The Captive (11 page)

He turned her under his arm and walked her back to the house without allowing her to leave his side.

“Why not a hack about the park one day soon?” Mercia asked his daughter. He had the knack of pausing long enough to invite the child to answer, but not so long as to create expectations. Gilly wondered where he’d learned such interrogatory skill, or if he simply had a gift.

“Hearing no objection,” he went on, “I’ll invite the countess to ride with us.”

“I haven’t a proper habit, but I will make one up, now that I know the stables are open to guests.”

Something nonplussed then a trifle aggravated flickered in Mercia’s eyes.

“We’ll choose her ladyship a mount, shall we?” He put the question to his daughter and extended a hand to the child. “One must indulge in some anticipatory spoiling if one is to form an alliance with a horse or a member of the opposite sex. You are not to repeat that to your governess, Lucy.”

As if she’d repeat anything to anybody.

Mercia took his daughter from stall to stall, eventually lifting her onto his hip, something the girl was old enough to object to, and wise enough to enjoy. She was content to wander from one velvety equine nose to another, her head resting on her father’s shoulder.

And the picture they made, two blond heads nestled together, the duke occasionally murmuring quietly to his daughter, gave Gilly an odd pang for Helene. This was lost to Helene, this simple outing to the stables with father and daughter, lost forever. Watering the flowers in the library, surreptitiously watching His Grace scratch out letters to his old army connections—many of them still on the Continent—that was lost too.

Peeling his oranges.

Kissing him. Reveling in the sandalwood scent of him. Feeling his heart beat with the firm, steady rhythm of a trotting horse.

“Come, Countess, there’s a lady asking to make your acquaintance,” the duke said. “I presented this one to Helene on the occasion of Evan’s birth.”

Gilly caught up to His Grace and peered over an open half door at a dainty golden mare with four white socks, a white blaze, and a flaxen mane and tail.

Gilly stretched out a hand to the horse. “She is darling. It’s a shame she’s not being ridden.”

“The lads no doubt dice for the privilege of taking her out,” Mercia said. “But she’s the right size for you. Helene disdained her because of her modest size.”

He said it casually, as if having such a generous lying-in gift disdained wasn’t of any moment, but Gilly had begun to wonder if anything Helene had said about her husband was true. Perhaps a sojourn in the army had done him good, or perhaps Helene’s judgment had been less than objective.

The duke was not grim; he was serious, as a mature man might be serious.

He was not selfish; he was disciplined.

He was not a great brute, but rather a tall, handsome—if lean—man, whose kisses were the opposite of brutish.

And if he was a ravening lecher, Gilly saw no evidence of it. Helene had claimed he’d kept mistresses and conducted several liaisons simultaneously. Gilly hadn’t questioned where such lurid information came from, but had prayed Greendale might do likewise and leave her in peace.

“Child, your hour of liberty has flown,” the duke said, easing Lucy to her feet. “Will you join me here tomorrow? Perhaps we’ll put you on a leading rein, and let you have a turn on Damsel while the countess cheers you on.”

Lucy’s little face lit up, and she clapped her hands together as she nodded emphatically.

“We’ve an assignation, then, so be off with you.” The duke turned her by her shoulders and gave her a gentle shove. “Mind you go straight to the nursery, and don’t get your pinafore dirty on the way, lest Nanny and the countess be wroth with me.” He shook a playful finger at her, then blew the child a kiss.

Grim?

The girl scampered off, turning to wave at them from the barn door, then cutting a line across the gardens toward the house.

“She’s more animated for having you about,” Gilly said. “The entire staff is elated to have you home again.”

“Oh, quite. Risen from the dead and all that. Would you walk with me, Countess?”

He wrapped her hand over his arm, the ease of it giving Gilly a private pleasure. On those occasions when it had been necessary to walk with Greendale, he’d spent the entire promenade hissing criticism at her, while presenting a bland countenance to the world. Strolling on Mercia’s arm felt…peaceful.

And protected, the opposite of Greendale’s carping and threats.

“You’re silent. This makes a man nervous, Lady Greendale.”

“We’re sharing a roof, Your Grace, and we have been cousins by marriage. Might you call me Gillian? Nobody does anymore.” Not that Greendale had. His names for her had been…not worth recalling. Gilly leaned closer to her escort.

“Gilly is a pretty name.”

In his less vile moods, Greendale had called it a peasant name. “How long do you suppose you’ll stay, Your Grace?”

“Stay?” The duke snapped off a red damask rose, took a whiff, then passed it to her. “This reminds me of you.”

Another compliment?

“Stay here at Severn,” Gilly said, wanting to touch the rose to her nose, but finding the impulse oddly intimate. “Before you leave.”

“I’ve quite sold out, Countess, and the only reason I’d set foot on the Continent would be if old army matters required it of me, and they well might.”

“But you’ve estates elsewhere. Business in Town, matters that will take you from Severn.” Part of her wanted him to travel on, lest she cross the line from kisses given out of friendship and comfort to kisses of a different nature.

“Are you asking if I have a mistress in Town, languishing for lack of my company? That would have been fast work, my dear. Should I be flattered or insulted that you suspect such a thing of me?”

My
dear?
Was he teasing? She recalled him shaking his finger at his daughter in mock sternness. “You should be quiet. I would never ask such a thing.”

Though she might suspect it.

“Helene did.” He disentangled their arms and took her by the wrist instead, leading her to a shaded bench. “At great, vociferous, and tiresome length, she accused me of being quite the blade on the town.”

Good heavens. It was one thing to complain to a cousin, quite another to rip up at one’s husband. “You cut a dash. Greendale remarked it.”

“Greendale was still wearing powder and patches. He’d criticize the angel Gabriel for flying. I was faithful to my vows, Countess. My parents were a love match, and I married Helene hoping to esteem her greatly.”

He fell silent while Gilly cast about for a change in topic—Helene had hoped
to
be
esteemed
greatly, and apparently she had been. The duke went on, his tone thoughtful.

“I often suspected Helene had a wandering eye and couldn’t quite admit it to herself, so she must see the fault in me.”

To his list of attributes, Gilly added astuteness, which was not a great blessing under some circumstances.

“She very much enjoyed being Duchess of Mercia,” Gilly said, relieved that it was the truth.

“She did. I take consolation from that.”

“Will you observe mourning for her and Evan?”

“That depends in part on the guidance I receive from Vicar, but I am inclined to take up second mourning, as Helene will soon have been gone for a year.”

“And Evan, too.”

The duke’s lips twisted in an expression Gilly recognized not as distaste so much as impatience.

“What?”

“I feel as much guilt as grief where the child is concerned,” he said. “For various reasons, but in part because the little fellow needed me more than my duchess did—the best person to show the next duke how to go on is the present version. And yet, my presence in the nursery was barely tolerated, and the army seemed like a good use of an extraneous duke.”

He was confiding in her, and Gilly was equally dismayed and touched. Damn Helene for her selfishness anyway, and English dukes numbered only several dozen in a good year. How could even one be extraneous?

“You are not extraneous, Your Grace. Not to Lucy, not to your tenants and staff.”

“What about to you, Countess?” Despite the gravity of the question, his blue eyes held humor, and maybe something else—curiosity?

“You are not extraneous to me, either. I am the one imposing on your household.”

“You will disabuse yourself of that notion.” He rose and drew Gilly to her feet. “When Vicar comes to call, you will pour. When Lucy needs her first habit, you will supervise the creation of it. When the tweeny steals the underbutler’s attentions from the first parlor maid, you will intervene, or civilization throughout the shire will cease.”

“While you do what?”

“Wait for my daughter to speak and try to address what needs addressing regarding my past.”

He gave her a little bow, touched his finger to the flower Gilly still held, and took himself back up toward the house.

Leaving Gilly to wonder, if in his questions and confidences the duke might—without any conscious intent to do so—have been flirting with her, just a little.

***

To Christian’s great pleasure, in response to inquiries regarding Girard and Anduvoir, a letter arrived from Devlin St. Just. Out of the pile of otherwise trivial social correspondence, that one was saved back, to be read in the solitude of the library at the end of the day.

The volume of good wishes from Christian’s peers and neighbors quite honestly surprised him. Each day brought more letters, some from people he’d never met, congratulating him on his safe journey home, thanking him for his service to the realm “above and beyond the call of duty,” wishing him well in light of his “noble sacrifices.”

Platitudes, all of them, and they made Christian at once furious and humble—though nobody had any word regarding Girard.

“Will I disturb you?” The countess in her dark bedclothes stood in the doorway, her hair a golden rope braided over one shoulder.

“Of course not.” Christian rose, for she was a lady. An increasingly kissable, holdable lady. “Sleep eludes you?”

“I’m hoping not.” She advanced into the room and closed the door to keep in the fire’s heat. “I’ve brought your volume of Blake back, lest it find its way to some trunk or portmanteau of mine.”

She was doing it again, hinting at her departure, and all the conflicted emotion he’d felt contemplating his mail transferred itself to the lady in bare feet before him.

Long feet, with high arches and pink, fetching toes. Surely, composing odes to a widow’s feet indicated inchoate loss of reason?

“Shall you choose another volume? And what can you be thinking, my dear, to wander about unshod?” He hoped she was
home
, where such lapses were not a privilege but a right.

“I wasn’t thinking.” But she smiled, that same wan smile that he often saw her turn on Lucy. He suspected that smile signaled a lack of children in her life to love, which lack she ought to lay squarely on Greendale’s no doubt tidy grave. “A want of regular, rational processes is my besetting sin, according to my late spouse.”

“Whom you have the sense not to mourn overmuch. Come here by the fire, then, and be warm, despite your lack of forethought. I’ll choose another book for you.”

“Kind of you.” She advanced to the hearth and took a seat on the bricks. “You’ve had the fire going all day. The bricks are warm.”

“I want one room in the house where the constant chill in my bones must do battle with a decent fire. I know it’s summer, but…”

Before he could bluster his way into some ducally appropriate explanation, she stroked a hand over the bricks.

“The warmth helps,” she said. “Someone should make it a rule that spouses die only in spring, so the warmth of the summer is available in first mourning to provide the simplest comfort of all.”

And to think Greendale had tried repeatedly to call her stupid.

Christian brought her another volume of poetry. “An anthology, perfect for browsing at the end of the day.”

He sat on the hearth beside her uninvited, because he hadn’t wanted to give her a pretext for popping off to her widow’s bed. “Thank you for protecting me from Vicar and his wife. I’d forgotten he has four girls to fire off.”

“He was subtle about it, but a new roof for the nave must take precedence, I’m sure.” She hugged her robe more tightly around her, despite the fire hissing and popping softly behind them.

“Is the church in such bad shape as all that?” And shouldn’t Christian take Lucy—and the countess—to services some fine Sunday morning?

“I don’t know. When I visited here, Helene wasn’t inclined to attend services.”

“We neither of us were. I used to go occasionally, show the flag, admire a few babies. Vain of me, playing the duke.”

“And was your faith much help when you were captured?”

“No,” he said, the question taking him too much by surprise for him to make the proper polite noises. “Not in the sense you mean. The Old Testament, perhaps, where simple justice is endorsed, but certainly not that tripe about turning the other cheek and forgiving them, for they know not what they do. They knew damned good and well what they did, delighted in it.”

Though Girard had seemed sincerely regretful too, which Christian desperately wanted to attribute to malignant genius. And yet, an echo of the blond guard’s final apology—“I’m sorry for it… Girard is sorry for it, too”—rose up from memory. Did the devil apologize for his own wickedness?

“It’s frightening,” her ladyship said, hugging her knees, “to think such evil is truly walking among us, probably going to services, admiring babies, even as you once did.”

Did she regard her late spouse, fencing her away from the roses, denigrating her intelligence, as an exponent of such evil?

“I was morally asleep,” Christian said. “I wish to God I had remained in such a state of innocence.”

She turned her head, her cheek pillowed on her knees. “You don’t sleep well now, do you? I can find you down here most nights up until all hours. You ride out at first light, and you look…unrested.”

“You are in an observant mood tonight, my lady.”

Except she could always be counted upon to harpoon him with the occasional pithy observation, the periodic disconcerting question. He wasn’t sure he liked her for it, but he liked her for the courage it suggested.