A Fresh Perspective, A Regency Romance (19 page)

“Scotch would be fine, sir.” Reed took the proffered glass and sipped a liquid fire almost as searing as the truths he had come to deliver.

His father fortified himself with a second drink. “You mentioned something about arrangements, and my signature required?”

“Yes, sir,” Reed licked his lips nervously. They tasted of a Scotch they could no longer afford to indulge in. “Our only way out of this mess, as I see it, is to sell off all properties that do not provide income, along with all unnecessary but valuable assets, the monies therefrom to be invested in properties that will provide income.”

“And you would sell?”

Reed read from a list he had prepared. “The country home in Devon. Rents received from the tenants are not promising. The hunting box in Surrey. The houses here in London. The apartments in Brighton and Bath.”

“Rusticating, am I?”

“Yes. In addition, all of the horses and carriages but these must go.” He extended a list. “All silver, paintings, rugs, furnishings and china but these.” He extended another list saying wryly as he examined some of the china shards that littered the floor. “Minus the Spode of course.

“Of course.” His father sighed. “What of the Keep?”

“The land thereabout has potential that must be more fully utilized, the North tower should be torn down and the roads repaired in trade for the building materials salvaged.”

“And the servants? Some of them, like Marsden, have been in my employ their entire lives.”

“Those affected by the sale of properties mentioned will need to be considered on a case by case basis, as well as those currently in attendance at the properties we mean to keep. The rest will have to be let go with references.”

“Dear God! Your mother. . .?”

“Has yet to be told.”

“She will take it hard.” He actually sounded as if he cared.

“I mean to sell off all of the plate from the Keep as well as the rugs, tapestries and a good bit of the furniture.”

“Dear God. She will come after me with a carving knife. Tell me, will she think I have done this out of spite, just as you did?”

“I cannot claim to know the workings of my mother’s mind, sir, other than to say she has had some small part in paupering us.”

“Has she, by God? You refer to her dancing and music masters, then? Have they been blackmailing her to hold their silence?”

“You knew?”

“I had my suspicions.” He waved his half empty glass at Reed as if to toast him. “You have just confirmed them.” He laughed when Reed uttered a sound expressing his regret. “Does she ever speak of me, your mother?

Reed was surprised by the question. “On occasion, sir.”

“And then only with loathing I wager.” His father tossed back the drink and let out a noise that sounded curiously like a sigh before he said in a softened voice, “I know you have little enough reason to confide in me, son, but have you ever been in love?”

“Yes sir.”

His father turned, surprised, body swaying drunkenly with the suddenness of his movement. “True love? Not just carnal connection, but a deep and meaningful relationship? The kind that will not fade as age and beauty does, but might warm you through a lifetime?”

“Yes,” Reed’s voice was stronger. Megan’s face rose instantly in his thoughts. She would warm him through a lifetime.

“Have you told the girl you love her?”

Reed held silent, unwilling to reveal so much of himself to this man who was little more than a stranger to him.

His father seemed to require no answer. “I was in love with her, you see.”

Reed wondered who, among the scores of mistresses, had usurped his mother’s rightful place in his father’s heart. “In love, sir, with whom?” he asked coolly, with little real desire to hear the answer.

“With your mother.”

Reed was stunned, so stunned he dropped his glass. Dully, he looked down at the spilled liquor and broken bits. It ran through his mind that there lay one more ruined piece of Waterford crystal to be struck from his list.

His father laughed bitterly. “Shocked you have I? No, leave it,” he protested as Reed bent to pick up the larger bits of glass. “Marsden is waiting just outside the door with a broom to whisk away all damages as soon as we are done. You may depend upon it.”

Reed left the glass but mopped up the spilled liquid with a dinner napkin. No sense in ruining the rug. Finished, he drew out a chair and sank into it. “I can depend on my memory, sir, for no evidence of this love you refer to.”

“Evidence?” His father’s voice was rough. “I left none. I was in love, but too full of pride to let it be known. You see, I was sure Clarissa Grant married me for no other reason than my money.”

“I have been informed it was a marriage of convenience.”

“She told you that?” His father’s eyes looked tired, and very bloodshot.

“Yes, sir.”

“I would that it had been. I was wrong. I did not find out how wrong until three years after I cast her, and you, from this house.”

“I remember that day, sir.”

“No doubt.”

“You were saying, sir, that you were wrong?”

“Yes. Bedded a woman who had once been privy to your mother’s confidences. Discovered she loved me too.” Lord Talcott set down his glass. With the flats of both hands he rubbed at his eyes, attention focused on the past. “The woman I was rogering, I will not bore you with her name, found a wicked sort of humor in revealing to me all that had once been told her in strictest confidence. She said your mother thought she might stir some spark of jealousy in taking a lover.”

“Did it?”

“I was outraged. She hoped to make me abandon bad habits, you see. By the time I realized I should have, it was much too late.”

“Why too late?”

“Your mother’s passion for me had turned to disgust, even hatred.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. There is a fine line, you see, where passions are concerned. If you have found love, my boy, do not let it slip through your fingers as easily as your glass. It can be just as brittle, and no more mendable when smashed.”

Chapter Twenty

H
is father’s words stayed with him. Was there, Reed wondered, as fine a line between friendship and passion as divided love and hate? Strangely, it was in once again setting eyes on the Yat that all feeling with regard to Megan was brought into perspective. He leaned out of the open window of the carriage as it came in view of the familiar landmark, the wind in his face, dust blowing to the rear of the carriage like a white rooster tail.

Here was the hill whose grandeur he had never fully recognized until he went away from it, just as he had not truly recognized the strength of his bond with Megan until he left it in the care of Giovanni Giamarco. He loved Megan! He had always loved her! It had taken distance, a fresh perspective and her kiss to see the complete truth of the matter. He was in love and yet did not feel free to tell his beloved, to write to her--not until his future, miserable as it might be, was secure.

However, it was with a feeling of light-heartedness that he paused briefly at Blythe Cottage, that he might run inside, hug Megan’s mother and kiss her cheek.

“Goodness me, Reed!” Mrs. Breech exclaimed. “How lovely to see you. Are you only just now returned? Are Megan and Gussie faring well? Tell me more of this Italian, Giovanni, with whom Megan fills her letters. Do you have news?”

Her words, like the prick of a pin to the balloon of his happiness, left him flattened. “She writes of Giovanni does she? Well, Megan has always been an admirable correspondent, has she not? I think it best she tell you all there is to say about Giovanni Giamarco. Regrettably, I cannot linger to chat. I have rather urgent business to attend to at the Keep.”

“Nothing serious, is it, Reed?” Mrs. Breech was all concern. “Your parents, they are well?”

“Well enough, given the circumstances. No one is sick or dying, so in the grand scheme of things, I would have to say our troubles are not serious.”

She gave him a strange look as he left her. Indeed, his leave-taking could not have been more abrupt, but away he rattled, bumpety-bump, up the last dreadful stretch of unrepaired road to Talcott Keep, his thoughts of Megan together with Giovanni bruised his spirit as much as the ruts in the road bruised his backside. The road pained him today as it had never succeeded in paining him before. Every rut and pothole seemed calculated and vindictive, evidence of love turned sour. A tragic work of spite, he now considered the disrepair.

There was tragedy, too, upon his arrival, in finding his mother closeted away with Monsieur Vincennes.

He did not burst in on her, as he had his father, but banged briskly upon the door, as he had never dared to in the past. “Mother. I require an interview if you will be so good as to join me in the yellow drawing room at your earliest convenience. It is a matter of utmost importance.”

“But of course,” her voice, unruffled, came from the other side of the door.

Her convenience, as it so happened, required the better part of an hour. Reed was left cooling his heels in the yellow drawing room contemplating the wisdom of having left Megan in Giovanni’s care. He composed a list of the room’s entire contents, with ticks beside the items he considered most valuable, and double ticks beside those that could be put up for sale.

“Reed.” His mother arrived at last to greet him with cool kisses and a wave of perfume. “How gratifying to a mother that her son should exhibit so boisterously his desire to speak with her on the instant of his return.” She couched her reprimand with eminent politeness and yet, her words, no matter how mild, cut him. She ended the remark with an unmistakable verbal jab. “How much more gratifying if he should display a more mannerly constraint.”

“How do I find you, mother?” Reed refused to rise to her bait. The Pom was gone he noticed. Fallen from favor, he surmised. Did she love anyone or anything with a sense of commitment?

She frowned and turned her back on him, crossing to the tall, narrow, arrow-slit window. “Sit down,” she said. “I have news, Reed, that you will not care to hear.”

So closely did her statement echo the one forming on his own tongue, that he was left speechless for a moment. “Bad news, mother? Anything you have to tell me cannot, I am quite certain, compare in magnitude to the news I bring.”

That got her attention. She turned, to lean against the arch, gaze fixed on him. “Oh? Perhaps you should tell me first then. You look unhappy. Did you not enjoy your little holiday with the Breech girl?”

Again the blunted stab of her words.

“Every moment spent in Megan’s company was a pleasure,” he said with conviction “however, you are correct in assuming me unhappy.

“Oh? What troubles you?” She encouraged in a bored fashion.

“It is vastly unsettling to discover that I have no inheritance to look forward to.”

“What?” She shot up from the wall, eyes flashing. “Does your father in any way dare to deny your right to the claim?”

“He denies me nothing. There is nothing at this point to deny, other than properties I will not be able to afford to keep and a mountain of debts to be paid.”

Clearly shaken, she sought the nearest chair and sank into it. “You jest!” she suggested, as if in saying so it would be so.

“I wish our situation were, in any way, jest worthy.”

“This cannot be,” she insisted, but her voice lacked conviction.

“It can and is. I have just returned from London. Father and I. . .”

“Your father knows of this before I have been informed?” Anger steadied her shaken resolve.

“Papers required his immediate signature.”

“I see.” She did not sound as if she saw at all. She did in fact sound outraged as she rose from the chair to pace the room. “What have the two of you cooked up to fix this mess?”

“As of yet, we have no fix, only stop-gap measures to halt the growing mountain of debt.”

“What papers required your father’s signature?”

“We are selling things, mother, to meet the debts.”

“Things? What things? Not my things. I will not suffer for your father’s folly.”

He handed her the same lists of properties, horses, carriages, and furnishings that he had shown his father.

She scanned them in silence before tossing them onto a fainting couch as if they contained personal insult. “Outrageous! There must be some other solution! These are family heirlooms!” She seemed desperate for another solution. “Have you considered marriage, Reed? Surely you could. . .”

“Marry into money? As you did? How can you even open your mouth to wish your fate on me?”

“What would you have then? Poverty? And Megan Breech? Do you think she can make you happy?”

“I do.”

“Ha.” She barked, crossing in her agitation to the window, where she peered through the narrow slit that looked out over the road that led to London. “I did once hope for happiness myself, but believe me, there is as much misery in love as ever there can be in money, if one loves the wrong person.”

How often, Reed wondered, in the passing years had she stood there, watching and waiting for a love that had never opened its eyes to her and come chasing up the hill--a love in which she had long since given up. He understood, as never before, the depth of her anguish.

“Was my father the wrong person?” he dared ask.

She whirled on him, eyes flashing, voice pinched. “This has nothing to do with your father. Whatever gave you such a nonsensical idea?”

“I think you loved him. I think he loved you too, but was blind to the truth of it.”

“Nonsense!” she insisted vehemently, too vehemently Reed thought. “But if you are foolish enough to marry Megan Breech, you can count on nothing but misery.”

He laughed. “Then give me misery. I mean to marry her if I am left with anything at all to offer other than my undying affection.”

She laughed, a strangely pinched, hysterical guffaw that brought tears to her eyes.

“Do not laugh,” he snapped irritably.

She laughed harder.

He hated her in that moment as he had never allowed himself to hate her in the past. Turning swiftly on his heel, he stalked to the door.