Incognita (Fairchild Book 2) (36 page)

“No, you won’t,” he said. He pushed back her hair, dabbed at one damp eye with the loose cuff of his shirt. He kissed one eyebrow, then the other, then drew his finger down the bridge of her nose. “Anna.”
 

“You don’t mind?” She needed to be sure.
 

“I was playing games at that ball, too. I’m not—I haven’t always—well, love is a fine thing, and it took me longer than you to learn not to be careless with it. But I’m not careless anymore, and I won’t be with you.”
 

She replied with lips but not words, learning his worn face with soft touches. His stubble was raspy, his cheeks thinner, his skin cool, but her response hadn’t changed. And though it came a little late, this was the welcome she’d wanted.
 

“No more arguing then?” she teased. “Good. Kisses are better.”
 

“You’re quite convincing. I’d be a fool to resist. Wish I had all my pieces, though. I’d rather you married a perfect man.”
 

“Perfect!” Anna was scornful. “I couldn’t endure that. If such a man existed, just think how insufferable he would be!”
 

“I’ll remind you of that,” he said. “Go get Henry. Griggs too—I expect you’ll find him lurking at the bottom of the stairs.”
 

She protested, but when he threatened to hop down the stairs himself, she had to give in. Griggs wasn’t there, so Anna winged her way outside, expecting he’d gone to find Henry. Instead of a tired town she saw stars. It felt like her head might bump them.
 

Just as she thought, Griggs was in the tap room, plotting with Henry while Bartolome tiredly swirled his wine.
 

“How is he?” Griggs asked, looking up.
 

Smiles couldn’t grow big enough to break open, could they? Perhaps so, for it seemed like bits of her own were attaching onto Henry, Griggs, to the bar keep, to Bartolome, and the newcomer nodding from the corner. Color swept into her cheeks.
 

“He’s well,” Anna said.

London was quiet and cold, with snow-muffled streets and frost-sharpened edges. Lord Fairchild could have gone out for a congenial evening of company, cards and hot punch, but had elected to spend the evening alone in front of the library fire, hoping Georgiana would return from a compassionate visit to her sister. It was late now. The snow would have slowed her progress, if she had set out at all. Georgiana hadn’t much fortitude for travel, even under the best conditions, and might have extended her stay.
 

He shouldn’t begrudge the visit. Lady Ruffington’s husband was dying, and her son ailing in Spain. There was no one else to help her since Cyril, her eldest son, was traveling to help his brother. Hysterics were a habit with his sister-in-law, invariably over the least consequential issue at hand; it surprised no one that she’d gone into a tizzy about Anna Morris getting her hooks into Alistair when he lay at death’s door. If it were up to William, he’d slap some sense into Louisa Beaumaris, but Georgiana would mix up possets and listen, trying to reconcile her to the idea of Anna as a daughter-in-law. It wouldn’t be a prudent match, but she loved him. Besides, with Sophy wed to Tom Bagshot, it might not be a bad thing to have one more shop-stained person in the family. It would give Bagshot someone to speak to at dinners, at any rate.
 

He was beginning to hope that perhaps there would be some—dinners that is, with Sophy and her lanky husband. Jasper too, sophisticated and discontented, and Henrietta and her Percy, if he could be coaxed away from his books. May as well have Alistair and Anna too—poor, but handsome as a match pair of horses. They’d never lack for conversation. Georgy might pretend to disapprove of whatever unspoken currents swirled around the table, but she’d thrive on it. And if she played at being miffed, then he’d have the pleasure of coaxing her out of it later. He liked this game of theirs, this secret happiness. William sighed and stretched his feet to the fender, smiling because it was good for a man his age to have dreams that might even happen.
 

He missed her. She’d been gone a fortnight, and—glancing at the clock—it seemed he must await her return at least one more day.
 

Above the clock, a new oil painting, still smelling of varnish, hung on the wall. He wasn’t used to it yet. Every time his gaze flew that way, his eyes stuck on it. The old watercolor was on the floor, propped against the other armchair. He’d wrap it and send it to Sophy. Jasper was visiting her this Christmas—he’d refused flat out to go to Spain.
 

“Let the Morris woman do it. Not my affair.”
 

It was the only thing William and his son had agreed on for months. William wasn’t sure how to fix matters with Jasper or Sophy, but he hoped sending this painting would be a start. He would miss it, though. The picture was an old friend, but it was past time. If he loved his wife, he couldn’t cherish this memento of Fanny.
 

You understand, don’t you?

Of course there was no answer. Just an image in his mind, half Sophy, half her mother. They had the same thin little shoulders: sculpted, birdlike, delicate but determined. Though short-lived, it had been a joy to press his lips into those hollows in Fanny’s skin and then look up into her astonished eyes.
 

Yes. I must think about you before I can put you away.
 

Fanny was young back then, of a family both genteel and poor, connected to a friend of Georgiana’s. He and Georgiana both terrified her. She was comfortable with children though, having a tribe of siblings herself. He got used to the sound of her laughing with his children as they came in from the park, hushing as they walked up to the nursery, where the happy sounds resumed again. It made him glad, that muffled evidence of contentment and childhood pleasures—captured frogs, perfect pebbles, running barefoot, and laughing for no reason.
 

Then Julius died and all turned silent. Henrietta and Jasper recovered first because of Fanny. Occupied with his own torn soul and the nasty assignment of blame between him and his wife, William was mostly blind to the way his older children took shelter under Fanny’s thin arms. Then one day, half-angered, half-drawn by their happy noise, he found them in the nursery, crooked paper crowns on their heads and snips of paper littering the floor. Jasper and Henrietta wore untroubled smiles, though Fanny Prescott’s vanished the minute she lifted her eyes to his. She said nothing, too afraid to apologize for laughing. That moment, he wanted to shelter in her warmth too.
 

He and Georgiana weren’t a love match, though until Julius died they’d liked each other well enough. She was beautiful and charming, and since he had no brothers, he had to marry relatively young. Georgiana danced delightfully, had a nice-sized fortune, and was brought up to be a gentleman’s wife. It didn’t matter, much, that they had so little in common. Jasper was born less than a year after their marriage, Henrietta soon after. Three more years and they had another son. They knew how to be polite, to behave as they ought. It was a respectful relationship, until Julius died and sharp words and days of arid silence hammered it apart. Georgiana took herself off to her sister’s, leaving him to rage and call her a coward. Of course it was no one’s fault but God’s, but without Georgiana to glare at . . . .
 

Fanny was shy and timid, no match for his desperate cunning. He put himself in her way, and naturally she felt sorry for him. She invited him, with twisting fingers and blushing cheeks, to play with his children, to row them on the lake.
 

“I couldn’t do it alone,” he said.
 

So she came along, and he let himself fall into her dreamy world of story books with sticky pages, milk tea and jam sandwiches eaten under the sun on the lawn. He came up to the schoolroom to admire her watercolors and the progress of his children, to smile with her when Henrietta conjured sums quicker than Jasper, and to watch her accept with unfailing grace the gifts his son presented almost daily: pinecones she arranged on the mantle, a snake caught in a smelly lineament tin that miraculously escaped overnight, dead beetles with black backs that shone green in the right light, and a necklace of braided grass she wore for two days straight. She would smile over Jasper’s blond head, but she never teased him about the offerings or chuckled at the way his chest swelled when she praised him. Most every day Jasper summoned her down to the stables to watch him ride his pony. She was always properly awed. William came to watch too, stealing her hand when Jasper and the groom disappeared into the stables.
 

“Oh. You shouldn’t.” Flustered and pink, Fanny retreated to the house, leaving William and Jasper to walk back alone.
 

“When I grow up, I’m going to marry Miss Prescott,” Jasper confided. William laughed, distracted momentarily from his own shameful thoughts. It should have recalled him to his senses—Fanny deserved a husband, nothing else—but he wanted her, and felt that success was not far off. It wasn’t.
 

“Your French is excellent. I wish you would help me—I’ve been reading some poems and I don’t quite understand.”
 

Pretending an unconcern she didn’t feel, she followed him into the library at Cordell, starting just a little when he closed the door. “I have a headache,” he explained. The closed door muffled every outside sound. He handed over the book.
 

Her blushes! Such a delicate stain tinting her cheek as she pointed out his error, such surprise in her eyes as she looked up to see him advance. Confusion, dismay—then bliss!—as she succumbed in his arms at last.
 

And after, those giddy weeks—not many—of rambles in the gardens, kisses stolen behind corners, of indoor games when they could evade the children. He couldn’t remember what kind of weather they’d had, but in memory the days were all drenched with sunlight, the only shadow a little furrow between Fanny’s eyes that steadily grew darker and deeper. He chose not to notice. He had tears in his eyes when she told him she was pregnant, though
enciente
was the word she used. She had excellent French, and she wasn’t blushing anymore.
 

He was selfishly happy. Another child—not another Julius, never that—but another little one to watch over, who would toddle and lisp, and climb into his lap and fall warmly asleep.
 

“No,” Fanny said.
 

He didn’t believe it when she said she wasn’t going to stay.
 

“You already have a family. You already have a wife.”
 

She was resolute, impatient with his excuses, defiant when he pressured her.
 

“I’m going. If you love me, make certain we don’t starve.”
 

Though angry and ashamed, he did as she asked. She wouldn’t let him do anything else. “I’m not making more mistakes,” she told him. “Don’t you make any either.”
 

Oh, but he had. This watercolor painting she’d done of his gardens, her last, brought by ten-year-old Sophy when she came to Cordell, shouldn’t have gone up on his study wall. He should have mended things with Georgiana long ago—shouldn’t have soiled Fanny in the first place. And he should ask forgiveness from Sophy, the daughter Fanny had loved. He should have loved her better, and helped her when she wanted to make her own choice. William looked at the picture propped up on the floor, at the light, melting tints and the play of sunlight and shadow. He would wrap it up now. On his desk he had tissue and brown paper. Jenkins could do it, but he felt he owed it to Fanny to do it himself.
 

Can’t say for certain, but I think Georgiana and I can be happy. I love her.
 

He thought this was what Fanny had wanted—though not so many wasted years, he was certain. He could only blame his own self for that. Fanny, bless her, had known what was impossible and what was right and best.
 

He carried it to the desk, laying it on the paper. He fumbled a bit over the corners, unable to make them neat—they stuck out like puppy ears. He was groping through the desk drawer, reaching for a knife to cut the twine when he heard noises in the hall.
 

“You’re still awake?” It was Georgiana, pushing wide the library door.
 

“Mhmm,” he said, unnecessarily.
 

She glanced from the mess on his desk to the wall and the new picture there. Her cheeks turned faintly pink, though perhaps that was only because the room was warm and she’d been outside in the cold.
 

“Turned out well, didn’t it?” he asked.
 

“I told you he’d flatter me. I thought you wanted it for the gallery at Cordell.” It was where they usually hung portraits.
 

“I like you a little nearer than that.” He smiled. “I think it’s a good likeness, though someone should have told him your true feelings about dogs.” It must be the fashion, because in life Georgiana would never rest her fingers affectionately on the head of a silky-eared spaniel.
 

“The dog’s just a device,” she said, coming into the room and drawing off her gloves.
 

He’d never been the type to fall into raptures over poetry or paintings. Some were good; some weren’t. Didn’t really matter why. “Oh? What’s a dog mean?”
 

“It’s an emblem of fidelity,” she said, intent on smoothing the empty gloves. “I didn’t know he was going to paint it in. I didn’t ask him—”

“Of course,” William said softly. “Yes, I’d say he captured you very well.” Like her, he kept his attention on the portrait. “But I meant this picture to be an emblem of mine. You have my fidelity, whether you want it or not.”
 

She nodded, glancing at him fleetingly as she studied the portrait.
 

“I’d given up hoping you’d return today. I’m surprised Tom Coachman agreed to drive in this dark,” William said.