A Gentleman Undone (25 page)

She stopped. She would have sworn no one but herself would be up and out at this hour, let alone so far afield.

He stood with his back to her, hatless, one side of his unbuttoned greatcoat furled out on the wind. He faced east. Toward the sea. Toward Belgium and Waterloo, if you kept going. It could have been any tall, dark-haired man at this distance, but it wasn’t. She knew.

How impossibly far away he looked. Lonesome and unreachable, not even bothering to shelter from the wind as he gazed out into something she couldn’t see. He’d arrived late yesterday afternoon with the viscount and her heart had somersaulted to earth like a fledgling bird pushed from the nest too soon.

Not her heart. Something else. A few of those balled-up remnants of anger that lived in that space now, no doubt.

A stronger wind kicked up. Her cloak slipped her grasp and flew out sideways in imitation of his coat. He turned.

If he felt any surprise at the sight of her, it didn’t show from this distance. He only considered her, as though she were but one more feature of the landscape he’d been studying. Then he lifted one hand and mimed tipping a hat.

She’d gone out hatless too, in spite of the clouds that threatened more rain. They made quaint mirror images,
both of them underequipped for the weather, their coats whipping out to the south.

They hadn’t spoken in eleven days. She gathered her cloak round her again, and went to him.

“You can smell the ocean here,” he said when she reached him. No greeting. He pivoted again so they stood side by side, both looking eastward to where the sloping green met a curtain of mist.

“It’s not far. In pleasant weather it makes a fine excursion.” Did that sound frivolous, to a man who’d crossed the Channel to fight in a war?

He didn’t say so. After a moment he angled his head. “Are you not going to church with the others?”

A rush of laughter threatened. “No, Mr. Blackshear.” She folded her arms tight across the lapped edges of her cloak. “A harlot is still a harlot on Sundays.”

“Other ladies are going, I’m sure. And the gentlemen who keep them.” He kept his eyes on what could be seen of the horizon.

“That’s their affair. I take it you won’t be among them.”

He shook his head. “I’m less fit for it than you.”

“How do you say so? You’re the most upright man of this whole company.”

“Forgive me for hearing that as faint praise.” A smile caught at his mouth. He didn’t turn to share it with her, and in another second the wind chased it away. “A murderer is still a murderer on Sundays.” With careful precision he formed the words. “I believe my sin would trump yours if we came to reckoning up our hands.”

“Murder! Do you refer to what you did in the war?” One heard of it sometimes, soldiers who never came to terms with taking lives. The reasoning wasn’t entirely without logic. Young Frenchmen left grieving mothers and sisters too.

“I do.” His jaws moved just enough to let those syllables
out. He continued to stare into the distance, but she could feel him waiting for her response.

They were speaking again. By some miracle of the Essex air, they were finding a way to leave every difficult thing behind and just converse.

And she knew what response to make. “You did your duty. You preserved your life and the liberty of England, and I doubt you took any pleasure in killing.”

“No pleasure at all.” One shoulder flicked, as though he were shaking off a memory.

“There is the difference between us.” She set her feet to face him. “Repentance. I contend you’d be more welcome than I in any church.”

His head turned and he looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read. And all at once there was something she needed to say.

“Will, I’m sorry. For that night at Oldfield’s,” she added when his look went quizzical.

“Don’t.” He shook his head, a tight, minimal motion, and his eyes stayed fast to hers. “I’m the one who began it.”

“I’m sorry for how I responded, I mean. For my lack of understanding. I fear wounded vanity got the best of me.” That wasn’t the whole truth. He’d pierced other things besides her pride. But it was truth enough for this moment.

He dropped his glance to the ground between them, and his voice dropped likewise. “You have ample reason to be vain, where I am concerned. But surely you remarked that for yourself.”

A fresh gust of wind drove her cloak against the back of her legs and carried her wet hem into contact with his boots. His coat billowed out behind him.

“You know I’d like to be your lover.” He spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the flapping of their garments. “I have been, in my dreams, more than once.”

“But you can’t. I know.” Her voice sank to match his.

“But I
won’t
.” He raised his eyes again. The wind was blowing full into his face but he didn’t turn aside. “I want to be something different to you. I want to be someone …” His eyes cut past her to some horizon where the rest of his thought must lie. “Someone you can trust. Not only at cards.”

Now she was the one to look away, down to where the edge of her windblown skirt still lingered about his boots like an emissary for the rest of her, a scout demonstrating how easily the gap between them might be bridged. “Don’t hope for that.” She dug her fingers into the folds of her cloak. “It’s not something I can give.”

He nodded once, still gazing past her. His shoulders rose and fell with a great breath, and she knew beyond any doubt that he was letting go of a hope that had meant much to him. The middle of her chest burned, painfully, as her limbs would if she’d come in from freezing weather to sit too near a fire.

A lock of her hair escaped its pin and rode out on the wind, one more insubordinate part of her reaching for him. She put up a hand to tuck it back, but his hand got there first.

Carefully, he set the lock behind her ear, smoothing it in a futile attempt to resist the wind. His solemn eyes traveled from her hair to her face. “You ought to go back to the house. Your hem is soaked and you haven’t any hat.”

He hadn’t asked why she couldn’t trust him. He’d accepted her edict so readily, with such resignation, as though there were really nothing extraordinary in her saying so.

And suddenly she needed him to know. “Will you walk with me?” Her hand closed over his and the lock of hair whipped free again. “I have a story I’d like to tell.”

Swift comprehension kindled in his eyes. He bowed, and slipped his hand free to offer her his elbow.

She shook her head. Proximity would make some parts of this too difficult to voice. She caught up her skirts and started down the hill, and he fell in beside her.

“This isn’t a story I’ve told before. It’s sordid, I’ll warn you now. But it will help explain why I don’t have it in me to trust you.”

“You needn’t explain. I’m not expecting—”

“Mr. Blackshear.” Her pulse was pounding in her ears. “I’ve resolved to tell you this. Do not give me the smallest opportunity to turn coward and run from that resolve.”

He inclined his head. She saw it sidelong. His hands went deep in his greatcoat pockets and he walked on, waiting for her to speak.

One big breath. “In short, I trusted a gentleman once and paid a steep price. My subsequent experiences with gentlemen have been …” But he could guess what those experiences had been. “I suppose trust is like a muscle that wastes away for lack of use.”

No answer for a minute besides the woolen rustle of his clothing and the squeak of his boot heels on the wet grass. “Did he seduce you, the man you trusted?” he then said.

“No more than I seduced him.” To put all the blame on Arthur’s side would put all the mastery there as well. It hadn’t been like that. “We were in love, I suppose. He was a neighbor, of family somewhat better than mine, though somewhat less well off.”

“He hadn’t the liberty to marry for love.”

“He said he would make his own liberty. I think he believed he would. At all events we entered into a secret engagement, but his promises—but his love, I suppose—proved insufficiently stalwart in the face of his parents’ disapproval.”

One sideways glance at his dark undissembling eyes told her exactly what impression he’d formed of Arthur. He was all but biting his tongue to keep from voicing it.

The ground sloped upward again and she pushed her stride longer. She would go over the next part quickly, lightly, like one of those insects who skated across water without ever breaking the surface to drown. “When I discovered myself to be in a difficult condition I wrote to him and received my letter back, its seal unbroken. I’ve heard reports he married a lady with thirty thousand pounds.”

“Wait.” He sounded half strangled. He’d halted ten feet back and he stood there now, downhill from her, face tilted to stare as he might at some grisly apparition. “I thought you couldn’t …” He was blushing. She would concentrate on that novelty, that she might not linger on other thoughts.

Her hands let go her cloak edges and her arms fell straight at her sides. Facts, plain and unadorned, one after the next. That was the way to get through this. “I was with child for several months. Then I bled, and I had a fever, and I nearly died. And since then I’ve never conceived again, nor even …” Of a sudden she needed to take a breath. She twisted so as not to face him, and sucked in chilly air. “It’s made me convenient, you know. At the brothel I could entertain men every day of every month, and there was no risk I would ever …” But that was obvious. She didn’t need to say it. “I don’t delude myself Mr. Roanoke would ever have engaged me without that advantage. I wonder if we might start walking again.”

Two or three forceful strides brought him up the slope and he fell in at her side. “Did he know? Your young man?” He sounded ready to slap a glove in Arthur’s face. “Did he hear of your illness?”

“I assume so. I think most of the neighborhood did.”
She’d begun this story too soon, she could now see. They had a long walk ahead of them and he might wish to fill it with such questions. “He didn’t come beg my forgiveness on bended knee, if that’s where your questions tend. By then I didn’t hope for it. I ceased to love him with remarkable speed.”

He didn’t answer at first. In the lull she heard the steady march of his Hessians, felt the way he weighed what she’d told him. “Were your parents still living then?”

“Indeed.” Abruptly she stooped to pluck a sodden wildflower from out of the grass. Maybe she wouldn’t say any more than that. Or no, she might say just a bit. “No one would have blamed them if they’d turned me out of the house. But they never did, though I know I shamed them terribly.” She tore a petal from the flower and threw it away.

“That must have made the loss of them doubly difficult.” He spoke like a doctor, tranquil and reassuring as he prodded at her broken places. Her broken places hurt like fire all the same.

“It should have been difficult in any case. No other family would take me in, and the cousin who inherited claimed that my portion had all been spent on doctor’s bills. I was penniless and disconsolate. You can see, I trust, how such a woman ends in an establishment like Mrs. Parrish’s.” She let the flower fall. “I believe that concludes my tale. I’d be obliged if you didn’t repeat any of it to others.”

“Of course. You honor me with your confidence.”

He must know without her saying so that she’d left herself raw from unburdening, because he didn’t ask any more questions. What a singular man he was, too principled for careless pleasure in a gaming-hell hallway, but drawing her into such delicate intimacy as no lady in Camden Town could possibly approve, if she knew of it.

Maybe it’s not what you think. His understanding with that lady
. Maybe it was some bargain of convenience that left both free to love elsewhere. Maybe it was … some poor but respectable aunt for whom he’d taken responsibility.

Nothing to the purpose. He would not be her lover. How many times did he have to say so, for her to grasp the fact?

They parted ways at some distance from the house, for discretion’s sake. And when she crawled into bed a short time later, finally free of her damp gown and stockings, her thoughts did not dwell on the things she’d told him or other maudlin details of her past. Neither did she indulge in recollections of his graceful, tactful attention. Instead she fell asleep on a memory of the picture he’d made when she’d come upon him, poised on that ridge with his coat carried by the wind, a desolate figure looking out toward the vast indiscernible sea.

B
Y THE
time he took up a place along the wall in the billiard room that night, he thought he might really run mad. Not one word had he exchanged with Lydia since they’d come to the end of their walk. She’d spent the day in Roanoke’s room, or in retirement with the other ladies, or too far away from him at the dinner and supper tables. While he’d spent the day seething with the wrath he’d swallowed when she’d told him her story, not one bit of it given voice because he’d known she wouldn’t welcome that.

Lord above, what the world did to people. What people did to each other. He should like to hunt down that spineless cad who’d abandoned her and thrash him within an inch of his life. And then he’d find every swiving bastard who’d despoiled her, who’d reduced her to a
convenient barren womb, and he’d darken their daylights, one by one.

Will flexed his fingers, fitting his hands together and stretching his arms before him, palms out. One swiving bastard, at least, was within reach. Roanoke held court at one of the room’s two tables, hitting hazard after cannon after hazard with an irksome unnecessary flourish, and also an irksome degree of skill. He wouldn’t look near so smug with half his teeth knocked out.

But what good would that do her? Prince Square-jaw was but a minor pestilence in a life of relentless calamity. Even if he should be brought to repent, and apologize for how he’d misprized her, and perhaps even settle some amount of money on her as would guarantee her independence, so many wrongs would remain unrighted. Every man who’d ever touched her could make recompense and it would not bring back her parents, or her brother, or the possibility of motherhood, or the hope and faith with which she must once have approached her life.