The Summer of You (26 page)

“Charles and Nevill?” Jane asked, whipping through the trees and into the clearing of the Cottage’s front lawn.

“They were surprised,” Victoria conceded. “The Duke—” She hesitated, not sure how to begin. “Your father—I think they knew that he was growing absentminded in his old age. Everyone understood that. But . . . but he just came into the room and started throwing his food. Saying he had already eaten luncheon, and that the nurses were trying to fool him. He hit one,” she whispered. “One of the nurses, with a broken plate. She cut her hand.”

Oh God—it was worse than Jane had feared. She had ruefully been hoping that her father had only said something out of turn, had mentioned his wife as if she were living or asked who Charles and Nevill were, but this . . .

Jane should have been there.

How could she be so utterly selfish?

They walked through the front doors of the house, into the stillness that follows pandemonium. Jane glanced into the dining room without stopping, saw the broken plates and spilled food that three maids were now attempting to clean up. She then bounded up the stairs two at a time, with an uncertain Victoria falling behind. Victoria stopped in the foyer, apparently deciding to wait there.

Jane ran into Jason first.

“Where the hell have you been?” Jason asked under his breath. Jane did not stop moving, did not stop until she got to her father’s door and the doctors waiting outside.

“Never mind that,” she breathed, arriving in front of Dr. Lawford. “How is he?”

The gray-haired man peered over his spectacles at her. “He’s resting. Nurse Nancy managed to convince him to drink some tea, laced with a bit of laudanum. He’ll sleep off most of his agitation.”

“It’s to be expected,” Dr. Berridge added, with a nod from his colleague. “His memory loss is progressing. No matter how careful you’ve been with him of late, these episodes are going to happen.”

But she hadn’t been careful with him, she thought guiltily. She had been the exact opposite. She had been reckless. She hadn’t been there for luncheon, and because of that, he thought luncheon had already occurred . . .

“The house being turned upside down for your ball,” Dr. Berridge continued, “he can sense the upheaval. It’s not your fault,” he addressed Lady Jane but then nodded up to Jason. “Either of you.”

Jane, for the first time, looked at her brother—his face wore the bereft, confused, and scared expression that it had when he first witnessed his father’s episodes. But there was something else. There was blame.

He blamed her.

She blamed herself.

“Can I see him?” she asked, her voice as calm as she could make it.

The doctors shared a look and then nodded simultaneously. “Just for a few minutes. He’s likely asleep; do not wake him.”

Jane nodded and with a look to her brother, she ducked into her father’s bedchamber.

He looked so small in the oversized, stately bed. Swallowed by gray silk sheets and a feather comforter. She approached the bed penitent, like a child caught at mischief. She had never been so scared to see her father as when she was about to be punished. But this . . . this was worse somehow.

He was sleeping, and she dare not wake him. But she didn’t see her father there.

When had he stopped being a parent to her? Stopped being a person? Now, all she could see was her responsibility and how she had failed at it. When had her father morphed from the strong, bold man of her memory into this small, fragile creature? When had she decided to run away from it?

She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t be this person, who lost all sense and compassion in pursuit of her own pleasures.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed, brushing the white hair back from his brow. He breathed lightly, peacefully. As she watched her father breathe in and breathe out, Jane wished, not for the first time, that there was someone who she could lean on. Who she could confide in, and who would know what to do for her father.

She wished her mother were here.

AFTER Jane rushed out with Victoria, Byrne was left to pace the length of his sitting room for some time, its short distance no strain on his leg, as he worried out what had just occurred, its complexities and implications.

It was a truly rare thing when Byrne Worth did not know what to do. He was used to deciding his course quickly and taking it. But now he was without bearings.

Something was wrong. Lady Jane’s reaction at Victoria’s arrival was not based in embarrassment over being seen with Byrne but fear when her father was mentioned. It was the second time she had done so. The first time he had thought little of it, only that it had prevented her from entering his house. But now—now it was the first piece of a larger puzzle.

And this time, she had rushed off, shutting Byrne out as effectively as if he had never existed.

In his old life, as the Blue Raven, this lack of existence never irked him. Hell, it proved useful. Slipping into the shadows, standing on the edges of life—it let him watch, step back, and see the whole picture. But this—he was too close in. Too worried that his actions were causing her to be as skittish and frightened as a newborn colt. Too entrenched with Jane to be able to tell at a glance what was bothering her and what to do about it.

Byrne’s head snapped up. Of course, it was too simple. What this situation required was some reconnaissance.

“Dobbs!” Byrne yelled. “We’re going out.”

It wasn’t terribly difficult for Dobbs to amble up next to the Cottage’s stables, ask a few easy questions while pretending to pick a rock out of his horse’s shoe. The stable lads there were willing to lend a pick when necessary, as well as gossip, and by the time Dobbs led his horse away back onto the road toward Reston, they had completely forgotten he had been there.

Nor was it terribly difficult for Byrne, upon being relayed the information that the commotion in the house was located abovestairs, and that the Marquis had come home in a lather, and once Jane had arrived, left in one, to skulk around the side of the large manor house undetected, as everyone who might be outside was requisitioned within.

What was more difficult was climbing the side of the Cottage, its smooth stone face offering little to no foothold, as he moved from terrace balustrade to window frame, to second-floor balcony, which ran the length of the lake-facing side of the building. Once he nearly lost his balance and had to hook his cane around a banister for support, but he managed, and silently, too.

The family rooms would afford views of the water, he guessed. And wherever Jane was, so would answers be.

He found her in what must have been the Duke’s rooms. He peered through the window, watched as she sat on his bed, her back straight and proud. She took a cup of broth handed to her from a nurse, brought a spoon of it to his lips. The old man shook his head weakly, forcing Jane to placate him into taking a sip. After a few spoonfuls, she put the cup of broth aside, tenderly fussed about the Duke’s pillows, tucked him in, watched until he fell asleep.

Byrne knew instantly when he saw it.

The same tightly wound expression. The same buried pain, only now—when her father couldn’t see—making its way to the surface. It was the same as when he first spied her, all those months ago, at the Hampshire Racing Party. The concealed strain, and grief. But there was something new now, something frightened.

She watched her father continuously. And Byrne watched her. Minutes on end, an hour. The sun began to dip lower into the afternoon sky, and yet they remained at their vigil: Jane watching the Duke rest, breathing evenly, Byrne watching Jane from outside the window.

And then a shaft of sunlight angled through the opposite window, warming Jane’s back, setting her hair on fire as surely as tinder. She sat up, taken out of her reverie. She looked around.

And she saw him.

Her eyes locked onto his, never once betraying his position, kneeling at the base of the window, never uttering a sound. But her eyes—those dark lost pools, they told him everything.

They met at the creek. The sun setting red and orange, turning the lake beyond the trees into silken ribbons of pink and coral, lapping gently on the shore. They made no plans to meet there, but he must have known she would take this path to his door—the cowardly long way around, instead of the quick lakeside route, delaying the inevitable. He was waiting on the bench stone when she arrived.

She saw him outside her father’s window long before she had met his eye. He had remained remarkably still, crouched there. His leg must have ached horribly. None of the other people in the room, not Nurse Nancy, and certainly not her father, noticed the interloper spying through the window. Just Jane. But then, she had always managed to see him. At the assembly. At the lake. Even as far back as the Hampshire Racing Party, she had managed to pick Byrne out of a crowd, her eye drawn to him like a moth toward light.

But now, sitting beside him on the stone, the creek babbling beneath their feet, Jane couldn’t look him in the eye.

And so, after some moments, it was Byrne who spoke first.

“How long has he been ill?” he asked dispassionately.

“A while,” Jane answered. “At first it was just as if he were . . . older. He would forget little things but then remember them. But then he began to forget bigger things.”

Byrne held quiet, waiting, watching. Which was something he was very good at, Jane thought with bleak humor.

“He’s still himself most of the time. But sometimes . . . today—” Jane didn’t think she would be able to continue on that train of conversation, so she stopped. Taking a deep breath, she continued. “None of the doctors in London gave us any hope. So my brother and I brought him up here, to keep him away from the eyes of the world during the Season. To tend to him.”

She let the silence fall between them, held there for some moments.

“I get the impression,” Byrne replied at length, “that you do most of the tending.”

“He has nurses,” Jane replied defensively. But it was a weak defense, she knew. And so did Byrne.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, finally turning his face to meet hers.

“I don’t know,” her voice was so small, it was barely a whisper.

“I mean it, Jane, why? I would have tried to help, or . . .”

“Because I didn’t want you to know!” Jane cried, standing up, turning away, pacing. “Because I wanted to keep something of my own. Don’t you understand? I needed to escape to a place where my father, my brother, they don’t exist.”

“And my house is that place,” Byrne concluded. “But if it was making you unhappy—”

“It’s the only place I was happy!” she replied despairingly.

“It doesn’t work that way, Jane,” Byrne stood, following her. “Take it from someone who knows about leading a double life and keeping hard secrets. There is no true escape. You don’t get to break yourself in half running from one life to the other. They will bleed into each other, and something will fall through the cracks.”

Something. That something being her father, she thought ruefully. And her peace of mind.

“You told me I could run to you,” Jane replied after a time.

He looked at her then, nodding to acknowledge the truth of what she said. “I did. And that was selfish of me. I offered you a peaceful refuge because I wanted to see you. Steal as much time as I could.”

Jane’s heart leaped when he said that, his declaration of desire as potent as most men’s poetry. Perhaps they could remain as they were, Jane could still hide at his house, they could still enjoy each other’s company . . .

Then he said, “But I thought your problems were limited to too many houseguests.”

Foolish hopes, Jane knew. And ones she couldn’t entertain to begin with, thanks to her lies of omission. Everything was all her fault, it seemed. Suddenly Jane felt red sparks of anger behind her eyes. No, it wasn’t.

“If I had told you about my father,” she asked, rounding on him, her shoulders squaring, “what would you have done?”

Byrne’s eyebrow went up.

“You would have told me to go home, and not see you again, correct?” Jane filled in for him.

“. . . Probably,” he acknowledged after a time.

“Because it’s what would be best for me, of course. So you’d send me away and go back to living in your little house, in your little life, wrapped up in your own problems with no thought to the outside world.” Jane began to rant, pacing as she spoke, knowing that Byrne only followed her with his eyes. “And if you gave yourself permission to crawl back into yourself, those tentative steps you’d been taking out into the world again forgotten, well, who is there to argue? Certainly not Jane.”

She cocked her head to one side, regarded him. “I get angry with my brother for abdicating his duties, for not working, for going out and being a fool with his friends. But at least he lives in the world. At least he doesn’t hide.”

He didn’t answer her. Instead his gaze bored into hers, those ice blue eyes blazing with suppressed fury.

“Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell you,” she decided, closing the gap between them, her gaze narrowed, scrutinizing. “Because if I did, you would send me away—not for my own good, but because in Byrne’s little house, in his little life, with his half a bottle of laudanum, no one is allowed to be broken but you.”

She stood toe to toe with him, and from the fire in the gaze, barely contained fury, she thought (briefly and uncharitably) that he might hit her. She couldn’t blame him if he did—she didn’t know what possessed her to say what she did, to go as far as she did . . . but it didn’t matter. Because at that moment, shaking with energy, he reached out and touched her.

Softly, tenderly. As if she would shatter . . . and she very well might. His hand caressed her cheek, his thumb dancing over her full lower lip, and oh, how she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to crush her to him, and to just take. To take all this shaking madness and anger and argument that coursed through her and through him and smother them into the ground. And for one, full, long, frightening and glorious moment, it looked like he would.

Instead, he leaned down, and with infinite restraint, placed the most chaste of all kisses on her forehead, and said, “Go home, Jane.”

And whatever illusions she had about their friendship and their time together fell apart, revealing the hardest of truths.

“Of . . . of course,” she whispered, pulling away from him, out of his reach. Because if he touched her again, she would die from it, she was sure. “Good-bye,” she said, turning, and before she could stop herself, walked away.

As she made her way back to the Cottage, she held back any tears that might threaten to fall, by thinking of the absolute logic of this conclusion.

She needed to be with her family now. And if he refused her because of that, well, then damn him anyway. As she climbed the steps to the Cottage, met at the door by the butler, telling her supper was waiting, she knew she had returned to her rightful place.

After all, they had known it would end. It would simply be a few days earlier than expected.

They were never meant for more than the summer.

Byrne sat by the creek as night fell. For once, he didn’t want to go back to his little house and his little life. He had a feeling that what had once felt cozy and safe would now seem empty.

Jane had made a rather cruel and astute point—that he was hiding from life.

But he had been making progress, hadn’t he?

You really think so? That little voice came back, and Byrne rolled his eyes in the dusky light.

“Yes, I do,” he countered, his voice echoing against the creek. He’d gone to the assembly. He’d been trying to be kind to everyone in the street. He’d . . .

When’s the last time you wrote to your brother? Or bought a new shirt? Or paid a call? No, you just shut yourself up in your little house, just like she said.

But it’s not the same! he thought vehemently. I’m . . .

You’re what? That little voice shot back. Broken?

Byrne remained silent, unable to reply to that.

Are you broken anymore? The voice needled.

No. He realized it, and it made him so calm. No, he wasn’t. For the first time in a very long time, Byrne felt whole. He felt able to venture out into the world.

So why was he holding back? What was keeping him in his little house? What was making him give Jane back to her world without a fight? Why had he ever agreed to let her go?

Why do you keep that half bottle of laudanum?

It was fully dark now, twilight giving way to stars. Byrne looked up, and through the trees, he managed to find the Big Dipper in the inky black sky.

And he made a decision.

He went back home, did not pause at the table of papers in the sitting room, did not answer Dobbs as he asked if they were ready to head out to the Oddsfellow Arms for supper that evening. He went up the stairs, pried open the floorboard, and pulled out the satchel hidden therein.

Then, marching down the stairs and out the front door, he came to stand at the edge of the water.

For too long, he had let Jane feed him. He’d taken her energy, her vibrancy, without thinking what it might have cost her.