Chapter Eleven
“Can you ride out with me tomorrow?” Julian asked, taking a seat uninvited beside Elizabeth Windham.
She occupied a blanket, a book in her lap. She’d chosen a spot in the shade, leaving the sunny bank of the lake to the younger ladies who were apparently desperate to remain in view of the bachelors at every moment.
In Julian’s opinion, the great Haverford house party regatta was proceeding amid more jollity than the occasion warranted.
Not quite more than was proper. The gentlemen had rowed across the lake in groups of four boats, and a respite had been declared for tea and sandwiches, so that all might restore their athletic powers before the championship race.
“I would like to ride out with you,” Elizabeth replied, using a stem of grass as her bookmark. “But my time is promised to another tomorrow morning. Perhaps Charlotte or Miss Trelawny might accompany you.”
Miss Trelawny would cheerfully have accompanied Julian right into his bedroom, did he allow it. She was rumored to have twenty thousand a year thanks to her uncle, the widowed banker. Her father was a viscount, and she was exactly the sort of female Julian ought to pursue.
“What are you reading?” he asked. And why must you look so lovely where any of these prancing nincompoops might realize what a gem hides in their midst?
“Cecilia. Mrs. Burney’s second novel, which for some reason, is twice the length of her first, and half as interesting, but it’s a favorite at the lending library I frequent in London.”
“You criticize a book, Miss Windham? I thought books were sacred.” Julian’s forbearers had certainly been of that daft persuasion.
She set Mrs. Burney aside. “You have a first folio of Shakespeare tucked among your biographies. Books might not be sacred, but mis-shelving the Bard surely constitutes blasphemy.”
“So that’s where it got off to. We have some of his quartos in the family library. Who claims your time tomorrow?”
None of Julian’s business, that’s who, but for the next eighteen days, he could comport himself like a callow swain where Elizabeth Windham was concerned.
“I’m enjoying my constitutional with a relation of yours—Mr. Griffin St. David. He shares many of your handsome features. We met as I began my walk this morning.”
Part of Julian’s mind seized on the thought Elizabeth thinks I’m handsome even as the rest of him grasped the substance of her words.
“How did you and Griffin meet?”
“You needn’t look so severe, Your Grace. Griffin chanced upon me strolling by the river. He’s very friendly.”
Unlike me? “What you call friendliness has landed him in a great deal of trouble. I’ll see that he doesn’t bother you again.”
Elizabeth turned such a look upon Julian that he was reminded of Sherbourne’s words, about shaming others with graciousness. Elizabeth’s gaze held great kindness and even greater disappointment.
“Griffin’s situation is complicated, Elizabeth.”
“Fortunately, I am possessed of sufficient intelligence that even complicated matters, when explained, are within my grasp. Who is Griffin St. David to you?”
Julian shredded a handful of clover and considered dissembling, but Griffin wasn’t a secret. Lady Pembroke probably knew of him, as did any of the guests of her generation. Debrett’s had eventually, for a sum certain, seen fit to forget about him.
“Griffin is my brother.”
“Your full brother?”
“My full, legitimate brother, and Lady Glenys’s too. He lives in his own household on a former Haverford tenancy, and I do not want to have this conversation where anybody can interrupt.” Or eavesdrop.
Elizabeth passed him the book. “You do not want to have this conversation at all. Pretend you’re reading to me, and we won’t be disturbed.”
He wanted to read to her, preferably late at night as they prepared for bed. “I’ll be called upon to referee the championship race at any moment.”
“The competitors are still very much concerned with besting one another at the buffet. Are you ashamed of your brother?”
Not even Radnor would have posed that question, but Julian was pleased to answer honestly.
“Of course I’m not ashamed. Griffin St. David has more decency in his smallest finger on his worst day than most people can claim on Easter morning. He’s brave, he’s determined, he’s kind, and in every way resembles a gentlemanly paragon more than I ever will. He wanted his own household, and Glenys supported him.”
“Open the book, Julian. You opposed this notion?”
Julian. “I cannot protect him as effectively if he’s living on his own. He’s been taken advantage of in the past, with serious consequences to him and to others. I trusted the wrong people once before, and Griffin paid a high price.”
The book felt heavy in his hands, as weighty as a brick, not quite as useful a weapon as a brick would be.
“He’s Lord Griffin,” Elizabeth said.
“You must not address him as such, for he has it in his head that all lords, even courtesy lords, go to London to sit in Parliament. I cannot take him to London. He’d be made a laughingstock, and—lest you think I haven’t considered it—Lady Glenys’s prospects will be diminished when people learn that she has an impaired younger brother.”
That silenced her, while ten yards away, Miss Trelawny was clambering into a boat and getting her hems wet. Sir Nigel splashed about in the shallows, probably ruining his boots while the lady shrieked about not having any oars.
“Society can be vicious,” Elizabeth said. “That much is true, but would Lady Glenys want a husband who couldn’t accept her brother?”
“In my experience, trusting to the compassion of human nature is folly, at least among my peers. My father’s outlook regarding his fellow man was more sanguine, or more foolish. I shall have to rescue that damned woman. Didn’t Mrs. Burney have something to say about a lady’s reputation?”
“‘Nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman,’” Elizabeth quoted quietly. “‘It is at once the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things.’”
The little boat was drifting out into the lake. Spectators on shore shouted suggestions, Sir Nigel trudged to the bank in his wet boots, and Miss Trelawny sat in her boat, slipping farther from dry land.
“We haven’t finished this discussion,” Elizabeth said. “Come by your sister’s parlor after supper, and if the hour is not too late, I’ll be there.”
Julian pulled off his boots and set them on the grass. “Until tonight.”
He kept walking, right out into the lake, which was surprisingly pleasant in temperature. The crowd on shore took to calling encouragement, though all that was wanted was to get behind the boat and give it a shove toward land. The water was little more than waist deep, and the boat soon bumped solidly into the bank.
“Well done, Your Grace,” Haldale called, applauding. “You showed Sir Nigel how to deal with a damsel in distress!”
The damsel was sitting prettily in the boat, waiting for a handsome swain to get her to shore.
“Some worthy gentleman needs to carry the lady to the bank,” Julian replied. “I’d oblige, but then Miss Trelawny would be as soaked as I am.”
Haldale had no witty rejoinder, and Sir Nigel was staring morosely at his wet boots.
Sherbourne waded into the water and lifted Miss Trelawny from her perch. “My pleasure, madam. Perhaps if you’re that eager to be on the water, we should have a lady’s regatta at next year’s house party.”
He aimed that remark at Julian, though Sherbourne knew damned good and well there would be no Haverford house party next year or any other year.
“If the company will excuse me,” Julian said, splashing to the bank, “I’ll see to my attire and join you all at supper.” He assayed a bow at Glenys, who looked torn between laughter and mortification.
“I’ll drive you back to the castle,” Radnor said, signaling to the groom who held the dogcart five yards off.
“My thanks.” Julian left his boots right where they were, twelve inches to the left of Elizabeth Windham’s book, and climbed into the cart.
“What was Sherbourne about,” Radnor asked as they rattled off at a trot, “stepping forth to rescue Miss Trelawny? He has no need of her money, and she has no need of his.”
“He was doubtless trying to impress us with his manners, and I admit, he surprised me. Sherbourne might be preparing to ask for permission to pay Glenys his addresses.”
The bench beneath Julian’s wet backside was hard and warm, and in truth, he was glad to be spared the rest of the afternoon by the lake.
Not glad to have abandoned Elizabeth, though.
“If Sherbourne presumes to court Lady Glenys, will you laugh in his face and have him tossed out the door?” Radnor asked.
“You know I can’t.”
Radnor drove along in silence for a quarter mile, while the sounds of the boating party grew mercifully quieter. “Will Lady Glenys look with favor on Sherbourne’s suit?”
“I honestly don’t know. I suspect she’d consider Sherbourne in the hope that her marriage would ease my financial situation.” Which it would not, though it might prevent Sherbourne from causing the outright ruin of his wife’s family.
Radnor tried to steer the cart around a pothole, but the way was narrow, and jostling inevitable.
“Lady Glenys would martyr herself to the St. David debt, as you have. I’d lend you my last groat, Haverford, you know that.”
“You’d give me your last groat without a thought of repayment, for which I do love you, but you’ve done enough. Besides, the St. David debt would eliminate all your reserves and still not be half repaid.”
Not that Radnor’s reserves were vast. He was comfortable, but like Julian had not turned to exploiting mineral resources to augment his fortune.
“So you’d allow a match between Sherbourne and Glenys?”
Was Radnor’s question too careful? He pulled the dogcart up at the back entrance to the castle, where the baggage and tradesmen’s deliveries were accepted.
“Sherbourne himself asked the same question, and all I could say was that I’d hate to see my sister shackled to any man she could not esteem. I hesitate to antagonize Sherbourne, and yet, neither can I allow him to ride roughshod over me.”
A groom jogged out from the stables, and Julian hopped down from the cart. The grass was cool and soft beneath his feet, another summer pleasure he’d forgotten.
“Will you return to the revels by the lake?” Julian asked, for Radnor had remained on the bench, his expression oddly severe.
“Haverford, Lady Glenys will marry that well-dressed barbarian for your sake. Do you want that on your conscience?”
“Of course not, but what if he’s her only choice? I don’t care for Sherbourne, but he’ll keep her in far better style than I can, and he knows her financial situation as well as I do. I don’t want her spinsterhood or a life lived in unrelenting penury on my conscience, much as I detest the man.”
Radnor sprang down, landing directly in front of Julian. “He’d treat her like a prize of war, parade her around London before his banker friends, and get children on her. How can you consider Sherbourne a suitable match for Glenys? He’d make her miserable.”
Julian waited until the groom had turned the cart around and led the horse some distance away.
“Radnor, for the daughter of a duke to remain unmarried is probably the definition of misery. You don’t have a sister, you can’t know how much store young women set on their come out, who is marrying whom, and who has been brought to bed with a child. Glenys is not happy, and she will never be happy without a family of her own. If I marry, her situation becomes even more pathetic.”
Radnor stuck his nose in Julian’s face. “Sherbourne is not her only option, you dolt.”
Good God. Radnor was not in a temper, he was lovesick. Julian took a step back and bruised his heel against a rock hidden by the grass.
“Have you told this to Glenys?”
“That you’re a dolt?”
“That you are in love with her.” Not merely fond of the lady, not in the grip of a passing sentiment, but hopelessly, wonderfully far gone.
Radnor turned away, his gaze fixed on the tents gleaming white across the lake. “I’m waiting for the right moment.”
House parties made the wisest people daft. “Cedric, one suspects you’ve been waiting for years. Sherbourne is probably right now bowing over her hand and fetching her another glass of punch. There will never be a right moment, and if you want to be seen as a suitor, you’d best start comporting yourself like one.”
“I’ve your permission to court her, then?”
“If you were anybody else, I’d tell you that Glenys’s wishes will be controlling, but you’re you, so I’ll simply wish you the best of luck and warn you not to muck this up.”
“Any worse than I already have, I know,” Radnor said, striding off in the direction of the dogcart. “Timing is everything, Haverford, and it’s time for a bit of courtship.”
He jaunted off, leaving Julian damp and slightly chilled outside the castle walls, his foot throbbing.
Sherbourne would have a royal tantrum if Glenys married Radnor, though Glenys would be safe and happy, which mattered a very great deal.
“I hate house parties,” Julian informed nobody in particular.
But he loved the idea of ending his day with Miss Elizabeth Windham in the cozy informality of the lady of the castle’s tower parlor.
* * *
The boat races had tired the other guests sufficiently that Elizabeth had to wait only until eleven o’clock to make her way to the tower parlor. She lit a fire for warmth and arranged a few candles, then occupied herself reviewing the stack of correspondence Lady Glenys had set out for her.
This meeting with Haverford was not a seduction, but rather a discussion between new friends. Elizabeth had no intention of drawing out the conversation, for she must keep her appointment with Griffin early in the morning.
“You waited for me,” Haverford said, slipping through the door. “Thank you.”
“And you brought sustenance,” Elizabeth replied, rising and taking the tray from him. Another man—another duke—would have summoned a footman to bear the tray, thus jeopardizing the privacy of this assignation.
This conversation, rather.
“Our orangery was built on an ambitious scale, and we have fruit in abundance as a result.” The tray held a tea service for one, shortbread, and an orange. “A modest feast, but the scullery maid nearly had an apoplexy when I dared trespass belowstairs to request a tray.”
Given the single teacup, not even the scullery maid would suspect the duke intended to share his tray.
“You probably interrupted her flirtation with the boot boy.” Elizabeth set the tray on the table before the sofa and lifted the lid of the teapot. Clove and citrus wafted up. “What manner of tea is this? The scent is delightful.”
“Glenys blends it, probably to stretch our stores of China black. Did you lay that fire?”
Elizabeth settled on the sofa and began peeling the orange. “I did, and I lit it from the sconce in the hallway. I gather her ladyship does try to practice economies, some of the time.”
His Grace prowled the room, tidying the desk—for which his sister might kill him—and moving the candles on the mantel so they were exactly symmetric.
“Tell me about Griffin, Haverford.”
“Perhaps you’d prefer cordial to tea?”
“I’d prefer you tell me about your brother.” Elizabeth suspected His Grace had no one with whom to discuss Griffin’s situation, much less Lady Glenys’s marital aspirations, or the problems with the estate. The right duchess would halve his sorrows.…
Elizabeth set the orange down half-peeled.
“My mother’s labor with Griffin was difficult,” Haverford said, his back to Elizabeth. He appeared to study the landscape over the mantel, but the art was so old and so poorly preserved, that in the dim light, he was staring into shadows. “The midwife said the cord had wrapped about his neck, and unlike most children, he didn’t come squalling into the world. He had to be encouraged to draw breath, and his early days gave us all great anxiety. To this day, he can’t stand anything tight around his neck.”
“He looks to be at least ten years your junior.”
“Twelve, and Mama was not young when I came along. Papa was overjoyed at first, for he’d given up hoping for a spare. Then we began to notice problems. Griffin was a clumsy baby, slow to gain strength, and even after he learned to walk, he’d have awful tantrums. The nurse said he was frustrated by a lack of words, because those too were slow to come along.”
And all of this would have been unfolding as Haverford navigated the rocky shoals of adolescence.
“Griffin speaks well now,” Elizabeth said, “and he’s nimble as a goat.”
“For years, he lagged behind other boys his age in terms of speech, and he’s learned to compensate for what he doesn’t grasp. Most metaphors are beyond him, though he won’t confess his confusion. He nods politely, as a gentleman should at various points in a conversation. May I sit with you?”
Both St. David brothers were gentlemen. “Of course. Griffin has a thorough grasp of facts, though.”
“Some facts,” Haverford said, settling in with a sigh. “Others he’s parroting from memory, oblivious to their significance. He has artistic skills in the same vein. He can copy any text in beautiful copperplate, but has little sense of its meaning. He knows the words to every hymn and has a lovely voice, while I struggle to recall more than the first verse. In many ways, Griffin is the truest gentleman I will ever meet, and yet, he’s vulnerable.”
Elizabeth took Haverford’s hand, because she could, and because somebody should. “As a child is vulnerable?”
“Worse. Griffin looks, recalls, and often acts like an adult, but he reasons as a child does. He raises no livestock for meat, because the notion of slaughtering a beast reduces him to weeks of despondency. They all become pets to him. That the chicken in the stew was raised in somebody’s yard and fed by somebody’s children seems to escape his notice. If he feeds that chicken himself, however, the bird will enjoy a lifetime of good care and be given a carefully chosen name.”
“He sees the world through the eyes of a child.” A child much loved and sheltered.
“Exactly.” Haverford stroked his fingers over Elizabeth’s knuckles, absently, as he might have petted a cat. “Griffin has befriended the occasional woman too.”
“Oh, dear.” Taken advantage of and vulnerable acquired dire significance.
Haverford leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “I had hoped that my brother would be spared a young man’s usual zeal for the ladies, but a guest who’d come to visit Lady Glenys a few years ago realized that Griffin is my heir. She seduced him, which probably took about two seconds given Griffin’s nature, and conceived a child—a daughter, as it turned out.”
The wrong that had been done, to Griffin, to his family, and to the child was stunning, and yet, Elizabeth had heard not a hint of scandal regarding the St. Davids.
And clearly, Haverford blamed himself for what had befallen his brother. “What did you do?”
“I explained the situation to Griffin, who did not grasp that he’d been played for a fool until the young lady laughed at him before others. She’d found a way to marry a ducal heir, acquire a courtesy title, and escape all the strictures husbands can legally put on wives. Her plan was to live out the rest of her life fashionably estranged from her spouse, a portion of St. David wealth and consequence hers to command for her silence regarding Griffin’s limitations.”
Uncle Percy, in all his shrewdness, assisted by Aunt Esther, with her vast stores of sense, would have been hard put to untangle such a muddle.
“I gather Griffin is not married to this disgrace.” Though Griffin hadn’t mentioned a daughter either.
“I put the choice to him. He could marry this woman, knowing exactly how badly he’d misjudged her and what sort of person she was. His daughter would be legitimate, the lady would become a member of the St. David family, and Griffin would have his one and only wife until the woman’s demise. In the alternative, he could remain unwed and we would raise the child as a by-blow.”
Elizabeth took a nibble of shortbread, and held the remainder of the biscuit to Haverford’s mouth. He took a bite, and she brushed the crumbs from his cravat.
“Which did Griffin choose?”
“He asked me if I would promise to love the child, and be as good an uncle to her as Abner was to Biddy. I gave my word, as did Glenys as the girl’s aunt. Radnor and I are Charity’s guardians. She bides with Radnor, though the poor mite has the St. David eyebrows.”
Elizabeth rather liked those eyebrows. “She’s assumed to be your child?”
“I don’t care what’s assumed about her. I care that she’s loved, protected, and raised with the privileges of her station. When Glenys is married, I’ll bring Charity here, where she belongs.”
“She doesn’t belong with her father?”
Haverford opened his eyes and gestured for more shortbread. “I can’t ask Biddy and Abner to care for half my family, Elizabeth. We’re letting the tea get cold.”
The teapot was swaddled in toweling, which would hold in the warmth. One-handed, Elizabeth poured out a cup and added two lumps of sugar. “Milk?”
“Please.”
They drank three cups of tea between them and finished the orange and half the shortbread. The modest fare was comforting, as was Haverford’s willingness to share the single cup.
“What happened to the young lady, if one can call her a lady?” Elizabeth asked.
“By agreement with her father, she married another man after Charity’s birth, a fellow her father could trust to overlook the entire situation. I conveyed to the groom a life estate in a sizeable farm in Gloucestershire, one I’d intended to include in Glenys’s settlements. If I hear a whisper of a rumor regarding Charity, I will revoke the life estate. Until then, the rents go to the couple or their oldest son.”
“Neatly done.” Charity’s mother was motivated to keep her mouth shut, and her husband and family were motivated to keep the lady away from polite society. Haverford, however, was out income and property in exchange for their silence.
And the child.
“This is not a cheering topic,” Haverford said, his head resting on Elizabeth’s shoulder. “I apologize for burdening you with family problems, but you’ve met Griffin. If you failed to keep your appointment with him tomorrow, he’d worry for you, or worse, worry that you didn’t like him because, in his words, he isn’t smart.”
Elizabeth slipped an arm around the duke, who fit nicely in the circle of her embrace. “I’ll keep my appointment with Griffin. He’s a pleasant change from the company at the breakfast table, excluding mine host, of course.”
She would also put off until another time a discussion of the bills piled neatly on the desk across the room.
Bills that Lady Glenys had doubtless forgotten to separate from her social correspondence, for Elizabeth shuddered at the amounts she’d seen. Surely her ladyship wouldn’t want anybody but family to see those figures.
Haverford kissed Elizabeth’s cheek. “Your host is the soul of graciousness, of course. I should see you safely to your rooms.”
Elizabeth knew the way now. Very likely, Charlotte would still be awake and full of questions.
“Let’s bide a while here and enjoy the quiet.”
“Can you swim?” Haverford asked.
“Quite well, though I haven’t since girlhood.”
“We’ll remedy that oversight.” He was soon breathing regularly, an exhausted, warm weight against Elizabeth’s side. Perhaps his explanation of Griffin’s situation had tired him, or perhaps the duke sensed that in this tower, in Elizabeth’s arms, he was free to rest from his many labors.
The moment wasn’t lover-ly, but it was intimate. Elizabeth remained with Haverford for another quarter hour, and when the clock from the hall below struck midnight, she eased away. A shawl purloined from the back of the chair at the desk was the best she could do to keep him warm.
She kissed his cheek, checked the corridor for stray footmen or straying debutantes, then made her way alone through the darkness to her room.