Edith Layton (9 page)

Eric’s mirth fled. His father’s smile flattened. The light in Brenna’s mama’s eyes was doused.

“Oh,” Maura Ford said, “I see. Well, then. We’ll just have to ride it out together then, won’t we?”

After all, it went unsaid, they’d done it before.

Brenna nodded because she couldn’t trust herself
to speak. She excused herself from the room and went to pace the gardens. Her parents and brother looked after her, helplessly.

They couldn’t help her when she lost her first love either. Thomas Powers had been a soldier too. Young, only four years older than her seventeen-year-old self, he’d pledged his love within two months of meeting her. Tom had been a gangling youth, but he’d looked splendid in his uniform. Brenna couldn’t remember now what they’d talked about to make them laugh so much together. She couldn’t recall what they’d had in common either, because it hadn’t mattered to them. They were drawn to each other, absolutely. He was one of Eric’s company, a good lad from a good family, and though she’d never had her Season, and he’d only danced with a few eligible girls, both families were delighted. Both tall and dark, uncommonly good and attractive children, they looked and thought alike. They seemed to have been made for each other.

They never got a chance to prove it. They were engaged five months before he went off to fight in Spain. He never returned. She never quite regained her good standing in the community. They were young and eager, and though they were careful, their courtship looked too ardent. She’d have been pitied, not scorned, if he’d shipped out sooner.

The problem was, they loved each other and were both too inexperienced at love and too young for their years. They wanted each other. But they were raised to be good, and that kept them from fulfilling that love before marriage.

And so all everyone saw was that desperate yearning.

He’d pass her in company and touch her shoulder; one finger trailing across her skin was enough to ignite both their passions. She’d glance at him and her heart was in her eyes, and his eyes would follow her everywhere. They’d brush each other’s fingers, touch each other’s sleeves. They’d be locked in each other’s arms every chance they got to be alone. But they never got to be strictly alone for long, and so, of course, those stolen embraces were seen.

She remembered frustrating, fervent caresses, long, moist kisses; it was a romance filled with longing and longer sighs. They scorched the earth that separated them when their glances locked across a room. And so everyone thought they knew what they were sighing for.

Three nights before he left, they met alone, and arranged it so it could be for a long time. He said he was going to a nearby town to buy some last-minute necessities. She said she was going to a friend’s house. Neither of them had ever lied to their families before. Half the trembling when they met in the abandoned barn was because of that. The other half, their overwhelming desire.

He had the top of her gown down to her waist in minutes; their writhing in the straw got the hem of her skirt up to meet it. His jacket was off, his shirt opened, the fall on his breeches too. Then they stopped, as the enormity of what they were about to do occurred to both of them. Tom rolled over on his back, one long hand on his hot forehead, the other covering himself.

Brenna sat up and raised herself on her arms over him. “What?” she asked, “What is it?”

“
It
is,” he said on a hoarse chuckle. “Too soon, too late. Oh, Bren, I ought to have married you weeks ago, as you wanted. But then…” He turned aside so he could sit up and not touch her. He put his head in his trembling hands. “I thought it was wrong to wed you and bed you, and maybe leave you with a child if I was going off to war. It would be even worse now.”

“I can follow you,” she said eagerly, as she’d said all the times before when they’d talked about this.

“You can,” he said, “but you won’t. Listen, Bren,” he said, as he rose to his knees and tucked his shirt in, “I’m not from a military family. I don’t want my wife following the drum. I want you home, here, safely waiting for my return. It’s the only way I’d feel safe enough to do my duty with a clear head. I’ll come back to you. Then we’ll make love day and night. But not now. It would be wrong.”

That stopped her like a bucket of icy water, dousing her overheated passions.
Wrong,
she understood. She was a good girl. Still, she’d have gladly done something wrong for him. But not on her own. Thrumming with unfulfilled desire, torn by conflicting ones, she rested her head on his shoulder. Then she straightened her gown and strolled hand in hand with him back to the gig, and they drove home. He left three days later. And never returned.

She waited, patiently, hoarding his letters, marking off each day on the calendar, only becoming puzzled as the weeks wore on by how everyone in town kept stealing keenly interested peeks at her. The style
of the day meant a girl’s gown was tied under her breasts, and fell from there. A lot could be hidden if a slender girl had high, upstanding breasts. Brenna did. But she didn’t understand what they were looking for until she overheard some girls chatting one day as she went to the lady’s withdrawing room at a local party.

“Well, it’s been seven months, and there’s nothing to show, so you owe me a thimble and three sheets of pins,” one said.

“Maybe she carries small,” another said.

“I think she carries not at all,” another put in. “Lucky thing. And with all the work that Tom put in! Brenna’s escaped and so you must pay up. She’s not with child.”

It should have ended the matter and restored her reputation. It didn’t. Because after all her carrying on with him, he never returned to make her an honest woman in their eyes, or any other way. He couldn’t. He fell in battle the year after he left England.

The townsfolk felt bad when they heard the news. But years later the gossip was still there behind the politely smiling lips of Brenna’s former friends and all her neighbors They never knew how she grieved because she hadn’t gone back into his arms that last time and stayed there no matter how wrong it would have been. She felt it was more wrong that he’d died so young without showing her what might have been.

They didn’t know that, and wouldn’t have believed it if she’d told them. They’d the evidence of their own eyes, after all. They’d seen how the two
had been together and imagined how they’d acted when no one else was there. The girls knew what they’d have done if they were in her place. The men grew warm just thinking what they’d have done in his. And so if the girls in town thought less of her for it, Brenna found, after her period of mourning, that the young men expected more. She sent them on their way with a flea in their ear—and sometimes with a slap on their smug faces. They went on to marry other girls.

Her parents sent her to an aunt in London to see if she could find a beau. She was a soldier’s daughter and a soldier’s sister, and had almost taken a soldier to wed. She sneered at the dandies and fops, and wrote begging to come home. They took her back because they couldn’t bear to see her sad. She refused to have another Season until Eric came home. But Eric went on to India after the war was over. And one day Brenna woke to realize she was two and twenty, and still unwed.

So, much as she wanted to help her brother, Brenna wasn’t that unhappy to leave home and travel halfway across the world to do it. Her parents protested, but not as much as she’d thought they would. They wanted her wed. Her brother had friends. She’d loved a soldier once. They knew she had a warm and loving heart, and could find another.

She did.

Spencer Fry was Eric’s friend. He wasn’t exceptionally handsome, rich, or clever. But he had a warm smile and a competent way about him. Thickset and medium height, he was one of those men who
seemed ready to do what needed to be done. Brenna needed a guiding light. He provided it. Her days were spent in the hospital with Eric. He was so ill she dared not stray far from there. Her evenings were passed quietly at home with Spencer’s sister and her husband. Brenna got to see little of India, and less of other men. But she saw Spencer every day. She came to rely on his advice and comfort, and looked forward to evenings when he’d walk out with her. His kiss didn’t move her, but his laughter did, and she knew she’d come to a safe harbor.

They’d come to an understanding. Brenna hadn’t known he’d come to another sort of one with an officer’s wayward daughter before she’d met him. When the woman had told him their child was coming, he’d gone to Brenna to apologize and say a sorrowing farewell. Because he loved only her, he’d said. But he’d been trapped, and there was no help for it.

Well, so one woman’s lover denied her out of honor, and she was left alone forever, Brenna thought as she paced her parents’ garden’s paths. And another woman acted without honor, gave all to a man she wanted as a lover, and won him forever.

There was no justice in the world, and she’d stop looking for it.
Folly to have even thought of anything with Lord Raphael Dalton!
But he’d attracted her as no man had since Thomas. He’d all of Spencer’s manner and competence, and so very much more.
And the most beautiful lady in London as his love, you fool,
she thought, and stalked through her parents’ garden, angry at herself and the world, and what passed for love in it.

“A
h, the bustling metropolis, at last,” Drum commented, glancing around as he and Rafe rode side by side down the main street of the little village, “Do you think they have an inn? Or shall we have to camp on the green?”

“There’s an inn,” Rafe, said, looking ahead. “Not much. But we won’t be here long.”

“You intend to sweep her up on your saddle like a Saracen invader, and ride back to London?” Drum asked with interest.

“If I have to.”

There saw no postboy or ostler, so they tied their horses outside the inn and entered it. The place was empty. Their boots rang out on the bare wood floors. They looked around, waiting for the landlord to appear. The place was timbered in Tudor style, and
was cool and dim. It smelled, not unpleasantly, of ale and age and old woodsmoke. The ceiling was low; the common room took up most of the downstairs and was furnished with bare wood tables and chairs. The hearth was huge and cold, because it was still daylight, and summertime. But the walls were whitewashed and pristine, there wasn’t any dust or dirt to be seen, and not a cobweb hung from the exposed dark oak beams.

The innkeeper came out from a door in the back. When he saw strangers he seemed shocked. He instantly recovered, bowing as low as though to a pair of princes, not just two well-dressed, but road-weary travelers.

Overjoyed at the prospect of overnight guests, and such well set up ones too, the innkeeper immediately invited them to stay in his two best rooms. “They’re at the top of the stairs. Go right up and get yourselves settled, gents. Then come down and I’ll pour you a pint. It looks empty now—well, ’tis! But most folk in the village gather here at the end of the day to have the same.”

“We will, and thank you,” Rafe said.

“Dinner, as well? You don’t have to mingle with the village folk—we’ve a private parlor,” his host added, after another look at the quality of his new guests’ clothing.

“Dinner, of course,” Rafe said. “We’ve come a long way and will do justice to it. The common room will do fine for us.”

“…Because there’s no better way to get a lay of the land,” Rafe told Drum as they were unbuckling their saddlebags and cases from the horses a few minutes later.

“Reconnoitering,” Drum said. “Wise. It may be we won’t have to see the fair lady. After all,” he added as Rafe stared at him, “if there’s no gossip here about what happened in London, what’s the point?”

Rafe stopped in his tracks, his saddlebag hanging from one hand. He frowned, began to speak, stopped, and began again. “Thought you wanted to see Eric again. I know I’d like to know how he’s faring.”

“Indeed, but you could learn that from local chatter too. Rafe, my friend,” Drum said, seeing Rafe’s perplexity, “your heart’s pure as running water, but don’t you see? If you come visiting the lady, that in itself might start gossip you want to stem. I vote we stay the night, hear what we can, and then if there are no problems, go back to London so you can resume your life again.” He laughed at Rafe’s expression. “You’ve changed from the old days! You’d be rotting in a French prison if you’d thought like this then. Don’t you see? You’ve accepted your awful fate too well. You’ve convinced yourself to sacrifice, but you don’t see a possible escape route opening in front of you.”

Rafe nodded. “You’ve got a point,” he said, considering it. Could it be true that he might so easily go free? The thought took an enormous weight off his mind. But it left a curiously heavy one in his heart. It sounded too easy, and his had never been the easy
way. Was it possible to learn everything in one night? Even if he repaired things with Annabelle, could he ever really be sure he hadn’t damaged Brenna for the rest of her life?

Rafe shouldered his traveling bag as he did his responsibilities, and so went very slowly up the stair.

Twilight cast long shadows over the fields outside the Inn. Late summer crickets pumped their reedy songs twice as hard because they felt the autumn closing in. Inside, the buzz of conversation drowned out the night sounds. The landlord had laid a fire against the damp; the heady scents of the dinner the two newly arrived guests just finished still hung in the air.

At least a dozen men of all ages and a few older women sat at their ease, nursing their tankards. Although they didn’t do more than take occasional sideways glances at the two strange, clearly fashionable gentlemen sitting apart at a table near a window, it was obvious they were wildly curious about them. When the local patrons had come in, they’d stopped and stared at the pair of them. But since the two gents seemed content to sit and drink the way everyone else was doing, their presence was, if not forgotten, then at least ignored as the evening wore on.

Voices in the room lifted as time went by and tankards were refilled. The talk was all about crops and rents and weather.

“Nothing for it,” Rafe said in a low voice after an
hour went by with nothing more exciting that the price of grain and the lack of rain being discussed. “Going to have to infiltrate. Buy a few pints for the house, ask a question or two.”

“Wait,” Drum said, as quietly. “It’s better to wait for them to forget us completely and get round to gossip. They will. What else is there to discuss in backwaters like this?”

“You think London’s different?” Rafe asked. “That’s all they do there. That’s what brought me here,” he added bitterly. But he sat back and waited.

He didn’t have to wait long. Soon someone asked someone else about the harvest ball to come at the squire’s manse. Before long the patrons of the inn were all talking about it, wondering who was going to go with whom. That naturally led to talk of courtships, coming marriages, and possible unions. Before much longer they were all laughing over the fact that Annie Grimes was at last going to lead Young Tully to the altar in the spring. Then, speaking of unions, a man asked if anyone had heard anything new about the Ford girl. Rafe’s head came up.

“Haven’t heard a word,” an older woman said, “but mind you, early days yet.”

“Aye,” one man cackled. “I’ll wager you’re watching her waist even keener than when she was engaged to that soldier boy.”

“Pity, that,” the woman said. Many present shook their heads. “So well suited, the pair of them.”

“So well suited?” the old man cackled again. “Aye, and almost showed exactly
how
whenever they was
together. Always fondling or kissing, forever eyeing and ogling. Their looks could boil water.”

“Young love,” a woman said sagely.

“Young lust,” a man laughed.

“Whatever,” the woman said. “There’s a great sorrow for a lass to bear.”

“Others bore more,” a man said with some grievance. “What of me, eh? With our Bill gone down with his ship? Aye, and you, John Thatcher, with your son lost in France?”

“Or the Smythes and the Fletchers, and their brave lads gone?” Thatcher said sadly. “We’ve all suffered.”

“Or me, with my dear Sonny, never returned?” one old woman said. They all fell silent.

“Well,” the landlord’s wife said in more sprightly tones, trying to change an awkward subject, “Brenna got over that in time, didn’t she? But then, poor girl, to lose another lover—the new one she found in India! The girl lives under a dark star, and there’s truth!”

“Lost her mind too, waltzing off to India on her lonesome. Scandalous!” the old woman muttered.

“Looking for trouble,” another agreed.

“And she come home to find it,” a man said into his tankard as he drained it. He thumped it down on the table and went on with relish, “Imagine! What she done in London! Strippin’ down to her particulars like that! Just to cut out another lass and steal her man away? Shameful, says I, no excuse for it. Plenty as has lost loved ones, right here, there is. Do you see
such carryin’ on from them? There’s some takes any excuse to do what they wants. Brenna Ford’s a slut and it’s a shame and a scandal, says I.”

Rafe began to slowly rise, hands clenched. A hard hand grasped his arm tight, holding him down.

“Hold,” Drum whispered urgently. “Say one word and you damn her utterly. Throw one punch and her name is lost forever, no matter what else you plan to do for her. Think, man! Be invisible. Remember? You’re on your feet? Use the motion to scratch your arse or signal the landlord for more ale, but don’t react to a thing you hear. Have you forgotten all? The lady’s doings may not be as important to England as Napoleon’s were, but you must use the same tactics now.”

Rafe turned a blazing stare on him. Then he closed his eyes for a heartbeat. When he opened them again, all expression was wiped from his face. He raised a hand to call the innkeeper, and slowly sank back to his chair again.
“Damme!”
he whispered, and fell still.

The conversation in the room was becoming more animated.

“See such from you?” a man scoffed at the one who’d spoken. “Stripping yourself to your skin? There’d be a treat. If you’re planning to do it, Clyde, kindly let us know, so we can run!”

This caused much merriment. And made Clyde angrier.

“I didn’t scandalize myself,” he said fiercely. “Brenna Ford did that, thank you very much. I heared she ripped off every stitch on her and stood bold as brass before a room full of swells, come to
call on the poor gent. With his fiancé at his side! Well, what was
that
poor lass to think, and her the Toast of the Town, at that? Madly in love with the lord, to boot. A beauty, I heared, and no mistake! She wept, and ran, is what she done. And there’s our Brenna, smiling, naked as the day she was whelped. Hoping as to snare him, she was. But she give them an eyeful for nothing, for I heared he sent her away a second after. That’s why she’s up at the Hall now, silent as a nun, in disgrace!”

“Well, I’m that surprised,” another man said, “For I’ve known Brenna since she were a tot, and never thought to see the day. She’s always been modest, clever as she could hold together, and as good a neighbor as one could want.”

“Grief turns some lasses’ heads,” another commented sagely.

“Well, there’s much we don’t know, and that’s certain,” an old man said, shaking his head.

“It’s the loss of two men what turned her,” the angry fellow said, putting down his empty tankard. “She had two men, lost ’em both. That’s what done it. A woman gets a taste for some things and can’t do without, don’t you know, and she’ll do anything to have it again.”

There was an outcry at that.

“Ho! You wish it were so, Clyde,” one man called.

“And how would you know?” another jeered.

“Mind your tongue in front of ladies,” one old woman shouted, as another cried, “Fie! For shame!”

“Brenna Ford?” A smooth, cultured voice asked. It was raised just high enough to be heard, and just low
enough to make the others fall still to listen harder. Everyone in the room turned to look at the two strange gentlemen in the window, and stared at the tall, thin one who had spoken.

“Your pardon,” Drum went on, “but did I hear you say, ‘Brenna Ford’? Would that be Lieutenant Eric Ford’s sister, by any chance?”

Nothing could be heard in the room but the crackling of the logs in the fire.

“Aye,” one cautious fellow finally said, “‘tis she.”

“Oh my!” Drum said with exaggerated shock. “Then the tale certainly lost something in its travels…or rather, gained something, I should say. Hasn’t it?” he asked his friend. Heads swiveled to look at the hard-faced redheaded gentleman with the chillingly blue eyes. “Mistress Ford was in London lately, that’s true,” Drum continued, “as was I. But what
I
heard, and I know most of the persons involved, was that she and her brother were house-guests of a friend of theirs. A former army officer. A nobleman of some note and reputation, but alas! A fellow with a killing temper, in more ways than one.”

There wasn’t a sound in the room as the mellifluous voice, tinged with amusement, went on. “I know the gentleman you were talking about. But he was
not
engaged to be wed to anyone, and is not. What
I
heard, and in itself it’s a shocking story, is that the mother of a lady he knew met Miss Ford and took exception to her loveliness. Well, but one has cause to believe she had plans for her own daughter. The woman sadly has few scruples but many ambitions, and she wanted the gentleman for her own son-in-
law. Thinking Miss Ford had captured my lord’s interest, she spread a tale or two about her after Miss Ford left Town. But
nothing
like what I’ve heard tonight, I assure you!”

Rafe didn’t take his eyes from the crowd as Drum went on.

“She just implied that Miss Ford was casting out lures to the gentleman, which I know for a fact was not true. But even that would only involve the fluttering of eyelashes and waving of fans and such. Nothing half so lurid as what I’ve heard here tonight. Have you ever heard the like?” he asked his friend with interest.

“Never,” Rafe barked, casting a look around the room that made the patrons of the inn shrink back in their chairs.

“Well, there you are,” Drum said. “Good heavens! How the tale has grown! I hope Lieutenant Ford doesn’t hear of it. He’s recovering, so there wouldn’t be much he could do about it—immediately. But his friend, the London gentleman! He’d be outraged—an easy thing for him to be, by the way. He’s an accomplished swordsman, a crack shot, and a prime one with his fists. He was mentioned in the war dispatches many times and finds the constraints of peacetime…inconvenient, and so is as often mentioned in the clubs for his duels. The truth is, he’s a warrior to his fingertips. He’s killed his man a half dozen times. Those he can’t challenge, he thrashes. The fellow has a shocking temper.”

Rafe frowned at Drum. Drum smiled sweetly and continued, “So if he felt an innocent lady, and a
friend of his at that, was being so viley traduced! It would go hard with him. Wouldn’t it?” he asked Rafe with a sweet smile.

“Ah,” Rafe said, understanding. “Yes. Very hard,” he said, glowering at the others in the room.

“I shudder at the thought!” Drum agreed dramatically. “He wouldn’t go after the lady who started the tale, of course. He
is
a gentleman. But I fear he’d slay the nearest man at hand, or anyone he’d heard said such a thing. How could he hear it, you ask? Well, we’re friends, you see. The irony of it is, we’re here now to visit Eric Ford, to see how he’s faring in his convalescence. We thought we’d make a week of it. The hunting is good hereabouts, we heard?”