Without a Summer (14 page)
Some minutes passed, in which Vincent stared at the ceiling, working his jaw in thought. At last, he rose and paced around the room with his fingers knit together behind his neck, pulling his head down. He stopped by one of the windows lining the top floor and stared out at the dark beyond. “So. What do we know? Mr. O’Brien appears to want to march on Parliament. He seems to know my father. They met, and then Mr. O’Brien changed the design.”
“It could be used to … one could have meetings without fear of being overheard.”
Vincent sighed heavily and drew his finger across the condensation on the window. “The difficulty I face is that it would not be unlike my father to use our own fears against us. In fact, nothing untoward may be happening. But he can twist innocence … oh, can he.”
“But why?”
“It could be related to the ‘commission’ he wanted us for. Or it could be spite. It is impossible to guess without knowing who his object is. Us? Lord Stratton? Someone else entirely? Certainly, he has no scarcity of enemies.” Vincent scrubbed his face again with both hands and held his temples. “Jane?”
“Yes, my love?”
He wheeled around to face her, dropping his hands to his side. “Miss de Clare was—she was a prostitute. Is. She is a prostitute.”
“I—I … she was, I mean, you … you frequented her establishment?” If Jane’s voice, after the initial struggle, was creditably steady, her nerves were anything but.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Four years.” He took a half step closer and checked himself. Standing by the window, Vincent clenched and unclenched his fists. “May I explain?”
Jane lifted her paintbrush and dipped it into the water, stirring to clean it of paint. The water splashed up the sides of her cup, almost spilling out the top. She cleared her throat. Inside her head, the thoughts were so foreign that she could not find words even to express herself. She had no understanding of her own feelings. He wanted to explain. Good. Did she want to know? Hand shaking, she lifted the brush out of the water and laid it on the table. Starting and dismissing four or five sentences, Jane finally settled on, “Do you think an explanation would be productive?”
“I was sixteen. My father took me to her for my birthday. Years later, I realised that he had thought I was effeminate. Because of the glamour. At the time … he was generous so rarely. I thought—I believed him when he said the trip was a gift.”
“And afterwards?”
“She was kind to me.” He looked at the floor, digging his thumbnail into the side of his finger. “I know that she was paid to be, but … but because of that, I was sure of her. She was safe, at a time when I very much needed a place to feel safe.”
Jane caught the next words before she spoke them. She did not ask Vincent whether he would feel safer with
her
if he paid her. “This is why he wanted me to ask.”
Vincent nodded. He held his lower lip between his teeth, still staring at the floor.
It was a mark of cruelty. Jane could look at the marks of manipulation that Lord Verbury had employed. She could recognise them for what they were. And yet that did little to ease her disquiet. She was not so naive as to be unaware of the tendencies of young noblemen. It should not shock her that Vincent had been with a woman before they wed. Nevertheless, it did. Regardless of how her mind might wish her to behave, the mores she had been raised with left her chilled. But she possessed, she hoped, more quickness than Lord Verbury gave her credit for. Marshalling her resources, Jane straightened her back and faced her husband directly. “Thank you for telling me.”
He peeked at her, without lifting his head. “It is in a part of my life I would rather were forgotten.”
“Undoubtedly.” Jane stood, smoothing out her gown. “I am going down to dress for dinner.”
“Do you—do you need help?”
“Not tonight, thank you.” She bit her lip and looked toward the stairs.
“Jane, I—” He stopped and sighed. “Of course. I will be down later.”
“Thank you.” Jane went downstairs alone.
Though Jane had no wish to allow Lord Verbury to control her actions, she was all too conscious when alone with Vincent. A part of her wanted to ask him to tell her everything so that, knowing, she could stop imagining. Another part wished that she could undo the knowledge. She thought of this before dinner and during dinner. After dinner, she simply pretended the conversation had not happened. Remembering how she had behaved on days before she had known of Miss de Clare, Jane attempted to act the part. She told herself that it was for Melody’s sake. Her sister should not be a party to this.
In truth, she was not so considerate. It was to maintain her own reason that she avoided the topic so scrupulously.
She could not continue to ignore it when it came time for bed.
Vincent stood by the door on the other side of their bedchamber as if set to quit the room. His coat, which he usually shed the moment he was through the door, remained on his shoulders. “Do you want me to sleep elsewhere?”
“No.” Jane lifted her dressing gown, which had been laid out to warm by the fire. “Mrs. Brackett would ask questions.”
“Well, we would not want that, would we?” Vincent tugged his cravat free and tossed it on a chair.
“I am trying.” Jane stopped and wrapped her fingers in her dressing gown. “I am trying to have a measured response, but you cannot expect me to have none.”
He rested his hands on the back of the chair and braced himself there. “No.” Blowing out a breath that was not quite a laugh, he bent his head lower. “I have figured out why he mentioned her. During dinner. I could think of nothing else.”
There was no doubt about which He or which Her Vincent meant. “To drive me away. He thinks to punish you for refusing him.”
He lifted his head sharply and stared at her with earnest longing. “If you understand—”
“Understanding his goal does not make the blow to my sensibilities any less. It only allows me to govern it until I master my emotions again.” She set down the dressing gown again, arranging the sleeves so that they hung straight. “I also thought on it through dinner. I expect I will think on it through the night and tomorrow and … I am trying.”
Vincent wiped his mouth, nodding. He straightened, with a face that presented a controlled tranquillity. He shrugged his coat off and hung it over the back of the chair, avoiding her gaze.
Jane pulled at the ties on her gown. Lord Verbury had done this to his son with a coldness that repulsed her. Her every action to keep Vincent at a distance only assisted a man whom she abhorred. Vincent was her husband.
To be more specific, Sir David Vincent was her husband. Whatever had happened with Miss de Clare happened when he was the Honourable Mr. Vincent Hamilton. She began to understand more fully why he kept the boundary between his two selves so inviolable. Wetting her lips, she lifted a hand to the tie at the back of her gown. “Vincent? Can you help me with this knot?”
He met her gaze, all motion arrested. He nodded. The only sound in the room was the fire crackling and the rough edge of his breath.
She stood with her back to the fire and waited as he crossed the room. His fingers, usually so sure, fumbled with the sash at her waist. Jane trembled as his warm breath brushed her neck. An answer occurred to her then, to a question that it had never occurred to her to ask during the course of their marriage.
She now knew how Vincent had come to be so certain with undoing the ties and laces of feminine clothes. Jane wished she did not know, that she did not have the answers to a thousand other unasked questions pouring into her mind. But she held still and let him help her prepare for bed. He needed that regularity. No matter how Jane might beat against the walls of her mind in denial, she would not allow Lord Verbury to hurt her husband again, and certainly not through her offices.
* * *
Let us not pretend
that the passage of a single night restored the Vincents to their prior state. Lord Verbury had laid a seed of doubt in both of their hearts, but neither had any intention of giving him the satisfaction of succeeding. What his actions accomplished, however, was that Jane became all the more determined to understand what Lord Verbury was about.
When she should have been attending to stitches of glamour that composed the texture of feathers, she was thinking of how to approach him. When she should have been thinking of the play of light across the limb of a tree, her thoughts turned instead to Mr. O’Brien’s character. If she only knew whether he were an ally of Lord Verbury or a dupe, she would rest easier.
Jane pulled too hard on the fold she was managing and stretched out the arrangement of threads on either side of it. The sunbeam she was rendering warped, snarled on the tree branch, and drew it into a grotesque parody. If the tree were swollen and purple with infection, then it would look more natural than this error.
There was little to do but to tear the folds out. Jane fumed and chafed under her breath as she did so. Then another thread sprang loose of its binding. With a flash of colour like a prism dropping through sunlight, the glamour shivered into a rainbow. Jane tried to catch it before it vanished back into the ether, but succeeded only in knocking the thread away from her. The trailing end of it caught the folds of glamour that created one of the illusory trees adorning the ballroom, and caused the skein that made up the rough outer layer of the bark to fray and dissipate. Jane bit back a cry of dismay as the detail on the tree dissolved, leaving only a raw outline of the trunk.
“What is—? Oh.” Vincent saw the offending strands and scowled at the work to be repeated. A moment later, he conquered his expression and said only, “That is unfortunate.”
“I should have been paying more attention.” Jane let the strands dissolve back into the ether.
“I must—I will own to being somewhat distracted today, as well.” Vincent tied off the fold he held. It circled into a coppice of maple trees he had been creating in the corner.
“Well, you have not spoiled your work.”
“This is the third time I have rendered that tree.”
Jane snorted and peered into the ether. She pulled apart the strands she had misplaced to see them better. “I think I will have to pull these out as well.”
Vincent rolled his head, stretching his neck with an audible pop. “Shall we end early, then?” At her look of surprise, he held out his hands in defence. “If I am wrong, say so, but I thought that … a change might do us both some good?”
Undoubtedly, he was correct. She was accustomed to using glamour as an escape. Today, it was too closely tied to the business at hand to offer the relief that she sought. “What did you have in mind?”
Vincent scrubbed his hair, thinking. “Astley’s Circus?”
Jane had absolutely no desire to see a circus. Watching riders do horse tricks had as much appeal as listening to a recital of Fordyce’s
Sermons to Young Women
. However … however, Vincent had suggested it, and she was fighting with her own sensibility to keep him from feeling rejected by her distance. “That sounds as though it might be interesting.”
“Good.” He took one last look at the tree he was working on and said again, “Good.”
Jane wiped her hands off on her apron and joined him in preparing for departure. It took very little time to tidy their working place, blowing out candles and repacking her basket.
Vincent helped her don her pelisse and then they left the ballroom to head outside. As they stepped out the front door, a gust of wind caught them, pushing Jane against Vincent. He steadied her with a hand at her waist, then released her, as though she were a mere acquaintance that he might offend with familiarity. She claimed his arm and secured herself with a hand around his elbow.
As they descended the stairs, Jane caught sight of Mr. O’Brien halfway down the street and walking rapidly away from them. “Where do you think he is off to?”
“I cannot imagine.”
Jane chewed the inside of her cheek. “I find that I should like to know.”
“You think he will meet with my father again? Jane, I must point out that there are many more reasons than that to step out. He might be going to his club, or just out for a stroll.”
“Then it will do no harm if I were to follow him.”
Vincent’s mouth hung open for a moment. “Oh, no. This is not a good plan.”
“It can do no harm simply to follow.” She turned their steps in the direction of Mr. O’Brien. “If you are not comfortable, I shall go on my own.”
“And if he were to see you?”
“In this crowd? Hardly likely.” She paused to look up at him. “You, however … with your height, you are more conspicuous than I.”
He frowned at her, even as they walked together down the street. “In spite of my previous statement, you cannot think that I would let you go alone.”
Jane patted his hand. “No. But I think it might be best. You are right that we might be spotted.”
“To what end? What possible good can come of following him?” Vincent guided her around a carter delivering a grandfather clock. “So you know where he is bound. Then what?” He did have a valid point, but she noticed that he did not slow his pace, nor lose sight of Mr. O’Brien.
“Then I would at least have some peace of mind. And if his destination implicates him in any way, then I know to keep Melody from him.” Jane disengaged her hand from his arm, becoming more determined the longer they talked. What had been a whim became something that she felt she must do, though she knew it was not entirely rational. “Please, love.”
“I like this not at all.” Vincent shoved his hands into his coat pockets. Even through the noise of the foot traffic and carriages, she could hear the small slow whine of his breath escaping. “I will follow on the other side of the street, back some distance. No. No, do not ask me to go home. If you are correct and something criminal is afoot, then I can by no means simply … I will follow you, following him.”
