Hadrian (37 page)

Odd, she could recall the words so clearly.

“That isn’t the same as saying she wanted to marry me.”

Gran had to measure the chamomile twice, then used a length of string to tie the bag closed. The bow wasn’t as snug as it should be because her fingers ached.

Rain coming, most likely.

“After what Collins did to her, how was Lady Avis to contemplate marriage to anybody?” She passed him the sachet of herbs. “Make a brew of a half tea cup full of leaves to four cups of boiling water. Let it steep at least three minutes. You can add a little sugar or honey. This will help with female complaints.”

“My thanks.”

“You’ll look after her?”

“I will do my damnedest.” He rose and brushed a kiss to her wrinkled cheek—bless the lad. “And my thanks, Gran. If you recall anything more, you’ll let me know?”

“Only if you’ll dance with me at your wedding.”

“I’ll issue a decree, and every man in the shire will be required to stand up with you, should you ask it.”

He would too. The Bothwells were men of their word.

“Best set a date, then, so I can send out my dance card. Wait until Fen is back from his wenching down in Manchester. He’ll need to recover before he’s up to my weight.”

Master Hay looked a bit taken aback, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard a jest.

“I want to be just like you when I grow up.” He gave her a careful hug and departed, leaving Gran to stare at her cooling tea, and wonder just how much the baroness would find convenient to recall about her son’s cronies—for Master Hay would ask.

Sooner rather than later.

“You will excuse us?” Hadrian’s tone was polite, but his manner was not that of a man willing to dither over pleasantries.

And still, Lily looked to Avis for permission to leave her in company with her fiancé.

“Lily, if you’ll give us a moment,” Avis said, putting a sketch pad aside and passing Lily a sheaf of letters. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to have these posted for me?”

When Lily left, Hadrian closed the door behind her—a presumption for which Avis could have kissed him.

“If you marry me,” he said, drawing Avis to her feet, “I’ll ask that Miss Prentiss be turfed out.”

He’d ask, he wouldn’t insist. Bless the man.

“Because she knows you’re bent on mischief?”

“I am not bent on mischief.” He wrapped his arms around Avis from behind, which deprived her of the opportunity to read his gaze, but was a marvelous comfort. “The woman has a suspicious mind, and you’re not some scatter-brained fifteen-year-old knotting your sheets so you can smoke Papa’s pipes in the woodshed. How are you feeling?”

“Achy,” Avis said, letting him have some of her weight. “It will pass.”

“Even Rue let me do this,” he murmured as he began slow, firm circles with his hand low on her belly. “She suffered badly, each and every month. Let’s get you off your feet.”

A knock on the door sounded as he settled her on one end of the sofa, but he gently pushed her shoulders down and answered it himself.

“Gran Carruthers sent you along some concoction for female troubles,” he said as he set the tea tray down. “I had the kitchen brew it up, and you’re to drink it with honey or sugar.”

“You discussed my,”—she waved a hand—“with her?”

“I didn’t have to.” Hadrian fussed about with the tea tray, and the fragrance of chamomile and flowers wafted to Avis’s nose. She knew this particular tisane, and even the scent of it brought relaxation.

Hadrian poured a cup, added a little sugar, then took a sip.

“It’s not too bad,” he pronounced. “I didn’t discuss your indisposition. All I did was make your excuses, and she divined the nature of your discomfort. She thinks you should marry me, by the way.”

Which opinion she’d offered with no prompting by her caller whatsoever, of course.

Hadrian passed Avis the cup, and like a jealous nanny, watched her drink. She didn’t finish it all at once, but rather, settled the warm cup against her stomach.

“I really shouldn’t marry you.” She wanted to, but she spared them both that admission. “I’ve had another note.”

He studied her for a long moment, hands on his hips, lips pursed in thought. When he sat down right beside her and put an arm around her shoulders, Avis fished a folded paper from her skirt pocket.

Had she expected him to stomp off, to tire of her problems, to blame her for the notes as she’d blamed herself? His arm around her shoulders, the tisane cooling in its cup, she accepted that he truly did love her.

God help him.

“The handwriting is the same as the others, and the paper a quarter sheet of foolscap,” Avis said. “I don’t care for the tone.”

She cared very much for Hadrian’s opinion of the situation, though.

“‘A good woman can be the making of a man,’” Hadrian read. “‘A bad woman can cost him everything.’” He folded the note up and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket. “This tells us a few things.”

“Our plan is working,” Avis said, taking another sip of her tisane. “We’re mightily displeasing somebody.” Who was hell-bent now on threatening Hadrian—a former vicar, for pity’s sake, and the sole heir to Landover.

“But if the somebody who’s displeased is supposed to be Ashton Fenwick, now he has to have accomplices,” Hadrian said. “Your whole household knows he’s reportedly larking away to the south, and they’d remark him stealing about, leaving notes in your sewing basket.”

“The note was under my pillow, Hadrian.”

Like a spider lurking among the linen. Avis had considered moving to a guest room, leaving the chamber she’d had since girlhood, her last sanctuary in her family’s home.

“That location, under your very pillow, suggests a female accomplice. Your boudoir is hardly frequented by the footmen this time of year.” He took her tea cup from her and wrapped her under his arm. “When did you find it?”

“This morning,” Avis replied, leaning into him. “When I woke up, it wasn’t there, but I went back to my room to get my flute after taking my walk and noticed my pillows weren’t as I’d left them. The note was stashed among them.”

“Were there footmen about?”

He was doing it again, being calm and methodical when Avis wanted to screech out indignation and exasperation. Did Gran have a tisane to restore a woman’s sense of safety?

What had Hadrian asked?

“The footmen had not been in my room in some days. The weather hasn’t been cool enough for fires at night, and I water my own flowers. The candles were fresh last night, and the lamps in my bedroom aren’t trimmed or restocked by the footmen.”

“So unless a footman were very crafty indeed, we’re looking at a maid. Do any of them bear you particular animosity?”

His thumb stroked along the side of her neck, a soothing caress that anchored her to the discussion and to him.

“Of course some of the maids bear me ill will. Every one of them I’ve scolded for making sheep’s eyes at the footmen, every one who has lingered too long among Vim’s or Ben’s things, every one who doesn’t tend to her tasks unless the housekeeper is standing directly over her.”

Good heavens, she sounded near tears—and she was.

“You do not have an easy time here, do you?”

“If you mean does my staff dote on me, no, they don’t. They do what they’re told, and when Ben or Vim are in residence, the staff dotes on them.” As did Avis, so desperate was she for her brothers’ company.

Hadrian was silent beside her, but his free hand was again making those slow circles low on her abdomen.

“I want you and Lily to remove to Landover.”

“That will not serve, Hadrian,” Avis said, letting her eyes drift closed. “Lily would not view herself as an adequate chaperone. Besides, if Fen can bribe somebody here at Blessings, he no doubt has spies at Landover.”

“It isn’t Fen. You know it isn’t.”

His confidence in Fen was reassuring. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I’m to pay a call on Lady Collins,” Hadrian said. “I’d rather not delay it until you’re feeling better.”

“I’ll feel better the day after tomorrow,” Avis said, sitting up a bit.

“You go through
three days
of this every month?” How indignant he sounded, and over a simple fact of female biology.

“The discomfort is three days, the mess is longer.”

“God in heaven. Rue was in bed for a day, sometimes not even that.”

“It passes.” And the important topic was not Avis’s indisposition. “I’m struck by the fact that, again, the note threatens you, not me exactly.”

“It does, but you are not to fret. The staff at Landover knows which side their bread is buttered on, and I will be careful.”

“You’ll tell me what transpires with the baroness?”

“I’ll return tomorrow. You need your rest, and I’m loath to convey anything significant to you in writing.”

“Prudent.” When she would have risen, Hadrian leaned down and pressed a kiss to her mouth, a little show of possession, perhaps, but also comfort before he took his leave.

Avis was growing to depend on him, on his pragmatic willingness to solve her problems, be they female discomfort, threatening notes, or intimate demons in need of exorcism. A woman could become to rely on to such treatment. A foolish woman who had no care for the man trying to protect her.

Lily rejoined Avis not five minutes later, and she was once again wearing Avis’s green cashmere shawl.

“I’ve brewed one of Gran Carruthers’s tisanes,” Avis said, though in truth, Hadrian had ordered the kitchen to make it up. “Have a cup—it’s very pleasant.”

Lily appropriated the rocking chair to Avis’s right and helped herself to a tea cake. “Half a cup will do, thank you. Mr. Bothwell didn’t stay very long. I hope his regard for you isn’t waning.”

The usual concern laced Lily’s tone, all bound up in sincerity and protectiveness.

“Your tea.” Avis passed over a half cup.

“A bit more than that, please. These cakes are quite good. Is Mr. Bothwell pressing you for a date?”

Avis added a dollop more tea to the cup and passed it over again. “The cakes were made this morning. I’m glad you enjoy them.” She rose and closed the door, because now, before she lost her nerve, she must speak more plainly than she had in all the years since Lily had joined the household.

“You forgot my sugar,” Lily said, wrinkling her nose and setting the cup back on its saucer. “Or shall I try the honey?”

“Help yourself to whichever you prefer,” Avis said, because Lily was playing some game, even in something so trivial as having Avis pour her tea.

And all the while, Lily oozed compassion, humility, and quiet sermons.

Avis resumed her seat as Lily stirred sugar into the half-empty cup.

“Lily, my affection for Mr. Bothwell and his for me have not wavered. If anything, my regard for him grows over time. If and when he and I marry, the services of a companion will not be required when I remove to his household. Your severance will be generous, and the character I write for you will be glowing.”

This was right. This was a calm, reasonable decision made out of neither fear nor anger, and yet, it was a vital step toward putting the past in a proper perspective.

Lily said nothing for a long while. She sat with her tea cup poised before her, back straight, expression unreadable.

Whatever response Lily came up with—a scold, a sniffled acceptance, a small tantrum—it would not outweigh Avis’s relief at having made the decision.

“Have you set a date then?” Lily’s tone held the brittle cheer of somebody enduring a public betrayal, and yet, she’d managed to fire off a telling shot.

“A special license is a possibility,” Avis said, rising. “Please take as long as you need to find another post, but as of this moment, you are free of any further obligations as my companion.”

Avis headed for the door. Lily said nothing, but remained seated, a pillar of silence swathed in a green shawl Avis had once treasured, but now, never wanted to see again.

Two aspects of the Baroness Collins impressed Hadrian as he bowed over her hand. The first was her graciousness, apparent in her manners, her speech, her graceful movements. She was every inch the dignified lady, while he was surprised she’d even be at home to him.

The second feature he noticed was the sadness in her eyes. Parents watching a child slip away to a lingering illness bore this air of patient sorrow.He’d
known
sadness like that, when Rue had died, but it didn’t still haunt him as Lady Collins appeared haunted, even as she smiled at him over a blue jasperware tea service that went nicely with her fair coloring.

“I’d heard you’re doing the pretty in Harold’s absence. Well done of you, Mr. Bothwell. Too few of us observe the civilities any more.”

“I’m home to stay, and always glad to welcome a neighbor who comes calling.”

She set her tea cup down carefully. “Harold extended the same olive branch. He and I left each other in peace.”

Her voice held a guarded plea Hadrian couldn’t afford to heed.

“I don’t wish to disturb you,” he began, but she stopped him with a shake of her head.

“I have my sources too, Mr. Bothwell. Hartley is back in the country, which bodes ill for him, because Benjamin Portmaine will put period to my son’s existence does he learn of it.”