Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03] (38 page)

Altogether, she might not have made quite as much a mess of everything as she’d thought. In fact, she might have achieved some very worthwhile ends.

Arriving home, Kate met with yet another unlooked-for triumph: a letter on heavy ivory-colored paper, franked, the date and signature on the outside nearly illegible. This time, though, the letter was not for her.

“It’s as close to an apology as I imagine I’ll ever have from Edward,” Papa said over dinner. “From Lord Harringdon, that is.” He nodded to Kate, to Sebastian, to Viola, to the younger girls. “Your uncle.”

Never before had the earl been “your uncle” or been referred to as “Edward,” as far back as Kate could remember. This, too, was something won at least in part by her efforts.

Viola, predictably, was unimpressed. “I should think the person to whom he most owes an apology is our mother.” She turned to Mama. “I don’t suppose he troubled to send a letter to you.”

“No, but it would be odd if he did, considering we’ve never been introduced.” No queen, no duchess, no countess could hope to match the grace and nobility with which Mama delivered this reply as she carved out a bite-sized morsel of her poached haddock.

“What did he say, if it wasn’t an apology?” This was really Papa’s business and nobody else’s, but Kate couldn’t help asking. “And does he mean to recognize you again? And what about Mama?”

“It’s too soon to know what will happen.” Papa, too, went on cutting his fish. “Too soon to know even what
I wish to happen. Twenty-three years is a long time for someone to be absent from your life, and you get accustomed to doing without him.” His eyes connected with hers. He was talking about his mother, too, and how twenty-three years of distance had eroded his ability to grieve for her. “And Viola is right in bringing up the insult to your mother. I cannot allow any reconciliation that doesn’t include her, and make some acknowledgment of how she was wronged.”

“You needn’t concern yourself with that.” Half the table separated Mama from Papa, and still she managed to sound as though they were speaking in private. “I’ve lived my whole life without Lord Harringdon’s approval, and never felt the lack. What matters is what will make you happy. It’s reasonable to suppose a truce between long-estranged brothers might have that result.”

I want you to be happy. All else seems secondary to that
. Countless things conspired to make Kate think of Mr. Blackshear. She’d told him to speak to his brother, and he’d kissed her on the nose and asked who she might marry.

“As to what he said, Kate, much of that will remain between me and him. But some I can share, and I suspect this will be of particular interest to you.” Papa smiled down the table at her. “You were right in some of your suppositions. Lady Harringdon’s attentions to you were the result of my brother’s wish to do something for this family, no doubt to assuage his guilt over having cut us off so long ago. He also said his wife is very pleased with you and pronounces you a credit to your Westbrook blood. Oh, and here’s what came as a surprise to me: I find it was through Edward’s doing that Lord Barclay was referred to me, when he put it about that he’d like a barrister to help him study speech.”

Even before she’d had her note from Lady Harringdon,
then, the earl had been thinking of Papa, looking for small, inconspicuous gestures he could make; ways he could reach out and benefit his brother’s family. And still, yesterday when he might have asked her to fetch her father to the dowager’s bedside, his courage or his brotherly feeling had failed him.

And then he’d had another chance. By her own doing—and Miss and Mrs. Smith’s, and Mr. Blackshear’s, with help from Mr. Kersey—Papa had come anyway, and Lord Harringdon had decided to write this letter. Thus a person progressed toward a worthy goal, it seemed, a step forward and a step back and the occasional intervention of other people to guide him back the right way when he’d stumbled off the path.

She shifted in her chair, and felt a sharp reminder of how she’d stumbled off her own path that morning. Lain down in a gentleman’s bed and got up again without her virtue. It felt like something someone else had done, a whispered report at which she pursed her lips and shook her head. It also felt like the only logical outcome of her three years’ acquaintance with Mr. Blackshear. As though from the moment they met, they’d been making their haphazard way toward that culmination.

What will you do, hereafter?

I don’t know. I wish things could be different
.

She reached for her glass. “Mr. Blackshear owes a debt of gratitude to Lord Harringdon then, doesn’t he, for this opportunity with Lord Barclay?” Singular, how everything wove itself together, or rather, how it had all been woven together from the start.

“I shouldn’t advise him to send a note of thanks.” With visible gusto Viola seized this new opportunity for disapproval. “I doubt the earl bothers to open any mail from a gentleman who has a profession, and no title in his lineage.”

Vi didn’t even know the worst. Lord Harringdon certainly
wouldn’t welcome any correspondence from a man with Mr. Blackshear’s shocking connections. Perhaps even Lord Barclay would find the matter too unsavory, once he learned of it, and thus would end all Mr. Blackshear’s hopes of political opportunity.

Maybe not, though. Society was changing, Louisa had said. Lord Barclay had already proven himself extraordinarily fair-minded in regard to her own connections. Surely if there was a man capable of overlooking the unfortunate marriage in Mr. Blackshear’s family, and judging Mr. Blackshear strictly on his own merit, the baron was that man.

She stole a glance at the long-case clock. Mere hours since she’d left his rooms, and all she wanted was to see him again, and tell him of all that had happened since they’d parted, and hear what had happened with him. But if he blamed himself for her ruin, it might be a great while before his next call here.

I wish things could be different
.

She’d been a coward.
I love you
, she ought to have said.
Help me have the courage to choose with my heart. Tell me I’m strong enough to bear a descent in station, and clever enough to help you make your way back up
. He might have answered, as he’d done once already, with that gentle explanation about her not being the right sort of woman to stand at his side. But at least she’d know she’d been brave enough to ask. Brave enough to be honest.

Never mind. She would count herself lucky in his friendship, and hope for at least the beginning of reparation with his brother, if that was what Nick wanted. Without reference to herself she would wish for his happiness, because that was what you did when you loved someone.

H
E
’
D IMAGINED
, ignorantly, that a footman would answer his knock. And that he’d consequently have a minute or so, the time it took to climb the stairs, in which to orient himself to his surroundings and make his last small preparations for this meeting that still felt a bit ill-advised.

But it was Will himself who stood there when the door swung back, his cheerful, unguarded expression suggesting he’d just stepped away from an amusing conversation and felt equal to whoever or whatever he might find on his doorstep.

He’d always had the most ridiculously readable face. His brows now lofted a quarter inch and came back down: that was surprise. The laughter left his eyes like a candle blown out. No anger or coldness came in to take its place; instead he looked curious, and ready to see where this unexpected twist in his day’s narrative would lead. “Nick.” At the sound of his voice, it suddenly felt like only yesterday that they’d last spoken. “Come in.”

“Do I intrude?” But Nick was halfway over the threshold already.

“On my glittering dinner party with all the leading lights of the ton? Hardly.” Will shut the door behind him. “We do have company, but nothing on which you need fear intruding. Take off your coat and come upstairs.”

Cathcart
was Nick’s first thought;
Martha
was his second. His third thought was that Will seemed remarkably at ease considering one of the siblings who’d cut him off had just appeared at his door after nearly a year of silence.

As Will led the way upstairs, Nick made a quick, discreet survey of the surroundings. He’d never had cause to call on anyone in the Hans Town neighborhood before, and hadn’t known what sort of house to expect.
Modest
described it fairly well. The stairs, from what he
could see, were in good repair, and the wallpaper was bright and not peeling. No signs of squalor; nothing dingy; but the house was undeniably small and the serving staff must have been minimal, if none of them counted it among his duties to answer the door.

You could never bring Kate Westbrook here
. God, the impudence of his unbidden thoughts! He wasn’t intending to bring her anywhere, and besides, who was he to make that judgment? Cathcart was a viscount; Martha was the wife of a baronet’s heir, and neither of them turned up their noses at visiting this house. After everything he’d seen of Miss Westbrook in recent days, could he really think her so superficial by comparison?

He followed his brother round the landing and along the hall to the first of two doorways, which opened on to a drawing room. There, side by side on the sofa, sat his grave-faced younger sister and the forbidding Mrs. Blackshear. “Lydia,” Will said, advancing into the room. “Allow me to present my brother Nicholas. Nick, this is my wife, Lydia Blackshear.”

He nodded, and Mrs. Blackshear nodded back. Her face showed nothing—he was used to that after two meetings—but an invisible thread of understanding ran between them. He wouldn’t be here now if she hadn’t shown up on the bench in Brick Court yesterday morning with a slip of paper and a roundabout encouragement.

“Nick, it’s so good to see you.” Martha struggled, still, with social niceties, but she did attempt them with some spirit. “I hope you won’t use up all your conversation on Will while I’m out of the room. Mrs. Blackshear and I were just preparing to go upstairs, that she could show me her new gown.”

“Indeed.” Will’s wife rose, with Martha a hair behind. “You’ll excuse us, I hope. I’ve been waiting some time to show Mrs. Mirkwood this gown.” The two filed out,
Martha pausing to grasp Nick’s hand and fix him with a look of fervent feeling, briefly, before snatching back her hand and hurrying flush-faced from the room.

He oughtn’t to laugh at his sister, certainly not at a show of heartfelt emotion when for too many years she’d been stolid to a fault. And indeed it seemed at first that he would successfully suppress the laugh, even though the idea of Martha eager to see anyone’s new gown had a layer of absurdity all its own.

But he happened to cross glances with Will, who likewise was fighting a tide of laughter, lips pressed together, eyes glittering with hilarity, and all at once they might as well have been eight and ten years old again, side by side in the church pew and jabbing one another whenever Reverend Roberts uttered any word that could be tenuously associated with a bodily function.

He laughed. Not out loud; their sister deserved better than to overhear and feel mocked, even affectionately. Everything was so ridiculous, though—his and Mrs. Blackshear’s stifled animosity, the clumsy maneuvering that had left him and Will alone, his very presence here in the first place—that he needed the relief of collapsing onto the now-vacant sofa and giving vent to his mirth.

Will laughed, too, sinking into a chair at right angles to the sofa and burying his face in his hands. For nearly a minute they gave themselves up to silent merriment, and by the end of that minute much of the awkwardness between them had simply evaporated. The habits of over twenty years, it turned out, could trump the habits of the last nine or ten months.

Will wiped his eyes, and nodded toward where the women had gone. “She hasn’t got any new gown, you know.”

“I suspected as much.” Nick sat back, relaxing a little into the sofa’s corner. He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “I don’t think she likes me.”

“No?” His brother grinned, smug in the knowledge of his wife’s fierce affection. “Well, she didn’t like me either at first. So I wouldn’t give up hope yet.” He looked so comfortable here in this too-small drawing room, settled into circumstances much humbler than those in which he’d grown up. “In the meantime you can console yourself with Martha’s surfeit of sisterly affection.”

“That damnable Mirkwood; he’s gone and altered her almost beyond recognition.” This wasn’t really true, but he wanted to speak strongly about something, and the man who’d debauched his little sister into marriage was as good a target as any. “You weren’t here during her first marriage, but she was every bit the sobersides she’d always been. Only when this fellow came along did she start doing unaccountable things, and behaving in the way you see now.”

“I don’t fault her for it, or fault her husband either. Love makes us all do unaccountable things.” Will leaned back and crossed his ankle over the opposite knee. “I’m nothing if not evidence of that fact, and I expect one day you’ll learn it by your own experience.”