Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (34 page)

She was so grateful.

“Let’s see to getting you all home now,” he said, and he took care of that, too. A hackney took her home, where she told Mama what had happened, and waited on the bench in the entry hall until Papa finally came in.

A single look at him told her she’d been too late. Not only in finding him this afternoon but in taking the steps to reconcile him with his family. She ought to have … but she didn’t know what she could have done differently. She’d been making her good impressions, little by little, with both Lady and Lord Harringdon.
Little by little
just hadn’t been enough.

He sat down and put his arm about her, as he hadn’t done since she was a child. She sagged against him. She couldn’t cry.

“Kate,” he said. She
would
not cry. “I grieved for her years and years ago.”

“But she didn’t die years and years ago.” She understood his meaning perfectly well. It just wasn’t fair to give up on someone who was still alive, and shared blood and so many memories with you. It wasn’t fair to grieve for someone while she still liked to sit in the parlor for social calls, and hear stories read out of
Ackermann’s Repository
.

“You’re lucky to have the example of affectionate grandparents on your mother’s side. Affectionate aunts and uncles as well. Not all families are like that.”

She wouldn’t speak of the letters. She couldn’t admit to having read them. But there had been affection in Papa’s family, once. Could it really die out altogether? “Was everybody there?” she said instead.

“Yes.” For a moment he was silent. “Please don’t imagine a tearful reconciliation around our mother’s deathbed. There was nothing of the sort.” He squeezed her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “Be glad of your own loving family, dear.” He stood, then, and went upstairs.

She didn’t follow straightaway. When his footsteps had gone past the second landing she moved to the end of the bench against the wall, mere inches from where she’d stood side by side with Mr. Blackshear the day he’d encouraged her to go into ballrooms and catch a duke. And she wept, silently, for Papa and his mother, for her arrogant, hopeful plans of that day, for all the many things about which she’d been so very wrong.

A
GAIN HE
’
D
lain awake and thought about Miss Westbrook, but this time worry had kept his thoughts chaste.

He hadn’t told her—nor did he intend to, ever—what effort had been required to persuade Mr. Westbrook to go to his brother’s house and his mother’s sickbed. He was the worst possible person to try to convince a man to overlook grievances with a brother, of course, but try he had, with every tactic of reason, every appeal to sentiment at his disposal. In the end he believed it had been the specter he’d conjured of Kate herself, pale and drawn as he’d left her in his chambers, that had finally convinced her father to make this gesture for her sake, if not his own.

Nick sighed, lifting his hat and scrubbing a hand through his hair, as he started up Middle Temple Lane on his way back to Brick Court. He hadn’t bothered wearing a wig to breakfast, since he didn’t have any appointments following. A part of him would like nothing better at the moment than to simply go back to bed. He might first make a visit to Westbrook’s office, though, and learn about last night’s outcome and how Miss Westbrook was faring.

His heart had fairly broken for her, seeing her in that
state. He’d known all about her pride in winning her aunt’s notice, and the vanity that attended her relations with the Harringdon household, but he’d had no idea there was a genuine attachment to her grandmother. In fact he hadn’t known there was a grandmother at all.

She’d been trying all along to patch up the estrangement in her father’s family. Every time she asked one of those questions in the parlor or at the dinner table—
Are you sure no one on your side is musical? Perhaps our talent comes from the Westbrook line
—she’d been tilting at that same windmill. Someone ought to have told her that sometimes families broke apart and there was simply no way to mend them.

He sighed again, this time shoving his hands into his topcoat pockets. In the right one was the paper left with him by Mrs. William Blackshear. He hadn’t even taken it out to read it yet, though until Kersey’s messenger had found him with the news about Miss Westbrook yesterday, it had been the leading topic in his thoughts. Perhaps after he’d gone to look in on Westbrook he’d sit down and see what sort of note he might write, if he did decide he had something worth saying to Will.

He turned in to Brick Court, meaning to get his wig before venturing to call on Westbrook, and for the second straight day, he was stopped by the sight of a woman on the bench. A small, sad figure this time, wrapped in a cloak and facing him, or rather, the path from which she’d known he must appear, rather than making a study of the sundial.

He had nothing to learn, now, by going to call on Westbrook. Her face made everything plain.

“Kate.” He crossed to the bench and sat. “Was it too late, then, when your father went to her?”

She nodded. Her eyes rolled skyward and her mouth compressed as she strove to hold back tears. “I think it was too late a long time ago. But I failed to see it.”

“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t touch her. Not only because they were in public view and she had a reputation to protect but because things went so terribly wrong when he touched her. He kept his hands deep in his pockets. “You tried to do a worthy thing. I’m sure there’s little consolation now, in thinking of that, but the consolation will grow in time. And your father will recognize the love behind what you tried to do.”

In spite of both their efforts, her eyes glittered with tears, and now one spilled over and rolled down the soft plane of her cheek. She wiped it with the back of her glove. “I thought I had more time. I was proud of the progress I thought I was making. But I ought to have tried harder, instead of allowing myself to get so caught up in …” She waved her hand vaguely. “I’ve just made such a mess of everything, Nick.”

“That’s not true.” His name in her voice touched him like a brief surreptitious kiss. He couldn’t let her know that. “You’re distracted by grief and disappointment at the moment, but that will ease. And then you’ll see more clearly the things you’ve accomplished, and the things you can still accomplish. Trust me. You haven’t made a mess of anything.” He shifted, preparing to rise to his feet. “Come; I’ll see you back to your father’s office. You ought to go home and get some more rest.”

She shook her head hard. “Papa doesn’t know I’m here. I don’t …” Of a sudden she was finding it very difficult to meet his eyes. “I said I was going to call on Miss Smith. And I walked down here on my own.”

“To … tell me of your grandmother’s death?” His whole body went still: if his blood could have arrested itself in his veins, it would have.

“Yes. And also to thank you for your help and kindness yesterday afternoon.” She took a breath.
And also …
Her lifting intonation, the indrawn breath, an overall quality of suspension, made clear she had more
to say. Her hesitation made clear she was finding herself short of nerve.

Inside one pocket Nick clenched his fingers, all apprehension. She’d come unchaperoned to see him, deceiving her parents as to her errand. She was distraught and doubtless wanting comfort, and filled with the recklessness that so often visited a person who’d been touched by death. He waited, not even knowing how he’d answer if his suspicions proved correct.

“I want …” She fixed her eyes straight ahead on Number Two Brick Court. Her throat rippled with a swallow. “I want to go … to your rooms with you. I want you to take me upstairs.”

His whole body thrilled to her words, and to the low, determined voice in which she said them. He would not, must not, give his body the reins. “Kate.” He made his voice as gentle as he could. “You’re upset, and not thinking clearly.”

“Wait, please.” Now she directed her words to the bricks at her feet. “Let me make my case.” She sat silent, her posture as taut as harp strings, until he nodded. “I am upset. I don’t deny it. Not only about the dowager Lady Harringdon, and the loss of any chance for my father to know her again. Not only because I see how many mistakes I’ve made.” Her hands clasped and unclasped in her lap. “I’m upset because I begin to doubt so much of the course I’ve chosen, and still, I don’t see what else to do.”

“I understand your distress. It’s entirely natural, in such times, to seek the consolation of another person, and to want to flee from one’s thoughts into pure sensation. It’s eminently human to want to forget oneself in times of grief.”

“But that’s not what I mean.” Her voice went lower still. Her cheek had flushed pink. “We will never have one another in marriage, Nick. You know of my plans,
and how they have no place for you. Besides, you’ve said we don’t suit. And that it’s too late. And only recently … only recently have I begun to feel that as a loss.”

His heart was pounding so hard that she must have heard it; his blood racing to predictable, futile destinations.

“Two nights ago at Lady Cathcart’s ball, you said it wasn’t so bad, what we did. You said it needn’t alter our friendship.” She brought her chin around until she was almost facing him. “Can we not do just that much again, and enjoy each other within the limits of what our respective plans allow, and … grieve, as much as it is appropriate for each of us to grieve … that our plans don’t allow for more?”

God in heaven, she made it sound so reasonable. Like the act of two prudent, considering adults.

It was anything but. “Kate, we’d be playing with fire. Not only as regards your virtue. Indulging the sentiments you speak of will likely only lead to pain.” Would.
Would
lead to pain,
if
they did it. Damn his transparent eagerness.

“I’m not afraid of pain. There will be pain in any case.” Finally she raised her eyes, bright with unshed tears, to his. “I want to give you what I can of myself, and have what you will allow me of you.” Her face was nearly scarlet, but she pressed on. “I know it’s unwise. But it’s what I want. And I hope there’s a part of you that wants it, too.”

There was. Not just the obvious fleshly part. He’d wanted her in his bed since nearly the first time he’d laid eyes on her. And he hated to send her away, fragile and thwarted, when he might have given her comfort, and bathed in the affection she bore him.

What if it
would
work the way she said? What if they could be together for an hour or two, eyes wide open to
their idyll’s necessary end, and go on afterward, their separate paths no more bitter than they already would have been?

In his pockets he curled and flexed his fingers. “This would have to be the last time, absolutely the last time, any such thing happened between us. I wrong your parents by doing this and I don’t want to wrong them anymore.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I never meant to make you go against your conscience. I’ve wronged you, too.” Anything he said to her, in this mood, she’d find a way to twist into further fuel for her misery.

He could cheer her, though, and not with words. It wouldn’t be a merry romp by any means, but he could take her mind from her cares for a little while, and find ways to coax a smile or two.

That did him in, really. If it had only been a matter of lust, he could have gritted his teeth and walked away, his honor and her reputation both unscathed. But the need to see her smile raced through him like a wildfire, scorching out the last pockets of better judgment.

“Very well.” Deep inside him he felt something fall away, probably what remained of his self-respect. “One last time, followed by appropriate grieving. Let’s go upstairs.” He stood and put out his elbow. If someone was watching out the window, this much contact could still pass for respectable. As for things going wrong when he touched her, well, that barn door was surely flapping in the horses’ wake.

S
HE
’
D GONE
up these same stairs for the first time not four and twenty hours earlier. Her heart halfway up her throat with worry, Miss and Mrs. Smith trailing behind, Mr. Kersey leading them with brisk purpose.

She hadn’t noticed the details then. The balustrade, its
finish worn dull by years of trailing barrister hands. The wallpaper, a pattern of broad stripes in masculine red and dark brown. The sconce lamp at the landing, and the grime from smoke on the wallpaper above.

The staircase could scarcely make a starker contrast to the William Kent masterpiece at Harringdon House, or remind her in blunter fashion that she did not belong in Nick Blackshear’s world.

You could belong here if you wanted to
. A rebellious voice inside her piped up.
You could choose to be the kind of lady who belongs here instead of the kind who belongs in ballrooms
. She let the thought slide through and away.

At the door to his chambers he paused. “You’re sure?” He spoke just above a murmur, despite the fact that they’d passed nobody on the way up, and the door across the hall from his was closed. His eyes searched hers for signs of second thoughts.