Five

“Does she know you love her?”

Evan was now alone in the dining room turned breakfast parlor with Hannah, Lady Crosby, and her sleeping blanket of baby. As peaceful and silent as little John was, so his mother was alert and sharp-eyed.

Though Lady Crosby’s question caught him off guard, Evan did not pretend to misunderstand. “No. Considering how many times your sister has mentioned I was like a brother to Con, she has no idea.”

It was a cruelty that she valued him so much and wanted him not at all.

As if in agreement, the sleeping baby released a stream of spittle.

“I wondered about that.” The young baronetess snatched up a serviette and dabbed at her soiled gown. “It’s possible she does know you love her, but she doesn’t want you to say anything about it. Because that would spoil your friendship.”

“Lady Crosby, I did that well enough already.”

“Call me Hannah, please. And how did you spoil the friendship?”

Evan pressed at his temples. “I should have tallied the number of times she mentioned yesterday that she’d had no word from me since Con died.”

“You never even wrote?” Hannah goggled at him, then slapped the serviette back onto the table. “Never mind, never mind. I’m sure she said a great deal on that subject.”

“You are correct.”

“Yet you are staying in our father’s house, and after the race meet you’ll travel to Ireland together. Is that something not-friends do?”

“Travel alone with a woman he can never have?” Evan said drily. “That’s not something any man in his right mind would do.”

“‘They are in the very wrath of love,’” murmured Hannah, patting her son’s back. The baby released a great belch of air. “That’s from As You Like It. My brother Nathaniel’s favorite play, because there is a Rosalind in it, and that is his wife’s name. I learned quite a bit of the play. For several months I had nothing to do but sit about and read Shakespeare and grow an enormous baby.”

“Well done,” Evan said. “The baby is most…er…enormous. In a way that’s just right for a baby.”

Hannah granted this, then asked, “If you do love Kate, how long do you intend to wait before pursuing her?”

Evan shrugged. “Forever.”

“Too long. We Chandlers regard ourselves as invincible, but that is not the same thing as immortal.”

“I know that.” Twice he’d feared that Kate would die when she was brought to bed of Con’s children.

Kate, whom he teased into laughter when she was focused on the next-next-next of a busy wife’s, mother’s, and countess’s life. Kate, who helped Evan remember that there would always be a next, and that gray wasn’t the only color in the world.

“She said she wants my friendship,” he told Hannah. “And I’d rather be her friend than mean nothing to her at all.”

“Why don’t you let her decide if those are the only two choices?”

“Are you the voice of the devil, Hannah Chandler Crosby?”

She winked. “That, I’ll leave to you to decide.” Pushing back her chair, she stood. “I’ll take John home now before he soils my entire habit.”

Evan took to his feet as well. “Babies emit a great many fluids. I am constantly impressed. I don’t know how they manage it.”

“You’re not the only one who wonders that.” Hannah jounced her son to one hip. “If you could hand me my sling?”

Evan did so, and Hannah settled the baby again. “Will I see you at the racecourse tomorrow?”

“Naturally. I wouldn’t miss race day,” Evan said.

“And have you decided whom you’ll bet on?”

“I wouldn’t bet against a Chandler horse,” he replied. “But I’m not sure how much I’m able to stake.”

“You have one day to determine the answer,” said Hannah—and with that, she and the baby were off.

One day. Hmm.

The lady had given him much to think over. Mischievous Welsh beast though he might be, it was time he acted.

Over the years of his hidden love, he had grown accustomed to thinking in impossibilities, of all he might lose should he risk what was precious. But there was another way to think about the matter as well.

He wondered what unexpected victory he might win, if only he strove for it.

* * *

Sir William was waiting for Kate in the doorway of his study as she exited the dining room.

“Come, join me in here, Biggie.”

Biggie. The nickname ought to have been horrid for one who always hovered on the edge of plumpness—or slightly over it—but it always cheered her. As a toddler learning to speak, Jonah had made a mash of his twin’s first name, Abigail. Throughout childhood, their parents and younger brother and sister—Nathaniel and Hannah—had adopted the nickname as an endearment.

Abigail Catherine Chandler by birth; Kate Durham, Irish Countess of Whelan by marriage.

Kate had missed being called Biggie.

“Papa, please—call me Kate. I am a grown woman now.” Yet she felt anything but, perched in the little chair next to the great table her father used as a desk. Here to plead her case.

The desk was cluttered and piled with the accumulated business of a great house and a great stable, a stud farm and a string of racehorses. Sir William kept no stable master, and since his daughter Hannah had wed and her replacement, Rosalind, had married Kate’s younger brother Nathaniel, he hadn’t had a secretary either.

Kate wasn’t the only one overburdened at present.

“Kate, then. What is weighing on your mind? Not that I’m not pleased to see you, but you haven’t returned for a race season in years.” His features were as stern as ever, but his hazel eyes were not unkind.

“I need money,” she blurted. “By the end of the year, or I’ll have to sell all the Whelan land that’s not entailed.”

Stripping her son of his inheritance, and that of those who would follow him. Turning the welfare of tenants over to whatever stranger would pay the highest price.

Or not a stranger at all. Finnian Driscoll, the magistrate of Thurles and holder of Con’s debts, would buy the land. A large and friendly man, he was well-liked by the villagers.

In the shock of new widowhood, Driscoll’s attention to Con’s creditors had eased her burdens, leaving her free for the immediate needs of her family. But there was such a thing as too easeful. In the end, the things he did for her own good, just to help, to make things easier had the effect of taking all choice away.

The idea of the lands falling away from Declan’s control into Driscoll’s hands made her stomach twist, repulsed.

Sir William sighed. “I thought it might be something like that. Come and walk with me.”

Kate glanced, startled, at his wheelchair. Her father’s smile was weary. “In a manner of speaking.”

Glass-paned doors led from the crescent-shaped study onto a smooth gravel path. Kate stepped out after her father, pulling the doors shut behind them, then tipped her face upward to the morning sun.

It showed its face here more often than in Ireland, where it often hid coyly behind dim drizzle. The trees were dressed in every bright shade of gold and bronze, and the breeze was cool and gentle as she fell into step at her father’s side. Her feet made pleasant little crunches in the smooth white gravel of the path, and Sir William rolled his wheelchair along with almost idle movements of his sturdy hands.

“To what end do you need the money?” he asked.

“Repairing the house. Buying winter fodder for animals and seed for spring. Maintaining the land’s drainage for tenants.” For what did she not need money? “Con left many debts, and crop yields have plummeted since the year he died.” A year of dreadful cold, in which summer hardly warmed the earth before winter fell again. Kate had been glad to leave behind 1816, though each year since had brought its own challenges.

Sir William’s hands clenched on the sleek wooden rims of his chair. “I should have met Whelan before I agreed to let you wed him. It was a difficult time.”

This was an understatement. He had contracted palsy and was near death in Spain. An aristocratic marriage for Kate had likely seemed the best way to see to her welfare.

“I had met him, Papa, and I wed him anyway.”

At this distance in time, she could speak the words with a flip of carelessness. Conall Ritchie Durham had many gifts, among them charm, handsomeness, and the ability to make a wealthy innocent feel like the most precious and special creature on earth. She had fallen for him swiftly, enraptured.

He’d married her for her money, of course. Oh, he’d been fond of her too. But would he have pursued her without her dowry? Never.

Realizing that never had taken years, difficult years. Years of lavish spending that gobbled the dowry and the income from the estate. Con was not one to bother himself. Don’t worry about it. You focus too much on minor details. Let me cheer you up. But “cheering her up” invariably meant more gifts they couldn’t afford, such as horses and gowns and lavish orders of smuggled luxuries from France.

So confident was Con that creditors never dunned him, letting the debts mount. Don’t distress yourself, Katie. I’ll take care of it.

But he didn’t. Instead, he had been killed, and there was a new way of life to which she had to come to terms.

Poverty. Scraping, shabby-genteel poverty and the fear of losing her son’s livelihood.

“How bad is it?” Sir William asked.

She scuffed her boot heels through the gravel. “Bad. I need thousands of pounds.” She named a figure that still shocked her, even after careful calculations.

And I do not know when I shall ever be able to pay you back. Years from now, maybe. If the land recovered well after the biting winter of 1816. If harvests were good for seasons on end, and the repairs to Whelan House went well. If, if, if.

She sighed.

Sir William halted as the path split, one fork leading to the stables and the other running into a wood. “I hoped you’d lay your burdens down in Newmarket, once you decided to visit.”

“You should know better than that, Papa. A parent and a noble can never forget the ties that bind them to home.”

She didn’t want to, truly. Her children and her responsibilities as countess were heavy burdens to carry alone. But it was better to carry them alone than to hope for the contributions of a helpmeet who, instead, added rocks to her pack.

Besides, she loved them. She loved Nora and Declan better than herself. She loved Ireland as the place of their birth. One would perform great feats for love that would seem impossible otherwise.

Sir William looked toward the stable, the lines of his face deep-carved by slanted morning light. “As it so happens, Kate, I cannot lend you the amount you need at present. I’ve invested heavily in broodmares from Arabia. They cost the earth, but in a few years, their offspring will be well worth what I’ve spent. Their stamina must be seen to be believed.” Wistfully, he traced the wooden rims of his chair.

Though Kate’s feet were firmly planted on gravel, the ground seemed unsteady. “I understand,” she said.

She did. Buying horses and racing was what Sir William Chandler did. It was what made him—what made them all—Chandlers. It was how Sir William had built the family fortune and earned the title of baronet from a grateful Prince Regent who needed strong and true cavalry horses during wartime.

Her father looked at her with eyes that understood too much in return. “What will you do, Biggie?”

She drew herself up. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing for years.” She tried for lightness. “Somehow I’ve always found the answer.”

“How will you find it now?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m a Chandler, and tomorrow, I’m going to the races. I’ll pick up my troubles after that.”

“That’s my girl.” He reached for her hand and gave it a quick squeeze.

There was nothing more to be said, was there? So she walked with him to the stables and stayed in the company of the horses, warm and sure, until she could almost forget the ever-present uncertainties of her life.