Chapter 15
On Thursday morning, the housemaid Becky Brown returned from visiting her mother. She asked to speak with Isabella.
Isabella saw her in the book room. Becky entered with Mrs. Early, the housekeeper. They sat at her gesture, Mrs. Early solidly, the girl perching nervously on the edge of her seat. One look at Becky’s face told Isabella that the news was bad. “How is your mother?”
Becky shook her head, her hands fisted in her apron. “Not good, ma’am. She can’t even get out of bed anymore.” The girl swallowed convulsively.
“Has she seen a doctor?” Isabella asked.
The girl nodded.
Had Becky’s hard-earned money paid for that bill? “What did he say?”
“He said that there was something growing inside her. That she won’t get better.”
Isabella was silent for a moment, remembering her mother’s own illness, remembering the day when she had finally acknowledged that the dowager duchess wouldn’t recover. “Would you like to be released from my service?” she asked gently.
Becky nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Someone needs to look after her and the little ones. My father has to work, you see, so he can’t...” She twisted the apron between her hands.
Isabella nodded. She did see. She glanced at Mrs. Early. “You may leave today, if you wish.”
Mrs. Early nodded.
Relief flushed the girl’s cheeks, but she shook her head. “Oh, no, ma’am. I thought ...a week, if.. . if it suits you.”
“Are you certain you don’t wish to leave today?”
Becky shook her head again. “One of the neighbors said she could stay for a week.” She smiled shyly at Isabella. “I thought... a week would give you time to hire someone else.”
“Thank you, Becky. That’s very thoughtful.”
The girl’s flush deepened. “You’ve been good to me, ma’am. I didn’t want to leave sudden-like.”
“Thank you, Becky.”
When the girl had curtsied and withdrawn, Isabella turned to Mrs. Early. “Will you please go to the registry office again?”
The housekeeper nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Isabella sighed. “We seem to be going through housemaids rather fast.” She stared at the square of sunlight that caught the corner of her desk, turning the pale wood golden. “We will pay her for this month and the next,” she said, looking up. “And give her references.”
Mrs. Early nodded.
“And please ask the cook to make up a hamper of food for Becky when she leaves. Food for her family. Meat pies, fruit, bread...” She frowned. What else? “Oh, and some of those plum cakes.” A treat for the children, in the middle of what must be a dark and frightening time for them.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Isabella nodded her dismissal, but halted the housekeeper at the door. “Mrs. Early, are the wax candles still being taken?”
Mrs. Early turned to face her. “Yes, ma’am.”
After the housekeeper had gone, Isabella pulled out her ledgers. She looked back through several months of neat columns, noting how many wax candles had been bought and when. Yes, three months ago. She tapped the page with a fingertip, frowning. A slight increase at first. The following month there was a noticeable jump, as if the thief had gained confidence. And this month...
Her lips pursed. I should have noticed this.
When had she added these figures to the ledger? Last week, when her mind was occupied by Harriet and Major Reynolds.
Isabella shook her head, unimpressed with herself.
It was fairly easy to determine how many candles had been stolen, using last year’s figures as a comparison. She tallied the numbers on a sheet of paper. The total made her eyebrows rise. Wax candles were an expensive luxury. If the thief had sold them for only half their true price he or she had made a significant sum.
Isabella laid down her quill. I don’t like this. It was unsettling to think that there was a thief under her roof. No, it was more than unsettling; it was disturbing.
* * *
Major Reynolds kissed her that night at the Athertons’ ball, after supper, when the quadrille was announced and the room they were in momentarily emptied of dancers. The kiss was as intoxicating as wine, and far too brief.
On Friday he kissed her at Vauxhall, where they managed to part company from Gussie and Lucas as they wandered through the dimly lit gardens. Major Reynolds held her pressed to him. His mouth burned against hers, hungry. She had the sensation that she was drowning in heat. When at last he raised his head she clung to him, dazed. Her pulse beat loudly in her ears. More, it said. More, more.
They stood in silence for a long moment, breathing raggedly. She felt the warmth of Major Reynolds’ body pressed against hers, the strength, the solidity. One of his hands stroked lightly down her back.
Isabella trembled with the pleasure of it. She clutched his lapel and closed her eyes. Is this truly me? Have I gone mad?
“I like to kiss you,” Major Reynolds whispered against her cheek.
“I like to kiss you, too.” And she turned her head, her mouth seeking his, kissing him again. Yes, I have gone mad.
On Saturday she looked at herself in the mirror and scarcely recognized herself. Had her eyes always been this bright, her cheeks this rosy? This is what lust looks like.
Isabella accompanied her cousin and the Peverills to the opera that evening. She searched the boxes with her eyes. Mrs. Westin’s voice, the voices of Mr. and Mrs. Peverill, were a meaningless blur of sound. Major Reynolds had said that he might...
There he was, on the other side of the chamber, scanning the boxes, swiftly examining each set of occupants before dismissing them.
Isabella’s heart began to beat faster. She held her breath as their eyes caught across the auditorium. For long seconds they looked at each other, and then the major smiled at her, a smile that made her blush with her whole body. A smile that promised.
Isabella tore her gaze from him. She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. Anticipation hummed in her veins. She barely heard a word her companions said. The music, when it started, was nothing but noise.
During the first interval their box filled with friends and acquaintances paying their respects. Major Reynolds didn’t visit. She glanced once across at him—leaning back in his chair, watching her, an ironic twist to his mouth—before firmly turning her attention away.
When the curtain lowered for the second interval, her cousin and the Peverills expressed the intention to visit the Seftons, in a box opposite. “I shall stay here,” Isabella said, as the others rose.
“Are you feeling unwell?” Mrs. Westin asked, her brow creasing with concern.
“Oh, no,” Isabella said. “I just want to sit here and be quiet.”
“Shall I stay with you?” her cousin asked, half-lowering into her seat.
“Oh, no! I shall just sit and watch people.”
Mrs. Westin looked dubious, but allowed herself to be persuaded. She followed the Peverills, glancing back once from the doorway.
Isabella looked across at Major Reynolds’ box. It was empty.
She looked down at her hands. I was untruthful. How had this happened? How had she become someone who told lies, who stole secret kisses from a man she had no intention of marrying?
I should stop this. Before I can no longer stand myself.
“Isabella.”
The sound of her name, quietly spoken, made her heart lurch in her chest. She turned her head swiftly.
Major Reynolds stood in the shadows at the back of the box.
“Nicholas!” She rose.
The clandestine kisses were wrong. Why, then, did it feel so right when the major took her hands and drew her back into the shadows? When he smiled at her? When he bent his head and kissed her?
His hands were at her waist, strong, holding her closely against him. Their lips clung together. There was heat and dizzying delight, and then Major Reynolds bowed and was gone.
Isabella stood alone in the back of the box. She touched a trembling finger to her lips. I have gone mad.
* * *
On Sunday Isabella accompanied her cousin to the Chapel Royal, as was her habit when in London. The day stretched ahead unbearably—no ride in Hyde Park with the major, no dancing tonight. No kiss.
Isabella looked down at her hymn book. It wasn’t just Major Reynolds’ kisses she would miss today, it was his company, his conversation.
When had the major come to be such an important part of her life?
Isabella opened the hymn book and stared blindly at the text. And when did I become so infatuated with his kisses that I became blind to the risks? Last night had been the height of foolishness. To steal a kiss in so public a place!
And yet she had kissed him quite willingly, had in fact lied to facilitate it.
Isabella frowned at the hymn book. The lines of text were like centipede tracks across the pages, unreadable. The rector’s voice droned unheard in her ears.
What she was doing was profoundly wrong. I should stop it, all of it: meeting him, kissing him.
And yet the thought of no longer seeing Major Reynolds brought something close to panic to her chest.
When had she come to like him so much?
The answer was easy: At the Worthingtons’ masked ball. When he had made everyone laugh with him instead of at him. When he’d kissed her for the first time.
The rector’s voice was rising, the sermon coming to its climax. Isabella heard none of the words; they were noise in her ears. How much do I like him?
The answer was terrifying. She looked up blankly and stared at the rector without seeing him.
There was a rustle of sound and movement as the congregation stood. Isabella scrambled to her feet belatedly. She had no idea what hymn was to be sung.
The organ music, when it started, made no sense. The words were unfamiliar. Isabella gripped the hymn book tightly, her fingers crumpling the pages. Was it more than lust? Am I in love with him?
How could she be in love with a man she’d known such a short time? And, equally as important—or perhaps even more important—how could she love a man who had admitted that he wanted to mold his wife to suit him?
The organ music stopped. Pages turned with a rustle of paper.
Isabella thumbed through the hymn book at random, opening it to a new page. She stared down at it blindly. What did she know about Major Reynolds?
He’d been a good soldier, a good leader of men. The best, Lieutenant Mayhew had said.
He had a sense of humor.
When he looked at his scar in the mirror he saw how lucky he was.
He was proud. He was intelligent. He was courageous.
Was that enough? Do I want to marry him?
By his own admission Major Reynolds was an autocrat—although surely he’d been joking? But still, joking or not, he was a man used to command, a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed.
What would it be like to be such a man’s wife?
The singing stopped. The congregation sat. Isabella followed, half a second later. She tried to recall her first impression of Major Reynolds: A dangerous man. It was difficult to think of him like that now. When she thought of him, she thought of laughter, of kisses.
Don’t let the kisses fool you; he’s still a dangerous man.
How many men had he killed in his twelve years as a soldier?
Isabella shivered. She stared down at the hymn book, gripped tightly in her hands. The rector was talking again. The words blurred together in her ears. What do I want?
“Isabella?”
Isabella looked up blankly. Everyone else was standing, talking, moving. The service was over.
“Isabella?” Mrs. Westin said again. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said hurriedly, rising. “I was just, uh... thinking.”
What do I want?
She tried to focus on her cousin, on the conversations around her, on anything but the answer. But the answer refused to go away as she gathered her hymn book and her bible, as she donned her wrap, as she stepped out into the sunlight.
If Major Reynolds is the man I think he is, then I would like to marry him.
To acknowledge the words, to say them in her head—if not aloud—was shocking. For a moment she stood frozen. People brushed past her, their voices a meaningless babble in her ears.
“Isabella?”
With effort she focused on her cousin’s face.
“Are you certain you’re all right?” Concern furrowed Mrs. Westin’s brow. “You look very...”
Lost. I’m lost. In the past week I’ve become someone I don’t know. I no longer recognize myself.
“...very pale.”
Isabella attempted a smile. She swallowed and spoke, “I’m perfectly all right, Cousin.”
She might not recognize who she was, but she recognized the emotion rising in her breast. Not dismay, but hope.
I want to marry Major Reynolds.
Isabella blinked and looked around her. The world seemed somehow different, unfamiliar. A world in which she might have a husband, children, a family.
It was a dizzying thought.
Isabella walked carefully down the steps, holding onto the railing.
The route home seemed much shorter than usual. Isabella listened with half an ear as her cousin discussed the morning’s sermon. In her mind she built dreams of a husband with a scarred face and green eyes, of children, of laughter and love. Reality returned when she stepped into the cool foyer of her house in Clarges Street.
Would Major Reynolds want to marry her? She bore no resemblance to the bride he had described, youthful and biddable. Perhaps he thinks me too old, too odd.
Would he want to mold her into someone else? He liked her, that much she knew. And he wanted her. But to want someone and to love someone—to love someone as they were, unchanged, unmolded—were two completely different things.
Isabella climbed the stairs beside her cousin, her brow creased in thought. Was it merely lust that Major Reynolds was experiencing—his hungry kisses, the way he held her pressed so close to his body—or was it something more?
The only way to know was to ask him.
Dare I?
Rufus bounded down the second flight of stairs, his tail wagging. Isabella bent to greet him, patting him, ruffling his fur. She glanced up at the sound of footsteps. Harriet.
Isabella straightened slowly.
And dare I tell him the truth about Harriet?
How would Major Reynolds react?
If he was the man she thought him to be, a man of calm good sense, then he wouldn’t judge her too harshly.
If he wasn’t . . .
Isabella shivered, suddenly cold.
* * *
Monday morning brought no letter from Harriet’s aunt. “Don’t worry,” Isabella told the girl. “If we’ve heard nothing by Friday I’ll send my man of business to Penrith to look for her.”
“I’m sorry to be such a burden, ma’am.”
“You’re not a burden,” Isabella said. “We’re very glad of your company, believe me.” She smiled cheerfully at the girl, although privately she was becoming a little worried. What if Harriet’s aunt was dead?
Harriet gave her a trembling smile in return. Unshed tears brimmed in her eyes. Where those tears of gratitude or misery? Probably both. The poor child was as innocent as one of the kittens and almost as helpless. The world was a frightening place if one had no family, no money, no protection.
Isabella was struck by a sense of how lucky she was. She had everything Harriet lacked, not through virtue or endeavor but through a quirk of birth.
No, not everything. Harriet had had one she thing hadn’t had: Major Reynolds as a bridegroom.
I want the man she ran from. How was that for irony?
* * *
After luncheon, Isabella paid a call on Gussie, ostensibly to see how Saffron was. “I still have one kitten left unhomed,” she said, as ginger-striped Saffron purred in her cupped hands. They sat in Gussie’s morning room, with sunlight streaming in through the lace curtains. “I was wondering... perhaps your cousin might take her?”
“Which cousin? Nicholas?” Gussie said, looking up from her cross-stitch. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“I thought I’d ask you first what kind of man he is,” Isabella said, avoiding Gussie’s eyes.
“What kind of man?” Gussie laid down her needle. “You ask me that, after you’ve been in each other’s pockets the past two weeks?”
Isabella felt a blush rise in her cheeks. “I know his social face,” she said, focusing on the gilded urn clock on the mantelpiece. And I know the lover. “But you know him so much better than I. I just wondered... what your opinion of him is?”
“My opinion of him?” Gussie repeated in an amused voice. “You want to know my opinion of Nicholas before you bestow a kitten on him?”
Put like that, it did sound odd. Isabella studied the ornate metal fire guard. “Yes.”
There was a moment of silence. Gussie cleared her throat. Her voice, when she spoke, was uninflected and businesslike. “Nicholas was my favorite cousin when I was a girl. My opinion of him is very high.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .” Gussie’s voice trailed off as she thought. “Because I trust him. Because he makes me laugh. Because he’s nice.”
“Nice?” Isabella repeated doubtfully. A bland word, a word that told her nothing. “Would you say he’s domineering?”
“Domineering?”
Gussie was silent a moment. Isabella risked a glance at her. Her friend’s brow was creased in thought. She was chewing on her lower lip.
“No,” Gussie said finally. “I wouldn’t call Nicholas domineering. He is very decided, and he has a great deal of determination, but he’s not domineering. At least—” she qualified this, “—he has never been so to me.” She put her embroidery frame aside. “Nicholas is a very capable man. He has a reputation for getting things done.”
“He does?”
Gussie nodded. “When I was a child we used to spend our summers together, and even then, when I was...” she shrugged, “...ten years old, maybe twelve, I knew that if I needed something done, it was Nicholas I should go to, not Gerald.” Her smile was wry. “That’s why Gerald dislikes him so much. Nicholas is so much more competent than he is.”
“Oh.”
Gussie leaned forward. She clasped her hands together on her knees. Her expression was serious. “The Nicholas I knew was a schoolboy—kind to me and patient and he listened when I spoke, as Gerald never did, but that was many years ago. The man.. .” She shrugged with her face, with her hands. “I’m learning to know him again. He was gone a long time.”
“At war,” Isabella said. Twelve years of soldiering, of fighting, of leading men into battle, of killing. Twelve years of blood and death. Her gaze dropped to Saffron, sleeping peacefully, a warm bundle in her hands. “Such an experience must change a person. Harden them.”
“Yes,” Gussie said. “But I think Nicholas is still the person he was. I think he has not become... too hard. Although I have to admit that he is more restrained than he was, quieter, more controlled.”
Yes, Major Reynolds, was a very self-controlled man. A disciplined man. Except when he’s kissing me.
Isabella glanced up and met Gussie’s eyes.
After a long moment of silence, while tiny motes of dust spun in the sunlight, Gussie said softly, “I think he would make a fine husband.”
Heat scorched Isabella’s face. Her gaze skittered to the silver teapot, the dainty porcelain cups, the plate of cakes. “I wasn’t... I didn’t mean... I was only asking because...” She bit her tongue, stopping the babble of words. She met Gussie’s eyes and said, with what she hoped was dignity, “I was only asking because of the kitten.”
Even to her own ears it sounded ridiculous.
Gussie’s lips pursed, as if she tried not to smile. “I see,” she said blandly. “More tea?”
* * *
Lady Isabella halted the phaeton. Her groom leapt down. Nicholas stepped up and sat beside her, fending off Rufus’s eager tongue. “Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon, Major.”
He settled back on the silk-lined seat as the horses moved into a slow trot. How many times had they done this? A dozen?
Rufus nudged his knee. Reminded, Nicholas rubbed his warm flank. The dog leaned against his booted legs and closed his eyes in pleasure.
The day was mild, the temperature warm and the sun bright. Only the faintest of breezes stirred the air. Hyde Park was busier than he’d yet seen it. Curricles, phaetons, barouches, and landaulets thronged the drive.
Lady Isabella wore a carriage dress of Clarence blue trimmed with braided ribbon. The color made her eyes seem more blue than gray, her hair even more golden. He glanced at her smooth cheek, her soft lips. I must kiss her tonight.
He looked ahead, not seeing the busy drive, absently pulling one of Rufus’s ears between his fingers. Where would they be tonight? Oh, that was it: the Middletons’ ball.
The phaeton stopped.
Nicholas focused his gaze. The roadway ahead was blocked. A curricle had clipped the wheels of an elegant barouche. The curricle’s driver had lost his horses’ reins and sat red-faced, enduring the scathing commentary of the barouche’s coachman, while his groom attempted to gather the reins.
Lady Isabella ignored the commotion. She turned to face him. “You know why I don’t wish to marry, Major,” she said, in her clear, frank way. “May I ask, why do you want to?”
The question drew his attention most effectively from the disturbance ahead. He studied her for a moment, the direct gray-blue gaze, the hair gleaming golden beneath the jaunty hat, the serious set of her mouth.
“Why?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Nicholas glanced down at Rufus, leaning against his legs. He could brush off the question, give an answer that was flippant or vague, one that told her nothing... but she had answered his questions honestly on the Worthingtons’ terrace; he owed her the truth.
“Soldiering is about death,” he said slowly, pulling Rufus’s ear between his fingers. “I knew that. I’d always known it. But at Waterloo...” His surroundings faded as memory flooded over him: the sound of cannon fire, of horses and men screaming; the smell of gunpowder and blood; death all around him.
Rufus nudged his hand. Nicholas realized he’d fallen silent, become motionless. He cleared his throat. “Waterloo was a slaughter. I watched so many men fall...” Memory intruded again: a welter of blood, of torn flesh and shattered limbs, of death, death everywhere, the smell of death, the taste of it on his tongue, the sound of it in his ears.
He swallowed. “It seemed that no one could survive. It seemed... impossible.” He glanced at Lady Isabella. She was staring at him, her face pale. Was he shocking her? “I remember a moment, when I stood on the battlefield. My horse had been shot from under me, and all around me were dead men. Scores of them, hundreds, thousands. The French cavalry were attacking again and... and to survive seemed impossible.” He had touched his cheek. I am lucky, he’d told himself, but he hadn’t believed it.
Nicholas drew Rufus’s ear slowly between his fingers. “I vowed that if I lived, if I survived that day, I would sell my commission, that I’d have nothing more to do with death.” He met her eyes, held them. “I want life. I want children. I want to see them grow. I want to watch them go out into the world and have their own children. Life, not death.”
Lady Isabella swallowed. He saw the muscles move in her throat. “I had heard Waterloo was bad,” she said in a low voice. Her face was almost—but not quite—expressionless.
I did shock her. “It was,” he said simply.
She looked away and moistened her lips. “Thank you for telling me.”
This was too dark a conversation for Hyde Park, for the frivolity of the Grand Strut, the ladies with curling feathers in their hats and the gentlemen with absurdly high neckcloths, the prancing horses and the silk-lined carriages, the sunshine and birdsong. “It was a long time ago,” Nicholas said, his voice hearty and cheerful.
Lady Isabella cast him a narrow-eyed glance. Don’t treat me like a child, he read in it. “Why did you decide to become a soldier?”
So she refused to be diverted, did she? Part of him respected her for it. No milk-and-water miss, Lady Isabella.
“Why?” He had to think back. It was hard to remember the young man he’d been, fresh out of Cambridge and eager to make his mark on the world. “I had intended on a diplomatic career, but... I decided I wanted more of a challenge.”
“And was it a challenge?”
“Oh, yes.” The challenges of soldiering had been many. He’d learned how to scout terrain and assess enemy positions, how to command men, how to lead them into battle even when the odds seemed stacked against them. He’d learned how to kill, how to lose one’s friends, how to survive. And then there had been the purely physical challenges: the forced marches, the filth, the bitter cold and the searing heat, the scarcity of food, the boils and the lice and the fleas, the fevers. “It was everything I’d thought it would be, and more. It was extremely challenging. But I enjoyed it... for the most part.”
Lady Isabella nodded. She glanced ahead. The offending curricle was gone. The barouche was almost alongside them, the coachman sitting erect on the driving block, his chest puffed out, proud victor of the moment.
With a deft flick of her whip, Lady Isabella encouraged the horses into motion. “Thank you for telling me,” she said again.
“You’re welcome,” Nicholas said. He looked past her, towards Kensington Gardens. Trees, sunlight, water.
He experienced a moment of disorientation, as if the world tilted slightly on its axis. His fingers stilled, pulling Rufus’s ear. How could this greenness, this sunshine, this safety, exist in the same world as the mud and blood and carnage of Waterloo? How could that battle, that slaughter, have been less than a year ago? How was it possible?
He blinked and shook his head slightly.
Lady Isabella caught the movement. She glanced at him. Her eyebrows rose inquiringly. “Major?”
Nicholas shook his head again, more firmly this time. “Are you going to the Middletons’ ball tonight?”
“Yes,” she said. “Will you be there?”
“Most definitely,” Nicholas said. I have to kiss you.