A Lord Rotheby's Holiday Bundle (33 page)

But that blunderbuss Griffin would
take the back door out of a tavern before being caught with his
breeches down. The lout had never liked Quin to begin with. It
would be just like him to seek revenge through such despicable
means.

He’d have to question Aurora about
Griffin. If she would even allow him near her person
again.

Quin took a seat on the ground next to
Jonas, draping an arm over a propped up knee. “I’ll sort it out.
I’ll take care of it.” Somehow. Good God, everything about his life
had become a blasted nuisance since Aurora came into it. “You know,
I’d rethink the whole idea of finding a bride, if I were you.
They’re often more trouble than they’re worth.”

“
Says the man who’s done
everything in his power to avoid his wife,” Jonas came back with.
“You’re neglecting her, Quin. She deserves better than that,
despite the mistakes she may have made along the way.”

“
What would you know of
it?” Quin barked. “You should mind your own affairs.”

As expected, Jonas failed to even
flinch from the rebuke. “I’ll mind mine when I’m satisfied that
you’re not going to ruin what could be a very good thing. I spent
the afternoon with Lady Quinton. She really is rather delightful to
be around. You should try it sometime.”

“
I’ll take your marriage
advice when you’re married. Until then, keep your opinions to
yourself.” Quin ground his teeth. What did Jonas know of it? The
baronet was almost thirty and had never seriously entertained the
notion of marriage. At least not that he’d let on to Quin. He’d
kept the same damned mistress for at least the last six years. “And
stay away from Aurora,” he added as an afterthought.

“
She’s lonely. If you don’t
spend any time with her and you keep her virtually imprisoned here
with no interaction other than with servants, she’ll go mad within
the year. Your wife was not built to be idle, Quin.” Jonas faced
him, his eyes holding a serious glow in the moonlight. “So either
you start paying attention to her, or I will.”

“
You’ll stay away from her
or you’ll answer to me.”

“
You’ll uphold your
responsibility to her or
you’ll
answer to
me
,” Jonas said, his voice holding a
quiet threat. “And you’ll damned well learn to stay away from the
brandy or I swear to you, I’ll take her away from you and put her
somewhere you’ll never find her. She deserves better.”

“
Of course she deserves
better. My mother deserved better! I deserved better. But we didn’t
get it.” Quin pushed off the ground and stalked to the riverfront.
“And instead, I turned into him. I became an exact replica of my
father, and there is nothing I can do about it. Every day, I am
more like him. Every moment, I feel more of him creeping through my
soul, coaxing me to drink, driving me to strike
something.”

“
If you strike her, I
promise you that you will never see her again. Mrs. Marshall and
Forster have already sworn their assistance. They won’t sit by and
watch you lash out against that girl the way your father lashed out
against you and your mother. Going through that once was more than
enough for this lifetime—for anyone.” Jonas came up alongside him
and skipped a stone across the placid surface of the river. The
ripples danced in the light of the moon. “But you are not your
father. You don’t have to be like him. You are your own man, Quin,
and you make your own decisions in life. Right now, you’re
choosing
to follow his
path.” He turned and walked back toward his horse, pausing before
he mounted. “I’m asking you to choose a different path. I don’t
want to lose a friend. But it is your choice.”

~ * ~

Quin hadn’t watched the sunrise come
up over the river by the hermitage since before Mercy died. Not
until that morning, after sitting there by the great oak the entire
night.

He didn’t drink any more of his
brandy. There was plenty left in his stores, so he could have drank
until he passed out, and then woke up and had some more.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he spent the
entire night thinking of Mercy. He always thought of her when he
went there. It had been
their
spot, almost as though it had been created just
for the two of them—their favorite place to go when they wanted an
adventure, or just to escape their tutor and governess for a while.
Mother and Father had always made certain the servants kept it well
stocked, with logs to burn in the hearth, pillows and bedding,
changes of clothes, bread and sweetmeats. Quin and Mercy could
escape there, for a few hours or the better part of the day,
sometimes even spending the night and watching the sunrise together
while they fished in the river, laughing and talking about how fun
it would be to leap from the branches of the old oak, to swim in
the water without a care in the world. They never did. The branches
were too high. He had believed he could climb it, but surely she
couldn’t. She was just a girl, after all. A girl with skirts and
any number of other things to hinder her.

Still, it was perfect. Their secret
place that wasn’t a secret. Their haven.

Until that one day when he came upon
Mercy laying on the riverbank, beneath the great oak with a pool of
blood around her head. The day she died. The day his life changed
forever.

For the next two years, the hermitage
was no longer an adventure. It was a place to hide when Father went
into a drunken rage. A place to lick his wounds in private, so
Mother wouldn’t know how badly he’d been beaten that time. A place
to fear discovery, if Father ever came out looking for
him.

After his father died, Quin hadn’t
been back to the hermitage. Until now. Until he was running from
himself. Maybe he thought a part of Mercy was still there, where
she’d laughed and lived and died. Maybe he thought she would have
the answers he sought, that she could still speak to
him.

But she wasn’t there. She didn’t
speak.

Mercy was nothing more than a memory
floating away with the current of the river. Not even the
perfection of the sunrise washing the meadow in gold could bring
her back.

Quin couldn’t sit there any longer,
waiting for the ghost of a girl who had died at thirteen to come to
him. He needed to find a way to repair things with Aurora. He
needed to put an end to the lies being printed.

He needed to tell her he loved her—and
of the changes that must take place because of that
love.

When he turned, he froze. Coming along
the pea-gravel path over the hill, shrouded in the pastel glow of
dawn, she came to him. Aurora, his goddess of the
morning.

Chapter
Twenty

19 May, 1811

There could be some hope,
if I can make him listen to me
—
if I can make him believe I’m not
responsible for these things. Perhaps then he will forgive me for
my faults. Perhaps we can start over again, and try to behave as a
husband and wife ought. Or perhaps my head is still in the clouds,
wishing for things that can never take place, hoping for things
when there is no hope. But how will I know if I do not
try?

~From the journal of Lady
Quinton

Aurora stopped in her tracks. With the
haze of the rising sun at his back, she couldn’t read Quin’s
expression. He stood in a meadow of delphiniums that overlooked a
winding river, looking quite out of place amidst the natural
backdrop. Part of her wanted to turn, to make for the abbey and
never look back. But she’d never been one to run from a
confrontation, not even when she likely should have.

She took another step. “Quin?” she
called. “Sir Jonas told me I would probably find you
here.”

He said nothing. He didn’t even move.
Was he cross that she’d come here to find him?

Aurora took a few more steps. She
needed to make him understand that she had not written those
stories. She needed his forgiveness for ever having written any
stories in the first place. If she hadn’t, none of this would ever
have happened. “I was hoping we could talk. I wanted to
apologize”

“
You have nothing to
apologize for,” he bit off. Still, he remained where he
stood.

She had
everything
to apologize for. If Lord
Rotheby learned of these new stories, regardless of whether she’d
written them or not, they’d likely be tossed out the door without a
chance to explain. “But…?”

“
But nothing,” he said more
softly. “I’m the one who should apologize, Aurora. I’ve been drunk
and belligerent and absent. I’ve done everything to you that my
father did to my mother, save cudgel you. And I nearly did that
last night.”

“
But you didn’t,” Aurora
said, moving closer to him, reaching for him.

He stepped backward, reestablishing
the distance between them. “No, I didn’t. But I threw your journal
and only missed you by inches. If Jonas hadn’t been there, I don’t
know what I would have done. I lost control. I’m sorry. I’m so
very, terribly sorry. I should never have married you. I’m not fit
to be anyone’s husband.”

He looked so vulnerable. She’d never
seen him vulnerable before. Quin’s eyes were big and sad, like a
deep well of unshed tears. She wanted to soothe him, to comfort
him. To hold him while he let it all out.

But again, when she stepped closer to
him, he backed away. It felt like a mirror of how their marriage
had been—always a certain amount of distance separating them, a
permanent divide.

“
You’re my husband,” Aurora
said. “What’s done is done. You didn’t hurt me.”

“
What if I do? What
then?”

Oh, dear good Lord. If he didn’t stop
it soon, she was liable to lose her patience. “You won’t. I seem to
recall you telling me, rather angrily I might add, that you don’t
strike women. So tell me why, all of a sudden, you seem so certain
you’ll hurt me.”

“
Because I’m just like my
father.” Quin dragged a hand over his face, and then he turned and
walked away.

“
Wait,” she called out. He
kept going. Blast him. Aurora raised the hem of her skirt and
followed. “Slow down.”

He seemed none too inclined to comply.
She hurried along behind him until she could reach him. “Please,
Quin,” she said, taking hold of his hand and tugging until he
looked at her. She could get lost in his eyes. They held a world of
hurt and fear—a world she would never understand unless he talked
to her. “Tell me about your father.”

“
My father was a moral
degenerate. He was the lowest creature in all of England. He drank
and yelled, and if you were lucky he would only beat you with his
fists. Mother was usually lucky, because she didn’t yell
back.”

Quin looked out across the river,
seeming to stare at nothing. “I wasn’t lucky.”

“
You fought with him
often?” Aurora prodded. She stroked his palm absently.

“
Every time he came home
smelling of whiskey and some other woman’s cheap perfume. Every
time I caught him on his way into London to visit the gambling
hells. Every time he struck my mother. Yes, I fought with him all
the time. I’d fight with him again today if he dared to come within
a hundred feet of my mother. We would see how tough he was against
someone his own size.” Quin shook his head, the dimple on his cheek
twitching as he clenched his unshaven jaw. “I’d kill him with my
bare hands for all he put us through. He got off easy, being thrown
from his horse. Fate was far kinder than he deserved.”

Aurora suddenly understood how very
lucky she had been all her life. Her parents were not overly
affectionate with each other, or sometimes not with her, but she’d
never had to fear for her safety. She never wondered where the next
blow would come from.

Her heart ached. She wanted to wrap
him in her arms and soothe the boy trapped inside him. But that
wouldn’t solve anything. His eyes still held too much anger, too
much pain. “Was your father always this way?”

“
It often feels that way. I
remember those times so much more than the others—than when we were
happy.” Quin led her to a soft patch of grass and spread his coat
for her to sit on. “But the truth is, he changed. When Mercy
died.”

His sister. The girl from the
painting. “What happened to her?”

He frowned and squinted his eyes.
“It’s difficult to remember all of it. I was only ten. Just a lad.”
He swept a hand, indicating the area around them. “We used to come
here a lot, Mercy and me. Always together. We were inseparable,
even though she was three years my senior. But since she was
thirteen and becoming a young lady, Father thought she needed to
stop traipsing around all over the place with me. That she needed
to behave like a young lady ought, and wear dresses, and learn to
do embroidery. All those kinds of useless things girls are expected
to do. Mercy didn’t particularly care for that idea. They had an
argument that night—the night she died.”

He went still for a moment—long enough
Aurora thought he might not go on. But just before she interrupted,
he continued. “Mercy and I had been out riding through the hills
again that day, when she was supposed to be with her governess. I
had talked her into giving Miss Robson the slip. She wouldn’t have
gone, otherwise. But she changed into one of the stable boys’
trousers and a shirt, and we rode off, laughing about what a coup
it had been. Father caught us when we came back. He pulled her off
the saddle, yelling about how ladies never ride astride, and
dragged her into the house. They were at it for over an hour. I
thought she was banished to her chamber for the rest of the day, so
I tried to stay out of the way. I didn’t want Mercy to be in any
more trouble because of me.