Gareth: Lord of Rakes (20 page)

Since their unlooked-for time at Willowdale, Felicity regarded him with emotions that eviscerated his ability to concentrate: protectiveness—not his protectiveness toward her, but
hers
toward
him
. She held him as if he were precious and admitted feelings for him no woman ought to own up to.

She was also angry, though he could not tell if she was angry for him or with him or both.

And worst of all, her eyes communicated a bottomless sadness he could hardly stand to acknowledge.

“You have gone quiet, Felicity. At this rate, we won’t make Town for another hour at least. You must share your concerns with me.”

He couldn’t force her to, of course. He was the man who’d offered to talk with her of a night, only to take advantage of her, and deliver a lot of hypocritical speeches in the morning.

She rested her head on his shoulder. “What is our plan, Gareth, for the next two weeks and beyond? I will be less… anxious, if I know what to expect.”

“Do you want me to be imperious now, Felicity, or shall I make suggestions?” He honestly could not read her mood.

“Be imperious, please,” Felicity said, nuzzling his shoulder. “If your ideas are not to my liking, I will speak up.”

She would, which was some reassurance. Gareth carried her wrist to his lips, in need of a fortifying whiff of lavender.

“You will always speak up—I rely on you for this.” He returned her hand to her with a pat on the knuckles, when he wanted to haul her into his lap.

“We will return to Town,” he began in the most prosaic tones he could muster. “I will arrange an appointment with the solicitors for, say, two weeks hence. I suggest you leave your schedule free for the preceding afternoon, so we can dispense with your virginity, whether your feminine cycle cooperates or not. In the intervening two weeks, I intend to go driving with you in the park, perhaps escort you to the theatre once more, and finally, I will join you at one of Mother’s at-homes. If you deliver me a rousing set-down at my mother’s house, then we will justify untangling ourselves from each other in the eyes of Society.”

Felicity rode beside him in silence for a damp, jarring half mile. “I suppose that will do.”

“I am not finished.” Which came as something of a surprise to him, because he’d honestly put off thinking these logistics through.

“I will oversee the running of the brothel, until such time as it can be sold. I believe it best if we have no direct interaction once we’re done with the solicitors. I would not risk your reputation any further.” Nor his own sanity. “If you would permit me to maintain the staff I have in place at your house until the brothel is sold, I would appreciate it. Should we need to correspond, it can be done through Brenner.”

He wanted her to argue with him, to find excuses for them to remain cordial. He wanted her to hint that she might discreetly continue as his mistress. He wanted her to slap such thoughts from his idiot mind.

She leaned into him as if weary. “I am glad, Gareth, that you can think through these considerations, really I am. I absolutely cannot see past the day we meet with the solicitors. I try, but I can’t.”

The heartache in her tone nigh undid him, but all he could think to do was squeeze her hand. “We will endure this, Felicity. One day at a time, one hour at a time, one breath at a time, if it’s all you can manage.” He rested his cheek against her hair and thumped his fist once on the roof of the coach.

The horses came down to the walk from their unambitious trot.

Gareth did this not to reduce the jolting and bouncing of a well-sprung coach on a muddy road, he did it so he had a few more moments with Felicity before they once again said good-bye.

***

“Mr. Holbrook has gone to ground, your lordship,” Brenner reported. “He no longer takes his coach to the park, and hasn’t left his house for three days.”

Three long damned days since they’d returned from Willowdale. That had been Thursday, and now Sunday afternoon had arrived brisk and blustery. Since he’d dropped Felicity off at her residence, Gareth had thrown himself into work.

Or tried to.

A knock heralded the arrival of a footman, bearing a note on a tray. It wasn’t from Felicity, which was a relief and a disappointment both.

Cecelia, Countess Evansley, begged the pleasure of Gareth’s company for supper that evening at eight of the clock. She was one of his duty escorts, or she’d started out that way when her husband had died, leaving Gareth with an obligation toward a deceased former schoolmate’s widow. Of course, that had been years ago, when a few lingering associations from university still qualified as friends.

Cecilia was a lady, though, and Gareth speculated she’d heard he was no longer keeping company with Edith Hamilton. He genuinely liked Cecelia, and her company was restful. The thought of a liaison with her left him peculiarly unmoved, though he ought to be lining something up to occupy his spare time once his business with Felicity was concluded.

Something besides work, work, and more work.

He set the note aside.

“Brenner, attend me. Holbrook is a mystery I want solved. Go back over everything you know, look at his deeds and records again, interview the locals again, bribe the boot boy, flirt with the tweenie, but get me some answers. I want to know what his connection is to Felicity Worthington, and I want to know yesterday. Do I make myself clear?”

“Very clear, your lordship.”

“How do the Worthingtons fare?” he asked as he straightened a sheaf of papers, each one an eloquent plea from some charity or other.

“They appear to be well, your lordship. Crabble has the men cleaning out the gutters, re-thatching the stable, mending harness, that sort of thing. The house is coming along, and Mrs. Crabble says it hasn’t looked so well since the last viscount was alive.”

Gareth set aside a request for funds from the Benevolent Committee for the Betterment of Unfortunates and Urchins and decided Brenner wasn’t being deliberately obtuse. “And the ladies?”

“They have remained at home, as you requested, your lordship. Mrs. Crabble does the marketing, and if the young misses need to go out, they take at least two footmen.”

“Why would they need to go out?”

“They went to services this morning, your lordship.”

Because that’s what decent young ladies did of a Sunday.

Gareth fell silent, unable to think of any other way to pump Brenner for details without sacrificing his own dignity. Instead, he directed his staff to have the coach available at half eight that evening, his evening clothes laid out, and Andrew notified of a change in the evening’s plans.

***

“She told you
what
?” Andrew spluttered as Gareth paced the library early Monday afternoon.

“Cecelia invited me to dinner for the sole purpose of politely warning me she’d heard a rumor to the effect that Miss Felicity Worthington had inherited Callista’s brothel, and I was managing it for her. The other element to this on-dit was that Felicity is my current paramour, and Cecelia is enough of a friend she thought I should know what’s said sooner rather than later.”

And thank God, that had honestly been her agenda.

“That must gall,” Andrew said, perusing the shelves as Gareth paced. “Being hanged for sheep, and all that. No pun intended. What will you do?”

Break every valuable in the house as loudly as possible.

Get drunk for the first time in nearly a decade.

Marry Felicity so none of this gossip or mayhem could touch her.

Gareth stopped pacing directly before a miniature replica of Canova’s
Psyche
Revived
, noticing that one of Eros’s manly wings was sporting a tiny chip.

“I’ll have Brenner chase down the rumor to its source, I’ll see that Felicity meets the terms of the bequest, and I’ll ensure she and her sister enjoy disgustingly good health, so long as it is in my power to do all of the above.” This recitation had the quality of a vow but didn’t settle Gareth’s mind the way a vow ought.

Andrew helped himself to a drink and didn’t press when Gareth declined one for himself. “I don’t envy you. Do you suppose Mother might be some help?”

“She will be invaluable in muddying the waters of gossip, as will Countess Evansley, but they can merely buy us time to ferret out the origin of the ill will. I can’t help but think Holbrook is wrapped up in this. Cecelia knows of him,” he added. “She reports he is quite the honorable fellow, though it’s rumored he’s regrettably, if discreetly, illegitimate.”

“Interesting,” Andrew commented, sipping his drink. And then, when Gareth’s guard was down and his focus on a lone wispy cobweb dangling from the central chandelier, “Brother, do I detect a note of fatigue about your countenance?”

Gareth was exhausted, and damn Andrew for noticing, because the blasted man would report it directly to their dam. “I don’t sleep well of late.”

“You know you have only to ask, and I’d lend any assistance requested.”

He should thank his brother for those words, and for the genuine sentiment behind them. “I know that, Andrew, but there are some tasks I cannot delegate or entrust to anyone—even you.”

Andrew looked like he might say more, then passed Gareth the remainder of his drink and departed.

Leaving Gareth to stew in thoughts of Felicity.

He wanted to keep her close, and wanted to swive her until neither one of them could stand. But he would hate himself if he did that to her—and she
should
hate him, too, though she wouldn’t. Not at first, anyway.

Realizing his fretting was getting him nowhere, he saw to his attire, bellowed for his phaeton, and arrived at Felicity’s door minutes later. His tiger held the team while Gareth went to fetch the lady, though to his surprise, Astrid was the one opening the door.

“You don’t look quite in the pink, Heathgate,” she observed. “Are you in good health?”

“I haven’t been sleeping so well of late,” Gareth admitted, because by all accounts, dissembling before Miss Astrid was arrant folly.

“I’m sorry,” Astrid said. “Warm milk with a shot of brandy is Felicity’s recipe for the same ailment.”

Gareth peered down at her curiously—he did not mistake the girl for an ally—but she only winked at him as Felicity came down the stairs.

“This bodes ill, the two of you with your heads together,” Felicity said, smiling at Gareth and offering her cheek for a kiss. He bent to comply, and the scent of her fragrance wafted up to him, along with a wave of something sweet—relief, comfort, longing. As he kissed her cheek, some of his fatigue fell away.

“Shall we make haste before the weather decides to change on us again?” he asked, offering his arm.

“By all means. Astrid, behave yourself, please,” Felicity directed over her shoulder.

The day wasn’t warm, but that gave Gareth a pretext for sitting close to his lady on the narrow seat of the open carriage. Because the air was brisk—and because he was in no mood to conclude their outing—Gareth kept the horses to a walk.

“So how fare you, my lady?”

“I miss you dreadfully,” Felicity said, sounding… peevish, and with him. “I sleep poorly, and I am jumpy and crabby. I wish I’d never gone to Willowdale, and I wish we were still there. And yourself?”

“The same,” he said, his heart lighter for hearing her recitation.

“Lovely. When will I get over you?”

Gareth was silent a moment, considering a question she couldn’t ask anybody else and ought not to be asking him.

“It’s like this,” he said, while in the back of his mind, puppies whined, kittens mewed, and small children covered their eyes. “You suffer with these sorts of things until you are sick of being unhappy with it, then common sense, or pride, or something asserts itself, and you stop clinging to your suffering. Then one day you realize you’ve gone maybe two whole hours without pining or moping, and you come to the conclusion, if you can manage it for two hours, then you can try for two days. It just takes time.”

Felicity bumped him with her shoulder. “It breaks my heart that you know such hard lessons from experience, Gareth.”

More of her protectiveness, which he did not deserve. “They’re only hard lessons the first time you learn them. After that, they’re valuable lessons.”

“Har-rumph. At least we do have a peek of sunshine.”

She smiled over at Gareth, and he simply could not rise to the challenge. He could not offer her a false smile, a glib rejoinder, a flirtatious aside while discussing the bloody, blighted weather.

He was going to miss her,
terribly
, for a long, long time. This realization manifested itself in a leaden ache in his chest, much like what he’d experienced for months after the damned accident.

A pigeon fluttered close to the offside gelding’s ears, and before Gareth could wave the idiot bird away with his whip, the horse propped, the carriage lurched, and Felicity pitched against him.

“Apollo, Mars, settle.”

Like the fine animals they were, the horses obediently resumed a placid walk—and Felicity straightened away from him.

“What is it, Gareth? Something is bothering you—something to do with me.”

Many things were bothering him, most of them to do with her. “Recall, please, that we are in public, soon to be joining the throng at the fashionable hour. I have unpleasant news, and I don’t wish your expression to betray its nature. We are still, to appearances, a potentially courting couple.” He related the gossip shared with him at the previous evening’s dinner, all the while keeping an eye out for persistent pigeons that might benefit from a taste of his whip.

“Steady on,” he remarked, as if to the horses, before continuing. “I am tracking down the source of the rumors, Felicity, but it occurs to me words can do more harm than bullets.”

Or house fires, or runaway horses.

“What harm can rumor do? Astrid and I were bound for obscurity in any case. It isn’t as if the dictates of Polite Society were much of an influence on our lives when the coal cellar was empty.”

“That’s my lady,” he replied, though from her—from the tenaciously proper Miss Worthington—this recitation bore an air of nervous self-deceit. “Obscurity is one thing, and total exile another. Even if you are going to eschew the state of holy matrimony, you harbor hopes for your sister.”