Kaleidoscope: A Regency Novella (13 page)

His father gingerly lowered himself into the chair as if he thought any sudden movement would cause Luke to begin shooting.

“Okay, David. Please tell our father how you stole my legacy from my mother and then how you decided to make amends by marrying me to a wealthy lady who happened to be carrying your child.”

Luke had anticipated having the threaten David. To his surprise, his half-brother began telling his story in a monotone voice. His eyes were fixed firmly on the carpet.

Watching his father was more interesting. As David spoke, his father began aging before his eyes. Color drained from his face. The hand he lifted to wipe his brow trembled. When David got to the part about Lady Belinda, he muttered, “Oh, my God,” and looked at Luke with tears in his eyes.

The old Luke would have been touched by a show of sympathy from the man he’d worked so hard to please. The new Luke, buffeted by betrayal and deceit, felt nothing. Would this numbness last forever?

David’s monologue finally ran down. The room descended into silence broken only by the swish of Luke’s swinging leg.

“I am so sorry,” his father said to Luke. “What do you want me to do?”

“About what? You can’t give me my old life back. My character has been destroyed. I’ll admit my behavior made my reputation worse, but at that point, I was trying very hard to live down to everyone’s expectations.”

Luke stood from his perch on the desk and began pacing, too agitated to remain in one place. “You cut me off from my mother, and no amount of regret can bring her back. The gemstones that might have given me the means to start over are gone. Oh, except for a large canary diamond I saw Patience wearing. Being married to David, I’m sure she earned it, but it’s mine. I want it back. Other than that, I don’t think there is anything you can do.”

“About David, then?” his father asked. His face was so white as to be bloodless. “What do you suggest I do with him? I feel you have the right to have your say.”

The right to have his say? Was his father a complete idiot? Did he think this would suddenly make everything right? The strange void in his emotions constrained his rage, but it was still there, beating itself against the bars of nothingness. And if his fury were loosed, it would want blood and mayhem and pain.

Luke smiled, but the effect must not have been reassuring, since his father winced. “As I see it, David is your problem. He’s a self-confessed thief, adulterer, and liar. I could also name him murderer, for his actions caused Lady Belinda’s death, as well as that of her unborn child. He also killed my own youthful hopes and dreams. What are the penalties for these crimes?”

The smile disappeared and he scowled at his father. “Of course, your problem in determining a just punishment is that you were complicit in most of David’s actions. While you didn’t steal my mother’s jewels, when I asked you about them, you told me they had been given to French émigrés without determining of this were actually the case. At the time, you wanted nothing to do with me, since you’d also chosen to believe the lies David had spread. I suspect you were secretly glad that I was left with nothing. It was easy for you to wrap yourself in false righteousness and turn you back on your youngest son—a son who had always lived his life so you would find pride in his actions. If David killed my intended future, you were his collaborator.”

Luke suddenly laughed without humor. “You ask what I want you to do? Be damned. For I truly want nothing else.”

He looked at the shrunken, weeping old man and at the bloody slug that was his brother. And he felt nothing but disgust.

He walked from the room. The servants who had gathered just beyond the door silently opened a path for him through their numbers. As he left the house, he wondered if it had ever been his home.

He was pleasantly surprised to see Tremaine’s odiferous carriage still sitting on the street. “Can I take you anywhere?” his friend called from the window.

He imagined Caro, waiting sleepy and warm in her bed—and he knew he could not go there. He was simultaneously too hollow and too filled with rage. He didn’t want her to see the ugly person he’d become because of his family’s betrayals. A creature with bloodied knuckles and a shriveled soul. He couldn’t pollute her goodness and honor with his own blackness.

“I can’t think of anywhere I want to go,” he said.

The carriage door swung open. “Good. Get in. We’ll get drunk together. That’s what I do when I have nowhere to go.”

“Do you often have no destination?” Luke asked, pulling himself into the carriage.

“Always, my friend. And I long ago discovered that even if I start out for one location, I will undoubtedly end up in another, so getting drunk is the best solution. Let’s start at my club and work down from there.”

Luke nodded. Getting drunk sounded like the best idea he’d heard today.

 
  

Patterns for July 1825

S
anjeet knocked on her
door but opened it without waiting for a reply. “A message, Memsahib. The runner is waiting for a reply.” He motioned to the outside door located across the large outer office of Rydell Shipping. A ragged boy, nearly lost behind the tall clerks’ desks, leaned against the doorjamb.

Sanjeet crossed to the desk and handed her the paper. The small man then shifted from foot to foot, as if unsure whether to retreat to give her privacy or to remain to give her support. He knew she’d been upset for these past two weeks and had undoubtedly guessed the reason. To forestall his having to make the decision to stay or leave, she immediately slit the seal and opened the note.

Would it be too late to hope for a dinner invitation for this evening? LH

No explanation. No apology. Her hand wanted to crumple the heavy paper into a ball and throw it across the room. Her heart wanted to take flight. She listened to her heart. Oh, she was a fool.

She pulled out a clean sheet of paper and wrote,
Eight then
, in her clear script, signing it
CR
. She folded the page with meticulous care and sealed it, part of her still tempted to sweep everything into the trash. Before she could act on that impulse, she handed the return message to Sanjeet. “Here’s the reply.”

He quietly exited, leaving her to stare at the original note. The first seven words seemed to express the real question—
Would it be too late to hope?

Luke had disappeared from her life a fortnight ago. The night he said he might be late, she’d waited for him until nearly dawn. She’d planned to thank him for going to the shipyard. She wanted to make him laugh with Sanjeet’s version of his overbearing lordly behavior.

But he did not come. Then or the next night—at which point, she was frantic, imagining all sorts of terrible fates. What if he were again floating in the Thames and she was not there to find him?

She finally sent a disgusted Perkins to Luke’s lodgings, but her butler returned with the information that he was not at home. Not knowing whom else to contact, she’d written to his friend, Viscount Tremaine. At least Tremaine had answered, although she doubted his letter’s truthfulness. He said Luke was involved in a family crisis and had been called out of town. He assured her Luke would contact her as soon as he was able.

And then, nothing. Just lonely silence as if Luke had never been—as if
they
had never been.

Slowly, concern coalesced into anger. Was she so unimportant that she could easily be dismissed from his mind? Amala read her distress and began again muttering about the dangerous habits of pye-dogs and how one should kick the curs and be done with them.

Eventually, her anger turned to pain. Why had he bothered to lie and tell her he loved her? She would have tumbled into bed without the need of a ruse.

But mostly, she missed him, the essential Luke, the man who listened to the problems of her day with understanding and could make her laugh when she least felt like it. Oddly, the loss of this closeness was more painful than the absence of the passion she’d come to enjoy. Memories of his body moving over hers haunted the hours when sleep would not come. But it was upon awakening that the hole in her life became most apparent.

Before meeting him, she’d learned to live with loneliness, but now loneliness had become a living beast with claws and fangs that raked her skin. Being with Luke had shown her how sterile her life had been. She feared returning to her solitary ways.

And now, after all this pain, he’d chosen to reappear.

Would it be too late to hope?
She hated that she still hoped. Foolishly hoped. She knew there could be no permanence, eventually he would discover she didn’t fit into his world, but she had hoped for more. More time. More closeness. Was it too late for both?

She’d always needed to know what lay on the far side of the hill, and so she could not let him disappear from her life without discovering the reasons for her sudden dismissal. While the knowledge might hurt, possessing it was better than not knowing.

But she could not, would not, let him know how devastating his disappearance had been. She would be calm and collected, the consummate hostess. She would look him in the eye and stare him down.

To do so, she needed to make preparations. Lord, yes, major preparations. A sumptuous dinner served by a beautifully dressed woman who was the epitome of indifference. She had so much to do before he arrived at eight.

Her feet crossed the room without her willing them to move. She opened her door and stuck out her head. “Sanjeet, order the carriage to come around. I need to go home.”

“Yes, memsahib,” he said.

Caro was crossing to retrieve her bonnet when it dawned on her that Sanjeet hadn’t been surprised with her request. Instead, he’d given her a knowing smile.

 
  

Luke walked up to Carolyn’s front door. He was done with sneaking in through the mews. He’d just finished reclaiming a large portion of his life. Now he was here to claim a bride. Unfortunately, he wasn’t particularly confident about that outcome of this last endeavor.

At the door, Perkins was aloof but not overtly hostile. Luke hoped this boded well for his visit. This optimistic interpretation lasted the length of the hall but disappeared when he entered the dining room. The large central table had been set for two people, one at each end. Nearly twenty feet of pristine white linen separated the two places. Caro had made it very clear that the intimate dinners at the small table by the window were now relegated to the past.

Caro herself looked like a queen. She wore a cream-colored dinner dress that shimmered in the candlelight. Her midnight dark hair coiled elaborately around her head. Her chin tilted upward at a haughty angle. Her eyes were mysterious and unreadable. She was incredibly beautiful and completely unapproachable.

Luke had known his behavior would be hard to explain. He’d come prepared to grovel, if necessary. It now looked like he would not be offered the chance.

“Lord Lucien, please be seated,” she said without preamble, being seated herself by a hovering footman.

Luke has no choice but to follow suit. From his end of the table, he had a view of a large silver epergne overflowing with flowers. From the far end, only the top of Caro’s head and the puffs on her sleeves peeked around the massive arrangement.

A footman offered a choice of two types of soup. Luke chose something clear. If it had a distinct taste, he didn’t notice. His mind was too busy planning ways to breach the physical and emotion distance that stretched out before him. Only the click of spoons on fine porcelain broke the silence.

Luke waited until he’d been served the next course and the footman had backed away to stand by the wall. Then he would wait no longer. “I much prefer a cold collation in your bedroom,” he said in a carrying voice.

“My lord, we are not alone. I don’t believe this is a suitable topic for conversation.” Caro spoke more softly, but Luke could hear embarrassment lace her words. He wished he could see if he’d caused her color to rise. The more uncomfortable he could make her, the sooner she would dispense with this lunacy and actually talk to him. As plans went, this was not a particularly good one, but it was the only one he could devise.