Heartless (14 page)

“Lord Ashley was upset?” she asked.

“Family matters,” he said. “I have been taking him to task about certain bills that are beyond his own means to pay. He has been accusing me of heartlessness—a familiar accusation.”

“You will not pay the bills?” she asked. “You will let him come to ruin? Perhaps even end up in debtors' prison? You are very wealthy, are you not?”

He remembered that her father had been deep in debt, that he had perhaps been a compulsive gambler. It must be a subject on which she was more than usually sensitive.

“The bills have been paid or will be paid,” he said. “And certain commands have been given. I am head of this family, madam, and have recently taken the reins into my own hands. It is only fair that all those dependent upon me be told where certain lines are to be drawn and what the consequences of stepping beyond those lines will be.”

“Yes,” she said. “But it is love that binds families.” She looked down at her hands and her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “But you do not believe in love.” She looked up into his eyes again, but did not raise her voice. “What is wrong in your family? Why do you not live in Harndon House? Why have you been estranged from your family for so long and never intended coming home or seeing any of them again? Forgive me, but do not say 'tis none of my concern. It is. Your family is mine now. And you said we must always speak frankly to each other.” She frowned suddenly and flushed deeply. She looked away from his eyes.

“I was a wild young man,” he said. He had begun with an untruth. He had been anything but wild. “Sweet” and “even-tempered” had been the descriptions of himself he had heard most often. He had been exuberant too, but never in any destructive way. And he had been utterly, incredibly naive. He had been in love—with his calling to the church and with his boyhood sweetheart. “I fought a duel with my older brother over some unremembered offense”—over Henrietta, whom George had ravished and impregnated and then offered for—“and came literally within an inch of killing him. He was in a high fever for a few weeks, I heard. I did not see it. I was gone. Banished. My brother was judged to be the one in the right, of course, since he was the one near death. He was noble enough to delope—his bullet was lost in the air above our heads. Is that frank enough for you, my dear?”

She was staring at him, pale faced.
“Was
he in the right?” she asked.

She was deeply shocked he could see. He withdrew from her emotionally, something that was quite unconscious, something he had become quite expert at over the years. “As I said,” he told her, “'twas over some quarrel I cannot remember. Doubtless at the time I believed I had the right of it. But he was more noble than I.” Only because Luke had not even heard the word “delope” until after the duel. And only because at that time he was such a lamentably poor shot that the bullet had hit six feet from its intended target—a willow tree well to one side of his brother.

“You see, my dear,” he said, quite unaware of the slight edge of bitterness to his voice, “what you overheard my brother say a few minutes ago is quite true. I am without a heart. It is as well that you and I decided yesterday to settle for pleasure, is it not?”

“Your mother wishes me to accompany her and Lady Doris this afternoon when they pay some calls,” she said. “She sent a note. May I go, your grace? Do you have other plans?”

Only to take her to bed to satiate himself again.

“You must send an acceptance,” he said. “You must become well acquainted with them, Anna. As you just observed, they are your family too now.”

“Thank you.” She looked uncertainly at him for a moment and then turned to leave.

But he reached for her hands and held them. He had found himself wanting to—to defend himself? To tell that story as it had really happened? To tell her about Henrietta? But he had long ago developed a confidence in himself that demanded no self-defense. He did not care what people believed of him or said of him. They would believe what they wanted, even if what they believed was not the truth. Only a weak man—a man to whom the regard of others mattered—worried about his reputation.

“Enjoy your visits,” he said, bowing over her hands. “I shall see you at dinner. The hours between now and then will seem endless.”

The conventional gallantries, spoken without conscious thought. And yet nevertheless true, he thought ruefully after she had left the room. He wanted her. Even after two nearly sleepless nights of energetic lovemaking, he wanted her.

For a moment the yearning was so great that it seemed to him it was more than just physical. But only for a moment. He knew better today than to walk into the trap that those thoughts could lead to.

•   •   •

“Do
tell me,” Lady Doris Kendrick said, taking Anna's arm and leaning her head close. They were at Lady Riever's, taking tea, their third call of the afternoon, and several other ladies had arrived after them. Lady Doris had contrived to take Anna a little apart to sit side by side on a small sofa. “Is marriage quite, quite wonderful? I will wager it is. Luke is very splendid, is he not? I enjoy watching the way all the ladies look at him at balls. Marriage to someone like Luke must be very wonderful. There are always whispers among women when they are talking about marriage and believe one is not listening about that which has to be endured at night as the price of position and respectability, but I will not believe that it is so very dreadful. I long for it, I make so bold as to say. Do tell. Is it exciting?”

Anna had quite alarmingly inappropriate memories of long, sensitive male fingers stroking her where it should have been too embarrassing to think of fingers being at all and of the raw sensation they aroused there. “It is pleasant,” she said.

“Oh, fie, pleasant!” Doris stifled a giggle and looked consciously at her mother, who was not observing her. “How refined you are, Anna. Are you deep in love? 'Tis said that half the ladies of Paris were hot in pursuit of Luke when he was merely Lord Lucas Kendrick and that three-quarters of them were after he became duke. Are you in love with him?”

Yes. Oh yes, she feared she was very much infatuated with a man about whom she was having more and graver doubts. But it was too late to doubt. He was her husband. And perhaps he was right about one thing. Perhaps the pleasure he gave her in bed was worth it all. Perhaps it was better than love. Love of her family had caused all the impossible tangles in her life. Perhaps it was as well that he did not love his own family, herself included. She wondered if he would love their children.

“I have an affection for his grace, Doris,” she said.

“Affection,” Doris said. “His grace. La, I will feel more than an affection for my husband when I marry, and I will call him by the intimacy of his Christian name or some other endearment. But perhaps you do in the privacy of your own . . . apartments.” She giggled again.

Doris was a year older than Agnes, Anna thought, yet far more of a child. Perhaps Agnes had been forced to grow up faster by the precariousness of their situation for a few years, though Anna had done her best to shield her younger sisters and even Victor from anxiety. She had sold her soul to the devil in order to shield them.

You are merely on loan to the Duke of Harndon.
She shivered quite involuntarily. No. No, she had decided not to think of that. She had burned the note. She smiled warmly.

“Have you met anyone to whom you would wish to attach yourself?” she asked. “You must not have lacked for interested suitors. You are very pretty.”

“And the daughter and sister of a duke,” Doris said with a sigh. “And the possessor of an enormous dowry. But yes, Anna, I have met the man of my dreams and I am going to marry him and live happily ever after.”

“Tell me about him.” Anna sensed that she had been led aside for just this purpose. Perhaps she was the only youngish woman in whom the girl had had a chance to confide, though there was a sister-in-law at Bowden Abbey, was there not?

“Mama does not approve,” Doris said. “In fact, Mama has expressly forbidden me to see him. Because he is poor, Anna, if you can imagine a more ridiculous reason for disapproving. He was hired to paint my portrait several months ago. He was considered good enough for that, you see, even though he has not yet attained any great fame or fortune. But he will. Oh, one day he is going to be the most famous, most sought after portrait painter in England. In all of Europe. We fell deep in love, Anna. And we will marry. The violence of my attachment will make it impossible for me to give him up.”

Oh dear. Anna, who was accustomed to having her ears assailed with confidences from sisters, had never had to deal with anything like this. She was suddenly very thankful that Charlotte's attachment had been a perfectly eligible one even if not brilliant. And Agnes had shown no attachment to anyone yet.

“I suppose,” she said, “that your mama is thinking of your happiness, Doris.”

“Oh, no, she is not,” the girl said emphatically. “She is thinking of family pride. 'Tis just not the thing for the daughter of a Duke of Harndon to marry a penniless painter.”

“Poverty is not a pleasant thing,” Anna said quietly. “Especially when one is not accustomed to it. There is certainly no romance in it.”

“Oh, fie,” the girl said. “We will have my dowry to live on until Daniel grows rich. And I do not fear poverty. Luke will let me marry him.”

Anna recalled the scene in the library that she had walked in on earlier in the day and the humiliation and distress she had seen in Lord Ashley's face as he had greeted her. All because he had acquired some foolish debts. Not that debts were ever foolish. Luke had perhaps been right to take him to task over them.

“You have spoken to him?” she asked.

“There has not been the chance,” Doris said. She giggled. “He has been distracted since coming home to England with marrying you. But that is all for the better. He will understand how Daniel and I feel. I will talk to him and he will tell Mama that I am to be allowed to meet Daniel and to marry him before the year is out. We cannot possibly wait longer. Oh, Anna, we are going to be the happiest couple in the world.”

Anna felt less sure.

Doris leaned toward her again. “Luke will agree,” she said. “Luke was always my favorite person in all the world. I thought my heart would break when he went away. But you might speak to him, Anna. You might explain that I am quite, quite sure about Daniel, that I can be happy with no one else, that wealth and position mean nothing to me. You will explain? You will help me?”

“Doris.” Anna touched her hand. “This is a matter for your mama to advise on and his grace to decide upon. You must talk with them. I am a stranger to all intents and purposes even if I am your sister-in-law. I have been married to your brother for only two days.”

“But that is the best part of it,” Doris said. “He will be so deep in love still that he will give you whatever you ask, Anna. Though he will do it for me, anyway. Talk to him. Please?”

“I will see what I can do,” Anna said unhappily. “But I will not interfere, Doris.”

The girl did not seem disappointed. She smiled with satisfaction. And there was no more time to talk. The dowager duchess was getting to her feet and signaling them that it was time to take their leave.

Luke would cut the girl to pieces, Anna thought. He had admitted to her quite openly that he had no heart, and she had seen for herself that it was true. He would not countenance his sister's marrying a penniless nobody. Anna had to admit to herself that he would be quite right to object or at least to have the deepest misgivings about consenting to such a match. But she feared his methods.

There was no love in him. Least of all for the family who had rejected him—with very good reason, from what he had told her—ten years ago.

F
OR
a month Luke succeeded in clinging to a life with which he was almost familiar. For a month he succeeded in keeping family problems more or less at bay, convincing himself that all had been solved. For a month he succeeded in making of his marriage what he had suggested they try to make of it—something wholly pleasurable. For a month he succeeded in staying away from Bowden Abbey.

He wrote to Henrietta, telling her of his marriage, though probably she had already heard about it from some other source. He wrote only of business matters, careful to keep his tone quite impersonal. Under the circumstances, he wrote, any changes to the house or park should perhaps be postponed for a while. It was a tactful way of informing her that his wife was now mistress of Bowden Abbey. Henrietta did not write again. He hoped she would not. He hoped that somehow he could avoid seeing her. He felt the gulf between them as an almost tangible thing, wider than ever, though it had been insurmountable even before his marriage.

He wrote to Colby, instructing him to increase Ashley's allowance by a substantial amount and to pay him a certain sum to see him through to the next quarter. He did not see a great deal of his brother during the month, and when he did, Ashley was scrupulously polite to him, gallantly charming to Anna. Luke understood from a certain large bill that arrived on his desk one day without explanation that the expensive mistress's services had been dispensed with.

For ten years Luke had cut himself off from family ties, feeling nothing for any of them except his uncle. And yet there was something whenever he saw Ashley. Some unidentified heaviness. Some . . . regret. He remembered the eager, mischievous little boy to whom he had been a hero. And he saw the handsome, eager, rather wild young man whose life might go either of two ways at this early, impressionable stage of his development. A young man who needed guidance. Luke was not sure he could give it—or wanted to even if he could. But if not him, who else?

He asked no questions of his brother during that month and hoped that the irresponsible extravagances were at an end. He shied away from any emotional involvement, even with a brother.

He made a little more effort in Doris's case. A few days after his wedding he called on his mother for the express purpose of finding out about the ineligible connection she had mentioned during the first visit. It seemed that a portrait painter had been engaged to come to the house in London to paint Doris. There had been several lengthy sittings, at which the dowager herself or else Doris's maid had always sat as chaperone. Or so the dowager had thought. Later, when Doris claimed that she and the painter were in love and intended to marry, it was discovered that the maid had often been sent out of the way.

“He is the son of a publican,” the dowager explained disdainfully. “He has had some small success as a portrait painter and is convinced that he will become fashionable and wealthy within the next year or two. Or so Doris claims. At present I believe he lives in shabby poverty.”

“You have talked with him?” Luke asked.

“About this matter?” his mother said haughtily. “Mercy, Lucas, what do you think of me? Of course I have not spoken with him. I have merely forbidden any communication between them. It is a connection that is quite out of the question.”

“And yet,” Luke said, “you are still concerned, madam? They are still seeing each other?”

The dowager was tight-lipped. “I fear there is some communication,” she said. “Doris is a headstrong girl and has not had the guidance of a father or older brother for more than two years.”

“I will see him,” Luke said. “His name?”

“Daniel Frawley,” she said, making it sound as if she were naming a worm.

Daniel Frawley, Luke decided after he had called at the man's studio and wandered unhurriedly about, examining his paintings, was a man of very mediocre talents. He would probably scratch a living by painting portraits that grossly flattered his sitters without in any way grasping the essence of their individual characters. If he aspired to be another Joshua Reynolds, he was doomed to disappointment.

Frawley was closemouthed about his relationship with Doris. But Luke was coldly and haughtily persistent. They were in love, the painter admitted at last. They wished to marry. He would support her on the proceeds of his work. Already he was receiving commissions from influential people—the Dowager Duchess of Harndon, for example. Soon he would be in fashion and would move in high society as if he were a born member. Besides, Lady Doris would have her dowry.

“Lady Doris Kendrick is an impulsive, immature young lady blinded by romance,” Luke said, seating himself without invitation on a hard and lumpy sofa and taking a pinch of snuff from the box he had withdrawn from a pocket. “The idea of starving in a garret with an as-yet-unappreciated artist doubtless has irresistible appeal to her. But she is accustomed to another manner of life entirely, Frawley. She would be unable to make the adjustment, even if I were willing to allow her to try. She would be desperately unhappy within a few months.”

“I see,” the artist said, gazing at him with hostile eyes that did not conceal the contempt he felt for the Parisian splendor of his guest. “But I am not so sure that I could adjust to life without her, your grace.”

“Ah,” Luke said softly. His eyebrows rose and he regarded the artist from beneath half-lowered eyelids. “I did wonder.” He looked Daniel Frawley up and down before speaking again. “How much?”

Frawley licked his lips. His eyes roamed restlessly about the studio. “Five thousand pounds,” he said.

Luke took his time about answering. “Lady Doris's dowry is larger,” he said. “You might have asked more, Frawley. Ten thousand, perhaps even twenty.”

The painter tried unsuccessfully not to show his chagrin. “I am not greedy,” he said stiffly. “It will not be easy to give her up. I love her.”

“Then you might have put a higher price on your love,” Luke said pleasantly, getting to his feet and strolling languidly toward the much taller and larger man. “But no matter. My answer would have been the same whether you had asked five, ten, twenty, or fifty thousand. This is my answer.”

The next moment, Daniel Frawley crashed backward to the floor. His face contorted with pain, he lifted one hand to cup about one side of his jaw.

Luke flexed his right hand and looked down ruefully at his reddening knuckles. “You will, of course,” he said in the same pleasant tone he had used a few moments before, “stay quite away from Lady Doris Kendrick from this moment on.”

The artist lay silently where he was on the floor while his visitor let himself out.

And then Luke called on Doris and asked for a private word with her when their mother would have joined them.

“You have
what
?” His sister stood wide-eyed in the middle of the room after he had spoken to her.

“I have forbidden him to have anything more to do with you, Doris,” he repeated.

“Have you?” Her voice was quiet, but her bosom, he saw, was heaving. “Have you? Because he is a struggling artist, I suppose, and because his father was not a gentleman. Because he has not yet achieved fame or fortune. I am to marry a man who has wealth and rank, regardless of my ability to love him or be happy with him. Is that it, Luke?”

“My dear,” he said, regarding her coolly, “grant that I have an older and wiser head than you and that our mother does too. Grant that perhaps we can see better than you what or who could
not
make you happy. Daniel Frawley could not do so.”

Her bosom still heaved. Her eyes flashed. With an inner sigh he prepared himself to deal with feminine hysteria, something he loathed doing and normally avoided at all costs since women did not fight fairly. They might claw and scratch and punch and kick and bite and use blistering language. But let the man retaliate with even the mildest oath or the lightest slap and they were screeching murder. And the whole world—male and female—took their part.

But Doris did not explode as he expected her to. Her eyes filled with tears, which spilled over onto her cheeks. “You too, Luke?” she said in a near whisper. “You too cannot see that I am a person with feelings and dreams of my own? Because I am a duke's daughter and your sister, you must see to it that my future reflects the family position and pride? My preferences are of no importance at all? You must order my life as if I am a thing, and not a breathing, feeling, thinking person?”

He realized his mistake immediately. His mistakes. He should have spoken with his sister before going to Frawley's. He should have tried to get her to see for herself that such an attachment was quite ineligible and very unlikely to bring her lasting happiness. And he should have conducted this interview differently. He should not have spared her feelings by withholding the information about her true love's perfect willingness—even eagerness—to withdraw his suit for a price. But he would not change course now. He had taken the path of authority and would keep to it. She doubtless would not believe him anyway. He had never had to deal with a younger sister before from a position of authority. What was as clear as day to him was obviously not clear at all to her.

“Did Anna not speak with you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “She did.”

Anna had told him that Doris had fallen in love with all the hot impetuosity of youth and that the object of her attachment might well be ineligible. But it was a real attachment, she had added. Young people's feelings might sometimes be misguided but they were nevertheless intense. And young people could feel as much pain as older people—sometimes more. Anna had asked him to deal gently with his sister.

He knew nothing about gentleness. And he was not sure it was the answer to anything. Life was a harsh business with harsh lessons to learn. He had learned the hard way himself and was none the worse for it.

“I feel sorry for Anna,” Doris said very quietly, “married to you.”

Ashley had said that too—directly to Anna.

“One day, Doris,” he said, “you will realize that I am doing what is best for you.”

“I wonder,” she said, “if parents and older brothers really believe that when they say it. I never ever expected to hear it from you. Not from you, Luke.”

“I will have your promise now,” he said, “that you will no longer communicate with Frawley.”

“Or what?” she asked. “What will you do to me, Luke, if I refuse to give any such promise? Or if I do not keep it? Take me over your knee and beat me?”

“I do not make silly threats, Doris,” he said. “It is only fair, however, that you understand that you will be very sorry for disobedience on this matter.”

“That is not a threat?” She looked down at her hands and then up into his eyes. “What did they do to you in France, Luke? If I could tear open your coat and waistcoat and shirt, would I find a scar on your left breast where they removed your heart?”

She did not wait for a reply, though the questions were, of course, purely rhetorical. She turned and hurried from the room, her promise not given.

Luke sighed. He had given up wishing that George had not died or had fathered a dozen sons before doing so. And he had given up wishing that he had stayed in Paris and allowed his family members to find their own way to heaven or to hell. But sometimes he still felt angry—deeply, impotently angry—over a fate that had given him responsibilities he had never asked for. He had been happy as he was, in the life he had forged for himself.

But over the following weeks all seemed to be well in the sense that his mother believed the connection with Frawley had been brought to an end. Doris was subdued whenever she was forced into his company and never looked directly at him or addressed a word to him if she could avoid doing so. But she did not look as if she were pining for a lost love. She danced every set at the balls they attended and conversed with gentlemen at routs and concerts. She had a court of admirers, several of them eligible enough to be encouraged if she so chose.

Perhaps by the summer, before it was time for her to return home, she would fall in love with someone else. She was young enough to forget easily. Though unwillingly he remembered someone—himself—who had not found it at all easy to forget. There had been a year of hell . . .

As for his marriage, Luke found himself regretting it less as the month progressed. Anna was an interesting and witty companion in the privacy of their own home, a dazzling and charming one in public, and a warm and passionate lover in bed. Sometimes he made love to her during the afternoons—so that they might get some sleep during the nights, he told both her and himself. She was embarrassed and rather stiff the first time, finding neither darkness—or even semidarkness—nor clothing nor bedclothes behind which to hide. But it did not take him long to persuade her—with his hands and mouth and body rather than with words—to accept her own beauty and her own sexuality and to know that he found her in no way wanting.