Those Autumn Nights Read online

  Until she caught him looking at her. “Is there something amiss?” Eliza asked.

  “Just…wanted to get some of the potatoes,” he excused, grabbing for the dish before the footman at the side of the room could step forward. He spooned some up, adopting as nonchalant an expression as he could manage.

  Damnation. They were almost all butter.

  After dinner, Bertie declined to drink port in solitude, so the group gathered at once in the drawing room.

  “We are four,” noted Eliza, “so how about a game of whist?”

  “Oh, I need to finish my knitting,” said Mrs. Clotworthy, hauling forth yet another workbasket and plumping onto the chintz-covered sofa. “You young people go on and enjoy yourselves.” In the lamplight, the lenses of her spectacles went silver.

  “What are you working on so industriously?” Bertie asked, ignoring Georgie’s widened eyes and silently mouthed no of alarm.

  “A trousseau for your sister,” said the older lady in a loud whisper.

  “Er…knitted? I wasn’t aware that such things were usually…knitted.”

  With a grumble, Georgie collapsed onto a cane-seated armchair, one of the new bits of furniture that had replaced Greenleaf’s decaying ones. “They are not, usually. Nor are they made for hemmed-in spinsters with no marital prospects.”

  “This one will be very special,” said Mrs. Clotworthy mildly. As her needles clicked through coarse woolen yarn, Georgie’s expression grew more alarmed.

  Eliza cleared her throat, easing onto a twin to Georgie’s chair and pulling it into a confidential coze. “I cannot have heard you correctly. A spinster, you? Ridiculous,” said Eliza. “I remember you as a girl, which means I’m a full decade older than you. Why, I shall be thirty in another two weeks, and I cannot bring myself to be called a spinster.”

  Her voice was light, but Bertie thought he saw strain about her eyes and mouth. Odd, how quickly he had again fallen into the habit of tracing her every flicker of movement.

  “What name shall we use instead, then, if not spinster?” asked Georgie.

  Eliza tapped her chin. “Hmm. What do you think of…woman of independence?”

  “I like that,” Georgie decided.

  “Woman of independence or not, it won’t hurt you to have fine things when you’re a bride,” said Mrs. Clotworthy.

  At which Georgie grumbled a profanity and Bertie cast a desperate look at the bracket clock on the mantel and wondered whether it was time for the world to end.

  Mrs. Clotworthy followed his gaze, then made a noise of annoyance. “Dropped a stitch—and look at that, it’s half seven already. Tut! No wonder I’m missing stitches. The hour is late, Georgie, and we must get you upstairs. You need your rest.”

  Bertie was not sure whether Georgie’s indignant expression or Eliza’s surprise was more pronounced, but he ignored them both. “Some tea in your bedchamber, maybe,” he suggested as Georgie flounced by. “Or a book? You love to read, I know.”

  “I’m thinking of something I’d love a great deal more, and it involves the destruction of that clock.”

  “Perish the thought. It’s Greenleaf’s clock.”

  This won a wry expression from his sister, who waited by the drawing-room door as her chaperone stashed knitting needles and the giant woolen…whatever it was to be. Mrs. Clotworthy was yawning, and the daylight was fading, but maybe the hour was a bit early for a young woman to be packed off to bed.

  He was on the brink of suggesting Georgie stay when he noticed that she was leaning against the frame of the door as she waited for her chaperone. Tired, too? Maybe, or maybe just not as strong as she’d been before her illness. He couldn’t allow her to take chances with her health. If she sickened again, she would not be strong enough to bear it.

  And after the many losses Bertie had borne, neither would he.

  “Rest well,” was all he said. “I’ll see you in the morning. Remember to take your breakfast in the dining room.”

  “I will remember, just as I promised the first fifteen times you said something to me.” With a rueful waggle of her fingers, she bade Bertie and Eliza good night and trailed upstairs, followed by Mrs. Clotworthy.

  Once the door had closed a decorous halfway behind them, Eliza looked up at Bertie. “Is that it? Is this how you spend your evenings now?”

  “What, being educated as to the making of a trousseau?” He attempted lightness, but did not quite succeed.

  “Alone, after sending your sister off to bed at an hour better suited to a child in leading strings.”

  He deliberated for a moment, then crossed to a cabinet in which was stowed a decanter and several glasses. Pouring a generous measure into two, he returned to Eliza’s side and handed her one. “French brandy. Very fine stuff. I developed a taste for it under Florian’s care and had several casks shipped back to England with me. While the war continued, I had to ration it. Now one can order it freely.”

  “The benefits of peacetime. I knew there had to be a few.” Eliza raised the glass to him, then took a small sip. “Mmm. That warms the throat.”

  Bertie folded himself into the seat Georgie had just vacated. No more than a foot away from Eliza, he twisted in the seat to watch flames play in the fireplace, gilding the marble chimneypiece and turning the gold paper-hangings to a darker shine.

  The brandy glowed like topaz in his hands. “I know you’ve lived a life of revelry in London for the last decade. Such solitary evenings must seem strange indeed to you.”

  “Whether I spent my time in revelry or not, it would seem strange to see your sister packed off to bed at an earlier hour than when she was a child.” Another sip, and then she set her glass on the small table between them. “That’s not a drink meant for ladies. It’ll go to my head.”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “Indeed, for you’d find your quiet house full of my Londonish revelry.” She nudged the glass, tilting her head. “Which hasn’t been the sort you think. I often feel I’m just passing time, that the amusements of London are nothing but a way to fill empty hours. To what end, though, I cannot say.”

  “No,” Bertie replied. It was both agreement and protest. Though this was his impression of the ton, such emptiness should not be how Eliza, vivid and laughing, marked a single moment of her life.

  But she was not laughing now, and she was no more vivid in the dim room than were the hands on the clock.

  “This is not such a bad way to spend an evening.” He tried for heartiness. “It suits my sister and me. We are all that is left of our family, and so I must watch out for her.”

  “You are all…” She trailed off. “Your father has passed away?”

  “Nearly three years ago.” He sipped at the brandy, letting the sting of heat roll over his tongue. “I was shot during the Battle of Toulouse. I almost bled to death, then nearly died of infection. While I recovered in France, month after month, I dreamed of England. Then I received a letter telling me my father had died.”

  “I am so sorry for your loss. What a kind and good man he was.”

  “That’s right, you knew him.” Bertie tilted his head. “I had forgot you knew him.”

  “Well. Only a little.” From the corner of his eye, he saw her fingertips play upon the carved arm of the chair. “Still. Please accept my sympathies.”

  He nodded. “He had fallen ill, you see. The mail was not to be depended on, and I never knew about it until after he was gone. Georgie had lost her mother young, and so he named me in his will as her guardian. He couldn't know whether I would come home alive, of course. But I was determined to.”

  “I am glad,” Eliza said faintly.

  Bertie set down his glass. “Such charity, Miss Greenleaf. I am glad you could not find it in your heart to wish me dead.”

  She laughed, a quick, low sound. “And I am glad you think so well of me, to believe that the limit of my charity.”

  A courteous man would demur. Bertie poked at his glass, shoving it into hers
with a clink. “Right. Well. I returned to England near the end of 1814. We had our mourning for Father for a time. And then last year, when we thought Georgie might have a London Season, she fell ill with pneumonia.” How rote he sounded, how calm. “I thought I’d lose her too. It was a very near thing.”

  The fire snapped. At his side, Eliza was carefully still.

  “So.” Bertie slapped his hands on his legs, then rose to his feet and paced the room. Fiddling with the numerous gewgaws on the shelves. Straightening pictures. “I am quite willing to spend an evening in solitude if it means my sister gets the rest she needs to grow stronger. Or is that truly what you were wondering?”

  “No, I suppose not. I’ve no doubt you can occupy yourself.”

  There was a hesitation at the end of her sentence, as though she were tasting another phrase before sharing it with him.

  He peered at her, hunting clues. “Yet you sound so doubtful.”

  Nudging her glass away from his, she twisted it. Brandy sloshed and played, amber-bright. “Perhaps I am. Not about you, though.”

  “Feel free to speak your mind.” She had made free of everything else in the household; why not his ears?

  Venturing a quick sip of the brandy, she returned the glass to its place. “All right. Bertie, your sister is quite well now. If you looked on her with a stranger’s eyes, you’d see her good health. How is she to get stronger if you cage her?”

  His fingers fumbled a bowl from which a strong odor of dried flowers rose. “What the devil do you know about it? You’ve never had to care for anyone but yourself.”

  Eliza’s mouth opened.

  “I’m sorry,” Bertie muttered. “That was ungracious.”

  She shook it off, drawing herself up straight. The fillet in her hair glinted gold. “No, you’re quite right. I’ve never had to care for anyone else. But I have done so all the same.”

  He had been expecting her to lash out, and the low melancholy of her tone gave him pause. If she fought back, would that mean she cared? Did he care if she cared?

  Honest to God, he ought to put himself to bed with a headache powder and a hot-water bottle. His mind was becoming as garrulous as Mrs. Clotworthy.

  “For whom have you cared, Eliza?” Despite himself, he had to ask. “Tell me something you’ve done in the past ten years to serve someone beside yourself.”

  Her lips curved. “As I said, that’s why I am here.”

  * * *

  It was a lie. But she wished it were true. How simple everything would be if she were here only to serve as the face of the Greenleafs on quarter day. A caller for Georgie, and maybe a friend.

  How good it would be to sink into the newfound yet familiar delight of Bertie’s company, to let a romance unfold in its own time, if it would at all.

  How marvelous that would be if it did.

  But being a Greenleaf of Hemshawe didn’t mean what it had ten years before, when she had a large dowry and a pretty face and nothing more ragged in her smooth life than a torn hem. The face had hardened. The dowry, protected by her parents’ marriage settlements, was all the money left to the Greenleaf family. Over the years, her brothers and father had gambled away a fortune vast enough to vanish slowly, so slowly that they had thought it would always be there.

  When Eliza was twenty years old, they were already beginning to scrape at the edges of society. Now the family had little left but pride and an ancient house they were forced to lease.

  Ten years before, she had jilted Bertie out of family loyalty. Since then, she had allowed only the most worthless, profligate of suitors, a way to protect herself. She had agreed not to marry against her family’s wishes, but she wouldn’t wed against her own either.

  Her thirtieth birthday loomed, though, and with it the loss of everything left to her family.

  Unless she could persuade Bertie into love with her again. Unless she could convince him to wed her at once.

  Her throat caught. Cold, her fingers toyed with the gold cord that trimmed her gown. She was not false by nature, and that was the trouble. She’d never been able to deny her own heart.

  “No, you are right,” she said. “I haven’t done anything noble with the past ten years. And I shouldn’t have criticized, because your sister has grown into a lovely young woman. Although you send her to bed at a horrid hour, your mutual affection is clear.”

  “Although?” Bertie returned to the chair beside hers. Instead of seating himself, he gripped the back of it.

  “Despite the fact? Even though?”

  “Because,” he growled, though the corner of his stern mouth gave a treacherous twitch. Almost a smile? No, there was something other than humor in his eyes. Something hot and dark—or was that the firelight, reflected?

  Her chest rose in a quick inhale. Her very thoughts seemed breathless.

  He bent lower, lower, until his face was only a whisper away from her own. She could breathe him in, the wine he’d swallowed at dinner, the subtle scent of his soap, and the starch of his cravat. Even though she ought not. Despite…or maybe because…she swayed closer to him.

  She could almost pretend the past decade had fallen away, that he was courting her in her home during her debutante season. Or that they were long wed and were enjoying a coze together before trailing upstairs to their shared bedchamber.

  She closed her eyes.

  His lips brushed hers, lightly, sweetly, his breath the ahh of a man who had waited long for something he wanted.

  Heat curled through her—and then the chill of regret.

  Shoving hard with her feet, she scooted the chair back. The thin wooden legs caught in the carpet, and she wobbled and tipped before righting herself again.

  “I can’t—mustn’t.” Her voice was as off-balance as the rest of her.

  “Can’t what?” His dark lashes swept low, hooding his eyes.

  “Can’t—this.” She shook her head. “All it takes is a kiss, Bertie. That’s all it ever takes.”

  He stretched tall above her, his face in shadow as he looked down. “For?”

  “For something to start. Falling in love. Being ruined.” She made herself laugh, a fractured sound. “A bit of both at once.”

  “Have you done either?”

  “I have,” she said softly. “But only one person knows about them both.”

  His jaw worked. “Me?” And after a moment, as quietly as a sigh, “Me… But you were never ruined, Eliza.”

  I was ruined for others. A woman couldn’t cast from her heart a man who risked his life for his country, who danced like an angel, who was as unfailing in courtesy as he was in roguery. Who understood her quirks, who made her laugh and feel brave.

  As long as no one else was looking. Or questioned her. She had been brave only next to him, and when he was gone, she was unable to hold fast against her family’s disapproval. She had known Bertie for only weeks. For years, she had been Eliza, the proper obedient daughter.

  Now she could not remember what that had been like.

  “You are afraid.” His voice was quiet. It was not a question.

  “I have always been afraid. But I cannot send you away this time.”

  “Because?”

  “Well—I’m in your house.”

  “Then I hold the power to send you away.” A flicker of a smile. “I won’t.”

  She ought to feel triumphant—but instead, guilt was low, in the pit of her stomach. Her every word was true, yet just being here was a deception. “Then I won’t go.”

  He extended a hand, strong fingers folding around hers. Before she realized, he had drawn her lightly to her feet.

  “I wasn’t worth standing up for before,” he said. “What is different this time?”

  She met his gaze. “I am.”

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  The following morning, it was as though the tumult of the day before had never been. The household snapped into a new order that was, in its way, as clockwork-perfect as the cooperation
of Bertie’s former cavalry regiment.

  In the study, Eliza took charge of the ledgers. Tutting and scratching at numbers, she also jotted innumerable notes for delivery to certain tenants. Florian offered the services of footmen to carry them, keeping the young Frenchmen trotting from the great house to the tenants’ cottages and back in a steady loop.

  Late morning found Eliza with a pile of notes and none of Florian’s minions at hand.

  “I’ll take those,” offered Bertie. He had been feeling at loose ends as everyone clicked into industry save himself.

  The smile that Eliza cast his way made him wish he’d offered to help far sooner. Thus he found himself with a fistful of notes, striding through the Greenleaf lands in the direction of the tenants’ homes.

  The autumn air was pleasantly cool, the sun high and pale in a rain-washed sky. Fruit trees grew abundantly, their leaves withering to reveal little green apples. Then fields on which something was being farmed, though he’d no notion what. He’d never lived in the country before, and thanks to Florian, he knew more about rural France than he did England.

  A tidy footpath led him to the crofters’ dwellings, where he distributed Eliza’s replies and instructions. At each home, he was invited to take tea while he waited for a reply. More than once he found himself with a hammer and nails in hand, completing a quick repair to a gate or roof.

  By the time he returned to the Friar’s House, he was the sort of tired that came from having worked hard in an unaccustomed way. His right side felt oddly stitched together, and he pressed a hand to it as he ordered a late, cold luncheon.

  As he ate a sandwich one-handed, balled fist against the spot where he imagined the bullet lodged, Eliza strode into the dining room. She held up a hand to keep him from struggling to his feet.