Dreaming (42 page)

At the next door she paused, for a suit of armor lay on the floor as if it had been knocked down. She stepped over it and moved inside. This was a man’s study of some sort. The room was richly appointed with massive chairs near the fireplace and a huge mahogany desk that sat
thronelike
in front of a set of tall mullioned windows.

A small bookcase had fallen facedown on the floor, and books and bric-a-brac had spilled haphazardly across the room. She took a step and her toe crunched on something small and hard. She bent down and picked it up.

It was a toy soldier, the kind of expensive German toy she’d seen on display in the
London
shops. Beneath the bookcase was a crushed box with more iron soldiers spilled about it.

The sparkle of broken glass glimmered from near the fireplace, where the ashes of a dead fire still remained and a large leather chair had the dustcover laying next to it, as if it had been tossed to the floor. A brandy cart sat on one side of the chair, the stopper missing from one of the decanters, and an ottoman was turned on its side as if it had been kicked.

She turned around slowly, taking in the room in its impressive entirety. There were high ceilings that went up past the third floor, and at their crest they were rimmed in elaborate bold moldings. The size and deep oxblood color of the leather furnishings gave the room a sense of unspoken power.

On the opposite wall above the desk was a massive portrait. She walked toward it, compelled to do so by the image of the figure in the portrait. It looked like Richard, but the clothing was of an older period.

She remembered the old earl, Richard’s father, but she hadn’t remembered their resemblance. Perhaps because she’d only seen the man on a few occasions and his hair had been gray, with no sign of those gold streaks.

In the portrait, however, he was younger, perhaps even younger than Richard was now, and he had the same dark hair with golden streaks, the same strong angled features and firm mouth and jaw. And like Richard, he was a tall man, but he looked leaner.

“What are you doing in here?”

Letty
spun around at the sound of Richard’s voice. It had a decided edge to it.

“I hadn’t explored this section of the house yet.”

Richard walked into the room, and the moment he was inside he seemed to distance himself from everything around him, including her.

His gaze was on the portrait, and there was that old sense of despair in his eyes. Isolation. He looked as if he were a lonely stranger in his own home.

She walked to him and placed her hand on his arm. He seemed to tear his gaze away and he looked down at her.

“Are you all right?”

“I always hated this room.”

“Why?”

“Take a breath.”

“What?”

“Take a deep breath. What does it smell like to you?”

“It’s stale air, musty with old tobacco and ashes and the like. What do you smell?”

“Autocracy. It smells of my father.”

He was quiet. It seemed to
Letty
that time had gone backward for him. He turned and looked around the room, and every so often something painful would flicker across his expression. When he spoke it was to the room in general. “Every fight we ever had was in this room.”

He grew silent again, then he turned around, and she had the feeling it was the first time he was really looking at her since he’d joined her. “You love your father, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“I saw that. In the church yesterday.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I was. I thought your father wasn’t around much when you were growing up.”

“He wasn’t.”

“You don’t resent that?”

“I don’t know if I did sometimes or not. I tried awfully hard to get his attention, but it wasn’t easy for him after my mother died. I think perhaps I might have reminded him too much of her.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never asked him exactly. I know he has regrets. But I also know he loves me.” She looked at Richard, trying to read him.

She slid her hands from his arms to his chest and around his neck, then laid her head against his shoulder. “Wish I could take your pain away, Richard.”

He looked down at her. “Don’t cry for me, hellion.”

“I can’t help it. You’re hurting, and I don’t know why.”

Richard looked around the room. “The last time I saw my father alive was in this room.”

He looked back at her. “Did you know he wanted me to enter the Church?”

She shook her head.

“For as long as I could remember I had wanted to be a soldier, even as a child.”

She pulled back from Richard and opened the hand that still held the toy.

He picked it up and looked at it.

“It was on the floor,” she said.

“I remember. I came in here that first night I came home, before I rode out on the moors. I’d been drinking and continued to do so, until I was so drunk I didn’t feel the guilt anymore.”

“Why do you feel guilty?”

“Because my father and brother were coming after me when they were killed. If I hadn’t been so bloody stubborn, if I hadn’t waved that commission under my father’s nose, they’d both be alive. I might as well have pulled the trigger myself.” He sagged into the chair. “There have been times in the last two years when I felt so guilty I tried to force an end to it. I felt as if I were a coward for living.”

“But you’re wrong. There is no strength in dying, Richard. It’s much harder to find the strength to live your life when those you love are gone.”

He said nothing; he seemed to need to fight his demons silently. She walked past him and stood at the tall mullioned windows behind the desk. She leaned against a wall, staring out at the land and hillsides beyond. “How do you see the world around you, Richard?”

He was quiet for a long time. “You and I see it through different eyes. You see delight. I see despair.”

“I think you see the past and I see the future. I think perhaps we’ll have to do something about that. You need to see the future.”

“I believe, hellion, that you would have made a better soldier than I.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you are relentless. You never give up. I think that I gave up years ago.”

“I think you are the bravest man in the world.”

He laughed. “And you know so many men.”

“I’m serious. I think you are brave. But you have your flaws. You’re also stubborn, pig-headed, opinionated, autocratic—”

“You are describing my father.”

“Am I? Well, I wasn’t finished. You also try too hard not to care about things when deep down inside you do.”

He seemed startled. He studied the portrait for a very long time.

“I think you were alike in more ways than you know,” she said quietly. A few minutes passed and she started to leave, thinking he needed to be alone.

He grabbed her hand. “Don’t go.” He pulled her into his lap and rested his chin on her head. He stroked her hair, her back, and just held her. After a time he said, “When I look at you I see everything good in the world, and it scares the bloody hell out of me. You know why?”

She shook her head.

“Because when you look at me you see what I could be.”

Letty
followed Richard through a tour of the west wing of the house. They entered a gallery, and there before her stood an entire line of medieval knights. Banners were displayed above each piece of armor, and three medieval tapestries hung high on the walls.

“Isn’t this wonderful?”

Richard studied an ancient battle axe mounted beneath a tapestry. “Looks painful to me.”

“I think it’s terribly romantic. Knights and ladies, armor and pageants.”

Frowning, Richard raised the helm visor on a sixteenth-century suit of armor and looked inside. He let go, and with a loud creak the visor slammed shut. “Makes one thankful chivalry is dead.”

“Richard!”

“
Grrrrrr
.”

She spun around.

Gus was snarling in the doorway.

“You stop that!” She turned back toward Richard and froze. “Why are you swinging that mace?”

“I thought I might try throwing it in the moat for Gus to fetch.”

“We don’t have a moat.”

He glared at Gus. “I’ll build one. A very deep one.”

“Someday you two are going to have to get along,”
Letty
said, looking at the complete collection. There were at least twenty-five different suits of armor, a wall of shields, banners, and a case filled with chalices and golden platters. “Did you ever play in here when you were children?”

“No. My father hadn’t started the collection until after I was at the university. Truth be told, until now I had never really seen it in its entirety.”

“Well, I think it’s wonderful. Look at this.” She held up a bowl edged in jewels. “Can you imagine actually using these?”

She felt his look and gave him a smile. “I remember my mother reading to me the most wonderful tales of knights and castles and dragons. I spent so many hours dreaming up tales of knights and princesses and mad ogres. I used to wish I lived back then because I couldn’t imagine anything more romantic than having a knight ride up and carry me away.”

“Off to his stone castle with vermin-infested rushes, greasy mutton, and cold
garderobes
?”

“Where is your sense of romance?”

He was quiet for a moment, then he said, “Do you want to see what I think is romantic?”

She nodded.

“It’s not in here.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her down another hallway, then another, and up a small flight of stairs. He opened a door that led to a dark corridor.

“Where are you taking me?”

He lit a candle and pulled her inside. “You’ll see.”

They walked along a narrow warren of passages until finally he stopped. “Here, take the candle.”

He reached above them and pulled some kind of latch, and a door slid open. “Now, this is what I find romantic. Close your eyes.”

She did.

He took her hand and slowly led her through the hidden doorway. “You may open your eyes now.”

She did, then she blinked once, twice. “This is our bedchamber.”

“Why, so it is.” He gave her a feigned look of surprise, then spoiled it with a grin. “Now where were we?” He pulled her back on the bed with him. “Ah yes, I remember. A million and sixteen.”

Chapter 25

Richard stood on the rise and leaned against an old elm tree, watching the land spread before him. Over the past few days he had seen his home through his wife’s eyes and realized that he was actually beginning to like it here.

He scanned the horizon, the hills around him, the river and moors, the cliffs and the ocean beyond. There was a permanence about the land, the house, and all that surrounded it. He began to understand the wealth he had, the earldom, and not in monetary units but as a different kind of wealth.