The Old Maids' Club 02 - Pariah (19 page)

“Thank you,” she murmured, though her whispered thanks were far from sufficient for all the help he’d given her, not the least of which was his way with Aunt Rosaline.

“Joyce and Mrs. Wyatt are back. I carried in your provisions and helped them to put them away.”

Yet again, all she could say was, “Thank you.” It felt so inadequate.
She
felt so inadequate, in so many ways. She needed help—with Aunt Rosaline, with Finn—yet she couldn’t afford for her father or uncle to learn of how dire the situation had become. But what else could she do?

Bethanne pulled her redingote tighter around her, wrapping her arms over her chest as though to hug herself.

“You’ll want to know that Finn has apologized for his temper tantrum and promised not to do that again.” Lord Roman chuckled, looking out across the gardens. Bethanne followed his gaze. He cleared his throat. “I somehow doubt he’ll be able to keep his promise forever, yet he will try. And Lady Rosaline has also calmed considerably. She’s back in the drawing room, waiting for Lieutenant Jackson’s arrival as patiently as she can.”

“H—how?” Bethanne shook her head dumbly, at a loss for how this man, this stranger, was so much better at handling her family—her responsibilities—than she was.

It felt so very wrong, yet also quite natural, to be sitting out here in the gardens, talking about everyday things, about life. It was as though this was how it ought to be. Yet how could this be how things ought to be, when Bethanne couldn’t risk letting him get any closer than he already was?

Lord Roman turned and looked at her then, his gray eyes piercing her with their intensity. “You’re too close. You deal with this every day, time and time again, without any time away from it all. You deal with it at night, too. Tell me, when is the last time you got a solid night’s sleep?”

Truth be told, not since before Finn was born—well over two years. Bethanne looked down at her lap and watched as a hot, fat tear fell. It landed on the pink redingote and spread, darkening the fabric to almost red.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, though she’d not said a word aloud to answer his question. “You need help, Miss Shelton.”

She knew she did. Bother, if she didn’t already know that far too well. But how? Bethanne pushed to her feet and walked along the maze, desperate to move, desperate to get away from this man and his bewildering nearness and perplexing knowledge of her.

Before she’d gone six steps, he was behind her and his hand was on her elbow—gently, yet it made her stop. He released her as soon as she ceased her flight.

She fought to control her breathing and her wild thoughts.

He moved closer behind her, and the warmth of his body seeped into her, through her, as though becoming part of her somehow, yet he didn’t touch her again.

A ragged sigh came from him. “What are you running from, Miss Shelton?” Almost as soon as he asked, he chuckled mirthlessly. “Pretend I never asked. We’ve all got secrets chasing us, don’t we?”

“You have secrets, my lord?” Bethanne murmured. Slowly, cautiously, she turned to face him again.

He looked down at her with achingly gentle eyes. “Secrets. Nightmares. Demons.” Raking a hand through his graying hair, he gave a rueful smile. “All of that and more. I know the pain and the necessity of keeping certain things to oneself.”

The pain of it had become far more familiar than Bethanne would care to admit. It had been part of her for close to three years, and seemed only to grow until she felt she must look like a hunchback with the weight of her pain holding her down. She nodded.

“I worry about you, Miss Shelton,” Lord Roman said, his voice jagged and broken. “I shouldn’t. I have other responsibilities that I ought to see to, but I find myself drawn here, to you, far more often than I can rightfully explain.”

A piece of her heart broke off at his confession. “I don’t want you to—”

“But I do.” He paced away, taking long, purposeful strides back and forth, as though something tormented him. “I worry about you, and about Lady Rosaline, and about Finn, and about your ragtag bunch of servants. I worry, and I can’t focus on my own duties, and you drive me to utter and complete distraction. And to add insult to injury, I take exception when someone from town speaks poorly of you, or when one of my servants looks at you askance, and I have no right to do so.”

“Oh,” Bethanne said, for lack of anything more intelligent to say. Her jaw fell slack, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from allowing such things.

“Instead of filling the vacancies at Hassop House, I’m trying to find ways to hire a manservant to protect you. Instead of planning renovations to the estate I’m acting as steward over, I’m repairing windows and locks and fences for you, because I can’t bear to do anything else while these things go undone. Instead of meeting with my father’s tenants, I’m riding with no true destination in mind, and ending up in front of your house.”

He stopped pacing and stared at her, his gaze so intense and lasting so long she felt like her bones might melt out from under her. Her cheeks heated, but she couldn’t force herself to look away from him.

“I think your aunt is right,” he said decisively. “I think I should stay here. With you. To protect you.”

What in God’s name had he just suggested? Roman couldn’t for the life of him determine where such a thought had come from or why he’d allowed it to issue forth from his mouth.

“Stay here?” Miss Shelton sputtered. She shook her head, as though dumbfounded, and her eyes were green pools of confusion. “What do you mean by that, my lord? You can’t…you can’t
live
here. Surely that’s not your meaning.”

He would have done much better to suggest hiring her a manservant, as he’d mentioned briefly and intended to do. He should retract his suggestion, immediately, and not look back. Pretend he’d never uttered such a foolhardy statement in his life.

“That’s precisely my meaning.”

Clearly, he’d taken all leave of his senses. Roman had known he’d lost a bit of himself in Waterloo, but perhaps he’d left more behind on those fields than he’d realized—more than just his soul.

The look in her eyes turned in an instant from utter bewilderment to pure, unadulterated outrage. “You, sir, are no gentleman,” she hissed. “You come here and claim to be offended when someone speaks ill of me, of my reputation, and yet you would suggest such a thing? No matter what the people in town have told you, no matter what you think you know about me, I can assure you—I am no loose woman.”

And therein lay the worst of his treacherous suggestion.

Somehow, he knew that. Knew that, while Finn might be her son, she had never willingly participated in an illicit affair with a man. He didn’t know what the truth was, what secrets she was hiding, but he could see that much of the truth, whether others refused to see it or not.

Roman rubbed a hand over his face, trying to wipe away the ugliness he felt at his unthinking callousness in putting the idea before her without, at the very least, better preamble.

“I am not suggesting we have any sort of affair—”

“No, just that we give the perception of one, which is equally as damaging.”

Roman frowned. “Miss Shelton,” he said slowly, “you do realize that, at this point, there is little you can do to achieve a worse reputation than you currently possess, do you not?”

She bristled with indignation. “That’s
not
the point,” she said hotly.

“You’re right. It’s not.” He paced again, searching for the answers within his own mind which could make this acceptable by any standard. “The point is that you need help. You’ve made it abundantly clear that you either won’t ask, or can’t ask, your family for help because of your secrets. I’m offering you help.” A massive sigh escaped him, shuddering for several moments and rising as mist in the cold air.

She looked at him with tears shining in her eyes, but she didn’t immediately rebuke him again.

“I won’t ask you to divulge your secrets. I don’t require answers to my questions in exchange for the assistance I’m offering. But you can’t do it all alone, Miss Shelton, and someone—good God,
someone
—has to help you. After what I walked in on today, you can’t possibly still think you can do this all alone.”

She’d had her mouth open and at the ready to deliver a retort right up until his last statement. At that point, she snapped her jaw closed tight and blinked back more tears in her eyes. Moments passed with no sounds other than their equally harsh breaths in the crisp November air.

Then she moved back to the bench and sat, studying her gloved fingers for a painfully long time.

“If I agree to this, what will happen when the people in town find out?” Her eyes, filled with fear and sadness and exhaustion, met his.

Roman resumed his seat beside her. The warmth of her body emanated over to his side despite the fact that they were not touching. “They’ll claim that I’ve taken you as a mistress. It might even be viewed as slightly more acceptable than what they say of you now.”

Which was ridiculous and shameful and utterly
wrong
, but true. If the whole town thought, as Talbot apparently did, that she was under his protection even if not his wife, then perhaps they would not be so hard on her.

Indeed, perhaps he should have thought of this plan before now…back when his staff threatened to mutiny over her.

Miss Shelton nodded and kept her tone low. “This
cannot
reach my family. My father, my uncle, my brothers—if any of them discover…” Her voice hitched. “No matter how innocent or honorable your intentions may be, my lord, they cannot ever learn of your presence here.”

“I’ll do everything in my power to keep it secret.” Yet another secret for her. And for him. The weight of them all was starting to take over his life. How on earth could she stand beneath it? The woman must have the strength of Atlas to go alongside the heart of an angel.

Miss Shelton worried her lower lip, drawing his eye there. Damn if he didn’t inexplicably harden at the sight. Roman forced both his eyes and his thoughts in a different direction.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll have Mrs. Temple prepare a guest room for you at the end of the family corridor—”

“No,” he interrupted, surprising himself even with the suddenness of it.

She jumped, and he cursed himself.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Roman took a deep breath and slowed his racing thoughts. “Prepare a chamber for me on the ground floor. Away from the family.” He couldn’t risk being too close to them—any of them—should he wake from a nightmare. For that matter, he
shouldn’t
put them at risk at all. What in God’s name was he doing? In an almost subconscious move, he felt the pocket of his coat, making certain his vial was still secure. “I’ll need to put locks on the door to it.”

“Locks?” she said dazedly. “If you fear we’ll steal from you, I can’t imagine why you’d want to—”

“The locks are not to keep you or anyone else out.” Not exactly. “They’re to keep
me
in. We’ve all got secrets, as you’ve said yourself.” Roman gave her a meaningful look.

She stared at him for a few minutes, and then nodded resolutely. “Very well.” She stood and moved to a frozen rose bush, then plucked off the last bud, covered in frost and snow.

“And I’ll sit up with Lady Rosaline at night, to help her when she has her night terrors.”

Miss Shelton rounded on him. “But when will you sleep? No, I can’t allow that.”

“You can. You have to allow someone to help you. I’m better at calming your aunt than you are.”

She pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest, crushing the frozen rose bud. “You have to sleep.”

“As do you. I never sleep before dawn.” Not if he could help it, at least, but he saw no reason to burden her with his secrets. “I’ll stay with her until morning, and then I’ll leave her to you and your servants.”

A play of emotions washed through her eyes, followed by a fresh bout of tears that hovered, just on the brink of spilling over and down her face. Roman rose and went to her, taking her hands into his.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked, and one tear fell, trailing a path down her cheek to fall on her coat.

For the first time, he understood something. He wanted to take her pain from her. To take her burdens. To see her carefree and light. Miss Shelton’s face was not one designed to be weary and drawn, as he so often saw it. It was meant to be laughing and shining in the light. He wanted to see that. He wanted to be, at least in part, responsible for it happening.

The realization struck him like a ball in the chest.

Yet, as unworthy as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to leave her. He couldn’t force his feet to walk away. He couldn’t bear the thought of allowing her to fend for herself for even so much as another day.

Roman lifted a hand and, with the back of his glove, he brushed away the wetness left by her tears, then left his hand there, touching her, stroking the rise and hollow of her cheek.

She sucked in a breath and stared at him, her lips parted ever so slightly and her haunting, green eyes wide.