everyone else and being myself, I would choose the latter, regardless of the frustration.
Though it had been a long road to this acceptance, and the occasional twinge of shame and jealousy still struck me when my differences were pointed out.
“I’m terribly sorry, Kiera.” Trevor reached for my hands. “When Matilda told me what her mother had implied, I was horrified. I never meant to hurt you. You must know that.”
I did know that. Losing our mother when we were both so young, just ten and eight, had forged a bond between Trevor and me that was stronger than most. We had been each other’s fiercest allies and friends.
Particularly, when Alana took it upon herself to interfere as only an older sister could, albeit with good intentions.
I owed my brother for so much, including protecting me when the scandal of my involvement with my first husband’s anatomical practice broke following his death.
Sir Anthony had forced me to sketch the dissections he performed for a definitive anatomical textbook he was writing, intending to claim the artwork as his own.
Except his poor draftsmanship had been well known, and upon his death, when the manuscript had been passed into his colleagues’ hands to be completed, they’d instantly suspected the truth and had me taken before the magistrate’s court, accused of all sorts of heinous crimes.
The notion that a gentlewoman could be exposed to dissected corpses and not collapse under the strain or go mad from the horror was impossible for them to believe, never mind that I’d had no choice in the matter.
If not for Trevor and my brother-in-law, Philip, I shuddered to imagine where I might have ended up.
If not the gallows, then possibly the same lunatic asylum where Sir Anthony threatened to send me during our marriage if I did not comply with his orders.
I squeezed my brother’s hands in return, assuring him I understood.