Season For Desire Read online

  Was it the American accent that made him sound so certain? Where the London accent tripped and twirled, his speech rolled over consonants like a gentle boulder. As though to speak something was to make it happen.

  Oh, it wasn’t just the sight of him that drew her. It was the sound of him, too.

  But her contrary habits had been formed long ago. “London society is devoted to Rundell and Bridge—not just for jewelry, but for silver and gold plate. An American competitor is sure to fail.”

  He opened his eyes: deep blue about a ring of brown. “But that is not what I am at all. I’ve no thought of competing with them on their terms.”

  Estella snorted. “That can hardly be called business. All right, what sort of gewgaws will the fashionable young ladies of London be wearing next season?”

  “Oh, you probably have a better idea of that than I do. More influence, certainly.”

  “Where is your pride? You’ll never take the ton by storm unless you are far haughtier.”

  He chuckled, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Haughtiness works for some, but I don’t think I could manage it. I’ll do business in my own way. A different way.”

  “And what way is that?”

  Rubbing a hand along his angular jaw, he considered. “If I love a piece, it will show. And that enthusiasm will make it sell.”

  “All right.” She took a sip of her bittersweet coffee. “Sell something to me so I can see whether you’ve the skill to back up your claim. Try to sell me . . . oh, how about my turban?”

  His dark brows knit. After a pause, he said, “If you’ll forgive me, I do not love your turban. I don’t think I could sell it.”

  She flailed for a place to smash down her coffee cup. With no table at hand, she had to settle for draining the cup and slamming it back into its saucer.

  Cursed man. He looked not the slightest bit abashed. “Why do you wear such—things?” Left out was the adjective dreadful, but Estella heard the space of it, unuttered but unmistakably there.

  “Because I can. I can do and be and wear whatever is offensive, and people have to accept it because of my rank and age and fortune.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I have horrified you.” Disappointment mingled with bitter triumph; she had known he would falter eventually.

  “No, not in the slightest.” He folded one leg up, resting the foot on the opposite thigh. “But it sounds as though you don’t like the things you do. Or be or wear, if that’s the way you put it. And that’s what I’m sorry to hear.”

  Estella occupied the next moments with the careful drawing of breath. Air seemed thick, too thick to enter her lungs without great ragged pulls.

  “Where it peeks from the edge of your turban, your hair is quite a pretty color,” added Richard, calm as ever. “A true auburn. My late wife called hers auburn, but it was red like Giles’s.”

  He spoke this as he would any fond memory, with a light matter-of-fact smile teasing his lips. When he mentioned his wife, his grief seemed neatly folded away like a favorite old silk.

  Estella had never grieved for her husband. No, after her marriage, she had grieved only for herself. The late earl had made her wealthy, but he had been careless and lecherous, his young wife a pretty toy with which he played whenever, however he wished. There had been no purpose to seeking harmony with him; no reason to strive to better herself. A hard shell grew over her heart, so quickly that it was brittle.

  She like the idea of a softer strength, like Richard’s folded-away memory.

  “Did you not like your wife’s hair?” She shaped the words carefully. Naked feeling was far more unseemly than a naked body.

  “Of course I liked it. It was part of her.” His surprise was no more than a ruffle on the surface of an untroubled pond. “But maybe she didn’t, since she called it by another color. Do you not like your hair? Is that why you cover it with turbans all the time?”

  “No, I wear turbans because I’m too vain to wear a lace cap. You call my hair auburn, but it’s mostly gray. I’m old, Richard.”

  “Do you feel old?”

  “I am old.” She was a great-aunt. Her sixtieth birthday loomed less than two years away. Fifty-eight; it seemed impossible that she should be fifty-eight and trundling about northern England. Fifty-eight and sitting beside a handsome man, wondering why he asked her so many questions. Not liking the questions, exactly, but not wanting them to stop.

  “But how do you feel?” Richard was looking at her, really looking, as no one had for decades. That warm brown ring about his pupils pulled at Estella; though she had drunk all her coffee, her throat had gone dry.

  “I feel . . . different.”

  He smiled, all warm eyes. “I like different.”

  She smiled back. It was an uncertain expression that had to crack its way through the shell about her. When it reached her lips, it wobbled—but it was there.

  Unfolding his legs, he slapped his hands onto the flat of his thighs. “As long as we are at our leisure, how about a game of cards or chess? You may name the stakes.”

  Her heart beat a little more quickly. At some point, she had stopped feeling cold. “Cards, then.”

  “Cards you shall have. Wait here, please; I’ll go find a deck.”

  As soon as the parlor door closed behind him, she removed her aquamarine turban. Scrubbing her fingers through her short-cropped hair, she woke and eased her tense scalp, then replaced the turban.

  After all, she liked it. And Richard liked her. Or he liked her being different, or feeling different, or—well, maybe it came to the same thing.

  The turban was not heavy to wear, no more than a few ounces of cloth and paste jewels. But she felt as though a much greater weight had been lifted.

  Giles could not resist. He brought the poor wizened vegetable marrow into the public room after dinner. “Here’s our Christmas decoration. It’s green, at least.”

  It was worth the horrified looks on Mrs. Booth’s and Lady Irving’s faces to see Kitty and Audrina laugh.

  Mrs. Booth had concocted a simple but tasty dinner. Every person in the inn, from countess to stableboy, tucked into meats and pickle and potatoes, washed down with ale and a mulled wine that Giles strongly suspected Lady Irving had fortified with distilled spirits.

  With the main dishes set aside on empty tables, the motley group handed around bowls of nuts, dried fruits, and the apple tartlets: perfect palm-sized pies of sour-sweet apples and a buttery crust, with a snow of sugar atop.

  “And for tomorrow,” said Mrs. Booth, “we’ll all enjoy a nice Yorkshire Christmas pie.”

  “If it’s as good as this apple pie, I look forward to trying it,” said Richard.

  “It might be as good, but it won’t be anything like,” said Mrs. Booth. “Lor’ bless you, I forget you’re not from aroun’ here. Though how I should forget with your odd accent, I can’ imagine.”

  “It must be our charming personalities,” Giles said. “People get so distracted by our delightfulness that they forget everything else.”

  Someone kicked him under the table, and he smothered a curse.

  “A Yorkshire Christmas pie,” said Mr. Booth, hitching at his suspenders with an expression of pride, “has five kinds of bird stuffed wi’in each other, all inside the tastiest crust you can imagine. Oh, and there’s a rabbit in there, too, isn’t there, Mrs. Booth?” At her affirmation, he added, “Mrs. Booth made it two days ago so it could age properly in the larder.”

  “Age . . . properly?” Richard made a valiant effort at enthusiasm. “Well, that will be a pleasure to try. I’m not sure I could even think of five kinds of bird.”

  “Oh, go on.” Mrs. Booth laughed. “Who’s for chestnuts?”

  Somehow, this question marked the dismissal of the servants. The lady’s maid melted off, and the overworked live-in, Jeanette, began to clear the dishes. “Jory will help,” said Audrina, and the footman moved forward at once.

  Giles felt as though he ought to
stand and help, too—but then Mrs. Booth shoved a bed warmer into his hands and tasked him with roasting chestnuts. He surrendered himself to the distraction of scoring the smooth wedge-shaped shells, steadying the long-handled pan over the flames, and shaking them around every few minutes.

  But as he crouched before the fire, a twist at his heart caught him by surprise. Audrina, laughing as she passed the plate of tarts, her tip-tilted eyes the shade of . . . of . . . damnation, he had no idea. Trees or leaves or something like that. It was a dark-green color like something richly alive.

  Not that he could see the color from this distance. But he knew their color, all the same.

  This was indeed an adventure, though Giles had hardly wanted to admit it to himself. At some point, after being wet and cold and puzzled, after teasing and embracing and staring at the stars, they had become friends. More than friends. Their whole party was knit, and there was nothing to do right now but be together.

  The joy of it was almost enough to gild the ashen awareness of departure. Soon, it would come. All pleasures must end. They would leave the inn, they would leave York. He would leave England.

  Time was the villain, even more than the threats of David Llewellyn or Lord Alleyneham. Where it had once dragged for weeks across the Atlantic, then northward across England, now each hour slipped by too quickly and each day raced. Every night, when Giles folded himself into yet another too-short bed, he thought of dark hair and a voice that turned every sentence into blank verse, and he wondered how he had ever found the strength to stop kissing her.

  He shook the pan, roughly this time, and one of the chestnuts gave a pop. How long had he been holding this pan? Drifting through thought? Minutes on end, for the chestnuts had begun to roast. The smell of them was scorched and sweet and savory all at once, a smell that worked its way through Giles’s body with a comfort like heat itself.

  “Who’s for chestnuts?” With an echo of Mrs. Booth’s words, he stood and shook the pan in the direction of the diners.

  Kitty dumped the walnuts from a bowl. “Pour them right in here!”

  Giles tipped the bed warmer, scattering out the hot chestnuts as a maid would usually dump out the coals. Kitty set upon them right away, hissing as she pulled free the hot shells and the fuzzy inner skin. She handed the first one to Giles. “To our roaster, with thanks.”

  With a smile, he bit into the mealy nut. The smell was far better than the taste, but a chestnut could taste like dirt and he would still be glad to roast it for the sake of that heavenly warm scent.

  Kitty handed him another, and he tossed it in Audrina’s direction. Her hand snapped up to catch it, quicker than a blink. She looked, bemused, at the nut in her hand, and then at Giles. “Thank you.”

  “Good catch.” He lifted the remainder of his chestnut to her, a half-eaten toast. She smiled, accepting this silly praise as she would not take his thanks earlier.

  Unaccountable woman.

  He liked her. Oh, how he liked her. It was a promise and threat at once.

  Only when he reached his bedchamber that night did it occur to Giles that his wrists and hands had not hurt while he was roasting the chestnuts. Balancing that long-handled pan for minutes on end—he’d felt fine.

  His hands still felt fine. He tested them, flexing his fingers and wrists, fearing a twinge. It came, along with a prickle of numbness at his fingertips, but it was slight.

  He could write a letter to his sister Rachel tonight. Before he left America he had promised to write her every week, and it had been too long since his last letter.

  But there was so much to say that, once he lit a lamp, and gathered writing implements, he had no idea how to start.

  I don’t know if you would love it here, he could say. You would miss the sun as much as I do. But the moon . . .

  He had never known the moon could be so near. So big and imperfect and yet still reliable.

  No, no moon, because then he’d have to explain the telescope, and then he would have to tell Rachel about Audrina, and what the devil ought he to say about her? That she was brave? That she was wounded and ungrateful? That he envied the promise of her life, but thought the circumstances of it a gilded cage?

  That he couldn’t imagine staying in England, nor returning to America and leaving her forever?

  He recalled how bitterly Rachel had cried when he and Richard left Philadelphia. How even before their carriage rolled out of sight—with Rachel and Aunt Mathilda waving wildly—he had felt the weight of being gone, of traveling into an unfamiliar world, like a stone on his chest.

  The divide between Giles Rutherford and Lady Audrina Bradleigh was as wide as the Atlantic. Yet when she was as near as the next chamber, it was almost impossible to recall this.

  No, no sun. No moon. He would not write to Rachel about that.

  You would love seeing Father so happy. He could tell her that instead.

  He filled a page about the code in the puzzle boxes, the differences between each box. The three owners: Mother gave these gifts to the girls who were precious to her. Lady Beatrix had doted on her daughters, probably even more than her sons.

  When he had filled the entire sheet, he wiped the pen and sifted through his papers for another blank page. He came across one of Sophy’s gridded sheets.

  For drawing a map of the sky—or a brooch, or a building, or a building that looked like a brooch.

  Hmm.

  He could send Rachel a drawing of Castle Parr. She would enjoy seeing where they had stayed.

  And he? He would enjoy drawing the place where he had forgotten himself, so briefly and sweetly. And then he would send the memory of it far away from him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Wherein the Ordinary Is Unacceptable

  Eight days until the wedding; seven, perhaps, until Llewellyn sent the dreadful parcel to the Duke of Walpole.

  Audrina hoped to distract herself from this thought in the kitchen of the Goat and Gauntlet. The leaven had risen nicely overnight; it was pale and bubbly and sticky as paste. With the help of the Goat and Gauntlet’s live-in maid, the exotically named Jeanette, she worked cup after cup of flour into it, then added warm water and salt.

  Jeanette was a raw-handed slip of a young lady, with a light-brown tangle of hair tied back under a sensible dark kerchief. “This is a nice change from doin’ the fires, foor once. You’ll tell me if I’m mixin’ the dough righ’, m’lady?”

  Her thick Yorkshire accent was a creamy lilt that took on the rhythm of her kneading hands. As flour blended with leaven, a look of delight perched on her delicate features.

  Audrina shared the feeling, muddled and distracted though she was at the moment. It felt good to shove at something, to remold it. To make something new.

  But it was not enough to still her whirling, wondering thoughts.

  What was Christmas in London like for Audrina’s family? Was the stuffed goose being put into the oven, to be eaten crackling-crisp for dinner?

  Had Charissa bought a gift for the Duke of Walpole? She had wondered whether that would be proper, but Audrina had left London—had been taken from London—before her elder sister came to a conclusion.

  Were the earl and countess at church right now, their eyes roving the tall nave of St. George’s in anticipation of Charissa’s wedding? Or was Llewellyn meeting with Audrina’s father to work out a settlement? Blackmail; such an ugly word. She hated the idea of Llewellyn profiting from lies. She hated the idea of him profiting at all from what had been private.

  Whatever the London Christmas might be, Audrina would have been barred from the kitchen. Cooking and baking was not romantic work, she knew. It was brutal and tiring and endless. But just once, just for once, she had a task to finish. Even though pushing at such a great quantity of dough made her hands hurt.

  Which, of course, made her think of Giles.

  “Jeanette.” Audrina hesitated.

  “M’lady?”

  “Did you ever know anyone with arthritis?” />
  “Ooh, yes indeed. Me grandmam had arthi’is soomthin’ terrible. Gave her the divil of a time findin’ woork wi’ them hands.”

  “When she was young?”

  “No, m’lady. It coom on when she was oold, p’raps sixty. She ’urt when she woorked ’ard, but she also ’urt when she di’n’t woork a’tall.”

  “So rest did not help her.” Audrina shook her head. “There must be more than one type. Some people get it old, some get it young.”

  “Can’t say, m’lady. I never heard of anyone gettin’ it young.”

  “It happens. Sometimes. But how does one know if it’s arthritis at all, or—something else?” Something that would not strip away one’s hope for the future?

  Jeanette lifted one shoulder as she pressed at the dough. “That’d be a job for a doctor, wouldn’t it?”

  “I suppose it would.” She tossed a reassuring smile to the maid. “No matter. I was woolgathering.”

  She was spattered with flour; Mrs. Booth’s capacious apron was daubed with sticky dough. But no matter how vigorously she mixed and kneaded and punched and shoved at the dough, she couldn’t stop thinking.

  “M’lady? How loong do we mix the dough?”

  Audrina blinked. The great mass of bread dough lay in a sad blob over the surface of the wooden table. “Oh, dear. Ah—until about three minutes before it looks like this.”

  With a sigh, she used the back of her dough-sticky hand to push back hair that was threatening to fall loose over her forehead. “All right. Let’s add a bit more flour, a little warm water, and work the dough gently into a ball.” If it rose again, they would have fresh bread for dinner. If not, they would have to eat it as crackers.

  Jeanette carried out these instructions with smooth efficiency. Setting the hopefully rescued dough at its corner near the fire, the maid then promised to tidy up. With thanks, Audrina stripped off the apron and wandered into the public room.

  Lady Irving had just descended the stairs, and the countess cast a gimlet eye over Audrina. “You’ve got flour on your face and you look like a wet cat.”