Hadrian (24 page)

“You do.”

“You shall have me, Avis, exclusively, and absolutely.” He hoped she’d have him often and always too. “What is your second demand?”

She gazed at the fire, her expression so sad Hadrian might be the one crying into his pillow. “You must be honest with yourself, Hadrian.”

“About?”

“When the shopkeepers won’t put coin in your gloved hand, but only set it on the counter, when nobody tips his hat to me, when you aren’t invited anywhere, when nobody calls, even to congratulate you on our betrothal.”

She had kept this litany of miseries to herself rather than share it with her brothers, and they had likely been loath to pry.

To hell with such consideration, if it consigned Avis to more lonely misery.

Hadrian traced the shell of her ear with a single finger. “You want me to report these supposed slights to you?”

“I want you to report them to yourself. I want you to acknowledge that the good opinion of your neighbors is valuable, and marriage to me will jeopardize that asset. Then I want you to multiply the loss of that good opinion by the decades you hope to be married to me, and ask yourself honestly if you can bear that cost.”

She was ignoring his caresses, so he didn’t tell her his calculations went in a different direction: All the slights and indignities Avie had endured times the number of years she’d born them. That was the sum of the smiles he’d give her in the first year of their marriage.

“You have my promise, Avie. I will assess the impact of marriage to you on all facets of my happiness.” He kissed her brow to reward himself for his honesty.

“Do we tell Benjamin or Vim about this engagement?”

“Vim being whereabouts unknown,” Hadrian said, “I’ll send the requisite flowery epistle to Benjamin, provided we can determine his location. My inquiries have resulted in a note from his solicitors that he’s on business outside London.”

“He’d be relieved to see me safely wed.”

“He’d be happy,” Hadrian countered evenly. “For you. You should write to your sister of this development.”

“I should not.” Her tone said she
would
not. “I haven’t accepted your suit, Hadrian, no matter you are determined on this course, and no matter an engagement will send a message to Collins. Alex will be hurt to think I’ve found a mate, while she contents herself to raise other people’s children.”

Hadrian kissed her temple, as a reward for not bellowing. “Now it’s Alex for whom you must sacrifice your happiness?”

“She very nearly sacrificed her ability to walk for me.”

Hadrian could not allow that flight of martyrdom to go unchallenged.

“Did you sacrifice
your
happiness to keep Alexandra safe? Collins had both of you in that cottage and could easily have finished with you then moved on to her but for your distracting him.”

Avis hunched forward, out from under Hadrian’s arm. “She was fourteen, Hadrian. How could she have prevented what happened?”

“She left you,” Hadrian said. “Left you to face that brute alone and failed to get help in time. I assure you, your sister carries tremendous guilt for leaving you to Collins’s dubious handling.”

The word
rape
echoed in the shadows flickering across the hearth rug.

“My poor Alex.”

“And her poor Avie. Rather than talk about this with each other, you’ve put a realm between you and lost what ease you might have had years ago.”

Much as Hadrian had gone pelting into the arms of the church and kept the West Riding between him and his older brother.

“I didn’t want Alex to go south. We fought about that, but we should have been fighting about this other.”

“This rape?”

“Assault.”

Avis hadn’t discussed the details of the incident itself in all the weeks Hadrian had been home. Surely, it needed discussing, when Avis was ready. Not before that.

Hadrian urged Avis to resume her place cuddled against him.

“As vicar, one is called upon to resolve differences between neighbors. I was often amazed how different people’s perceptions could be of the same incident, even an incident I had observed myself and would not have described as any of the disputants did.”

“I can’t go south uninvited,” Avis said. “Alex and I both have to be willing to have this discussion.”

“If we’re married,” Hadrian said, pressing a kiss to her cheek, “I can escort you south, merely to see the capital, or to avoid the damned northern winter.”

“You have property in the south?”

“We have a farm in Kent, close enough to Town to be convenient. Harold also has a house in Mayfair, because he occasionally voted his seat and did the pretty.” And likely kept company with Finch, about which Hadrian had ceased to care much at all.

“You haven’t promised me you’ll be honest about the gossip.”

“I’ll be honest. You must be honest too, Avis.”

“About?”

“About how much joy you find in the thought of being my wife, having our children, and availing yourself of my charms.”

“I’ll jilt you,” she warned. “I’ll avail myself from one end of the shire to the other, then toss you over.”

“Of course you will.” Hadrian kissed her again, because she was trying too hard to look after him. “You’re wicked Avis Portmaine, scheming seducer and despoiler of innocent lambs like myself. Shall you start availing yourself now? I’m in serious want of despoiling.”

And had been for years.

She yawned. “For pity’s sake, Hadrian. Not here, not now, and possibly not ever. We’re both exhausted, and the night has been quite exciting enough.”

When a lady yawned in the face of an offer of seduction, even a lamb in need of despoiling made a strategic retreat.

“You’ll make me work for it, then. Excellent tactic. I adore a challenge.”

“Well, challenge yourself to go to bed. We’ve been closeted in here too long as it is.”

Not nearly long enough.

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Hadrian said, rising and helping Avis to her feet. “Will you come to services with me?”

“Again?”

“I’ll probably ask next week too and the week after that.”

“Are you having the banns cried?”

He smiled in contemplation of that step. “Suppose I shall.”

“Don’t you dare,” Avis hissed. “No special licenses, either.”

“Stubborn.” Hadrian kissed her
again
, a consolation kiss, because even the summer nights in Cumbria could be chilly.

“I’m also exhausted, so away with you.”

Hadrian jammed his hands into his pockets, a desperate schoolboy tactic for dealing with the results of too many kisses. “Good night, my love. Until tomorrow.”

* * *

“Can this be the newly engaged Mr. Bothwell?” Fen drawled from the darkness of his back porch steps. “Is there trouble in paradise, Choir Boy? Did the lady disdain your impromptu wooing? Or perhaps she needed to ring a peal over your handsome, impetuous head before sending you to my cold, hard guest bed?”

Though Bothwell had probably chosen his moment after a lengthy consideration of strategy.

“Lady Avis is worried about you.” Bothwell took a stair below Fen. “Lily Prentiss was glaring such daggers at you, surely you must have given her the French compliment.”

Miss Prentiss deserved such a fate, though Fen wouldn’t be the one to bestow it on her.

“Some are prone to smiling, some are prone to glaring.” Fen passed a bottle. “It’s
uisge beatha.
Be careful.”

Bothwell took a casual pull of libation no decent vicar should have managed so easily. “You’re swearing off the peach brew?”

“I like variety in my pleasures.” Fen accepted the bottle back. “All that dancing worked up a thirst.” And, predictably, all that dancing worked up a sorry case of longing for home.

“Avie isn’t happy with me.”

Choir boys must be allowed their confessions. “Dramatic tactics, old man. Did something inspire your declaration?”

“Hortensia Cuthbert.” Bothwell appropriated the bottle again. “Elmira Woodman, Josephina Dandridge.”

“The harpies were in full force tonight,” Fen allowed. “You asked me how bad the gossip is regarding Avie, and I said it comes and goes, but it’s as bad now as I’ve ever heard it.” The meanness of the talk had an edge that two generations ago might have turned to mutterings about stillborn babies and the devil’s handmaiden.

“Maybe now you’re listening for it. I know I am.”

In truth, Fen had been trying desperately to ignore the gossip. “Will she marry you?”

“Maybe.” The doubt was making Bothwell miserable, but the man wouldn’t lie—not even to himself. “I desperately hope so, or I’ll have to swear off proposing.”

“Practice makes perfect.” Fen shifted so he sat on the same step as Bothwell. “You mean well.” He took another drink from the bottle. What did it say about a Fen’s courage, that he’d never proposed to any of the several women to catch his fancy?

“I do not
mean well.
I mean to marry the woman, and I mean to have the privilege of threatening death to any man who thinks to harm her. Avie merely wants to be left alone, and is likely weighing the burden of having me for a husband against the benefit of taking me on as her devoted watchdog.”

Sometimes, a fellow could be too honest.

“Was Lady Avis leaving you alone up at the pond last night?”

Bothwell’s posture didn’t shift, but in his very stillness, Fen perceived menace. “Did you spy on us, Fenwick?”

“I don’t have to spy to know you’re turning her head, Vicar, and it’s about time somebody did. She might just give up and marry you.” If Avie had appointed Bothwell her champion, then Fen could make a visit to the north, because summer was the only time such a journey made sense.

“She might give up what?”

The moon rose higher, the night birds went hunting, and Fen fashioned his thoughts into a parable, because Bothwell would grasp a parable most easily.

“Have you ever put a wounded creature in a cage, to help it heal?”

“I have not.”

“In the Highlands, as a boy, I came across all manner of creatures in distress. It seemed my special gift, in fact. I found the stags who’d lost the mating matches, horns bloodied, noses bloodied. I found the fledglings who fell from the nest too soon. I found the rabbits caught in some crofter’s snare. My grandfather told me I wasn’t supposed to heal the beasts. I was to end their misery and gratefully commend them to the stewpot, but I didn’t listen.”

Fen was still in the business of finding wounded creatures, apparently, or perhaps he’d joined their number.

“I found one of those rabbits,” Fen went on, though he hadn’t thought of this particular beast in years. “Its hind foot was neatly cut, but the wound was clean, and I thought I’d give the creature a chance to heal. By spring it would be hopping about, nibbling clover, making little bunnies, and proving my grandfather wrong.”

Always a pleasure to prove Grandpapa wrong.

“Your rabbit didn’t survive?”

“She healed up well enough, but the day came for me to open the door to the cage and let her bound forth. She cowered in the back corner, unable to move, as if by opening that door I’d served her a dire betrayal.”

Grandfather had extricated the rabbit from her captivity anyway, for which Fen had been grateful.

“Your point?”

“Avie knows how to be a strong victim, of Collins’s attack, of gossip, or of her family’s benign neglect. You want her to give up that cage and be Landover’s viscountess. She might not have the courage for it, Bothwell. She’s coped so long in her cage, she might not even know how to want something else.”

“As you’ve coped in yours?”

Not exactly, for in some ways, Fen shared captivity with Lady Avis, did she but know it. “We all cope, Vicar. You’re staying here tonight?”

“I am.” He leaned back and rested his elbows on the stair above. “I’ll have to pop over to Landover in the morning to roust my coachman. I’m escorting Avie to services.”

Fenwick doubted Avie had been apprised of that development. “After last night’s announcement, it will be expected. Shall I come along?”

“Of course. Avie deserves all the support she can get.”

“And I need to prove old Maudie didn’t dance me off my feet.” Fen fished the cork from his pocket and stoppered the bottle rather than give in to the temptation to remain under the stars until it was empty. “You’ve put in a bloody awful week with the crews, Bothwell. Then to take on Avie’s situation… You deserve some support too, if not a keeper.”

And yet, the man’s own brother had sailed off to parts distant.

“Avie is trying to ignore the fact that Collins is somewhere in England. I’m merely providing her a distraction.”

“Right.” Fen stretched his back, which had also put in a bloody awful week. “Marriage is one hell of a distraction. You’ll wake me in the morning if I’m still at my slumbers?”

“At first light.” Bothwell followed Fen into the house and took himself down the hall to the guest room.

Avie would be an idiot to refuse Bothwell’s suit, and Scotland was lovely in summer. On that thought, Fen took the bottle back outside, saluted the full moon, and headed for the trees.

“Last night, I forgot to tell you something,” Fenwick said as he and Hadrian cleared the trees on the Landover side of the property line.

Ashton Fenwick did not
forget
. He likely didn’t forgive much, either. “Something important?”

Fenwick drew rein such that a sunbeam slashed across his face, and in the dappled morning light, he looked nearly haggard. “You have a guest at Landover.”

“A guest?” Hadrian’s first thought was that Finch had journeyed back from Denmark to report that misfortune had befallen Harold, but Finch had pigeons to convey all but the worst news.

“Devlin St. Just, Earl of Rosecroft,” Fenwick replied. “He arrived late yesterday afternoon, and your staff sent word to my house. St. Just’s note said not to disturb you needlessly.”

“So when I was busy proposing before God and man to Avie, my houseguest was rattling around Landover without a host?”

“I expect he was sleeping. Traveling overland from Yorkshire is devilish tiring. I meant to tell you, but then you proposed and I decided it would wait until morning.”