Of Moths and Butterflies (22 page)

It was then that his uncle requested that he escort Mrs. Barton to a party in Town. First to one, then another and another. Sometimes to the opera. Other nights it was the theatre. With the return to London came the return of former longing. On crowded streets, amidst the staff of the hosts with whom he dined, he found himself looking for a familiar face. Though he knew it was pointless, he did it, and did it without thinking.

He’d arrived tonight, prepared, or so he thought, to brave yet another crowd. Were he wise, had he any rational feeling for the precariousness of his position, he might have put forth a little more effort to do what he had come to do—what he’d been sent to do. He had no doubt of his uncle’s purpose for keeping him close to home, nor for sending him to Town now that his blood had cooled. He was to find a bride, a suitable one—and quickly. But ever and always, he found himself avoiding the ballrooms and dining rooms, turning instead to the card tables and his hosts’ best spirits. And it was in that direction he had just determined to go when he was waylaid.

“Hamilton!”

He heard the voice and cringed. He had not seen Roger Barrett in an age. With a stiff smile, he turned.

“You’ve been rather elusive of late. Caught and captured your ‘bright thing’ and enjoying the fruits of your labours, I presume?”

“Barrett,” was Archer’s stony reply.

“Here on official business, then?” Barrett inquired, and passed an assessing look over a pair of young ladies who were just walking by, and who returned this attention with smiles and flirtatious glances.

To him they were all blank faces. Satin gowns in myriad hues swished and sidled past him. He was aware of his neglect to duty, but acknowledged it and dismissed it with cool indifference.

“You’re not quite yourself, Hamilton,” he heard Roger say.

Archer took a drink from a passing tray. “And what is that, do you think?”

Roger laughed. “Devil take me if I know!”

“Aren’t you supposed to be busy wooing your own ‘bright thing’?”

“Ah. Miss Radcliffe.” He turned in her direction.

Archer followed the line of sight until he found its target. In a not too distant corner of the room, the young woman in question had very suddenly taken her gaze from Barrett and was now whispering to a neighbour and fanning herself furiously.

Barrett returned his attention to his companion. “A bit awkward, that.”

“Why should that be? Unless you’ve given it up before she has.”

A noncommittal smirk answered this.

“Wait,” Archer said, his brow lowering. “Miss Radcliffe? This is her home, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Rather.”

“And the trouble? She seems willing enough.”

“Something’s come up.”

“Such as?”

Roger did not answer right away. “My cousin has been found, did I tell you?”

“No you didn’t. She’s here, then?”

“Yes. Somewhere, or so I’ve lately been told.”

“You have not yet gone to her? Why is that?”

“She is to be sent to me, providing my aunt can arrange it. It’s a bit complicated, you see.”

“Well it always is, isn’t it? But if you’ve got two women under one roof I’d say you’re presently fixed more than most. Why should you be kept apart, though? She is your cousin, is she not?”

“She is my cousin by marriage and a great deal more to me. Consequently, I’ve been dissuaded from keeping her company,” Roger answered with a stiff sigh. “From seeking her out, even.”

“You’re being kept apart?”

“Not for long. I don’t mean to put much stock in her aunt’s eccentricities, the more so as I intend to rescue her from them. But neither do I wish to cause her any trouble.”

“No. I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” Archer answered with real sincerity. “At least the latter end of it.”

“So what of your ‘bright thing’?” Roger asked, thus reminded. “Conquered is she?”

“No.”

“And you do not pursue?” he observed, uncomprehending. “You are here—when you could be there?”

“I’ve been mercifully removed from the temptation. Or she has, I should say. She’s gone.” He took another drink.

“That is rather disappointing. I was looking forward to the sordid details, you know. It’s usually a simple matter. You had the time. You had the desire, I believe. Why you didn’t take your chance when you had it, I cannot understand.”

“We are not, all of us, dead set on any conquest,” Archer answered, a little ruffled by Barrett's remark.

“She was not worth it, then.”

“Perhaps not,” he said in echo of the thought he too had been trying to convince himself of. But somehow hearing the words from Barrett’s mouth made his spirit rebel.

“But truly,” Barrett went on, “it was not as if you could have had any real intentions toward her. Yet you look as though someone’s shaken the life out of you.”

Archer turned a warning look on his friend, but Barrett didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he returned to the subject of his lost and recovered cousin and of the difficulties which had arisen—and had yet to arise. To this Archer could commit no more than half an ear. He had no patience left for Barrett’s ramblings, nor had he the mental acuity to comprehend them.

Professedly forlorn over his beloved cousin’s disappearance, Barrett had nevertheless found his burdens lifted by the substitution of another. In contrast to his friend, Archer found himself irrecoverably fixed on the image of one woman for whom he should have no desire, and whom he was likely never to see again. The irony in their respective situations warranted consideration. But truly, Barrett’s was not an uncommon practice. It was Archer himself who lacked the proper sense of masculine pride (or so he had been told) that would provide him with the power to turn his heart and mind at will from any too prepossessing temptation. There were opportunities enough for a gentleman to seek and find diversion, however fleeting and indiscriminate. Such was necessary to those who had affection to give—or other, baser needs to fulfil—but must reserve their hand and home for nothing less than respectability and a fortune. He closed his eyes upon the thought. Why could he not just let it go? It was pointless, after all. And if he did not get himself together, he would soon find himself shackled in an arrangement from which he could not escape.

He sighed and opened his eyes—and blinked again. Could it be? Setting down his drink, he was suddenly a man of purpose. “Excuse me, Barrett, will you?”

“What?” Barrett said, interrupted. “You going?”

“Yes, I—”

“By Jove, there she is!”

Instinctively, Archer stopped. His blood had run a little chill. “Who?”

“My cousin. Come. You will meet her.”

With a sense of dread, he turned and followed Barrett’s gaze until it landed, once more, on she who had a moment ago transfixed his. But no. That wasn’t possible.

Or was it?

Blindly, Archer followed as Barrett advanced toward the doorway.

“Beautiful, darling girl!” Barrett said, taking both her hands in his and kissing each cheek.

Her face was suddenly full of light upon seeing her cousin. How Archer wished she had ever looked at him that way.

“How are you?” Barrett asked her.

Beaming, she looked up, and only then did she see Archer. Her shock was quite apparent. She blushed, then paled and seemed suddenly uncertain of herself or her surroundings. As if she wanted only to run away. It was not much of a compliment.

“My dear,” Barrett said, her hand still in his. “Look at you!”

She was dressed very nearly as Archer had first seen her, in a gown made expressly to fit her, in mourning of grey and black. Though sombre in both dress and manner, she was breath-taking, and if he had ever begun to recover from the loss of her, it was all undone now.

“You’re a fright,” Barrett said to her, offering his own conclusion.

Was he blind?

“You look like death itself. And your aunt has you in the cheeriest of colours, I see. You’re not unwell?”

To Archer’s surprise, for it was not the response he expected, she laughed.

“No,” she said. “I’m perfectly well. I’m having a little trouble sleeping, is all.”

Only then, as she threw a glance in Archer’s direction, did Roger remember his company.

“My dear,” he said, drawing her forth, “may I present to you my friend, Archer Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton, my dearest friend and cousin, Imogen Everard.”

Archer opened his mouth to speak, stopped and stumbled over the name. “Miss Everard,” he managed to say and struggled to maintain her gaze, which faltered and fell to the floor before rising once more to meet Roger’s. Where it stayed.

Completely befuddled, he found himself at a loss for anything to offer. He couldn’t very well say he was pleased to make her acquaintance, for he knew her already. He could not ask after her health or happiness, for Barrett had done that. What did that leave him? If she would not even look at him, then nothing. But he must say something. It was not possible that she should walk back into his life just to have it end like this, as though they had never met. Archer opened his mouth willing any coherent thought or word to issue forth.

“I’m sorry, Hamilton,” Barrett said, forestalling him. “Do you mind if I take my cousin for a little walk?”

“You have catching up to do,” Archer heard himself say, but otherwise left the question unanswered.

Barrett began to lead his cousin off, but she turned back suddenly. “It was very good to see you again, Mr. Hamilton.”

“The pleasure’s mine, Miss Everard. I assure you.” With those few words, he attempted to express all the sincerity he felt. She smiled, briefly, and turned away, leaving him helpless to do anything but watch her walk out of the room, clinging affectionately to the arm of Roger Barrett.

OU'VE MET MR. HAMILTON
before?” Roger asked Imogen when once they had secured some relative privacy.

Imogen looked up at him, but it took her a moment before she realised he had spoken, and only then did she observe his brow lowered in puzzlement and something like alarm in his eyes.

“Yes,” she answered, uncertain just how much to tell him. Uncertain how much he’d been told already. “I met him while I was away.”

“In Kent?”

“Yes,” she said, and found it difficult to hear or concentrate on the matter at hand while her head spun and her heart pounded in her ears. A quarter of an hour ago, all she could think about was Roger. Now she could hardly think at all.

“Tell me, will you, in what way you spent your time there? Where did you live? What did you do?”

“It can’t matter now, Roger.”

“I want to know. You said you took employment.”

She found she could not look at him as he struggled to hold her gaze.

“Come,” he said. “We can’t talk here.”

He led her out onto the veranda, where he immediately began closing the gallery of doors between themselves and the guests within. He turned to her, folding his arms across his chest.

“Tell me,” he said. “I want to know it all.”

“I ran away. Foolishly. I was recovered and now I am back. Can we not leave it at that?”

“No,” he said, his frustration mounting, and with a gesture of his hand towards the ballroom, and those who occupied it, he added, “I could have received the same answer from any guest here.”

Still she was silent.

“You won’t tell me?”

She would not look at him and so, taking her chin in his hand, he turned her to face him.

“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me you did not go to a small village in Kent and hire yourself out as a servant.”

She remained silent, but in her eyes he could see the answer. He released her.

“Do you have any idea of the danger in which you might have put yourself? Sir Edmund Barry is only a slight improvement over your uncle. And to think of Archer Hamilton making his rounds of the help, and entertaining the idea that you might be next… I can barely stomach it!”

“It wasn’t like that, Roger! He was rarely there. I spoke to him perhaps half a dozen times. No more.”

He examined her face very carefully and did not like what he saw there. “Are you in love with him?” he asked with more breath than voice.

Her face grew very red and he began to fear her answer.

“I was a servant in his house, Roger,” she said almost angrily. “Just how base do you think me?”

“It would not have been base of you,” he ground out. “It would have been base of him. And I have every reason to believe it was. Great day!” He raised a hand to rub at his throbbing temple.

“Roger,” she said, calling him back from his dark thoughts.

He turned to her, and as she smiled repentantly, his anger began to crumble and melt. He let out a heavy sigh. “Have I told you how I’ve missed you?”

“Yes,” she laughed. “Thrice now, to be exact.”

“I don’t think I can say it enough.”

“I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to see of each other,” she said.

“Not much if your aunt has her way. She’s done her part, I imagine, to dissuade you from keeping me company?”

“She says you have prospects. And that I am not to get in the way.”

“She
has
been hard at work.”

“Is it true?”

“There doesn’t have to be anyone but you, you know.”

Imogen lifted one eyebrow as she looked up at him. “Julia is not discouraging
you,
I think.”

“She believes my attending you will prove you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. If you had run away…with someone—that’s what they’re saying—then how could I welcome you back so openly?”

“Because we’re family,” she answered softly. “Because we are friends.”

“Because my loving you as I do would make it a mighty difficult thing to do,” he said. “
If
it were true.”

“Some would call it a convenient match, you and I.”

“Convenient to whom?”

“To you. To Julia.”

His look became dark again. “Is my manner toward you different now than it has ever been?”

“No. You’ve never changed toward me, Roger.”

“And do you believe it will? That it ever can?”

She didn’t answer.

“Will you listen to me? I mean, really listen? I love you. I have always loved you. I can’t stand to see you unhappy. Won’t you let me try to change that?”

Imogen took a deep breath and released it.

She wasn’t stopping him. He could hardly believe it.

“It’s not impossible that we might be happy together. We are at least very good friends. Even my fumbling petitions must seem preferable to remaining where you are. Better, I hope, than running away?” He stopped then, and looked at her very intently. “You broke my heart, Imogen. Do you understand that?”

She didn’t answer just at first. She only looked up at him with those blue eyes of hers. “Think, Roger, of the sacrifice you make.”

“I don’t care about the gossips. You ought to know that well enough.”

“That’s not what I meant. When you realise that I am what I am and cannot be redeemed, when you become bored and turn back to your former ways, what then?”

Roger held her hands in his and, lowering his voice, spoke more seriously than he had ever done before.

“These past seven years, Imogen, have we not been the best of friends? Without you, I cannot account for what I might become. But with you, I might be anything. And if you think, for a moment, that I would lay to waste what we have already, then you don’t know me at all. If I were to hurt you, I would destroy the best part of me.”

She closed her eyes and turned from him.

“Think about it pragmatically,” he said, seeing that a different tack was in order. She never could stand a love speech. “You would be free. The money is yours. I won’t touch it. And if, when you tire of me, you regret the match, then I will release you, as far as it is in my power to do. I don’t believe any better offer can be made you than that. Will you consider what I have said?”

She hesitated for half a minute more. A ripple of something—was it regret?—crossed her brow and then her features became suddenly fixed, perhaps hopeful, at least determined. “Yes, Roger. I’ll consider.”

He squeezed her hand and looked at her earnestly. “I want very much to see you happy. If I can make you so, Imogen, I would make any sacrifice to do it.”

She smiled.

“You will consider?”

“I said I would.”

He kissed her cheek once more and moved away.

“Where are you going?”

“To speak to a gentleman about his penchant for roguery amongst the hired staff.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said, almost desperately and taking a step forward.

But he had opened the door and was through it before she could offer anything further in the way of objection.

*   *   *

Archer Hamilton, anxiously awaiting his turn to speak with Miss Everard, found himself smartly clapped on the back.

“A word?” Roger said.

With a nod, Archer agreed and the two stole off to search for a vacant room.

“What in the
devil’s
name do you think you’re up to?” Roger said, rounding on him the moment their privacy had been secured.

“I’m sorry?”

“Running around after the servants, are you? And my cousin no less!”

“Now hold on there, Barrett. I never chased after anybody. And it was you, if you remember, who suggested I should. It wasn’t even an hour ago that you told me you were disappointed that you were not to have all the ‘sordid details’.”

Roger looked for the moment as though he might strike him.

Archer was unimpressed. “You’re the one who encouraged me to pursue it.”

“And did you?”

“Of course not. Granted, I might have done, had she not made it clear she was not game.”

“Then you gave her cause to do it!”

“Perhaps I did,” he answered flatly. “Can you blame me?”

“Great day! To think on it makes me sick.” He seemed to calm a little then. “A servant?” he asked as though he thought Archer might have the explanation for his cousin’s irrational behaviour.

“To her good fortune, no one truly believed it. But you are right to fear she was not best placed at the Abbey. She was not safe there.”

“From you?”

Archer, in all honesty could not answer this. “I would not have harmed her. My cousin meant to raise her up.”

“Your cousin!”

“She was prepared to hire Miss Shaw— Miss Everard,” he corrected, “as her companion.”

Roger seemed slightly relieved for this. But only slightly.

“Will you tell me what it was she was hiding from? Not from you?”

Roger turned and gave him a warning look.

“I’d like to know she’s better off having returned to family than at the Abbey.”

“She will be, Hamilton,” Barrett said and crossed to the door. “I’ve just put the question to her. And this time she’ll accept me.”

The door closed and Archer was alone, leaving him to wonder if his question had been truly answered. Certainly not to satisfaction.