Martha Schroeder Page 17

  The two ladies looked at him, speechless with embarrassment. “Very well. I will tell you what you think and why you are idiotic to think it. Annis, you believe that m’mother does not approve of you because of your lack of fortune and social standing.”

  Annis’s pale face flushed with angry color. “I am not ashamed of the fact that my father has been too busy helping others to make his own way in the world. And I am not sorry that my mother never asked her sisters to assist us to have a Season. Firing off her daughters so they could snare wealthy husbands was not what she approved of.” Her pale blue eyes flashed fire as her gaze locked on Gerald’s. “I can quite understand if you and your mother do not share these views. They are not ideas the world of the ton looks upon with favor. But I am proud to come from parents who believe in such things, and proud to share that belief!”

  There was silence for a moment after Annis finished speaking, and she stood erect and shining with purpose. Then Meg jumped to her feet and held out her arms. “Oh, Annis, that was wonderful! I am so proud of you!”

  But Annis wasn’t quite finished. “Sir Gerald, I am sensible of the honor you have done me in offering me your hand.”

  “And my heart, dearest, do not forget that. It is the most important part.” Gerald stood and took a step toward her, but she gestured for him to stay where he was.

  “However,” Annis continued, “I cannot marry into a family that views my proudest claims as detriments. I know that Lady Mattingly does not approve of your marrying me. And I must bow to that view. It would be very difficult for you to be caught between two women, Gerald, and I cannot make your life a misery to you.”

  Gerald smiled. “You could not do that. And I do believe that perhaps you have misjudged m’mother just a bit.” He looked down at his mother. “Has she not, Mama?” There was a hint of steel in his voice.

  Lady Mattingly looked around her, at a world she hardly recognized. Where was her devoted son? Could he be the stern-looking man whose eyes challenged her? And her good friend Lady Meg—surely the young woman who looked at her with sorrow and disappointment couldn’t be she? Lady Mattingly looked at Annis Fairchild, the young women she had once viewed as the perfect paid companion and then as a scheming gold digger. Now she saw a young woman of strength and principle.

  “I only wanted what was best for you, Gerald,” she said, her face suffused with an expression of puzzled shame. “I suppose mothers are not always the best judges of that. Especially when it comes to marriage.” She began to raise herself slowly out of her chair. Instantly both Gerald and Annis moved to her side.

  “I did not say what I did to distress you, Lady Mattingly,” Annis said, her soft voice carrying regret but no hint of apology. “I will not marry Gerald, but I did not want you to think that it was because I shared your sense of my unworthiness.”

  “My dear, I do not know how to begin to tell you how wrong I have been,” Lady Mattingly said. “When you spoke just now, I understood my folly. You are just the wife for Gerald. I hardly know how to—”

  “Please, sit down and let me get you some fresh tea,” Annis said.

  “Then I take it, Mama,” Gerald said, determined to stick to the point, “that you have withdrawn your objections, and will be happy to travel with me to Surrey for my nuptials?”

  Lady Mattingly had already rallied. “As I recall, my dear, you have yet to receive a favorable answer from your chosen bride.” She gave Annis a mischievous smile. “I would keep him dangling for at least another day, Miss Fairchild. He’s already thinking himself much too clever. I should depress his pretensions were I you. He can be annoyingly sure of himself.”

  “Mama!” Gerald said. “I must protest. First I am too wonderful for any woman in the kingdom, and now you are conspiring to have me live under the cat’s foot.”

  “You would do better to speak to Miss Fairchild. She holds your fate in her hands, not I.” There was a tinge of regret in Lady Mattingly’s words.

  “Yes, so I should.” Gerald held out his arm. “Miss Fairchild, if you would do me the honor of taking the air with me on the Sheridans’ very lovely veranda?”

  Smiling, Annis laid her hand on Gerald’s arm, and no one in the room doubted that the couple would return after a suitable interval, duly affianced and ready to accept the congratulations of their friends and family.

  * * * *

  Annis went off to Mattingly Place to have dinner, and James decided it must be an omen. He should woo his lady tonight, as Gerald had done. But a simple sailor could not possibly speak aloud of his feelings. James could feel his cravat shrink around his neck and his brain congeal at the idea. He would wait until later. When he was in bed with Meg, in the languorous afterglow of their lovemaking, men perhaps he could find the words he needed. In the meantime, he could enjoy sitting near her at dinner and watching the candlelight catch the gleam of gold and bronze in her hair.

  “You have not uttered a word in five minutes, James,” Meg said. “And you are looking most peculiar.”

  “Peculiar, my dear?” James tried to exert himself to think of something to say, something that would convince her that he was intelligent and witty. “What do you mean?”

  “I do not know. Peculiar. As if something were paining you.”

  Here he was, sunk in love, dying with it like a callow youth, and the object of his desire, his love, his adoration told him he looked as if he had indigestion! He couldn’t help it. He had to laugh. It was so quintessentially Meg-like to have brought his romantic fancies crashing to earth with a laugh.

  Meg looked at him impatiently, like a mother at a recalcitrant two-year-old. And that was what finally pushed him outside the barriers he had stayed safely behind for so long.

  “Oh, Meg,” he said almost without thinking, still laughing, “I do love you!”

  Meg’s fork crashed to her plate as she stared, dumbfounded, at her husband, James, laughing, saying something so stupendous as if it were the easiest thing in the world. / do like this pudding, Meg. I do hope Gerald and Annis will be happy, Meg. I do love you, Meg.

  “How dare you say it like that!” she raged, suddenly furious.

  “I am sorry,” James said, still smiling, clearly not one bit sorry. “It just popped out, like the cork out of a champagne bottle.” And he began to laugh again.

  Meg narrowed her eyes and strove to count to ten. At least he had said it. He must mean it, mustn’t he? Even though he was laughing like a fool? A small sense of resentment crept through her. Why couldn’t James ever be romantic? He was so handsome, he had only to smile at her in that special, intimate way to make her knees buckle. She loved how he made her feel when they made love—cherished and magical, as if she gave him something so incredibly wonderful that he couldn’t speak of it.

  All she had wanted, she told herself, was that he say he loved her. Then her happiness would be complete. Even if he never learned to tell the difference between corn and barley, and alphabetized everything in the house, she would be happy. If only he would say it.

  And now he had and she got no satisfaction out of it at all!

  Even if he meant it, it was obviously an everyday, laughable kind of love, not the fairy-tale variety she longed for. Right this minute, Gerald was probably filling Annis’s ears with all kinds of poetic nonsense about her hair and her eyes and his passionate love of both. But James was sitting at the table, laughing.

  “Just what is so funny about love?” she said, challenge in every syllable.

  “Nothing, of course. I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just that you are so—so—” He couldn’t think of a term she would not object to, Delightfully down-to-earth? Even he realized that was not romantic in the least. Wonderfully fanny? He’d already seen how unpopular that thought was.

  “I am so—so what, James?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion, daring him to laugh at her again.

  “So delightfully wonderful, my dear,” he said, hoping he’d found the right words at last.

  It seem
ed he had. Meg smiled at him. “Oh, James,” she said.

  That night, as he lay buried in his wife’s warm, welcoming body, James thought he had never in his life been as absolutely happy as he was at that moment. He not only thought so, he managed to tell Meg as well. And then he waited for her to respond.

  Meg heard the words and they filled her heart with a joy she had never known. She understood how much it had cost him to trust her enough to speak of his love. And she longed to return his words tenfold, to tell him how much she loved him, how happy he made her. Yet she could not. Guilt ate at her and kept her silent.

  James not only loved her, he trusted her, believed in her loyalty and honesty—values she had assured him she held sacred. But she had lied to him, at least by omission. She had written his sister without his knowledge, much less his consent. Her silence was due entirely to the fact that she knew full well he would never have agreed to establish contact with Claire. She had manipulated him in the way those women she despised did—cooing to their husbands and laughing with their female friends at how easily duped the foolish men were.

  Meg squirmed and James immediately left her and rolled to his side. “I’m too heavy for you, but you feel so good,” he murmured. “Good night, my dear. I do love you, my dear.”

  Overcome with remorse, Meg hugged him convulsively. “Oh, James,” she said, “I am so sorry.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  At just before seven o’clock the next morning, James sat at the breakfast table, ignoring his toast and tea. Meadows thought the captain looked a mite peaked this morning. Usually he came downstairs with a spring in his step and a light in his eye. Meadows hadn’t been married for twenty-seven years without knowing what that meant. Both he and Mrs. Meadows had been heartened by that look. They’d been more than a little leery when the captain and Miss Meggie had married so quickly. But that was Miss Meggie all over—leap first and look afterward, that was always her way. But it had all seemed to work out, and both the Meadows had heaved a sigh of relief.

  Until this morning. Now here was the captain, staring off into space, looking as if he’d just lost his last friend. Meadows was worried. What would they see when Miss Meggie came down?

  James was unaware that Meadows was in the room. His newfound confidence had evaporated last night. “I’m so sorry.” He knew now exactly what people meant when they spoke of their hearts breaking. His had simply shattered, like hot glass too quickly chilled. It lay now in painful shards in his chest.

  “I’m so sorry, James.” So sorry I can’t love you, you hopeless fool. So sorry you’ll never be what I want. So sorry my children will have to have a worthless bastard for a father.

  So sorry.

  Well, there was always work. That was what had sustained him before. Being sent away from Kettering had hurt, but the hard, backbreaking, mind-bending work of a midshipman had sustained him, given him something physical to exhaust him, something challenging to absorb his thoughts. And after a while, the pain of leaving a home that had never truly been a home faded to insignificance. So today he would ride out and talk to Old George, a tenant who had been at Hedgemere all of his seventy years. Old George knew more about the land than even Meg’s books, which James had been poring over. And he could tell you what he knew. Illiterate, George was nevertheless a born teacher and had taught Meg when she was young. Yes, he’d ride over to Old George’s son’s house and sit and talk to the old man for an hour or so.

  James threw his napkin on the table and was preparing to rise when the knocker sounded at the front door. Meadows hurried through the dining room on his way to answer it.

  “Who in God’s name is coming calling at this hour?” James growled.

  “I am sure I do not know, Captain,” the butler answered.

  James glowered into his tea. He couldn’t hear what was being said at the front door, which annoyed him. He liked to be prepared for what he had to face. But the low murmur of voices told him nothing.

  At last Meadows came in, his manner apologetic as he said, “There’s a young person who wishes to see Lady Margaret, Captain. Won’t give her name. Says she isn’t expected. Says she’ll wait outside. Would you care to speak to her, perhaps, sir?”

  How very odd. The “young person” must be of the Quality or Meadows would have sent her to the servants’ entrance forthwith. A prickle of interest teased James’s brain. Something to think about besides Meg’s being sorry. “Yes, Meadows. Show her into the library.”

  But he had hardly had time to get to his feet when a familiar voice said, “Jamie! Is that you, Jamie?” And a slender young woman with golden hair much like his came running into the room, straight at him. “It is! Oh, James, thank God she wrote me.”

  For the first time since he’d actually seen Admiral Lord Nelson himself in the flesh, James was struck into immobility. Then his arms closed tightly around his visitor.

  “Claire,” he said. “Oh, Claire!”

  For a moment, he just stood and held her. She still sounded like his little sister, still looked like the young girl he had sent away in Naples. And the affection shining from her deep blue eyes was like balm to his wounded soul. His sister, his friend, his childhood companion. All the old emotions, walled off and unacknowledged since he had left for the navy, came rushing over him and swamped him for a long moment. Then he pulled away, his eyes narrowed.

  She was so thin, she seemed almost transparent, and her clothes were not what he would expect of the daughter and sister of the eighth and ninth Dukes of Kettering. They were not in the first style of elegance. He looked deep into her eyes and saw shadows.

  “Claire! Why in the world have you come? How did you know where I—” He broke off.

  “Just what did my wife write and tell you? That I was being ostracized by the neighbors and needed you to lend me consequence? That evidence that someone from my family spoke to me would help her hold her head up among her friends?”

  His moment of euphoria was over. Meg had meddled again, enticing his sister, with who knew what harebrained tale, to set forth alone and travel all this way to see him. He felt the familiar bars of his interior prison close around him, separating him from other people, isolating him with his anger and pride.

  Claire’s eyes darkened, the way he remembered they did when she’d been hurt. “No, Jamie, she wrote only that you and she had married and you had spoken of me, and she wanted to tell me that you were well and thought of me often. That is all, truly.” She reached out to touch his face. “Oh, Jamie, it meant so much to know you had found a home and a wife. That you were happy! That is so wonderful!”

  Despite her thinness and shabby clothes, she was his Claire, her vivid face as expressive as ever, her eyes as bright, although shadowed. He could not prevent himself from smiling down at her. “Always my well-wisher and champion.”

  Meadows cleared his throat and James looked up, startled out of his reverie. “I was thinking, Captain, mayhap the young lady would like some breakfast.”

  “The young lady is my half-sister, Lady Claire Devereaux, Meadows.”

  The butler bowed and smiled. “Welcome, your ladyship. May I fetch you some breakfast?”

  Claire smiled, and it caused the same miraculous transformation in her face that it did in her half-brother’s. “Oh, thank you! Yes, I would love something to eat if it isn’t too much trouble. I forgot to eat dinner last night, and this morning I was in such a hurry I never thought of food.” She laughed, a little self-consciously.

  “Of course. I will bring it right up.” Meadows smiled kindly at her and hurried off.

  “May I sit down, Jamie?” she asked, still smiling.

  “You shouldn’t have come.” His deep voice was shadowed with concern. “Why did you? Does Reggie know where you are?”

  Her lips tightened, and sensitive as always to her moods, James knew she was angry. “Oh, yes, indeed,” she said. “I left him a note.” She unbuttoned her traveling pelisse of gray twill and looked around. “If I
could just wash my hands, Jamie. I’ve been traveling for what seems like weeks.”

  “Didn’t you stop at the inn at the crossroads to freshen up and hire a gig?” he asked.

  “No, I walked from there, if that’s where the stage stops,” she said.

  “The stage! You took the stage all by yourself! What were you thinking of, Claire? What was Reggie thinking of to let you go?” He was horrified. His little sister, traveling all night and day with God alone knew who.

  “I’ll tell you everything once I have washed the travel dust off myself and had a bite of breakfast.” Once again he saw the Claire of his youth in her mischievous smile. “I do not think I can face your disapproval on an empty stomach.”

  “Nor should you have to.” Meg walked into the room, a smile on her face and her chin tilted in that familiar way that James had come to recognize as her signal that she was not going to give an inch. She would go down, if she had to, with all flags flying, as always.

  She stretched out her hands to greet her sister-in-law. “Claire! I would have known you anywhere as James’s sister. Are all of you so good-looking? It isn’t fair! I had hoped for a visit, but for you to come so soon is an unexpected pleasure! But as you said, you need to refresh yourself before we hear of your journey.” Meg put her arm around Claire and led her from the room without a backward glance.

  James sat down hard. His emotions were in such turmoil that he hardly knew what he felt. Anger at Meg. That he recognized. That was an old friend. But this time it was mixed with a sense of sorrow and loss such as he had not felt for years. He was thrown back to the age of twelve. That was the last time he could remember feeling so hurt and so angry all at once. And mixed with it all, he felt love. Just as he had as a boy, leaving Kettering.

  He understood the feeling now for the first time. That ache, buried soul-deep beneath the anger and the sorrow, was love. He had felt it then, despite all the ostracism and the indifference. He had loved Kettering, and he had loved his father, although not for anything the duke had done after taking him in. James had scarcely seen him. But the duke was his father and had rescued him. He had cared enough for his bastard son to take him into his home and risk the wrath of his wife.