A Much Compromised Lady (26 page)

Her mother seemed to think little enough of
it. “Clumsy
Gadje
,” their mother said, as if she had known
about them all the time. “But what of your story? I’ve only heard
that I must come to meet up with the new Lord Nevin. What is
this?”

Glynis and Christo took turns telling, and by
the time they finished, the day was already fading and Glynis could
think only of her growling stomach.

They found that the hotel served meals in a
room downstairs, and Glynis regarded the hotel staff’s warm welcome
with uneasiness until it became clear that St. Albans had
charmed—and had most likely paid—for the best service possible.

When food began to arrive, she forgot
everything else.

They dined like royalty in a private room,
with endless wine and laughter and stories and delicacies so rich
that Glynis stuffed herself.

Afterwards, Christo had to tell the whole
story again to their mother, but Glynis fell silent as he talked.
She kept looking from the doorway to the ticking clock on the
mantle.

Why had he not come?

Christo pulled her attention away from her
waiting. He insisted she add her own parts of the story again, and
so she did.

It was not until late at night that Glynis
had time alone with her mother. They sat in Glynis’s room again,
near the open window. Glynis lay her head on her mother’s lap.
Christo had gone out to meet their cousin, and to talk with him of
the legalities that must begin.

“Everything changes tomorrow, does it not?”
Glynis said, as her mother stroked her hair.

“Everything always changes. Ah, but this city
smells of smoke and horses. How do these
Gadje
stand
it?”

Glynis smiled. “It is not so bad at Winters
House. St. Albans has a garden there, at the back, and roses that
the servants bring inside every day.”

“Does he? Tell me about his house.”

Glynis did, describing its elegance, and poor
Gascoyne, who had to jump to perform St. Albans’s ever whim.

Anne listened to her daughter talk. She heard
far more than was said, but she only listened, and stroked her
daughter’s hair. At last, she said, “I think you will like living
in London.”

Glynis straightened. “You will, too.”

Anne shook her head and smiled. “I told Bado
I would be back by midsummer’s eve. We are going to travel north
for a time. And perhaps marry.”

“Marry? But I thought...but...well, what of
father?”

Anne chuckled and took her daughters face in
her hands. Such a beautiful face, she thought, even thought she
could see it only with her fingers. It was time, at last. Time for
her to find her own path, however difficult it was to walk.

Cradling her daughter’s face, she said, “Your
father’s love was the most precious gift. And his loss broke my
heart. But hearts mend—eventually. If you allow them time. And you
should always think long and hard before you turn away from any
love—it will open parts of you, sometimes painfully. But, ah, it
makes life so much richer. It is like sleeping under a million
stars, like turning your face up to the first rain of spring, like
dancing in dawn mists. And I would be a silly woman if I were to
turn away from what Bado offers to me. He knew I had to wait for
you and Christo to be grown, to be set upon your path. And so he
waited. That is how much he cares. Now that you are started right,
it is time for me to go on with my life.”

“But you cannot want to keep traveling.”

“I cannot? But that is all I have ever
wanted. Your father knew that, and he chose to come with me rather
than to lose me to the road. You and Christo are like him. You need
a place with roots. You have always needed that, and I had to make
certain you would have all you need.”

Tears stung Glynis’s eyes. Her throat
tightened. She buried her face in her mother’s lap. Ah, but
everything was changing too fast, too much again.

“You won’t leave yet. Not yet.”

Her mother stroked her hair. “No. Not yet.
Not yet. But soon, my daughter.”

* * *

The next two weeks became endless papers, and
meetings with solicitors, and trips with their cousin, Bryn.

At his request, they moved from the hotel to
Nevin House. He wore black in respect for his father, but he
refused to decorate the house for morning, and he had the funeral
held privately at Dawes Manor in the countryside.

Glynis was glad of that, and she only wished
she could do something in return for her cousin, for she noticed
how silent he fell at times. And then he would talk too much to
make up for it, and she could almost wish him melancholy again.

In truth, the real work fell on Christo, who
had to sign everything, and who had to bear with skeptical
questions and disdainful glances and begrudging acknowledgement of
his rights. Even dead, Francis Dawes carried influence, and without
their cousin’s assistance everything to gain their rightful places
would have taken months or years. But at last, it seemed, all those
who must be satisfied were convinced of the truth; the courts began
to take action, although the solicitor warned it would be months
before Christo would be called by Parliament to claim his seat and
title.

All this time, he never came to her.

Ah, what was that
gaujo
earl’s doing?
What plan of his was this to leave her too much to herself and to a
London without him?

She watched for him. The sound of a carriage
rattling past drew her to the window. In the evening, she sat with
a book open on her lap and listened for the front knocker. She
almost asked Christo to take her to the opera, or the theater, but
feared she might see him with another woman.

Her mother caught her looking out the window
one day, at a coach halted opposite Nevin House. Glynis dropped the
curtain at once, with the uneasy feeling her mother glimpsed more
than a woman with sight could ever see.

With a cane to feel her way, her mother came
into the room. “Waiting is the hardest thing we learn.”

“Oh, I am not waiting. I simply
thought...well, yes, I am waiting. Oh,
Dej
, what am I doing?
When he wanted me, I wanted nothing to do with him, and now I ache
just to glimpse him. Just to hear his voice. Only I should
not.”

“Why should you not?”

Glynis sighed. “Because he does not want what
I want. He wants me for a short time—for only until he tires of me
and finds the next thing he cannot have. Because once he has me it
will be over between us. Because I am respectable now, and there is
no place in his world for such a thing, even if he wanted me there,
and because...oh, because I am in love with this devil of a
gaujo
, and what am I to do?”

Her mother found a chair, sat, and said,
“Come here.”

Glynis obeyed, coming up to her mother. The
old woman took Glynis’s hand and put it on her chest, where Glynis
could feel the steady rhythm of her mother’s heart.

“How do you think you and Christo achieved
what you did—finding those papers, and your place in the world.
With luck? No, it was with this—with your hearts. God never gives
you a desire without giving you the means to achieve it. You have
to believe that. You have to follow this beating in your heart, and
you have to follow your dreams even if they take you on
uncomfortable journeys. It is such an empty road without them.”

Glynis glanced down at her mother. Ah, but
she wanted to believe. She wanted so much—too much, perhaps.

She heard another carriage—horse hooves
clattering, leather harness jingling, wheels rolling over
cobblestones.

It stopped.

Glynis’s heart skipped. Moving away from her
mother, she went to the window.

The sight of the golden crest on the door
froze her hand on the curtain. No one stepped from the coach, but a
groom jumped off the back and ran up the steps to Nevin House.

A moment later, a soft knock sounded on the
door and the butler carried in a note on a silver tray. He gave it
to Glynis with a bow and left.

Hands shaking, Glynis tore open the note. And
she glared at it.

“I am invited to tea!” she said, disgust in
her voice. “Tea! And he signs it with an ‘S’—nothing more!”

“You never know, the tea leaves might tell
your future.”

Glynis glanced at her mother. Her first
impulse had been to tear up his note—if he could not even be
bothered to come to see her, she would not be summoned to him like
some lackey! But now she stopped and thought. She wanted to see
him, if only to tell him to his face that if he thought she enjoyed
his neglect, he was wrong.

She paused only to kiss her mother’s cheek,
and strode for the door.

Anne let out a sigh as her daughter left. Ah,
but love could be so hard at times. And it was harder still with a
child to trust that all would work out as it was meant to.

* * *

Glynis sat stiff in the back of the coach
rehearsing various greetings for St. Albans. She longed to give him
a reserved, but gracious, nod. A true lady’s greeting. But she knew
the limitations of her own skills and temper. Coldly angry was far
more likely to come out of her as soon as she glimpsed him. But
what if he took that wrong and stayed away from her forever this
time.

Eventually, she grew bored of wondering how
she should act when next they met. She began to glance outside the
windows.

She had not noticed when city had given way
to countryside, but now she realized the roads had been much
rougher for a good long time. The sun was still in the sky, so it
could not have been more than an hour or two that she had been in
the carriage, could it? She began to fidget now with the buttons of
the upholstery.

She had just decided to let down the glass
window and call out to the coachman to demand to know where they
were going, when the horses slowed from a brisk trot to a walk, and
the carriage turned down a wooded lane.

The woods fell back, and Glynis leaned
forward in her seat to see where they were. There, at the end of a
circular, graveled drive, stood the house.

Her house.

Just as in her dream. A tidy garden. White
front, picket gate. Two stories with gleaming windows that
welcomed, and white roses bloomed over the entrance, spilling snowy
petals.

She kept staring, even after the carriage
stopped and the grooms let down the steps and waited for her to
alight.

How could he have found it? Or even
known?

And then she remembered.

She had told him once what she wanted. That
night when she’d had that terrible dream. He, it seemed, had
remembered. And he had found her this place.

Dazed, she climbed from the carriage. Slowly,
afraid almost that she would wake from this moment, she went to the
gate. She reached out and touched it.

Solid wood lay under her glove.

With a smile, she pushed open the gate and
walked up the path to the main door.

She wet her lips and almost knocked upon the
door. Gathering her courage, she opened the door instead and
stepped inside.

The house was already furnished. Lovingly.
Tastefully. Simply. Glynis walked from parlor, to dining room, to
kitchen, to stairs, to hall, to bedroom, to sitting room, to sewing
room, to stairs and the main hall again.

From the upper back rooms, she glimpsed the
back garden—a black-and-white cow contentedly chewed on daisies. He
had even remembered the cow.

But how had he found this place?

And where was that devil?

Ah, but that man could drive a sane woman to
murder.

Remembering her dream, she went to the front
windows and looked out.

He stood there, outside, as he had in her
dream. Outside the gate, and far enough from her that she could
barely see that black horse of his in the shadows of the trees.

A smile trembled inside her. And so did her
fear.

But she knew now that it was not him she
feared—she never had really. She had feared herself—her own
passion, her love for him. She had feared she might end up leading
her mother’s life, but she wondered now if that was such a bad
thing. Ah, but it would hurt if he left her. When he left her.

How much more it hurt now not to have
him?

And perhaps it would be enough to have
memories of having loved him. She doubted it, but she longed
desperately for even one memory of lying in his arms. She would dry
up inside if she did not do this thing—she would not be her
mother’s daughter if she backed away now out of fear and let this
chance slip away.

She would think only about today—about what
she felt for him. She would let the rest be what it would be.

Talking a deep breath, Glynis went outside to
him.

St. Albans watched her from the shadows as
she came out of the house, chin up, more beautiful than ever, but
looking very much the respectable lady in an elegant blue gown,
with a pretty straw bonnet in place and gloves on her hands.

She walked, however, with a stride that would
put a forester to shame. She walked like a traveling Gypsy
still.

Leaving Cinder to graze on summer grass, St.
Albans started toward her. “I need not ask if you like it, I can
see my answer.”

“However did you find it?”

He shrugged. “I did not. It amused me to set
Gascoyne to hunting for it when I thought I might have need of it
to house a mistress.”

She flashed a smile that looked forced, and
he thought this had not been so very good an idea, after all.

It had been two very long weeks, and two even
longer days, since he’d had even a glimpse of her. He had thought
that time enough for her to grow bored with her respectability, for
her to come seeking him. Only she had not.

And so when Gascoyne had found the house and
told him of it, he had bought it for a princely sum—to save the
trouble of bargaining.