Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (22 page)

So when the speaking lesson had finally concluded and it was time for everyone to sit down and have tea, she leveled all her courteous conversation on the newer of their two guests.

There was everything to approve in him. Really, there was. For all his fine upbringing and military dignity, he evinced an agreeable modesty, and seemed altogether more interested in hearing about the Westbrook family than in speaking of himself.

His respectful manner to Mama continued unchanged, even though she no longer addressed him with a teacher’s authority. He asked what parts she’d played, whether she preferred comic roles or tragic, and who she thought were the most promising of the modern playwrights. When Viola seized the opportunity—as she inevitably did—to put forth some political point relating to the plays of Mrs. Inchbald, he raised his eyebrows, nodded thoughtfully, and asked her to tell him more.

And though Kate stayed mostly clear of these conversations, confining herself to such pleasantries as seemed appropriate to a morning call with a slight acquaintance, he nevertheless smiled at her often and thanked her most particularly for the tea.

Mr. Blackshear thanked her as well—she’d remembered to make a separate pot of his bitter dark brew—and conversed with the family as congenially as he always did, though she sometimes caught him watching her with a troubled crease in his brow. Once, when she was up and tending to the teapot, he came to the table to replenish his own tea and said something about wondering whether the rain had stopped.

That was a subterfuge, and a fairly obvious one: he wanted her to go with him to the window at the room’s far side, that they might speak privately.

She couldn’t. Not only because Viola would be watching, and drawing conclusions. He would want to apologize again. He’d want to say what a mistake the kiss had been, and he’d want to assure her there’d be no danger, ever, of another such mistake. Probably he’d want to
express his hopes for her snaring of Lord Barclay, as proof of his own disinterest.

She knew all that already. She didn’t need to hear any of it.

“I do hope it will be dry by the time you must take your leave,” was all the answer she gave, and then she took
her
leave, slipping away from the table and back to her seat as soon as she’d poured his tea.

He understood he’d been rebuffed. She saw it in his face when he sat down again. For the remainder of the call he wore a distracted air, and a slight frowning twist at one corner of his mouth.

And for the remainder of the call she felt sorrier than ever, wishing he could know, without her having to say so aloud, that she didn’t blame him at all. And wishing she could notice his frown without igniting a hundred volatile memories, all having to do with his mouth.

“N
OW
THAT
was an experience well worth this whole undertaking.” Barclay settled in one corner of his carriage, dropping his hat on the seat beside him. He’d insisted that Nick accept a ride home, the rain not having abated. “The next time I attend a house party where someone proposes an amateur theatrical, I shall be ready to amaze the company.”

“I’m sorry about the material.” Nick sat in the opposite corner, steadying himself with his feet as the carriage swayed out into traffic. “I do remember you saying
Henry the Fifth
wasn’t a good representation of what your time in the army had been.”

The baron shrugged. “The reality of war would make a very poor play. There are great stretches of tedium such as no paying audience would stand for. And a man breathing his last rarely has anything poetic to say on the occasion. I prefer Shakespeare’s version of things altogether.”

The very few times Will had spoken of war, in the months after he’d returned to England and before he’d forsaken the family, he’d adopted a flippant tone not unlike Lord Barclay’s. Nick had never known how to press past the flippancy, or whether he even ought to. If
he’d been a better friend to his brother, a better listening ear, would Will perhaps not have felt the need to seek a connection with the woman for whom he’d then thrown everything away?

He took off his own hat, holding it over the straw-covered floor and tapping off the raindrops. “Would you say you were much altered by your experiences in war?” He frowned at the hat, to make it look as though he was primarily occupied by that matter and asking the question only by the by. The subject might be an uncomfortable one for his companion; he wouldn’t add to the discomfort by watching for a response.

“Altered, yes.
Much
altered, though …” He was shaking his head when Nick glanced up. “Given what I’ve seen of some other men, I cannot say so. My alterations have mainly been of the benign sort, I hope. I suppose I took things a little more lightly before my military service. I told you—didn’t I?—that my brother Astley has not been impressed by my recent political zeal.”

“I should think political enthusiasm must be among the most benign sorts of alteration, as well as the least surprising. Who is more likely to concern himself with the good of the nation than a man who’s just devoted several years of his life to that same concern? But perhaps Lord Astley simply regrets the loss of the brother he remembers; the one with lighter pursuits and preoccupations.” He knew a bit about that sort of loss. He gave his hat a last shake and set it on the seat, eyes following the action of his hands all the way.

“I think he’d prefer I put the good of the family before that of the nation. I’m next in line for the marquessate, you know, and nearly from the moment I stepped off the ship he’s been after me to marry.”

From one uncomfortable subject straight to another: it was almost as though the man had somehow been
privy to his thoughts during their time in the Westbrook parlor. He schooled his face and looked up. “Indeed?”

“He’s ten years my senior and quite sure he’ll predecease me, so he’d like to see me settled with a wife and, ideally, a son or two. Thus my presence at that rout. I believe he intends to compel my attendance at one social event after another this Season until finally I break down and offer for some lady, if only to silence him on the subject.”

“You don’t particularly wish to be married for your own sake, then?” Nick couldn’t like the idea of Miss Westbrook marrying a man who’d offered for her only to silence his brother, even if her own approach to wedlock was at least that pragmatic.

“I’m sure I’ll like to have a wife.” The baron laced his fingers and stretched his arms out before him with a rueful grin. “However, I’d always fancied that thoughts of marriage followed upon meeting the right lady. I have difficulty reversing that sequence.” He let his arms fall. “And you? No plans to renounce your bachelor state? Never found yourself tempted by one of the Misses Westbrook?”

Was this an attempt to discover the existence of a prior claim? In any case, his duty as her friend was clear. “No plans or temptations of recent date.” Nick sat back and shrugged. “I’ll admit to a brief, youthful
tendre
for the eldest Miss Westbrook, though that’s little more than admitting to a pulse.”

Barclay nodded, his grin gone wider. “To be sure, I would have doubted you if you’d denied the fact. Such beauty is exactly suited to a young man’s taste. But I suppose you were in no position then to marry.”

“No. And in the intervening years, we became more like brother and sister than a pair of possible lovers.” The last word tasted of rank mendacity. He hurried to
pile other, blander words upon it. “I suspect that’s not uncommon, where habits of proximity do away with all the mystery a lady might have for a gentleman, and he for her. At all events, I look forward to one day celebrating her excellent match, and I’m sure she’ll be just as happy for me on the day I tell her about the worthy lady who’s won my heart.”

“That sounds an admirable sort of friendship. You’re fortunate.”

Indeed it was an admirable sort of friendship, and indeed he was fortunate, or had been until everything had spun out of control for those scant few minutes in the Astleys’ library.

She’d been so dreadfully uncomfortable when he’d tried to speak to her or even look at her today. He might, after all, have done irreparable damage to their connection. And for the first time the thought occurred to him: if she did succeed in marrying Lord Barclay, he might have to avoid them both.

He picked up his hat and tapped it over the straw again, just to have an outlet for a flare of desperate energy. He could never take a post as Barclay’s secretary, in that case. He’d worked and waited so long for an opportunity like this one, and he might really have thrown it all away for the sake of an ill-considered kiss.

For the remainder of the journey to the Inns of Court they spoke of politics. And every sensible opinion the baron expressed—every proof of what good work a man who partnered with him might be involved in—drove further and further home the possible cost of his fleeting indulgence in a darkened room.

H
E SEEMED
to have stepped into some spiral of dire complications, and the next day brought another: an invitation
to a ball at Lord Cathcart’s house in Grosvenor Square.

Ostensibly the invitation issued from Lady Cathcart, who’d barely said a dozen words to him over the years of their slight acquaintance. However, the message scrawled upon it came in the viscount’s slanting, careless hand.

Nick pushed the invitation away and got up from his desk to pace to the window that looked down on Brick Court. A lady sat on the bench near the sundial, probably waiting for a barrister to come down and speak to her, or to recruit a suitable chaperone with whom she could go upstairs. Unaccompanied women didn’t venture into gentlemen’s chambers, unless on errands of a most particular nature. Mrs. Simcox had come up sometimes, and Mrs. Marbury, too, though neither of them very recently.

He sighed and turned his back to the window, raking his fingers through his hair. No doubt Cathcart meant well. Perhaps he even thought to hasten the rehabilitation of the Blackshear name by setting the example—indeed, by prevailing on his wife to set the example—of
acknowledging Nick. And if he was right, if even one respectable person in attendance should decide it was time to follow the Cathcarts’ lead, and cease holding all Blackshears accountable for the transgressions of one, that would not only benefit Nick’s own circumstances but might be a first step toward repairing the damage Andrew and Kitty had sustained. His elder brother and sister might begin to gradually replace the many connections they’d lost. By the time their respective children were old enough to marry, they might have a few decent prospects after all.

He folded his arms, resting his back against the strip of wall between the room’s two windows.
All Blackshears accountable for the transgressions of one
, indeed. The truth was that he hadn’t been able to think of Will, since the events of Tuesday night, without a suffocating sense of his own hypocrisy. His brother, at least, had not laid hands upon an innocent. Will hadn’t taken advantage of a lady’s feverish response to her first taste of passion.

You didn’t do more than kiss her. And you stopped. You caught yourself in time, when you might have given her far more to regret than a kiss
. Oh, but he hated the part of his brain that wanted to offer these pathetic self-acquittals. He’d never try anything so mealymouthed in a courtroom.
The prisoner may indeed have stolen the accuser’s purse, Your Honor, but I beg you to base his punishment upon the fact that he didn’t then follow her home and take all the money she had there as well
.

He pushed off the wall and went back to his desk, where he picked up the invitation. Little doubt of what reply he must make, but he needn’t make it this instant. He pulled out the drawer in which he always stored documents that didn’t require immediate attention, and found himself confronted by a paper that had languished there for some months.

Not that the paper took him by surprise. He hadn’t forgotten about its existence. Why he hadn’t thrown it away, when Martha had first sat down at this desk and made free with his pen and ink, he couldn’t precisely say.

Proper ladies did sometimes venture alone into a barrister’s chambers, after all. A sister given to imposing her will, for instance, might take it upon herself to call on her brother and prepare such an impertinent document.

He set down the invitation and lifted out the paper, which bore but two lines in his sister’s hand, the greater part of the page being taken up by a rudimentary map. She’d drawn a set of tiny waves in the broad ribbon that curved left to right through her diagram, to identify it as the river—though the docks she’d sketched, protruding into that same ribbon, surely resolved the matter of identification without any need for waves.