Chapter Twenty
Mal’s first thought was that he was going to be murdered on the spot. He looked around for a pistol, or a noose, but found nothing. The glint in Lord Arden’s eye seemed more suspicious than accusatory.
Mal could still taste Georgina in his mouth, could still feel the wet slide of her sex against his thigh. He had to remind himself that, unless the earl was clairvoyant, neither of those things were things Arden could actually see.
He lifted the bag of sweetmeats—which he’d almost left in the room where he’d nearly tupped Lord Arden’s sister.
“I had a taste for marzipan.”
“You’re bribing the students with it, aren’t you?” Arden asked bluntly.
Mal blinked. “Why do ye think that?”
“My wife’s aunt already beat you to that particular method.” He paused, as if mulling something over. “As long as you’re here—would you like a whisky?”
Mal thought this might be a trap. Maybe the earl had a store of poison in his sideboard alongside the whisky.
He hesitated.
“Well?” Arden asked, sounding impatient.
He was probably just being mistrustful, and even if he never drank to excess, he did enjoy a glass of whisky now and then.
So he silently followed the earl to the library and sat down in an armchair while the other man went to the sideboard. Mal watched him, making sure it was only whisky that was poured into the tumbler.
“My brother insists on buying it for me, even though I prefer ale,” Arden remarked as he handed Mal the glass.
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
Which meant Georgina had a brother. A sharp pang hit him in the chest—there were so many things he still didn’t know about her.
Arden took the seat across from him. “You’ll probably meet him soon. Right now, Robert’s holed up in his cottage, trying to finish his book.”
His book?
Mal was going to ask about that, but Arden, after taking a sip of whisky, beat him to the next question.
“My sister says you were a soldier. The Black Watch?”
He stiffened. “Aye.”
“How long?”
“Years,” he said, without elaborating.
Arden sighed. “I don’t like to talk about it, either,” he said. “But if you ever want to, I’ll listen.”
Mal stared at him blankly. This was…about the last thing he’d expected. “I doubt we had the same experience.”
Arden looked legitimately confused. “Why is that?”
“Because you’re an exalted lord of the land. Even if you weren’t a lord at the time, I’m betting you were still gentry. And I’m nothing but a lowly Highlander who can’t help my own ignorance. I acquired it at birth, you see.”
Arden was silent for a moment. Mal was cursing himself. He’d let his tongue run away from him. He hadn’t even tried to hide his dislike.
“You sound a bit…revolutionary, Mr. Rochester. The aristocrats are touchy about that, after France.” Arden didn’t seem angry, which surprised Mal to his core.
“You say that like you’re not one of them.”
“The Arden title passed through my mother. She disobeyed her father and married a physician, so we never lived like aristocrats. My father was kindhearted, too. He’d treat people who couldn’t always pay him, and there were times we had to economize. When I learned I’d become an earl, after my grandfather’s death, I was as surprised as anyone. So I’m an aristocrat, yes, but I don’t know that I’ve ever felt like one.”
“But I assume you don’t mind the money that comes from the land. The power?”
Arden grimaced. “I never wanted power. I like having money, I’ll admit. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. But it’s difficult to separate the two.”
Mal was growing frustrated. These were questions he hadn’t thought he’d have the chance to ask. But Arden’s weren’t the answers he’d expected.
“It isn’t right. How can someone be entitled to land and power simply through a fluke of their birth?”
Arden finished his whisky and set the tumbler down. When he looked at Mal, his eyes were intent. “It’s not right. But that’s the way it is. I’m simply trying to do my best for my family and my tenants. I try to wield my power carefully and do more good than harm.”
“Would ye give up profit, if it meant a Highland family could keep their home?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“If you’re asking me if it came down to my family in the workhouse or another family, then I’d save my own. But I don’t think that’s what you’re asking. If we had to do without certain things…if we had to live less like aristocrats to ensure that another family wasn’t evicted, then the answer is yes.”
Mal, to his utter shock, found that he believed him. There was something about the way he held himself, the depth of his stare, that spoke of gravity. He didn’t take his responsibilities lightly.
His willingness to answer Mal was also surprising. Mal knew that many lords wouldn’t give him the time of day. Especially for the kinds of questions he was asking.
“That sounds a little revolutionary, too,” he said, after a moment.
Arden’s mouth tipped, a ghost of a smile. “My wife thinks you’re a good teacher. She hopes you stay.”
“But…”
“I see the way you look at my sister,” Arden said bluntly, and Mal had to respect him for that if for nothing else. He didn’t dance around things. “What exactly are your intentions?”
His intentions? Mal had never wanted to laugh so hard in his life. He had no idea what his intentions were, and even if he did, it wasn’t like that would matter to Georgina. She’d just go ahead and do what she thought was best.
“Perhaps you should ask your sister that, instead.”
Arden appraised him. “My sister was young when she took ill—I’m sure you noticed the scars. But even so, she nearly died, and it changed her. She became…I don’t want to say hard, because she’s still kindhearted…but there’s no better way to describe it. She closed herself off, a little. Made herself impermeable. I’m sure that a large part of the blame lies with my family; we were worried about her catching ill again after she recovered. We treated her too delicately.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I suspect that things affect her deeply, whether she lets herself show it or not.” He looked down, brow furrowed as if seeking answers at the bottom of his empty glass, before meeting Mal’s gaze once more. “Whoever she chooses will have to be careful with her heart. They’ll think it’s not very breakable because of the way she acts, but it won’t be true.”
Mal would need to mull that over later. Though it made sense. He knew she didn’t like to seem vulnerable, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t. Maybe it meant the opposite.
“But why are you telling me?”
“Because I see the way she looks back.”
“You can’t be saying you would give your blessing to a match between your sister and a schoolteacher.” The thought was unfathomable to him.
“No,” Arden agreed. “I’m not that revolutionary. I’d prefer a more suitable match. And I’ll tell her that, again and again. But ever since my mother ran off to marry a physician instead of a lord, obedience has never been the Townsends’ strong suit. I would be loath to deny them something, anyway, if it seemed to bring them happiness.” Then he added, “Being in Scotland certainly doesn’t help matters. You don’t even need your guardian’s permission to wed.” He seemed put out by this detail. “In England, things are different.”
“Better?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “Not necessarily better. Only different.”
A silence fell between them. Mal had been nursing his whisky, but now he took the last sip, letting the peaty flavor forge a trail of fire down his throat.
“You should know, however, that if your intentions toward my sister are dishonorable, I’ll ruin you.”
Mal nearly choked on his drink. The threat was delivered very calmly, and he was certain they weren’t simply idle words. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
When Mal set down his tumbler, Arden stood. “Come, I’ll show you out.”
And he found himself asking about the earl. He was only curious, he told himself. Discovering some smidgen of respect for the man didn’t mean he suddenly liked him. “Were you at Waterloo?”
“No. I served in Spain and Portugal, mostly. I returned home after I was injured. What about you?”
“I joined when I was seventeen. The war dragged on for so damn long. It was all I knew for the better part of a decade.”
And all he knew when he came back was loss.
He remembered leaving his sisters and his mother to join the army. He’d been young, and excited, and ready for an adventure. Ready for some space between himself and the women he loved. Ready for the chance to prove himself to them. His mother had made a special meal of lamb stew—though he remembered thinking they should have kept that lamb for themselves—and then sent him away with a heavy stomach and more bannocks wrapped up in a cloth bag than he could ever eat.
His sisters had wanted a song before he went, but he’d been worried about being late, and he’d left without obliging them. Later, he wished he had.
After he returned, he tried to go over that memory, etch it deep into his mind, embellish each moment, but he hadn’t known it would be the last time he would see them, and there were gaps he simply couldn’t fill.
Had his mother smiled as he left? Had his sisters been disappointed he hadn’t played or had they shrugged it off? What had he said to them, right before he’d gone? What had they said to him?
He could remember their parting broadly, but he couldn’t remember any of the details. Any of the little things that would have brought that day back to life.
He couldn’t remember.
Because he had never guessed that he would need to.
“None of us are the same as we were before the war,” Arden said simply, as if this was an unassailable fact, like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. And Mal supposed it was. “I meant it—if you ever want to talk, I’ll listen.”
Mal didn’t give him a yes or no. He didn’t quite like Arden—even a better aristocrat than most was still an aristocrat—but he would think about it.
Just as he would think about this conversation on the long walk to his cottage.
I see the way she looks back.