How to Impress a Gentleman (22 page)

“Why did you leave the manor, Lindsay?” Charles asked somberly.

“I saw you with that Bonneville woman,” Lindsay answered hollowly.

“And you believed me to be having an affair?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Nay, Linnie, I am not. You had only to ask to straighten that out. Cynthia is to become her father’s estate manager and I was showing her the ropes, is all.”

“And that requires showing her how to kiss your face?”

“You were in town and saw us together? Why did you not confront me then?”

“I had to return with the doctor to help Bernard. You stayed away for two days after. What else was I to think?”

“That you have always been able to trust me and can still.”

“I have not been able to trust you since the day you left for the navy, rather than helping me protect my mother.”

“Lindsay, your father has forbidden me to speak of what happened that day, but I will now, and damn the consequences...

“As promised, I went to speak with your father on your mother’s behalf. He persuaded me to speak with him at the pub, where he proceeded to get me four sheets to the wind. I passed out and came to about a navy vessel. I was no officer. Your father did not buy me a position. Instead, he claimed I had stolen from him and had me impressed in the navy. I did four hard years of labor and suffered greatly.

Pulling off his shirt, Charles turned his back towards Lindsay and she couldn’t help but turn to look.

Gasping, Lindsay noted the many white and silver scars running across Charles’ back.

“I was beaten for defending the frailty of an old man. I nearly broke, Lindsay. It was thoughts of you and of returning to get vengeance on your Father that kept me breathing.”

“Why am I just now hearing of this?”

“Your father warned me that if I said one word to you, he would come out and claim evidence of my illegitimacy.”

Lindsay gasped. “How does he know?”

“You knew?”

“Bernard told me everything.”

“Give unto me, made lowly wise,

The spirit of self-sacrifice;

The confidence of reason give;

And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!”

~William Wordsworth, 18th Century English Poet

Lindsay carefully ran a trembling hand along the silver lines. A bundle of scar tissue converged at the center of Charles’ back, from which thin marks branched out across both sides. The effect was that of a moonlit tree, bared by winter’s blast. To Lindsay, the tree was both terrible and beautiful. It was the outward manifestation of all Charles had endured to return to her.

Tears rolled down her face and she desperately attempted to contain her gasping breath. “I have upset you,” Charles turned and gathered Lindsay into his arms.

“The truth has pierced my heart, yet set me free,” Lindsay wheezed, fighting to suck in air through her constricting chest. “I am horrified and shame-filled and furious at what has happened to you, Charles. And, yet, I am also greatly rejoicing to learn that the Charles I knew, the Charles I have always trusted and loved, never left me.”

Breaking down into sobs upon his lap, Lindsay held tight to Charles waist, as if he might drift away, as if he were her raft in a seething ocean storm. “How could he?” she moaned through the onslaught of raw emotion. “How could my father destroy my mother and my dearest friend?”

Running his hand across her head, soothingly, Charles sighed. “Those who act only for their own self preservation, will harm many in the process. Your father is not evil. Yet, his very nature lends him to acts of evil. “I know now that he truly believes himself in the right for having your mother committed and me impressed. He believed I was molesting you the night we met to remove your mother from the household. He was acting to protect you and, most likely, his reputation.”

“He could not have discovered the truth from his own daughter?”

“If your father was one to consider the thoughts and feelings of others, Lindsay, he would never have acted as he did. Were I guilty of the crime he believed, I would have deserved my fate. And many would condone your father’s actions toward your mother, as he, in his way, did seek to get her treated for her condition.

“It is only that his actions were self-serving and devoid of the necessary angst or remorse that we know him to be a cold and calculating man. It is for this reason that I told you naught. I knew you would not be able to stop yourself from confronting your father. I knew I risked our very livelihood, were I to explain my untimely absence. Worse, yet,” Charles sighed, “it seems Sir Richard made a legitimate threat. If Bernard knows of my illegitimacy, then the father I knew was not my true father.”

Sitting up and looking into Charles’ troubled visage, Lindsay shook her head. “I do not understand of what you speak. Bernard said no such thing.”

“Then, what truth did Bernard reveal?”

“I have given him my oath to secrecy, Charles. What he told me matters little, in the end.”

“It matters, if your father can use the information against me, to disinherit me.”

“Then, mayhap we should speak with Bernard. He has made it his business to know about you. He is your father’s cousin. He will know the right of it, I would wager.”

Charles grasped Lindsay’s hand affectionately. “Forgive me my rough treatment of your person. I am not the man I once was, but, with you, I feel I can become the man I wish to be.”

“Charles,” Lindsay snuggled back against his chest, resting her cheek up on his heart. “I prefer you hot and grasping, then cool and remote. It has been a quiet torture, having you away. I would have you here, by my side or not at all. I cannot live a life of in-betweens. Can you promise me your devotion, in return for my own?”

“Lindsay, devotion has never been lacking between us. Let us, instead, promise honesty. If we can tell one another all that we know and feel, then we will not have to wonder about the depth of our devotion. I have loved you the whole of your life. Now, as husband, I have learned to love you as a woman. We will err. We may yet cause the other undue harm. Yet, we can commit to true and total candor, so that the wrongs we commit will be nothing but tiny ripples in the current of our lives. Can you commit to that?”

“Do you love me,
as a woman
, Charles?” Lindsay goaded, smiling up at him coyly.

“Aye, I believe I do, Lady Donovan. How forgetful you are of my love making, if you must needs be reminded.”

Planting kisses along Lindsay’s temple and jaw-line, Charles moved to Linnie’s neck, eliciting a silken moan. “Charles,” she chuckled, pulling apart slightly, “you mistake lust for love. I speak of the deeper, lasting devotion and respect of one person for another. I speak of trust and diligence and hard work. I speak of never giving up on the other, despite difficulties, anger, and disappointment. I speak of the acts we do each day to show we will be there, come what may.”

Charles paused only briefly in his nuzzling to gift Lindsay with a dazzling, dimpled smile. “Lindsay, I love you as my partner and my equal. There are many ways I plan to prove my devotion. Dipping his head down to run his lips and tongue along her stomach, Charles ire and grief boiled over into hard earned lust.

Kissing and suckling his way across her hip and thigh, Charles grasped greedily at Lindsay’s knees, pushing them apart to gain access to her soft center. Nuzzling and grazing her inner thighs with his lips, he smiled at Lindsay’s soft moan.

Her hands ran affectionately through Charles’ hair, then pulled, encouraging him toward his destination. Charles lapped and kissed and caressed her core until she came in pants of escalating need.

Pulling him atop her, Lindsay lifted her hips in welcome, as Charles joyously plunged into her hot, pulsing passage. Lindsay cried out for more, delirious in her relief. Needy for affirmation and reconnection, they both fell together running their hands across one another’s chest, sides, face, raining kisses wherever they could reach in frantic, frenzied love making.

“Aaah!” Lindsay moaned, bordering between pleasure and pain as she climaxed in powerful surges about him. Charles withdrew and then slammed into Lindsay, he increased the tempo, quickly finding his own release.

Shaking, he lay atop Lindsay until he regained his breath. Wrapping Lindsay in a trembling, achingly fragile embrace, Charles gently brushing away her hair. Sighing, Lindsay turned her back into Charles’ and nestled closer. Charles blew in Lindsay’s ear and ran his tongue along her lobe.

“I may be broken, sweet Linnie. But at least I can get this one thing right.” Watching her face for confirmation, he relaxed when a lazy smile turned her soft cheek into a blushing apple.

She loved him. Thank God and saints, his ever shrinking world was intact once more.

~ ~ ~

Elizabeth Beaumont sat rigidly in her chair. Her husband’s large bulk engulfed the small settee across from hers.
Why has he come to Bath? He couldn’t possibly have missed me. Perhaps he worries I am overtaxing my host. I must not behave poorly. He might send me back to Bethlem
, Elizabeth thought with a shiver.
I like it here.

“How are you, Elizabeth?” Sir Richard queried, clearing his throat and tugging on his lapels.

“I am fine, thank you.”

“And Mrs. Henley and Miss Bowling, do they fare well?”

“Yes, they are in good health and spirits. They continue to extend their hospitality, indefinitely, if need be.”

Nodding, Sir Richard shifted from foot to foot, uncertain of how to proceed.

“It may have been,” Sir Richard hedged, “that I did you a disservice, sending you to Bethlem five years hence.”

Elizabeth stilled. She did not trust her husband and his rash decisions, and she did not trust herself to respond in a manner pleasing to his temperament.

“I came to visit, to make amends for my foul treatment in your time of distress.”

Elizabeth chose her words carefully. “Richard, I will not deny that I suffered greatly, as a result of my time in Bethlem. I felt a woman wrongly punished for a crime she knew not.

“Yet, when I grew ill from pleurisy, you did not allow me to waste away and die. You came to collect me and bring me here, to Charles’ aunts, to be nursed back to health. And they have, Richard, in more ways than you can imagine. I have learned to cope with my melancholy, if not displace it entirely. I have found vigorous exercise, fresh air, and companionship do wonders for my humors.

“And, painful as it has been, I have learned that I
have
committed a crime, against my family. I consider my time in Bethlem a just sentence for the neglect my daughters have suffered. While I am not fully recovered, I had hoped you might arrange for Lindsay and Leah to visit me here.”

Sir Richard ground his hat beneath clenched knuckles. While he felt relief that his wife continued to recuperate in this environment, he had not fully planned out how he might handle an outcome in which he must tell his daughters of his deceit.

“Lindsay and Leah suffered greatly from your illness. When I took you away, Lindsay did not eat for a week. When I received the letter that you had become ill, I told the girls that you had died before I left for London to remove you to Bath. I felt it would be easier for them, if you were to just pass on.”

At Elizabeth’s heart broken expression, Sir Richard rushed to explain. “At the time, I had no expectation that you would recover, either in body or spirit. It was for this reason that I led your daughters to believe you had died and been buried in London.”

“Are you then refusing me my daughters?” Elizabeth queried, lifting her chin a stubborn gesture he had come to associate with Lindsay and Leah.

“Nay, not so...I ask only for time to tell them. Lindsay and Charles have just married and are off to his estate and Leah is preparing for her come out. I ask only that we wait until the London season is over before I bring them for a visit.”

Elizabeth inclined her head in acceptance, loath to show her husband just how emotional she was feeling over the day’s revelations. “Then I bid you adieu.” Lady Beaumont responded quietly.

Taking the hint that their visit had come to an end, Sir Richard bowed. “God be with you, Elizabeth. Farewell.”

~ ~ ~

Officially, her honeymoon ended today. Lindsay smiled bitterly at her image in the mirror. She definitely looked older and wiser. Her eyes showed dark circles and her frame had thinned, giving her a delicate air. Lindsay’s normally, lush, vibrant allure had faded, giving her a more ethereal presence.

What her hard labor and physical grief had stolen from her frame, it gave back in a stoic wit and wisdom. Lindsay was not the vivacious girl she had been four weeks ago, but she was the soul-satisfied consort of a passionate and honorable man. Whatever might come of Charles’ inheritance, they would face it together.

Leah was to arrive any day now, and Lindsay’s excitement grew to see her sister. First, Charles and she must face the reality of his lineage and determine a response. Turning from the looking glass to face her husband, Lindsay stood and offered him her hand.

Together they walked to the guest chamber. The door hung ajar and Charles led the way into the small space. “It has come to my attention, Bernard, that you may know something of my father-in-law’s threat to my person.”

Bernard, or rather, Sir Alexander, sat straighter in his bed and demanded, “I know not of what you speak, young man. Explain yourself.”

“Last night I told my wife of her father’s intimations about my legitimacy. She seemed to think that you might be able to shed some light on the subject.”

Sir Alexander wriggled uncomfortably within the bedclothes. “We had a pact,” he growled, looking accusingly at Lindsay.

“I have said nothing, Sir...might I request that you tell Charles?”

“Very well, I will bow to your inclination on this matter, but first, explain to me the nature of Sir Richard’s accusations.”

“Sir Richard stated that he knew the man that was my natural father. That man, he claims, was not Daniel Donovan, but Nathaniel Wright, a businessman to whom my mother was betrothed before she married my father.”

“Nathaniel Wright, you say? It does ring a bell. Some sort of shipping magnate, I believe. Yes, I do believe your mother may have been associated with the man, afore his death. What of it? There is no reason to think you are his get. He died before your mother wed Daniel and you were born eleven months later. It would be impossible.”

Charles’ grin spread wide across his face. “I am the legitimate heir to the title, then?”

“You are the legitimate heir,” Sir Alexander confirmed.

“Bernard,” Lindsay chided, pleading with her eyes for him to tell Charles the whole truth.

“However,” Sir Alexander hedged. “I am the current baronet and executor of Braxton Manor, in sense of blood lines.”

Sir Alexander sat back against the bed frame, waiting for his revelatory words to be absorbed.

“You are not Bernard, the butler?”

“Well, aye and nay. I have taken on the name and position of Bernard the Butler and Bernard has taken on my plot in the graveyard. Legally speaking, Sir Alexander is dead and Sir Charles is the baronet running Braxton Hall.”

“Why?” asked Charles, perplexed.

“Why ever not?” returned Sir Alexander. “As I explained to your wife, the lands were in disrepair, the people suffered, I am not a young man, something had to be done. How better to bring fresh blood, family, and money to the estate, than by dying and providing it with a new heir.

“Not being particularly inclined to end my own life prematurely, I took advantage of the death of a dear friend, to set this household to rights.”

“I cannot act as if in ignorance to this knowledge, Sir Alexander. I must step down from my position and allow you to regain control of the estate.”