Midnight Scandals (32 page)

It was odd to think of her so openly. He’d become used to the opposite, to snipping his thoughts in the bud, rarely allowing full, uninterrupted recollections.

Perhaps it was the effect of Mrs. Englewood’s naked pain and undisguised yearning. Perhaps it was simply the result of walking past the same door year after year without ever glancing its way. One of those days he was bound to fling it open, to come face to face with—what had Mrs. Englewood called it?

Old dreams that had fallen apart.

And here he was, about to help create an illusion that Mrs. Englewood’s old dreams
hadn’t
fallen apart.

E
VERY MINUTE CRAWLED
—it had been ages since Isabelle had eaten the sandwiches she’d brought with her and changed into somewhat more appropriate attire for seduction. A wonder her restless pacing hadn’t worn the carpet threadbare down the center.

The front door of the house opened. Her hand went to her throat. Now she would hear his footsteps coming up the stairs and approaching in the passage.

But that did not happen. After the front door closed, all became quiet. Straining her ears, she heard him moving below quietly, as if he were looking into each one of the rooms below.

Her pulse sped. What if—what if it was not Mr. Fitzwilliam, but a thief, grinning from ear to ear at the bounty of this unlocked, undefended house? And what if this thief were to see her in only her nightgown and dressing robe?

Now
the footsteps ascended the stairs. Now they came swift and resolute. Her chest tightened. A glance toward the fireplace showed no sign of a poker, so she gripped the silver hairbrush her mother had given her when she became a bride—it wasn’t much of a weapon but it would still give a man a nasty bump on the head.

As the man neared the door, she realized that he carried a handcandle: its light swayed upon the wall. He extinguished the light and knocked on her door.

Not a criminal then, only Mr. Fitzwilliam, who had remembered her requirement for dim light. She panted in relief, only to have her heartbeat race for a different reason altogether.

She set down the hairbrush and hoped her voice would hold. “Come in.”

She’d left a lamp in a far corner of the room, the wick trimmed so short it was practically drowning in lamp oil. In this gauzy, barely-there light, the man before her bore such an uncanny resemblance to her erstwhile sweetheart that she could not quite suppress a gasp.

Fitz,
her heart cried.

Just this one night. This one bittersweet night, so that she could look back as an old woman, when she had forgotten everything else, and remember what it was like to have her beloved in her arms.

Her palm hurt. She realized that she was clutching Great-Gran Cumberland’s miniature portrait and the frame was digging into her skin. She let go of it and beckoned him to approach her.

He did, but he did not fall upon her, as she’d meant him too. Instead, he reached past her for the miniature portrait and studied it. Then he studied
her
face.

They did not look much alike, she and Great-Gran Cumberland, except for the pitch black hair they shared—and even that was hardly discernible, as Great-Gran Cumberland’s coiffure, done up in the style of Madame Pompadour, had been enthusiastically powdered.

“She is an ancestress from six, seven generations ago,” she offered, made uneasy by the silence. Silence, to her, manifested grief. Or unhappiness. Or the distance of two lovers drifting apart. “Each of her four husbands cherished her. Her eleven children all survived her. On her seventy-fifth birthday, she had what she declared to be the best meal of her life at the dinner her favorite granddaughter threw in her honor, then she retired to bed and, with truffles and a forty-year-old claret in her stomach, passed away in her sleep.”

He nodded.

It didn’t feel terribly odd to speak of Great-Gran Cumberland—she had yet to tell Fitz about the latter. In her younger days, when she’d believed herself invulnerable, tales of Great-Gran had been just that, stories about a woman who lived in a different century. Then she’d had no need for anyone else’s luck; now she put her faith in legends and relics, no longer quite trusting her own ability to navigate life’s bitter seas.

He returned the miniature portrait to its place. Belatedly she noticed that in his other hand, he held a bottle of wine by its neck, two wineglasses, and a corkscrew.

Several times since her return she’d suggested to Fitz that they could have something more potent than tea or coffee, but he’d always turned her down, leaving her to recall wistfully those occasions years and years ago when he’d come to visit, and all the young people in the house would sneak out at night. They’d always had a bottle of something and a handful of thimbles. Hidden behind a high hedge, they’d pass around thimbles of the night’s tipple, tittering all the while, drunk as much on youth and the first taste of freedom as on port, sack, or champagne.

He set down the wine on the nightstand and extended a glass toward her. Their fingers brushed as she took the glass from him. A harsh heat sizzled along her nerve endings, but he did not seize on the moment or even remark upon it. Instead, his attention turned back to the bottle and he removed the cork with an audible pop.

He poured. The wine landed with a beautiful sound, nectar on glass. She took a sip; the claret flowed over her tongue, cool, delicious, leaving a trail of reassuring warmth in its wake. “Good idea,” she said. “The wine.”

He poured for himself, casting her a glance as he did so. Now she began to feel odd, carrying on this monologue, even though it was by her request that he remained silent.

“Nice claret,” she went on, unable to stop herself.

He turned the bottle so she could read the label. “Château Haut-Brion. I see from your pride that it is probably the Mona Lisa of wines. But I can’t tell the difference between a French red and an Italian one, let alone distinguish the parcel of land that produced a wine by the taste of it. All I know is that I like the conviviality a little wine brings.”

He drank from his glass and waited for her to speak more. She stared a moment at his almost unbearably familiar face, mesmerized, before her mind seized on the length of his hair to remind her that no, he was but a stranger.

“My—my late husband was a conscientious officer, always stern before his men. But every evening at dinner, after half a glass of wine, he’d begin to smile. After an entire glass of wine, he’d tell me the jokes he’d heard from the other officers. And on rare days when he allowed himself a second glass, he might even imitate his horse, a gorgeous bay stallion who ran like the wind, but had the habit of breaking wind loudly at the most inopportune moments.”

She could not quite believe what she had said. But oh, how she’d loved those two-glasses-of-wine evenings. Lawrence had mastered a marvelous parody of himself, and when he would copy the noises that issued from his horse’s hindquarter, she almost invariably dropped her fork laughing.

After a moment of surprise, Mr. Fitzwilliam smiled. She had the sensation that he relaxed somewhat. Of course he must have been on guard: This had to be the most outlandish situation in which he’d ever found himself.

His increasing ease made her unclench a bit—she hadn’t quite grasped how tense she’d been, caught between her desire to make love to Fitz and her—thankfully—still quite sane awareness that no matter how much Mr. Fitzwilliam looked like Fitz, he remained another man entirely.

Mr. Fitzwilliam indicated a chair by the fireplace.

“Of course. How inconsiderate of me. Please have a seat.”

He settled himself in the chair and raised his glass to her.

She reciprocated the gesture. “How did you know I’d like some wine?”

He lifted a brow. He had a livelier face than Fitz. The small gesture conveyed a wealth of meaning, not the least of which was an even-tempered awareness of the ludicrous demands that had been placed on his person.

She reddened. “Please forgive me. Of course you may speak. I don’t know what came over me earlier.”

“I’d like to say I have that effect on women,” he answered, smiling slightly. “But I don’t—not these particular effects, in any case.”

There was no mockery in his voice, but something that was the audible equivalent of a friendly nod. It put her further at ease—he hadn’t taken her mad request too seriously. Or at least, he’d treated her moment of insanity for what it was and did not consider her permanently batty.

“And to answer your question, I had no idea whether you would like wine, but I was fairly certain I would like some.”

“To gird yourself?”

He hesitated a moment. “In a way.”

It was unnerving to keep looking at his face, so she lowered her gaze a few inches. But it was almost as disconcerting to contemplate the width of his shoulders, the length of his arms, and the casual way he held his wineglass, the stem dangling between his fingers.

She noticed for the first time that his waistcoat was scarlet—Fitz never wore such flamboyant colors. And he slouched to a degree, whereas Fitz’s back would have been straighter than a yardstick.

The man who looked exactly like Fitz might not remotely resemble him in temperament or inclinations.

“I am curious, Mrs. Englewood,” he said, “how would your life have been different had Lord Fitzhugh not inherited his title?”

“Other than the fact that today I might still believe myself fortune’s darling? Probably not very much. Fitz had wanted to be a cavalry officer. The man I married was also a cavalry officer.”

“Does this mean I am not your first replacement for Lord Fitzhugh?”

Her nerves pulled taut. But he did not sound peevish, only genuinely curious.

“It might look that way, but I never
set out
to marry a different cavalry officer. When Fitz married his heiress, I was cast adrift. My mother and my sister convinced me to not let life go by, to at least go to London and see what other choices I might have. That London Season led me to Captain Englewood.”

She smiled a little the memory of meeting her Lawrence for the first time, of the way his eyes had followed her the entire night. “It wasn’t until I’d accepted his suit that my sister asked me whether I was trying to duplicate the life I would have led with Fitz. I broke down and cried myself to sleep. The next day I woke up and vowed to never think of Fitz again for as long as Captain Englewood and I both lived.”

“Not an easy promise to keep.”

“No. At the beginning of our marriage, whenever Captain Englewood did something that I didn’t like, I would instantly wonder how different things would have been with Fitz—how I would have never experienced a single moment of annoyance or dissatisfaction. But I’m proud to say I pushed those thoughts away quite diligently and did my best to love Captain Englewood for himself, rather than as a second choice when my first was no longer available.

“It became easier after a while. He was a good, devoted husband. We had two lovely children. I enjoyed life in the cantonment and made friends with the other officers’ wives. It wasn’t the life I’d planned for, but it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, I was feeling quite fortunate and grateful, when Captain Englewood and I both caught a tropical fever.”

She stopped for a moment, unable to help the tremor in her voice. Mr. Fitzwilliam gazed at her steadily, as if in encouragement. She took a deep breath and went on.

“He was the hardiest man alive, never a cold, never a toothache, never even an upset stomach. Soon he seemed to be on the mend, while I took a turn for the worse. In what I thought would be my last moment of clarity, before I descended into delirium, I told him how thankful I was that he came into my life when he did, how much I adored him and our children, and how I wished I could grow old with him and together welcome our grandchildren into the world.”

Mr. Fitzwilliam sat straighter. She clutched her wineglass with both hands. “I woke up two days later, weak as a newborn, and so confused I barely knew where I was or even who I was. When I did remember, I said a long prayer of thanksgiving—I was alive, I was well, the life that I had painstakingly rebuilt had remained intact. Only to then be told—”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. He was instantly before her, holding out a snow-white handkerchief. “Thank you,” she murmured, accepting the handkerchief and hastily dabbing her tears away. “I’m sorry.”

“Be glad you can cry. There are those can only sit dry-eyed with pain burning in their hearts.”

Was he speaking of himself? She wanted to ask but didn’t know how. “I’m sorry,” she repeated herself. “I have been going on and on about myself. Please understand I am only belatedly trying to appear halfway sane.”

“I never doubted your sanity—what we do in moments of heartbreak isn’t always rational or explicable,” he answered, his voice as gentle as it was authoritative.

She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so grateful. Impulsively she reached out and touched his hand. “Thank you, sir.”

He rested their combined hands against his chest. The lapel of his jacket was warm and soft upon her skin. Then he let go and returned to his seat. “So you grieve for Captain Englewood, you wonder what would happen to yourself, and you remember your old sweetheart. Except he is no longer your sweetheart.”