Laurie's Painter (sweet Regency romance) (9 page)

"You mean you slaved
all those years, with hardly any hope of ever paying everything off, all because
bankers somewhere made an error of kingly proportion?" Jenny gripped the
arms of her chair hard, well and truly furious. "I can't believe that
such—such ignorance and folly are allowed to exist in the world!"

In spite of everything, he
sent her an amused, sarcastic look. "Well, sister, if you've not learnt to
live in the real world yet, surely there's nothing I can do to change your
mind! But do admit an error in this way is better for us than one in the other!"

Was it?

If he had thought their
debt was something that could reasonably be repaid, would Henry have refrained
from working himself so hard? Would his health have fared better?

The bank was at fault. It
must be run by truly evil men if they could allow such an error to go
uncorrected for so long, tacitly allowing a young man to work himself toward
the grave. It was wickedness!

Henry sank into a chair
and flung his arms over his head, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a
huge sigh. "Lord, to think we might soon be free of it, finally free! I
can't tell you how good it feels!"

"You needn't,"
said Jenny in a clipped, abrupt voice. She rose quickly and walked to the
kitchen with hard, angry steps. She did not let tears slip before reaching the
safety of her smoky haven and beginning to scrub angrily at the table to
relieve her feelings. But her eyes were clouded and her throat choked.

Such wicked men, to allow
her brother to suffer so. And her as well.

If they had known the debt
was more manageable, how might their lives have differed? Help in the kitchen
for Jenny perhaps, considering it an investment to keep her hands soft? New
dresses once in a while, and opportunities to be around eligible young
men—perhaps not of the first water, but better than the young men in the
marketplace who called rude things at her whilst she shopped.

She wanted that life. A
life of poverty not without hope. Instead of—this. It wasn't fair, a cheat. The
life she had been cheerfully making the best of until now suddenly seemed to
have been a cruel joke.

She didn't hear Henry
until he came in the kitchen and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He
pressed his forehead against the back of her hair. "It will be all right,
Jen," he said quietly. "Everything will be all right now."

Chapter six

Laurie put a stack of blunt
in Henry's hands, and gave him a defiant look. "It's not for you. It's for
your sister."

"What?" demanded
Henry, blinking.

They had been calmly
discussing the Wilkensons' visit to Laurie's family manor in two weeks time,
when Laurie steeled his nerve and handed over the money. He'd been trying to
for days. Unusually for him, he couldn't find the right words ahead of time. Perhaps
because this meant a lot to him, and he couldn't bluff his way through it. It
was serious, and he needed Henry to understand.

"And why would you be
giving my sister money?" asked Henry, beginning to bristle.

Laurie sighed. "Because,
your sister is very humble and not the least proud, but she is bound to feel
the blush if you make her attend my country home without better clothes. It
would be unkind. So accept this money and encourage her to deck herself out in
something suitable. She needn't know it is another advance."

"Oh." Henry
stared at the pile of cash, deflated. "It has been a long time since she
had a new dress. She doesn't complain, but I'm afraid you're right." He
raised a guilty gaze to meet Laurie's. He swallowed hard, and spoke unwillingly.
"I shall give it to her, as you say. But you must remember to take it out
of the price at the end, along with your other advance."

It was so difficult for
the young man to accept either, Laurie knew, that he assented readily. "I
shall, of course, do so."

In the months since
meeting the siblings, Laurie had grown fonder still of them. His visits—teasing
or serious—had drawn the three closer together. Even Henry seemed to benefit
from the teasing and feel less defensive and more cheerful when Laurie visited lately.

Laurie's plans regarding
the debt had also gone well. He could afford to cancel some debts which they
would be hard pressed to earn their way out of on a painter's salary—or through
the mending and washing that Jenny took in, as Henry had confided once to
Laurie after a glass of sherry.

These words had surprised
him enough that he nearly choked on his drink. The thought of those slender
hands doing such rough work, cracked and bleeding from scrubbing in the cold
weather, had shocked him more than he cared to admit. Laurie had been
unprepared for the sudden rush of protective feelings and the anger roused in
his chest. It was as though someone was making
his
Jenny work too
hard—and he knew he had no such claims at all.

Henry seemed relieved
about the debts being less than he and his sister had originally been told, and
seemed completely without suspicion that Laurie might be involved. Laurie was
relieved to have carried it off so well, with the collusion of a friend at the
bank. Henry's pride would never have allowed him to accept what he must view as
charity.

When Jenny re-entered the
room carrying tea biscuits and some of the very thinly sliced ham Laurie had
sent for Christmas, her smile was warm and friendly. Laurie thought of those
dainty hands labouring over the ham, and he had to push down a very strong
desire to kiss one of her gloved hands.

Her gloves. Since he'd
first met her, she'd always worn thin, white gloves when he visited. Now he
knew why; she was ashamed of her hands.

He finished talking to
Henry, accepted the return of a book he had loaned, and left Henry reluctantly
laughing at one of his jokes. He regretted very much not getting to see Jenny
privately. He hadn't realised how dreadfully he could miss her when he didn't
get to speak to her alone for at least a moment.

It was a very odd way to
feel, and he thought about it as he left their home and went to do a little
shopping for ladies' gloves.

~*~

"Laurie?" A
familiar voice smote him like the prick of a sharp sword. He froze, a pair of
lavender ladies' gloves in his hands. His heart pounded madly, and for a moment
he wished himself anywhere, anywhere else. What had prompted him to visit this
shop now? And why, why did she have to be here?

He turned with a forced
smile, and found himself face to face with his old crush, the lovely Althea. She
looked beautiful and elegant as always, very little older than she had at
nineteen. He realized he resented that; couldn't she look careworn? Couldn't
she look as though she regretted her cruelty to him?

But all he saw was a familiar
smile. She extended a hand and he accepted and bowed over it. "It's lovely
to see you, Mrs. Johnson."

She laughed. "So
formal. We were neighbours once, or have you forgotten?" Her eyes laughed
at him, not with him the way Jenny's did. "How is your mother,
Laurie?"

He answered stiffly.
"Quite well, thank you. And your husband?"

"Fatter than ever,
and with the gout," she answered cheerfully. "It's lovely to see you.
I do wish you the best of luck with the lucky recipient of those gloves." She
nodded faintly towards the forgotten items in his hands, her eyes dancing with
a taunting laugh, and then she moved away with a faint smile that seemed to mock
him even after she was gone.

He stood there for a
moment, shaken to his core, and then turned away blindly and back to examining the
gloves. She may as well have stuck a knife in his gut and turned it. He'd had
no luck with her, no luck at all; and perhaps he was behaving just as foolishly
with Jenny.

That mocking smile haunted
him all the way home, through his meal, and into his restless sleep. And in the
end, he didn't have the fortitude to deliver the gloves to Jenny himself. Instead,
he sent an anonymous present by messenger: three pairs of gloves—kid gloves
soft as leather, white lacy gloves delicate and lady-like, and the third pair
lavender-coloured.

She said nothing to him,
but wore the lace gloves next time he visited. He saw by her shy smile that she
knew they were from him. He smiled in return, feeling a twinkle in his eyes,
and bowed low over her hand, relief filling his chest. She would never mock him
the way Althea could with just a smile. Jenny lacked the coldness; she was too
kind. Jenny was a woman who set scraps out for stray cats, not someone like Althea
who practiced a hard set down. Althea thought nothing of vanquishing a rival at
a crowded party; Jenny would never behave so, he felt certain.

And being near Jenny
lifted his heart, made him feel like a youth again having these feelings for
the first time. When he remembered that first blush of youthful ardour, he was
ashamed of himself for being such a fool. He'd fallen head over heels for his
neighbour Althea, a beautiful statuesque woman three years his senior—an
eternity in those days, when he was a puppy of sixteen and she was a diamond of
the first water on the marriage mart at nineteen.

He remembered as if in a
dream the intense feelings that had consumed him, night and day, the things he
had fooled himself into believing—that a dance with him, or a cool smile in his
direction meant her heart was as lost as his.

These feelings for Jenny
reminded him so much of those in some ways—unexpected, strong, sudden and
intensely real. But they were different. What he felt for Jenny was a warm
blossoming instead of a rabid fire; and yet there was fire, smouldering,
glowing beneath everything like hot coals. He felt that a look or glance with
her could be nearly as intimate as a kiss. When they shared a laugh. When they
conspired to care for Henry. When she told him something that only a trusted
friend would be privy to. In these moments, his heart warmed further and he
felt something singing inside him.

He'd distrusted such
feelings since his first, humiliating love. After fooling himself blind about Althea's
love, he'd had the ill-wisdom to propose to her in public—and then had to
weather the humiliating disgrace of her public, scornful rejection of him as a
lovesick puppy.

Laurie's good humour had
taken a severe hit after suffering these pangs to youthful love. He felt sick
as a dog, couldn't stand to eat or bring himself to meet even his sister's gaze,
much less his mother's or father's. (They had warned him about this very
situation, though he couldn't hear them at the time.) His jokes, when he made
them, were cold and caustic, full of bitterness.

Eventually he had been
sent to school and there immersed himself in the world of books and
scholarship, and awakened some months later to find his heart cooled from
passion, fury, and hurt. But he had also become a far more cautious man in
regards to matters of the heart; he had determined never to be made such a fool
of again. And, indeed, whether through a quirk of fate or because (as he
suspected), he had grown up too much for it, never again had he experienced
that blinding rush of devotion, or a feeling that here was someone he could not
live without.

Anyway, there was time
enough for marrying. He hadn't needed an heir yet, not with any desperation. Perhaps
he would have settled to the task sooner, if he'd met more young women and been
in polite society more. But between his studies, continued after graduation
with his ever-increasing personal library and correspondences, between his
friends and his practical jokes and gadding about, and then with his sister's
illness, he'd kept busy enough.

But truly, Ann's illness
had probably done the most. Grieving made attending balls and routs
unnecessary, undesirable and extremely unpalatable to him. He could no more
have sat through watching healthy, laughing young women flirt with him whilst
his own sister grew steadily wearier and nearer death's door, than he could
have supped with the manor's pigs in the evening. It disgusted him, but worse, made
him feel a traitor to his sister. Whilst sometimes every moment spent in her
presence was thick with grief and the sweet, bitter feeling of looming loss, it
was worse to know these moments were coming to an end.

Sometimes he felt it would
be a relief for her to be freed from her suffering. Yet how were he and his
mother to manage without her? Ann had always been a gentle, quiet, kind soul. In
a way, she was all that kept the family together, after Father's death. Mother
had seemed so very far away, and Laurie had been hit hard by his father's
death.

Instead of allowing him to
retreat into his books or into worse habits, Ann had gently drawn him out into
a limited social life, and into conversation with her. She had helped Mother
immensely, as well, all whilst dealing with her own grief. She rarely spoke of
it, but Laurie was aware that she and Father had been very close. In some ways
they had been more alike than not, with an understanding between them that
Laurie often envied. When talking to his father, he seemed to have his words
twist in the air and become weapons of attack, their meaning never clear or kind.

Father's words had had
much the same effect of making things worse instead of better between the two
of them. They were much better off if they didn't talk, but instead simply rode
together to the hounds, or partnered in piquet. In those moments he had grown
to know his father as a young man wishes to, a companion and friend to look up
to, to pattern himself after and to find approval from. But those moments never
seemed to last long enough, and the two would be back to their brangling,
confusing ways.