An Invitation to Sin (16 page)

"I will not. You and Caroline apologize to one another, and we'll all sit down to dinner like civilized p—"

"Fine," he interrupted, gesturing for his valet to hand over a saddlebag. "I'll ride on ahead. I'll meet you in Bath—or in London, if this trip was just a damned ruse."

"It was not a r—"

"Then I'll see you in Bath. Reed, follow with my things."

"Yes, my lord."

"Harold!"

The dog crawled out from under the bed and scrambled into the hallway. Zachary brushed past his aunt and thundered down the stairs, Harold at his heels and for once minding his master. The foyer was lined with Witfeld females, but he barely spared them a glance. Barling apparently realized he was about to have his front door broken down, because the butler pulled the heavy oak open as Zachary reached it.

"Saddle my horse," he ordered as he reached the stable.

"Mine, as well."

Zachary turned around to see Edmund Witfeld behind him. "That is not necessary, sir," he said, anger clipping his words. "I thank you and Mrs. Witfeld for your hospitality. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm riding on to Bath."

"I'll ride as far as Trowbridge with you."

Zachary gave a curt nod. "As you wish, then."

He paced, unwilling to stand still long enough for Witfeld to begin a conversation with him. He would rather it was Caroline standing there; he certainly had a few choice words for her. On the other hand, he was a Griffin, and Griffins were unfailingly polite—even when he'd been insulted in such a manner that it would have prompted pistols at dawn if it had been a male confronting him.

Harold sat by the stable door and looked at him. Caroline had been right about one thing—the incident with the sketch pad hadn't been the dog's fault. It had been his.

Finally a groom brought Sagramore up. Zachary slung his bag over the back of the saddle and tied it down, then swung up himself. If Witfeld was joining him, he could damned well hurry it up.

Edmund caught up to him at the end of the drive, slowing from a gallop to a canter to match Sagramore's brisk pace while Harold padded behind the two of them. "I know you don't want to listen to anything I say, lad," he began, "but there are things you don't under—"

"I understand quite well, thank you."

"I can't afford to keep Caroline here past the end of the summer."

Zachaiy opened his mouth to retort, then closed it again. He couldn't imagine not having enough money to keep his family intact, but then the Griffins were supremely fortunate by anyone's standards. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said stiffly. "But I hardly think it's any of my affair."

"She's applied to twenty-seven academies and studios over the past three years. Tannberg is the only one to offer her a place—and that's only if she passes the application process."

The application process he was supposed to have been helping her with. "It's not as though I refused my assistance."

"She overreacted, I know, and I apologize on her be—"

"Don't," Zachary cut in sharply.

Witfeld drew a deep breath. "Very well, lad. If you don't want to hear about her dilemmas, then let's discuss yours."

"Mine?" Zachary glanced at him. "I don't have a dilemma. I'm going to Bath, and if Aunt Tremaine doesn't appear within the week I'm returning to London and purchasing my colors." The hows and whys of that would have to be left to some time when he was thinking more clearly.

"I did that, you know."

Zachary didn't want to ask, but the words came grudgingly to his lips anyway. "Did what?"

"Joined the army. Sally's father told me if I wanted to marry her, I had to prove that I could support her. I married her in my regimentals."

"Romantic."

"I took what he said to heart, though. Her father. It wasn't long before I was home just long enough to get her with child again, and then off I went to some other battle. The pay is better on active duty."

Zachary clenched his jaw and didn't say anything. At this point he didn't think he was supposed to do anything but absorb some wise words or other from someone who'd supposedly trodden all his paths before him. As if Mr. Edmund Witfeld had any idea what his life was like.

"Then, after daughter number five, I took a ball in the leg. It was enough to get me sent back home. I couldn't afford to support my family on half pay, so I had to sell my commission. I kept thinking if I'd been unmarried I could have lasted until my damned leg healed and gone out again."

"I'm sorry for your—"

"I'm not finished," Witfeld returned, with surprising force. "I hated being here, sitting among a clucking clutch of chicks and hens while my former mates were still out there having their adventures. So I closed myself up in the conservatory to hide, and started inventing things. I thought if I could devise the right thing, it would pay my way out of Wiltshire. I built Greek ruins to imagine myself in another life. If I kept myself distracted enough, maybe I'd forget that I'd been denied the opportunity for greater glory and fame."

"And has it worked?"

Edmund looked at the ground. "Well, what I finally began to realize was that I enjoyed what I was doing. The inventions, I mean. And when Caroline started coming up to the conservatory to paint, I also realized that I had a family. You should have seen her when she was twelve or thirteen. Even then, she would put some brush strokes on a canvas, and it became a flower. A damned flower, where when I did it, I had nothing but a mess. And I made her, as a distraction to keep me occupied while I was stuck in Wiltshire between deployments."

He cleared his throat. "My point being, I suppose, that I could have stayed a soldier and been dead now with some grand monument to my bravery. Or I could have seven daughters I adore despite their excessive silliness, and a chance to perhaps invent something that might be useful to them or their children." Witfeld looked directly at Zachary. "So before you decide to run to some fleeting and deadly glory on the battlefield, do you really want to do what I did and waste twenty-two years before you realize what's truly important?"

It was clear now why Witfeld didn't allow soldiers into his house. And it wasn't for any reason his daughters would have imagined. "You're a good father," Zachary finally said.

"I'm trying to be one now. For a very long time I was an abysmal father. And that is why I have five silly daughters, and two who have sense in spite of me. If I'd done right by them, I might have no silly daughters, and seven I would be proud to set against any educated, privileged young lady in Mayfair."

Damnation, Zachary knew what the next step was supposed to be. He was supposed to do his part in aiding the Witfeld daughters, one of the two who had sense, at any rate, and return to the manor to pose for Caroline. There was more to this conversation than that, however. More for him to think about. Because thanks to Edmund's supplement to Caroline's speech, Zachary had just realized that he more closely resembled a waiting bag of fertilizer than he cared to admit. While on some level he'd known already, now he had to face it. She was right, and Melbourne had been right. He had no real goals, just a desire to be someone other than the spare's spare, the third Griffin brother.

At least the eldest Miss Witfeld knew what it was she wanted in life—and he'd apparently put himself in the position to deny it to her. Or to help her gain her dream. In a way, that felt more significant than any silliness he might be contemplating for himself. And he had some serious contemplating to do, though he preferred to do that at length and in private, and bloody well not while galloping along the road literally headed in the wrong direction.

"Do you think the trout are ready?" he asked slowly.

Witfeld made a poor effort to conceal his smile of relief. "I'm sure they will be by the time we return."

"Good. I'm hungry."

Caroline sat in the morning room and covered her ears with her hands. Even that, though, didn't much help to lessen the cacophony around her. Her mother and at least three sisters were in hysterics, while Susan stood by the window sobbing. Anne yelled at Joanna and Julia to stop shrieking about losing their one hope for a happy future, while Grace kept repeating, "You called him fertilizer?" at the top of her lungs.

As loud as it all was, the screeching was still quieter than what her mind shouted at herself. And covering her ears couldn't block out any of that. Yes, perhaps she'd become overly focused on his parts rather than his person, but for goodness' sake, what did he care? He'd already made it perfectly clear that he wanted to avoid any entanglements in Wiltshire. Oh, she probably could have flattered him more, made more of a fuss over the perfection of his features and his manly form. And no, she shouldn't have called him fertilizer.

How much of his careless, haphazard presence was she supposed to have tolerated, though? After he'd sworn he would help her, he'd gone fishing, of all things, and left his stupid dog behind to make matters even worse. And then he'd left altogether when she'd protested.

Caroline shuddered. None of her plans or even her opinions of Zachary mattered now, because he was gone, and she had to convince Lord Eades to sit for her and to sign a letter of approval. She had more than a sneaking suspicion that he would hand over no such thing—encouraging the artistic ability of his son Theodore would be more important to him than aiding her. All he had to do was string her along for a week and then deny his approval, and for all intents and purposes she would belong to the Eades family.

She was so
stupid
. Zachary should have been a learning experience; undoubtedly a great many nobles were as aimless as he was. If she couldn't tolerate it in an otherwise charming, kind gentleman, she had no reason to think she could make her living among his kind.

A tear ran down her cheek. Of course no one else noticed, because they were all too occupied with their own miseries. She felt like yelling herself, pointing out that none of them had had so much as a pin-point's chance of netting Lord Zachary, but they wouldn't listen. They didn't want to hear it, and so they wouldn't. She, however, had a stronger sense of reality. And what she'd begun to realize was that the moment she'd opened her mouth to yell at Zachary' for his inconsideration, she'd irretrievably ruined her own life.

"I said,
enough"

Caroline didn't know how many times her father had called for quiet, but she heard that one. So did the rest of the family. For a heartbeat the silence seemed louder than the yowling.

"Mr. Witfeld," her mother said tearfully, "I insist that Caroline be punished. Such an ungrateful girl! You can't—"

"Everyone go change for dinner. Be back down here in twenty minutes," her father snapped, his usual easy manner vanished. "I do not want to hear another word spoken until then. Is that clear? Nod, don't speak."

One by one everyone nodded.

"And Caroline, join me in my office. Now."

He turned on his heel and vanished. Caroline followed, pretending to ignore the glares boring into her back. Nothing they could say or do could make her feel more hopeless than she already did.

Her father stood beside his office door and gestured her to precede him. She stepped through the door, and he closed it behind her. Before she could wonder why he'd closed her in alone, Harold trotted up to lick her fingers. Startled, she lifted her head and spied the figure standing by the desk.

"Lord… I… Zachary, I…"

"If you sketch tonight and begin your painting in the morning," he said, unmoving, "will you complete it in time to meet your deadline?"

Caroline couldn't breathe. He was giving her another chance..She felt the blood leaving her face, and she still couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but keep repeating to herself that he'd come back.

"Jesus," he muttered, moving abruptly forward to help her into a chair. "Breathe, Caroline." He patted her none too gently on the back, and air rattled into her lungs again. "Better?" he asked after a moment.

"Yes, thank you," she managed. "But I thought you were going to Bath."

"I don't think I've ever been quite that angry before," he said in a low monotone.

"Then why… why—" She broke off. A tear plopped onto the back of her hand.

Zachary shrugged. "I deserved a little of what you said." He cleared his throat. "More than a little. And I don't think I quite understood exactly how important my cooperation was to you. If I had, I wouldn't have abused the privilege.''

Despite his kind words, his voice didn't have the relaxed drawl she'd become accustomed to hearing. He was probably still angry; she would be. She tried to tell herself that she had a reason to be angry, as well, but she was too busy feeling grateful and trying to remember to breathe. "I apologize for what I said. It was thoughtless and mean, and I should never—"

"It was true, and you've given me some things to think about," he said gruffly. "Leave it at that." Stirring again, he made his way to the door. "I'll see you at dinner."

"Yes. I… thank you, Zachary. Thank you so much."

His hand touched her shoulder as he passed by, and then he and Harold were gone.