Secrets of Surrender (13 page)

She took pleasure in watching him eat it. He made a few appreciative sounds and expressions.

“Wonderful.” He swallowed the last bite.

“I am relieved that you liked it. Jordan kept clucking his tongue while I baked, but I think it just annoyed him that I was in the way.”

He reached for her and drew her to him. “You do not need to cook anymore. You do not need to make your own pies.”

“I know that. Only this morning I remembered how I served you pie the first time you visited and how you seemed to like it. I thought that I would like to make you another one.”

He realized that he had just been complimented for last night.

He gave her a kiss and released her. He was not hungry now, at least not for food. Least of all for this pie.

He cut himself another slice anyway.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

K
yle placed the rolled drawings in a large canvas bag.

The matter could not be delayed any longer. Too much had already been invested. He had no choice but to keep this long-agreed meeting with Norbury.

He listened for sounds from Roselyn’s chamber. She usually started her day early. She did not have the habit of lying abed until noon like some ladies. Today, however, this level of the house remained starkly silent. Since he had kept her up most of the night, he was not surprised.

She did not seem to mind. She did not act as if she was eating porridge. And unlike in Oxfordshire, where she always came to him as if to prove she would not shirk her marital duties, here in London he went to her. That meant sometimes, like last night, he did not leave very soon at all.

She did not mind, but she had also gently arranged the nightly ritual so she would not be embarrassed. The lights were always snuffed early after that first night. He knew her body better than she thought, despite the dark. Touch revealed everything, and moonlight even more. She might prefer the obscuring shadows, she might even forget the face of the man who took her, but he never forgot it was Roselyn whom he caressed.

He smiled to himself as he acknowledged the little war his body fought every night. Roselyn Longworth incited a desire so intense, so shattering, that ferocity beckoned too often. But because it was Roselyn, a lady who could still be shy and shocked by nakedness, relinquishing control was out of the question.

It did not matter. The end was always good. Her sweet ecstacies and his own thunderous climaxes amazed him. Afterward he relinquished the total contentment that he experienced in her embrace with regret. Sometimes, like last night, he refused to leave her for hours, which meant imposing more than once.

He walked down the stairs. This house still felt new and strange to him. Roselyn had appeared very happy with it when he brought her here. She occupied herself now with rearranging it to her preference, and with making her first careful sorties back into society.

He spent his time on his business affairs, like this meeting. He rode his horse to Norbury’s with the canvas satchel slung from the saddle. The day was more fair than his mood. He would not speak of Norbury to Rose, but last night’s repeated hunger to possess her had been tied to the unpleasant anticipation of today’s meeting.

In truth the man intruded on his thoughts too much now. Not only because of Rose, although Kyle had to work hard to keep away images of that affair. Those thoughts only provoked anger, and the unholy desire to hurt the scoundrel badly.

The memory that had emerged on his wedding night kept beckoning too, demanding reassessment. He kept seeing the face of a woman, beaten and bruised. That woman’s eyes haunted him. The humiliation that they reflected was much like Rose’s expression that night of the auction.

When he came upon his aunt that day, battered from fending off the young bloods making sport of her, he had fought like a soul possessed. It had been three against one and he had only been twelve, but his enemies had not already spent four years carrying baskets of coal out of a pit.

He thought he had saved her. Only now, as the details continued their relentless resurrection in his head, he wondered. He might not have intruded at the beginning of her misuse, but at the end.

Thoughts of Rose had raised that memory on their wedding night. As he weighed how to handle her, how to make sure it was not porridge but also not frightening, the shadow of her previous lover had loomed. Then the memory came, and with it the unexpected thought that porridge might have been the least of the reasons for Rose’s distaste for physical intimacy.

He stopped his horse in front of Norbury’s house. He gazed up the facade at the perfectly wrought Palladian style that gave this building such elegance. He thought it was one of London’s best homes, with an excellence most would not notice in a sea of Classical derivations. It was wasted on Norbury, who had little sensibility for such things.

The aesthetics could not distract his mind the way they normally did. The new question mark about that long-ago fight affected much more than his boyhood history. It made him wonder more than he wanted about Rose’s affair. It even bore on his meeting today, because Norbury had been one of those boys he had thrashed.

His aunt said he had come in time, and he had believed her. But those mumbles below in the cottage had been silent for a long while after that day, and his uncle had never viewed Cottington’s patronage with grace.

Take the money but don’t be his lackey, Kyle lad. Use them good the ways they use others, but don’t ever turn into one of ’em.

The footman smiled while he took the calling card. The familiarity was not disrespectful. The servants of this house, like those at many other fine London addresses, had quickly warmed to the poor boy made good, to the man who straddled the two worlds they knew.

“My lord is occupied, but will receive you within the hour,” the footman reported on his return. Kyle followed him to the library, assuming “within the hour” meant a wait of at least fifty-nine minutes.

No sooner had the library door closed than Kyle opened it again. He headed below stairs to the kitchen. Norbury probably was not occupied with anything at all. This delay was merely the viscount’s tedious way of declaring his own importance. The time Norbury had just granted would be useful, however.

The pastry cook turned in surprise when she heard his step on the stairs. “Mr. Bradwell! Now this is an honor. My, don’t you look handsome. Your new marital situation seems to suit you.”

“Hello, Lizzy. You are looking well yourself. A bit more flour than normal.”

She brushed her gray hair and a cloud rose. Lizzy was one of several servants in this house who had family in Teeslow. She had taken service with Cottington when she was a girl, and moved to London when Norbury established his own household here.

The cook, a dour man, nodded his acknowledgment to Kyle and muttered congratulations on his marriage. He moved a large pot off the worktable, kicked a stool to the spot, and went back to scolding a scullery maid. Kyle sat on the stool.

“Here to see his lordship, are you?” Lizzy halved and quartered a huge pile of bread dough. “Here for one of those money things you do that no one understands?”

“Yes.”

“Like gambling, some say.”

“A bit like gambling, except I get to decide where most of the cards will be in the deck.”

“Still, one wrong deal and—”

“That is possible.”

“Not so much for you, I’ll say. You have always been smarter than most, so you probably stack the deck better than most.”

Usually. Normally. The risk was still there. The thing about any gambling was you couldn’t care overmuch if you won or lost. A nervous or desperate man always played wrong.

His own success depended on his firm belief that if it all went to hell, he could always come back, and that a few years’ setback would not make much difference in his life.

Marriage changed that. He had realized it as soon as he spoke the vows. His responsibility for Rose meant that he might never be fearless again, and others would sense that no matter how he tried to mask the truth.

That was why two days ago he had established a trust for his new wife.

Two bank drafts had been waiting upon their return to London. One, from Cottington, was a wedding gift.

The other draft had been much larger. Easterbrook’s ten thousand had come with no note, no letter.

If Rose learned about that money, she would think it meant someone had paid him to marry her, which in a manner of speaking someone had. Looking at the draft, he had realized he did not want her believing that. She refused to lie to herself and build any romantic illusions about this match, but it would not be good for her to have no illusions at all.

Cottington’s gift alone pulled him back from the brink, so he took enough of Easterbrook’s settlement to pay for Rose’s jointure, then put the rest of it in trust for her. She would be provided for, should the deck ever play against him in the future.

“Any word from Teeslow, Lizzy?”

She was not above gossip, which was one reason Kyle liked to visit. She learned all about Teeslow from her family’s letters, in much more detail than he ever received from his aunt.

“Well, that Hazlett girl got herself with child and the father is nowhere to be found. Peter Jenkins passed away. It was a mercy, he was so ill. And there is talk of reopening that tunnel in the mine. You know the one.”

He knew the one. He had heard that rumor when he visited in December. Now it seemed it had not died the way an untrue rumor would. “How is Cottington faring?”

“Not well, I fear. That household will mourn the earl bad when he goes, I tell you. Too much will change with his passing.”

“More than the household will mourn. All will regret his heir taking his place.”

Lizzy checked the cook’s proximity before allowing her expression to concur with the part about the heir. She turned her strength to kneading the dough. “I don’t suppose the viscount was at your wedding.”

“Hardly.”

Her glance spoke volumes. That of course Norbury would not inconvenience himself even if he had been invited. That of course Kyle’s bride would not want her past lover at her wedding anyway.

“It was good of you, Mr. Bradwell. How you helped that poor woman, and what you now do for her. That is what everyone says.”

“Unfortunately I could not thrash him again like I did the last time, much as I wanted.”

He watched for her reaction. Lizzy had been in service with Cottington back then. In such a household the servants often knew everything.

She appeared surprised by the allusion. Her gaze locked on his, then fell to her bread dough. She kneaded with vigor.

She acted as if the entire event had been shocking, and its details understood to be a secret.

Mere bad behavior by some youths—the story that he knew—would not be either.

“I still say the houses do not have enough servant chambers.” Norbury issued the complaint after ten minutes of perusing the drawings.

Up until now, things had been going well. Norbury’s reception had been coolly indifferent and the project had occupied their attention. Norbury appeared to be making an effort to act like a gentleman, but Kyle sensed the viscount constantly swallowing a fellow far less civilized.

“These will be bought by families with incomes of several thousand a year. Five servant chambers, plus those in the stable yard for the groom and coachman, should be more than adequate.”

“Several thousand. It is a wonder how they do it.”

It was a stupid statement by a stupid man, intended to emphasize how he was above such petty concerns as a thousand more or less. Norbury bent his tawny head over the drawings some more.

“My solicitor says that my father intends to sign the papers on the land.” Norbury’s lower lip pulsed. “He is out of it all, and has not seen these drawings, but he sent word anyway.”

Fine, we will go forward, but it is the old man’s choice, not mine. I will see a fine profit off you, but I will not be choosing this association.

Kyle did not care how it happened. He resented this project now, and how it required that he accept Norbury’s company. If the earl did not recover and take up the reins of his affairs again, this would be the last partnership with this family.

“I will call on your solicitor tomorrow.” He collected the drawings. “Work on the roads will begin soon, and the timber and supplies ordered. The first estates will be available by midsummer, I think.”

His host examined his preparations for departure. An icy gleam entered his eyes. “Felicitations are due.”

“Thank you.”

“I was not invited.”

“It was a village wedding, not in London.”

“I read that Easterbrook attended.” The idea annoyed him. Kyle did not know if it was because
that
lord had been invited, or because Easterbrook’s attendance made Norbury’s absence irrelevant.

“His county seat is nearby, and my wife is related to him through marriage, of course.”

Norbury’s eyes narrowed. “You have done well for yourself, Kyle, in marrying my whore.”

Kyle forced himself to continue with the drawings but he barely controlled the urge to strangle Norbury. This was how duels got fought. Stupid men said stupid things because pride or pique got the better of them. They said things that another man cannot allow to stand.

“Call her that once more, or anything like it, to me or anyone else, and I will thrash you. If I hear that you even hint at your dishonorable behavior toward her, I will not finish with you until you cannot move for a fortnight.”

Norbury flushed so red that Kyle expected him to throw the first punch right then. He sorely wished he would.

“Thrash me, hell. I box twice weekly.”

“That only helps if your opponent uses Queensberry’s rules. You will be fighting a collier’s son, and your soft, useless hands can’t stand against me.”