Chapter Six
Grace excused herself as soon as she could. She sent Letty away when she tried to linger. Anna’s replacement was not someone she wanted around at this moment.
The door between her room and Everett’s had no lock, and she couldn’t see a way to effectively block both that door and the one leading to the corridor without arousing the suspicions of the servants.
She’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but she went to her trunk and from a concealed panel, picked out her little dagger in its leather sheath and examined it. Simple, functional, it was heavy in her palm. Maurice had given it to her when she’d asked, with a quirked eyebrow and advice not to be silly. When she’d hidden the blade in her trunk, she’d thought of Lord Rayner, and he rose again in her mind.
She imagined them side by side, Lord Rayner and Lord Westbury. Light haired and dark haired. Force and choice. They were different, there was no doubt. But could they be so different? They held the same rank of earl. They both selected pretty maids to work for them. Everett knew all his servants’ names, but was she so sure of his gentlemanliness that she could put the knife back, sure he wouldn’t attempt to visit her and…
No. He would visit. If only on the pretense of saying good night. It would be foolish to risk not being able to protect herself, even if she thought she might be able to trust him. She slipped into bed, wriggling down into the covers as though they could keep her safe.
She arranged herself into a semblance of her usual sleeping position on her side, knees tucked up level with her hips. But it was as though all her muscles were trying to hold her an eighth of an inch off the sheets. Each time one muscle tried to relax, there was the image of Lord Rayner and she seized up. She had to remain tranquil, but she wasn’t. She couldn’t be.
The knock on the door was quiet. “Grace?”
Her fingers tightened around the knife handle, but otherwise, she lay completely still. Hiding in her own body. The doorknob made a click as he turned it, and there were light footsteps that grew slowly louder. Then stopped.
She was asleep. She was asleep. She willed him to believe it.
“You can stop pretending to be asleep.”
The knife felt hot beneath her fingers. He wasn’t Lord Rayner, but just the thought of him made her fear deeper. He was an aristocrat and would never be held responsible for his actions. She tightened her grip on the weapon.
He sighed. Then the bed dipped as he sat down on the edge. “Grace, you’re holding your breath. It’s erratic and shallow because you’re panicking. There is no need to worry.”
Uncertainty raced through her. Should she acknowledge him? If she continued to pretend to be deep in slumber, would he reach out to her, to try and “wake her up”?
She swallowed, hoping her voice would come out even. “If you touch me, it will be the last thing you do.” Her voice sounded foreign to her. High, with a tremor.
“Yes, I see there is something in your hand.” He paused, as though he was waiting for her to confirm it. “I imagine you know that a gun would be foolish at this close range, so perhaps it is a knife.”
She didn’t credit his good guess with an answer.
“I hope we might be friends. I don’t mean to scare or harm you. I wished only to spend my wedding night with my wife.” His voice was soft and weary.
She kept her fingers tight around the knife. He could be beautiful and sometimes kind and still be a villain. Lord Rayner was, after all.
“I am sorry for my mother’s behavior. She is bitter after the deaths of my brother and father. I could have brought home a princess, and she would have found fault.” He hesitated and seemed to be working up to something. “This was not how I wanted our marriage to start. You have every right to be angry, but I will make it up to you, I promise.”
His weight moved off the bed, then his steps receded. She didn’t reply to his “Good night” before he closed the door. He moved around his room and she kept gripping the knife. After there was silence for a long time, her limbs, one by one, eased into repose. Her breathing evened to a steady, slow rhythm.
Only then did she allow herself to mull over his words. They seemed honest. Part of her wanted to believe that he just wanted some illusion of normality and happiness. But as inviting as his tone had been, experience said she couldn’t believe it.
…
In contrast to her evident terror last night, his wife was carefully amiable the next morning. Everett nodded when she made polite talk about the clouds turning into either rain or shine.
When he’d gone to her room last night, she had evidently thought he was somebody else entirely. For him, a simple “no, thank you,” would have sufficed. He was beginning to see that his wife’s outward expression had little relationship with her inner thoughts. It made this job of persuading her to stay tricky. Nevertheless, the charm offensive must begin.
“Would you like to walk together today? You mentioned you liked water, and there are some excellent vistas of the lake.” A walk would be just the thing to build trust between them.
“I’m sure that you are much too busy with your work to worry yourself over me,” Grace replied into her teacup.
Was that deference? A pulse of disappointment went through him at her lack of spirit. “I would not want you to get lost on your first day on the estate.”
“That’s quite unnecessary.” Grace regarded him, her gaze guarded. “I have an excellent sense of direction. Besides, I won’t go far. I must to go to the library.” She added sotto voce, “To plan my trip to Europe.”
Her eyes had been cast down not in deference but defiance, and she had slipped in a reminder she was leaving.
“Grace.” When she looked up, he raised his eyebrows.
She bit her lip. She’d evidently forgotten her agreement to pretend to be in love. “I’ll fetch my shawl.”
As they set out toward the lake, Everett kept up a light chat about the weather as they followed the flat path away from the hill with the large oak. The lake was an opaque blue gray this morning. They lapsed into silence as they skirted around the boathouse and approached the trees, and he wondered what she might respond to. How could he draw her out? She would need something to make her comfortable and understand her better.
And the answer was obvious. “How old is Henry?”
“We don’t have to talk.” Her brows were puckered together.
He’d thought this would be an easy distraction from the day ahead. He would deliver the dues for the culled animals to Cottley Farm, confirm with them about arrangements, check on all the farms north of the river, then have the difficult conversation with the Walkers about the grim necessity of culling their animals. But as it turned out, this was no easier.
“In love, remember? Besides, it will be a dull six weeks in silence.” He pointed across the lake to the house. “There’s a clear line of sight from the house to this path.” Except when they were in the woods, of course.
She looked back at the house. “Four years old.”
“So young.” His teeth gritted at the memory that she didn’t want to visit him. At least with an attitude like that there was no chance he’d ever fall into the same trap his mother had, and love someone who didn’t love him back. A woman who had no tenderness for a little child, her own blood no less, was not someone he could ever love. But he had to lure her in, and for that they needed a connection. “Does he like his lessons?”
She sighed and her mouth tightened. “I don’t know.”
Well. Not everyone thought education was as important as he did. He swallowed his reservations.
“The nursery has a rocking horse that he might enjoy. Two, actually.”
“Two? That seems a bit excessive.”
“Peter didn’t share very well.” It was disproportionate, though. His father had occasionally become guilty and brought back gifts for them all. “Sometimes three boys required three set of toys.” Mostly, though, Everett had been expected to share or yield his toys to George. “There are three sets of tennis rackets, shuttlecock, bowls, who knows what else.” He hadn’t sold them, since they wouldn’t fetch much, and because of a twist of nostalgia.
They were approaching a gap in the trees. Using the back of his hand, he touched her upper arm. “Look. The view is lovely from here.” He gestured toward the vista to the house.
Her eyes widened for a flash. But she turned to look at the view, leaving him looking over her shoulder. She was so flighty, a cautious wildcat, and allowing him to be behind her was a tiny sign of trust.
“It’s your house now.” He walked away rather than crowd her. “And Henry’s, if you wanted.”
“For six weeks,” she corrected him.
“There’s an excellent school nearby where I was educated. Clifton College is just outside Bristol. He could come home for exeats.” He’d loved those brief stays to see George and be fussed over by the housekeeper.
“Exeats?”
“Oh, sorry.” He’d forgotten she wouldn’t know that. “A leave of absence from school. Usually a Saturday and Sunday.”
“Henry won’t go away to stay at school.” She shook her head firmly, as if he could force her to send her brother to school.
“I went there as a child.” He shrugged. “I liked it there.”
“You liked it because being at home was worse.” She slanted a wry look at him.
Her comment was a slap. Was it true? He’d spent many years away in the army and hadn’t been sentimental about stripping the house to protect the people his father and brother had let down. Moreover, how had they changed to talking about him? “Is it just the two of you? You and your brother, Henry?”
She nodded.
“I missed my little brother when I went up to Cambridge, then into the army.” She hadn’t shown any sign of caring for her family, but surely, he could persuade out of her some feeling. “I always wanted to look after him, and I imagine you feel the same about Henry.”
“And you had your elder brother to care for you.”
He laughed. “No, Peter wasn’t like that.” An enormous understatement. “The heir doesn’t concern himself with the spare.” Why would Peter bother looking out for Everett when he was constantly told by his parents he was the perfect center of the universe? “Occasionally, I was deemed a useful play fellow. As long as I knew my place.”
She gave him an assessing look. “What was your elder brother like?”
Guilt chased up his spine. His brother had been a feckless idiot who had put the estate into a debt that meant he now had to seduce Grace. Anything he revealed about him could build toward her understanding of what Peter had done. “Very much like my father,” he said eventually.
“They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Maybe not, but with enough determination an apple could grow legs and run away from the tree. He wouldn’t, couldn’t ever be like either of his parents. Or his brother. But most people didn’t feel so disconnected from their family. “Is that the case for you? Are you like your mother?”
She jerked her head aside as though something had caught her eye. “It’s going to rain.” She stopped walking.
He looked up at the white cloud patches above them. “I don’t think so.”
“It is. Can’t you feel how close it is?”
“No.” Because it wasn’t.
“I’m going back.” She walked away from him, back toward the house.
He’d mortally offended her in some way, or pricked a sore spot. Her shawl was stretched taut between her elbows. She was so tense and his heart twinged. He replayed their conversation in his mind. Her mother. What had happened to her mother?
…
Over the next few days, they settled into a pattern. She’d promised faux affection, and she delivered it. At breakfast and dinner, she was a model wife, inquiring about his day, but refusing to “intrude” in his work. The attentive listening and clever turns she made in conversation meant that he never heard anything about what she was doing. Their walks in the morning followed the same pattern as the first. Whenever he probed too deeply, she found a reason to curtail the walk. By Friday evening, Everett was utterly frustrated.
In addition to his inability to learn more about Grace, a letter had arrived that continued to niggle at him. Mr. Lawson, the man who held his brother’s debt, had finally given the explanation Everett had been asking for.
Mr. Lawson detailed the rise of his little tailor’s shop. Their diversification into smoking paraphernalia had been their downfall. That, and extending credit to one young lord. It hadn’t even been his brother who had run up the debts. Some friend of Peter’s had conned Mr. Lawson into extending him credit on expensive snuff boxes and cigar cases. This Lord Holmes had given them a gambling debt from his brother as payment and promised Lord Westbury was good for the money.
As a result, Mr. Lawson was not going to trust an aristocrat again. He threatened he would act if Everett didn’t pay immediately. The warning was only partial, as a peer couldn’t be sent to debtor’s prison, though bailiffs who might attempt to take items by force were not a good prospect. But he just couldn’t pay it off without the other half of Grace’s dowry.
After dinner, Everett came to the drawing room. John Footman served tea and Grace apologized and said she really did want to finish reading Eothen, because she was captivated by the East.
While Grace read, Everett stared at the space above the fireplace where a painting of his great-great grandparents ought to be. He and Grace had been married several days and they were in silence, sitting in matching leather chairs. What on earth had made him believe she would be amenable to being seduced? Somehow, in the blinkers of finding the money to keep the estate going, he had walked down the road of sacrificing everything else. The title ought to have a direct heir. He wanted a companion whom he loved and who adored him.
“Why did your father leave Henry to Lord Rayner’s guardianship?” He meant to provoke her. Grace’s words and actions were like a partly assembled gun, with fragments that appeared impossible to fit in with the rest. The Grace who shot questions at him he could manage. This little wife act was impossible.
“Pardon?” Grace didn’t look up from her book, sounding politely confused.
If he could break through her façade, maybe the woman in the ballroom would return. An indifferent, polite topic wouldn’t do. Not her mother. But she’d talked easily about her father’s business and he wondered about Henry.
“I want you to tell me about your father and Lord Rayner.” If he could understand the motivation of her father, perhaps he could better understand what drove her. Why would a canny businessman value rank so highly? For a self-made Englishman, it didn’t make sense.
“I don’t know anything about it.” She fiddled with the corner of her book.
“Enough.” Everett slammed his palm onto the chair arm. “Enough reticence and carefully organized conversation.”
She jerked her head up and stared at him, alarm flashing in her eyes for a second. Her jaw clenched. “As you wish.” She closed the book and discarded it onto the small table next to her chair. “First walks with you, now this. But a deal is a deal and I will uphold my side of it.”
“Your father and Lord Rayner,” he reminded her.
“You don’t feel it, do you?” She stood and walked toward him, circling his chair before she stopped at his side. She held out her hand toward him, and Everett felt his pulse leap at the mere hint that she might touch him, even through the layers of his shirt and coat. Instead, she held her hand two inches away and ran it down his shoulder and bicep. “It’s so warm and soft. It protects you so perfectly, you don’t even realize it’s there.”
Everett had no idea what she was talking about, but he was suddenly very aware she was there. As she stood over him, her skirts touched his trouser legs. He imagined off balancing her, bringing her down on top of him and taking her mouth with his own.
Grace’s gaze pushed his want further when he lifted his eyes to meet hers. She was blazing, the strength of her was aweing. “You have this cloak of privilege around you, and you don’t even realize it. It’s invisible and it’s so strong, it protects you from almost everything.”
She stroked her hand down next to his arm again, as though feeling the texture of the cloak she was talking about. “If you ask for something, it’ll happen. You have absolute belief in what you deserve and that it will be delivered.” Grace smiled wryly. “Why shouldn’t you? Everything you have ever wanted has arrived—even a rich and undemanding wife to bail out your precious estate. A lord can have everything he wants.”
Everett felt winded. He wanted to argue, say life hadn’t come easily to him, and even an earl’s son had problems. The description was uncomfortably accurate, but also had a sense of not being about him at all. That Grace was talking about some other lord. Lord Rayner, perhaps, although it was too early to suggest that. But he felt compelled to defend himself. “Not all lords abuse their power.”
“All lords do.” She shook her head. “You can’t help it. You don’t see how your power is woven with little threads taken from hundreds of people around you. Your power is stolen.”
His breath was thin in his chest. Her attack made him want to voice the stream of counterarguments in his head. But this truth, her fury was what he’d wanted.
“My father didn’t have a cloak like yours.” She paused and glowered at his coat sleeve, seemingly lost in thought. “He fought for every advantage, and watched when men no better than him, but of a higher class, achieved as much and more. He saw you can go farther, more easily, with the distinction of rank. It’s natural for a man to want something extra for his children. My father could give us wealth and he wanted to use it to buy something for us that he hadn’t had. He put Henry in Lord Rayner’s care because he thought Henry would have the best chance in life with the advocacy of a powerful, highborn gentleman.”
Grace was loyal and he admired that. Supporting her father’s decision, even when he’d forced her into a difficult situation. “But you disagree.”
“Yes.” She stared, eyes unseeing, at the curtains drawn across the window. “I know Lord Rayner can give Henry things that I can’t, but…not him.” She hesitated, seeming to struggle to find the right words. “I cannot allow my little brother to learn from him what is right and wrong.”
“And yourself? You know right from wrong. You could have married Lord Rayner and looked after Henry.”
“I’ve told you before.” Now she radiated with certainty and…was that anger? “That was out of the question.”
Interesting. Evasion before and now ire. He wondered what offense Lord Rayner had committed. Perhaps he hadn’t gone to church frequently enough for Grace’s exacting standards? But surely, she couldn’t be so petty. More likely he preferred the company of men, or some other irrelevant moral outcry that would upset the sensibilities of a resolute young woman.
“I suppose you think me selfish to not want to marry a man I neither love nor respect.” Her mouth was tight. “But I refuse to martyr myself by marrying Lord Rayner, when the result would be a totally powerless state after the marriage.”
Ah. Just a vague fear of a bad marriage. It seemed rather superficial to want love more than wanting to stay with family, but hadn’t he been cautious about marrying the wrong person? And as a man, all he had to be concerned about was a lack of conjugal bliss, not actual bodily harm. He was the owner, not the property.
“I can understand wanting love in your marriage.” He let his tone dip as he said the words and was gratified to see an answering visceral reaction in Grace. She flushed. This was where he would link the attraction between them with something more. “You know, love can grow in surprising places.”
Her neck stiffened and she sauntered away, looking deliberately around the room. Everett found he was anticipating her response.
“There are some leaks in this place, I concede. And there are holes in the curtains that let in light. Perhaps there are the prerequisites to grow something in this house.” She swung around to stare down at him. “But Everett, love is not a weed.”
“No, it’s a wildflower.” And perhaps she was right, he was trying too hard to cultivate something that would bloom if just allowed the space.
She bit her lip and turned away. “Good night.” Leaving the tea, forgotten and cooling on the table, she walked away.
“You are right,” Everett called as she opened the door. “I didn’t see my cloak of privilege. I did not know what it did for me, not really, and perhaps I never will. But I did know that it was there. I felt its weight. I felt the weight of the responsibility in that cloak settle upon me when my brother died, and I became earl. It might protect me, but it’s heavy, because I feel that I must hold it up constantly, so that others may share its shelter.”
There were never enough people in its shelter. Those whom he’d failed were always with him in the shadows.
Grace hesitated and tilted her head. He saw a thoughtful shimmer in her eyes before she nodded, then continued out.
Everett sat for a while longer after she left, trying to piece together her dislike of the aristocracy, her father’s respect for them, and Lord Rayner. But there was still something key he was missing. He didn’t shirk from a trial—Grace or any other. She was the most problematic female he’d met in his life. And God help him, he liked it.