A Novella Collection Page 5

  She had never heard of such a condition. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass him,” she said. “Please give him my greetings and let him know he is welcome at the Hall any time he would choose to accompany you.”

  “I’ll tell him.” Colin ventured a tug at the brim of his hat. “Thanks. He’ll like that.”

  Perhaps this was why the brothers traveled together. If Samuel was embarrassed to be seen by others, he’d need to stay with his elder brother to maintain contact with the world. “Does he travel with you because he enjoys it?”

  Equinox sneezed, shaking his head. Atalanta danced to one side. “We rely on each other,” Colin said at last. “Whether we enjoy it or not.”

  “Brotherhood described with admirable conciseness,” Ada said dryly.

  “Do you miss your brother, Lavelle? Or is one permitted to miss a duke?”

  “A sister is permitted, surely. And I would rather have him around than not, but I am used to being apart from him.” She reined in, easing Atalanta over a stone-scattered part of the path. Here, it was brighter, the oak trees that had cradled the path giving way to hedges. Through gaps, she could see paddocks, grooms, horses being worked. Plenty of eyes to catch sight of the duke’s sister on a pleasant ride with her admirer.

  “Besides,” she added, “a duke’s household is full enough of servants that I am never by myself.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not lonely sometimes.”

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

  They finished their ride in a companionable silence—but Ada’s thoughts roamed abroad even as she sat serenely on horseback. She’d known since the moment of meeting Colin Goddard that he had an ulterior motive for seeking her company. But did he have other motives too? Might he be fond of her for her own sake?

  How could she know?

  And why was she disappointed he hadn’t even tried to steal a kiss?

  * * *

  In his room at the White Hare, Colin groaned as he eased himself into the steaming bath. A copper tub was usually a luxury, but if he hadn’t been able to soak his sore muscles today, he’d be a piece of human hardtack in the morning.

  The White Hare was a clean and comfortable inn, neither cheap nor costly. Of habit, Colin held fast to every coin he could, since one never knew when the next would come. Thus the brothers were in a small room under the eaves. The bedstead was hardly big enough for one, but Samuel preferred to sleep during the day so he could spend his waking hours away from curious eyes.

  Just now, Samuel sat on the edge of the bed and laughed, head bobbing. “I knew you’d regret riding a horse.”

  “I knew it too, though I thought I’d be much worse off than this. A little muscle soreness isn’t bad compared to being tossed on my backside.”

  It wasn’t a little soreness. But a man had his pride, even with his brother.

  He hissed, sinking more deeply into the water. Through the window, the sky purpled and bled into a sunset.

  As Colin took hold of a cake of soap and a cloth, Samuel rose and paced back and forth across the room. Three strides this way, three that.

  Five years Colin’s junior, he was the darker of the two brothers, with puckish brows and the angular face of an ascetic. Like their father, Samuel got absorbed in his work to the exclusion of almost all else. For Samuel, the almost was conversation with Colin, his link to the world outside their room. For their father, it had been drink.

  “You’re invited to come to Theale Hall anytime you like,” Colin told him. “Lady Ada asked me to tell you so.”

  “Did you tell her about me?”

  “About your twitches? Yes, something of them. She said she wouldn’t wish for you to be embarrassed, but wanted you to know you might come whenever you wished.”

  “She sounds nice.” Nod. Nod.

  Colin rubbed the cloth liberally with soap. “Nice is not what I would name as her defining quality.” Proud. Intelligent. Appealing. Prickly. Those suited her better.

  Pretty too. Warm. Unexpected.

  “But she is nice,” he agreed.

  Samuel sat down. “We don’t have to do this, Col. We could leave and write a different series instead. Bright will find something else for you to observe.”

  He had thought of that himself. But. “We need this,” he said. “You and I. We’ve scrambled for the day’s pay for years. With this series and a pamphlet afterwards, we’ll have a steady wage. Bright promised.”

  More than a steady wage. Colin would become its co-editor.

  Samuel’s hands clenched, unclenched. “We’ve never gone hungry yet.”

  That was true. “And we won’t. I’ll make sure of it.” He put a soapy hand out, palm up. Samuel pressed it—their old agreement, better than a handshake.

  “Two weeks of pretense,” Colin said, relaxing into the hot water. “Lady Ada knows what’s going on. It was her suggestion. She won’t be injured.”

  Samuel pulled back his hand, still looking doubtful.

  “It’ll be fine,” Colin assured him. “Are you ready to take notes on the day?”

  “Ready.” Samuel rose to his feet and took up the portable writing desk with which he traveled. The brothers were always amply supplied with paper, ink, quills, and pencils—as well as a penknife, sand, and anything else that might be needed for the smooth transfer of ideas into the written word.

  Samuel wrote with a beautiful hand. Colin could tell that, even though he couldn’t decipher half of what his brother wrote, or what anyone else wrote. When Colin tried to read, the letters wiggled like the contents of a fisherman’s bait bucket, altering and flipping. He knew it wasn’t like that for most people, and no one but Samuel knew it was like that for him. He had a wonderful memory, and that was enough to get him by most of the time.

  That, and Samuel’s steady hand.

  “The trappings of the upper class,” Colin began. He held the cloth over his head, squeezed rivulets of warm water down. It felt like sensual fingers on his scalp, behind his ears, down his neck.

  Kiss me on the path, he had wanted to tell Ada. Or on the lips. Either one.

  She was a dangerous woman, with her listening ears and deep, wondering eyes. A man might confide anything in her, even the truth.

  A man might fall hard for her, and not just play at being besotted.

  Colin had shut his eyes. When they popped open, Samuel was staring at him. “Ready for more,” he prompted.

  So, on they went. Colin recounting the day, Samuel transcribing it. The brothers shaping witty, deathless prose—or at least prose good enough to earn their bread for another day, week, month.

  They’d write the series, and then they’d return to London. Colin had promised to play the swain for only two weeks.

  How far could he possibly fall in that time?

  Chapter 4

  An opportunity might arise to further one’s relationship with the pursued—and if it does, be prepared to take it.

  Readers uncertain what is meant by “further one’s relationship” might need assistance beyond the scope of this guide. The author offers his sympathies.

  Vir Virilem, Ways to Wed for Wealth

  Colin should have learned his lesson from the on-demandes of The Gentleman’s Periodical: The questions to which he didn’t already know the answer were the truly troublesome ones.

  How far could I possibly fall? was a troubling question, asked by a fool who’d thought his journey to Berkshire would be nothing but time to fill before he could return to the real life of London. To Bright’s publication, and reporting on whatever the long-nosed editor thought would sell copies. And above all, a life of trickery. Endless trickery, from a writer who could hardly write, but whose livelihood depended on words.

  Each day with Ada unspooled with startling ease and rightness. It was easy for Colin to forget that his every moment here was pretense—until he returned to the White Hare to share his observations with Samuel. The brothers turned them
into pithy prose, written in Samuel’s elegant hand.

  Day by day, there was less that Colin wanted to tell Samuel, more that he wanted to hold back, to turn over in his mind and let it flourish there.

  Much like a beetroot. Which, by the bye, he now fed daily to Equinox, who deigned to let Colin ride him when Ada deemed such pursuits necessary.

  He still preferred to walk, though. As he went daily from the village to Theale Hall, sometimes he took the bridle path, which threaded alongside the Talbot horse farm for much of its length. Here, he indulged a bitter curiosity, peering over the hedges to spy upon—that is, observe—the noble visitors. Wrotham sat his horse with a skill Colin would never achieve. His wife looked at her husband with shining eyes such as had never looked upon Colin.

  After several days of this, Colin could deny the truth no longer: He was jealous.

  He was jealous not because he wanted Lady Wrotham, but because he wanted something as honest and sweet as she and her bridegroom possessed.

  Everything Colin wore, said, did was some gradation of a lie. The only person who knew the full truth about Colin’s identity—the writer of the questions that had split Ada from Wrotham, the fake suitor for a fortnight, the writer who could hardly read or write—was his brother.

  The devil of it was, Colin’s desire to be with Ada was honest. But that was the only bit that could be. She’d made a bad bargain with him, and he didn’t intend to free her from it. She had asked him for two weeks of devotion, and she was going to get every minute of it.

  He was selfish like that.

  After a particularly trying day in which Colin had been asked to read everything from the names on horses’ stalls to a soliloquy from Hamlet, he was out of reasons to demur and wanted nothing more than to walk away from words. He returned to the White Hare seething with frustration, and when Samuel asked for his daily report, Colin put him off.

  “You recently arose, and it’s growing dark. Let’s get a lantern and go walking.”

  Samuel must have sensed the edge in Colin’s mood, even if it didn’t sharpen his tone, for he agreed. The innkeeper at the White Hare was willing enough to lend them a lantern, since they were always current with their bill, and within a few minutes of Colin’s suggestion, the brothers were walking outdoors.

  “Hardly needed a lantern,” Samuel observed, “with the moon full tonight.”

  The full moon. That was right. He’d known it was coming up. “We ought to walk the bridle path,” Colin decided. “There’s a local legend about it. Might see a few young lovers doing their best to make that legend come true.”

  He filled Samuel in on the legend as Ada had told it to him, true love and kisses and all, embellishing it with comic details of his own battle to stay on Equinox’s back as she had recounted the old tale to him.

  Samuel laughed. “You didn’t tell me any of that when it happened. Just that she’d demanded you ride horseback.”

  “I had my pride,” Colin said loftily. To be more truthful, he’d had his awkward hopes even then—hopes that had only grown stronger each day since. Hopes of kisses from Lady Ada Ellis, hopes that she’d see him as something more than the interloper who threatened her family with scandal once again.

  The brothers found the path, wide and well-kept. Samuel swung the lantern breezily in one hand, looking around with some curiosity. He sometimes fell into a crouch, walking half-bent over for a few steps. Since he preferred it when one didn’t mention his twitches, Colin merely strode along at his side. He breathed deeply of the cool air.

  “It hardly smells of anything here, have you noticed?” he asked Samuel. “Maybe horses, a little. No coal, no stink from the Thames, no fog. A night like this, with trees whispering alongside the path, is enough to make a man swear off London.”

  “It’s too quiet.” Samuel kicked at a dry leaf. “And the moon is too bright.”

  “Not hidden behind fog and smoke, you mean. It’s a strange look, I agree.” Certainly it was bright enough to spot giggling couples kissing by its light, if Ada’s legend was widely believed. For now, though, the path was deserted, the silence broken only by the rattle of autumn’s last leaves on mostly bare branches, the brothers’ footsteps, the occasional whicker of a restive horse on the Talbot lands.

  And then another set of footsteps, barely audible on the soft surface of the path. The approaching figure was hardly more than a silhouette against moonlit trees—and then it drew closer, falling under a spill of silver light, and revealed itself to be Lady Ada Ellis.

  The three people stilled upon seeing one another, like butterflies pinned under glass.

  “Ada.” Colin spoke her name. He hesitated, caught between ought to and wish.

  “Colin,” she replied. She was bare-headed and gloveless, as if she’d walked out in a hurry, though she wore a pelisse, long and warm, over her gown. “And Mr. Samuel Goddard, I presume?”

  Samuel broke the stillness at once. “Happy to meet you, my lady. Ah—I must be off.” Half running in his crouch, he disappeared around a curve of the path. Taking the lantern with him.

  And then it was just Ada and Colin and the moon. To Colin, woman and celestial object seemed equally lovely, far away, untouchable. How far apart were they? Maybe a half-dozen steps. Maybe fifty miles, the distance between where they each belonged.

  “It’s not safe for you to be walking out here alone,” Colin said.

  “It wouldn’t be if we were in London, probably. But we’re not.”

  “Yes,” he said dryly. “Samuel and I were noting the differences. He did not find them to Berkshire’s advantage.”

  “Did you?” She took a step closer. “Do you like it here?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Another step. “It matters to me. If you’re my devoted suitor for two weeks—”

  “Half that, by now.” Too little time left.

  “—I want you to be happy about it.”

  “You needn’t worry about that,” he said. “I can handle it right enough. Is it helping you?”

  “What, not to have to stand alone while a man who once swore he’d be mine until death puts his arm around another woman?”

  “Yes. All of that.”

  She closed the distance between them. “It is, actually. It gives me courage. I know if I were less prickly, I wouldn’t have to bribe or browbeat people into helping me.”

  “Nonsense. If you’d like company walking back to your home, you may have mine.” He offered his arm.

  “I have no particular destination,” Ada said, accepting his escort back toward Theale Hall.

  “You didn’t put it as if you were browbeating me,” Colin added as they set off. “When we made the bargain, you called it just that. A win for each of us. It was very sensible.”

  “Oh, good. Sensible Ada.” She sounded grim.

  “If you’ll forgive me for mentioning it, you are in an odd mood.”

  “I’ve forgiven you much worse than that. And yes, I am. I lost my eldest brother almost exactly four years ago, and today I visited his sons. They are twins, two of four he fathered on the wrong side of the blanket. During the carriage ride home, I did a bit of addition and realized that I could easily have had a child or two of my own by this time if Wrotham hadn’t jilted me.”

  The words were like weights on his shoulders. Jilted because of what I wrote. Somehow, he spoke in a light and teasing tone. “It’s always maths with you, isn’t it? Would you like that, having little Adas running about?”

  “God help me if they were anything like I was as a child.” She walked on a few more steps before she added, “It would certainly be a different sort of life. I don’t know if I’d like it. I’m sure I’d like the children, but it would only have been a matter of time before I displeased Wrotham. He’s so proper, have you noticed?”

  Colin coughed. “Rather.”

  “If I’d married him, I’d have to behave perfectly all the time, or my husband would
be displeased.”

  “He was never besotted with you,” Colin pointed out.

  “No, he wasn’t,” she sighed. “It would have been nice to pierce a heart or two as I wended my way through life, but it’s a good life all the same.”

  “Totting up numbers again, my mathematical genius?”

  “If I am, I’m fortunate that they’re large numbers. My brother’s wealthy, I’m wealthy, etcetera. But no, not just the numbers. I love the village here and the path. The horse farm makes for fine neighbors, and my brother is happily wed, and—”

  “You could go on listing marvelous things for some time as I turn green with envy. Fortunately, you can’t see my lovely color by night.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be a braggart. I was trying to convince myself that I have everything a woman could want.”

  “Trying to convince oneself never works. I’ve tried it often.”

  “Oh? Of what does a handsome and amoral reporter need to convince himself?”

  “Amoral, you call me? What a flirt you are.” As she smiled, he considered his reply. A rush of wings in one of the trees lining the path made him look up. A bird tucked up for the night, chased away by their footsteps.

  “I attempt to convince myself I have the nerve,” he went on, “to pursue a new story or idea when I’m footsore. When I’m tired and my skin is thin, and the editor of The Gentleman’s Periodical still won’t take me onto his staff.”

  She tightened her grip on his arm, an annoyed reflex. “I will ignore your mention of the worst waste of rag since paper was invented. What helps you get your nerve back, if you can’t convince yourself that all is well?”

  “Sometimes, someone I care about has to do it for me.”

  “A woman?” Her voice was low, tentative.

  He liked that she had asked. “There’s not been a woman in London I particularly cared about for a long time. No, my brother is usually the one to knock sense into me. And sense it is to count your blessings and then keep putting one foot in front of the other.”