Vail believed she didn’t want to be in his company. He’d somehow formed the opinion her refusing to join him was somehow a product of the burgeoning relationship between them.
Leave him to his erroneous supposition. It was far easier and required no explanation. He’d, after all, crafted the reason and provided the answer for her. Wordlessly, she stared after him as he retreated: tall, impossibly proud.
…Deaf, ugly, and weak is what you are, Bridget…
Those hateful, hurtful words that had been hurled by her siblings in equal measure whispered forward as she confronted her own weakness again where Vail Basingstoke, Lord Chilton, was concerned. For she could not allow him to stalk off and let him believe she’d found him wanting.
She briefly closed her eyes. “Vail,” she called out. He stopped but did not turn back. “My not wishing to accompany you has nothing to do with…with… what we have done,” she settled for. What was this that had formed between them in this short time? This inexplicable bond that wrought havoc on her senses and reason, in like measure. Registering that they now spoke in a hall of intimate matters, she cleared her throat. “I’d speak to you…alone.” For a long moment she believed he’d deny her request.
Then with a terse nod, he urged her forward. They said nothing more until they reached his office. As soon as he’d closed the door behind them, Bridget clasped her hands close. He faced her and her throat worked. “Each time you kissed me, Vail, I wanted your embrace.” She’d long ago ceased to believe that those tender exchanges could or would ever belong to her. Carefully depositing her work upon the nearby walnut console table, she forced herself over to him, erasing the distance even as it was far safer. “I was as much a participant as you. I’m as responsible and, as such, I take ownership of my actions.” Somewhere along the way, she’d blurred her crimes with her pardoning his actions.
He looked at a point beyond the crown of her head. “My mother was a servant,” he said unexpectedly. “She worked in a nobleman’s employ as a nursemaid to that man’s son and heir.”
Knowing he needed to have this told, she gave him an encouraging silence.
A muscle moved at the corner of his mouth. “She was young and in awe of the devoted father who came and visited his son every day. That devotion went against everything she’d been led to believe or expect about noblemen.” A humorous laugh escaped him; a darkly cynical expression of empty mirth so at odds with the affable gentleman he’d been around her. “My mother was, of course, too naïve to realize she was, in fact, the reason the duke came ’round.”
“Your father,” she said softly with a dawning understanding.
He nodded once and proceeded to speak in brisk, methodical tones. “He set her up as his mistress in town and, for two years, was faithful to her. The naiveté of that. To believe an unfaithful husband would be faithful to a mere mistress.” He chuckled, giving his head a disgusted shake.
“Mayhap she loved him,” she ventured, laying a hand on his sleeve.
The muscles bunched tightly under her grip, straining the fabric of his black jacket. “Then she was a bigger fool than I ever credited.”
A kindred bond to that woman stirred within Bridget. “Because she loved where she ought not? One cannot control one’s heart.” She sadly smiled up at him. “If one did, then no one would ever suffer heartbreak and there’d only be happy marriages and joyous people and we both know that is not how the world truly is.”
Vail stared at her with something akin to surprise. “You’re a romantic.”
She held her hands up to ward him off. “No,” she said quickly. She’d only ever been logical and practical. “I’ve never been accused of being a romantic.”
“And yet, not being accused of it doesn’t make it not true,” he accurately pointed out.
Bridget tightened her lips. He might believe she believed in love and fairytales and happily-ever-afters, like most other women, but she’d lived enough of life’s ugliness to recognize the reality that was life. “Acknowledging that some people love and lose, and are capable of that emotion, doesn’t make me a romantic. It makes me someone logical enough to see that love is real, just not a gift everyone receives. Your mother no doubt loved your father.”
“Then she was a fool,” he said without inflection. “He got a child on her.”
“You,” she said softly. “You wouldn’t be here even now if she hadn’t.” And for his heroics at Waterloo and the siblings he cared for, and the servants he was kind to, the world would be colder without him in it.
Hard silver flecks blazed to life in his eyes. “And for the first year of my life, he was an attentive protector, still. He paid her visits and brought by gifts for me and for her. In the end, he had his man-of-affairs sever the arrangement, but not before he was generous enough,” he spat, “to coordinate the services of her next lover.”
Bridget recoiled. What must it be to love so deeply and then to be so callously turned out by the one you gave your heart to?
“Precisely,” Vail said, misinterpreting the reason for her reaction. “That is the manner of reprobate my father was.” His shoulders sagged. “And every time I hunger for you, every time I violate the moral code I hold myself to, I prove I am the same as him.”
And then it made sense. He worried about becoming his father. Nay, he feared that he already was him. Bridget drifted over and, palming his cheek, forced his eyes down to hers. “You are not your father,” she said simply.
He jerked. “You don’t know that,” he spoke in harsh tones, intended to push her away. “You cannot know that after but a week of living in my household.” He dropped his voice to a low, angry whisper. “I’ve wanted to take you in my arms since I found you studying my bookshelves.”
Butterflies danced in her belly. No one had ever looked upon her as one to be admired, as any sort of beauty. She’d simply only existed for her imperfections…that hideous crescent stamped by the Devil as a mark of the Hamiltons.
A pained laugh escaped him and he caught her gently by the shoulders. “Why must you have that besotted look over that?”
“Because you’re the only one who has ever looked past my flaws.” And that in and of itself marked him so very different than anyone else in Society. “I don’t know your father but I know you enough to say you are not him,” she said again. “Because you worry about becoming him. For that alone, you can never truly be like your sire. Where he turned the care of his child and former lover over to ruthless lords, you are one who loves and looks after those who share your blood.”
A negating sound left his lips and she silenced it with her fingers. How could he not see that in entrusting his cherished work over to a woman most of Society had deemed unworthy and unfit, he was far greater than all those shameful lords?
Bridget gasped as he caught her wrist and brought it to his mouth, scorching her skin with the kiss he placed there. Little shivers radiated out, traveling up her arm, and wreaking havoc on her senses. “I need you there. Marlborough will not allow me to examine his collection without your presence.”
Of course. Her heart sank, as he neatly steered them back to what had led to his revelations. Lord Marlborough and his collection and Vail’s business. For the more she ventured out into Society, the more visible she became to the world. She’d existed as the Hamiltons’ hidden, shameful secret and had only emerged to commit a criminal act. The fewer who knew who she was, the safer it was…not only for herself—but for Virgil and Nettie. “Vail,” she began, needing him to understand, but unable to give him the truth.
He retained his hold upon her; a gentle, yet unyielding grip. “Bridget, I do need you there, but I also want you there.”
He wanted her there with him. A week prior to this moment, she would have called him a liar. Life had proven that even her own kin didn’t want her about. The inexplicable bond she’d formed with this man, however, challenged everything she’d previously believed—about the goodness a person was capable of—of how others viewed her or might view her.
“You enjoy your work,” he pressed.
“Of course I do.” Other than Virgil, examining precious literary classics had brought her the only joy she’d known in her hidden village of Leeds. Did he sense her weakening?
“And you appreciate literature.”
Since she’d first read of Lord Marlborough’s libraries and discussed it with Mr. Lowell, she’d yearned for so much as a glimpse of those rooms. And given she’d been a marquess’ daughter, it should have been a simple journey afforded a woman of her station. But she’d never really belonged to that world. She’d been snipped from the fabric of that existence, with her parent’s holding the threading needles.
“Why should you not come?”
If he were capable of the same perfidy as she and her brother, his own question would have set warning bells off for him. “Because…because servants don’t accompany their employers to the homes of other noblemen,” she cried, spinning away from him. Filled with a frantic restlessness, she began to pace. “By your own admission, lords have little use of maids and…” She stopped abruptly. “Society will note your peculiar relationship with your housekeeper,” she said, presenting him with the only argument that might resonate, hating herself all the while for deliberately hurting him.
He gave a negligent wave. “I don’t give a jot what they believe about me. I care more about what I know to be true.”
Bridget bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. How wholly unlike her father and brother this man was. Vail Basingstoke was a man of convictions and honor, and she stood before him a fraud in nearly every way. “Please, don’t ask this of me,” she implored.
He set his jaw and met her gaze resolutely. “It hardly matters what station you’ve been born to or the status of your rank or finances. A person’s worth is defined by who they are.” He’d made up his mind and had taken the decision from her.
Then, by the fierce glint in his determined eyes, it had never truly been a decision. He’d have settled for nothing but her acquiescence. She shuttered her expression, willing back the fear and panic that came in revealing herself before Polite Society. “Very well. I will accompany you,” she said, even as her mind raced. None except for the servants in their family’s Kent countryseat had known her and she knew what her parents had told them or the world in general after her disappearance with Virgil. A panicky laugh gurgled in her throat. That was assuming she’d even been anything more than a regretful afterthought.
Bridget started as Vail settled strong, reassuring hands upon her shoulders. “You’re no mere servant. In the time you’ve been here, you’ve proven invaluable to me.” Invaluable to him. Given that few had ever seen her existence as anything more than a burden, she should find a beautiful solace in his words.
I want more.
And it was folly and dangerous, not only because she’d never thought there could be more with a man such as Vail, rather because she wanted him—this one man she could never have anything with.
She froze. Afraid to move. Afraid to speak. Afraid to so much as breathe under the enormity of her folly. Oh, God. I care for him. A man she’d set out to deceive, who’d entrusted his business to her hands. In a short time, he’d come to matter. Her mind shied away from anything more.
“I have an appointment tomorrow,” Vail was saying through her dread. She sent a prayer skyward that he’d restored them to the safe role of employer and servant. “We’ll leave before noon.”
We’ll leave? Bridget closed her eyes. Of course Lucifer wouldn’t allow her even a slight reprieve. “My responsibilities are here,” she said weakly, in one last, desperate bid to extricate herself from that public visit.
He dusted his knuckles over that hideous crescent birthmark in a tender caress that threatened to shatter her. “With your skill and capabilities in handling literary texts, it would be a crime for you to take on any other role.”
Why could he not let her carry on as a mere servant? Why must he involve her in his business dealings? It only enhanced the deviousness of her betrayal.
A knock sounded at the door and, as one, they looked to the entrance to where his brother, Mr. Winterly, stood. Cheeks flushed, Vail swiftly dropped his arm and backed away from her.
“This arrived a short while ago for you,” the other man murmured, looking back and forth between them. He briefly settled his stare on Bridget’s disheveled tresses.
Shame curled her toes reflexively.
Mr. Winterly held out a small folded sheet of vellum.
Stalking over, Vail claimed the page. With a slight, stiff bow, Mr. Winterly backed out of the room.
Vail flicked open that sheet and worked his gaze quickly over the words written there. He immediately folded it and stuffed it inside his jacket. Expression guarded, his firm lips set in an unforgiving line, and this towering figure before her was very much the ruthless businessman her brother had spoken of. “I have a meeting with a seller.”
He owed her no explanations. “Of course,” she forced herself to say, grateful for that wall he’d erected and the diversion that now called him away. She was grateful, so why did she feel this dejection at his abrupt departure. “I-I should return to cataloguing your most recent purchases.”
He frowned. “It is your day off.”
How many noblemen would note such a detail? How many would care?
“I enjoy my work here,” she settled for, praying that would suffice. The alternative was further questions that served as unnecessary reminders of the young boy living alone with Nettie. “You should go, Vail. Your meeting.” Please, just go….
With a hesitant nod, he turned on his heel and left.
As soon as he’d gone, a panicky laugh gurgled in her throat and she clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle that half-mad sound. All her life, she’d mourned that she was forced to conduct her work as a secret to Society for no other reason than because she’d been born female. Only to find the one man unafraid to acknowledge the role she played should be this one.
Reclaiming a spot at the mahogany desk, she resumed the work she’d left when Mr. Winterly had gone. Vail might have confided his fears that he would become his shameful father, but the truth remained, of her and him, only one of them shared their family’s vile blood—and that was her.
Vail didn’t deal in unscheduled meetings. To do so with buyers and sellers conveyed too much of an eagerness and jeopardized the profits one might earn. Such a lesson had been learned during his first transaction when he’d operated under a different set of rules…that punctuality demonstrated one’s honor and character. That had been the last appointment he’d ever arrived on time to.
Taking those desperately requested meetings, however, was an altogether different matter. Early morn appointments and unexpected visits bespoke a seller’s desperation and to not grant that one was the height of business folly.
Never before had he thought of declining one of those sessions. Until Bridget. What was it about the lady that made him want to damn the seller in his office and remain with her?
Mayhap it was her total lack of artifice. With her cleverness and acumen in the antique book industry she stood apart from the lords and ladies he dealt with daily. By her admissions and faint pleading, however, she didn’t recognize her worth for what it was—greater than all those miserable peers who’d dare make her feel inferior. But it was also something he understood…because he’d once felt precisely as she had. As a boy, all Vail had been so very focused on was how different he was from the lords and ladies of Polite Society. He’d hated his lot and resented that he and his mother had been treated beneath those fancy members of the peerage. Too many nights he’d lain abed, staring at the plaster ceiling of a temporary home imagining himself becoming powerful like the duke who’d sired him.
In time, he’d found pride in the work he did and the battles he’d fought against Boney’s men. When he’d returned from war and been titled for those acts of bravery, the last thing he’d given a jot about was Polite Society. He’d naively forgotten what it was to live on the fringes of that world as Bridget did.
And she didn’t see her own inherent worth against those lesser people.
Reaching his office, Vail stopped at the edge of the doorway. To carry thoughts of Bridget into his meeting only posed a distraction. He forcibly thrust aside her visage and masking his features, entered the room. “Lord…”
The blonde-haired, cloaked woman at the center of the room, spun to face him.
Adrina.
“Vail,” she greeted in her singsong voice that had so enthralled him as a young man. Tall, willowy, and in possession of a halo of golden curls, she’d always epitomized a flawless English lady. Now, he found himself preferring Bridget’s understated beauty. Adrina cleared her throat. “It is so very good to see you.” Three years away from thirty, she was older, more mature than the girl who’d married an old earl after Vail had gone off to war, and yet her golden tresses shimmered with the same shine. Only her eyes appeared harder, sadder. Once that would have gutted him.
“My lady,” he said tightly. “I don’t take meetings based on lies.” He reached for the bell-pull but she rushed over in a rustle of black satin skirts.
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “I needed to speak to you.”
Vail chuckled, the sound empty and mirthless to his own ears. “And here I thought no words between us were to ever be spoken again.” He tossed back that sentence she’d etched in his memory the day he’d called upon her in London and learned she’d accepted the offer of an aging nobleman.
She winced. “I deserve that, but you must know, I need you to know I’ve thought of you and only you for the past eight years.”
That utterance would have once sustained him. Life had changed him, however. It had made him stronger, harder, and, as such, Adrina may as well have been speaking on the weather or tedious ton gossip. “I have neither the time nor the inclination—”
“Please,” she implored, again, holding out a hand. “It is not entirely a… personal call. I’ve brought a book.”
He stilled, eying her warily. He’d met her, the village squire’s eldest daughter when she’d been eighteen and he twenty. She’d had the brightest laugh and delighted in discussing gossip and visiting the milliner’s, but never had she expressed a smidgeon of interest in a literary work.
The countess worked her eyes over his face and then rushed over to his desk. “My late husband’s collection,” she explained. “I’m…” She grimaced. “Required to sell his books.” So, marrying her titled lord had not earned her a fortune. That realization brought no glee…just pity. Adrina’s violet, doe eyes softened. “You were the only one whom I thought of…” She stretched the small leather copy toward him. “Who might help.”
Vail searched for some emotion from that admission: joy, triumph. Instead, he fixed on her gloveless hand, gripping that book dangerously by the spine. Of course, he wouldn’t expect her to know the proper handling. Few did…and yet Bridget was one of those who did. The first woman he’d ever known with that skill. Wordlessly, he collected the tome.
“I gathered one that held the greatest value,” she murmured.
Not lifting his gaze, he assessed the age of the leather and shine of the etched leathering hinted at its newness, and flipping to the front page confirmed it as such. “I’ve no need for this work, my lady,” he said without inflection. Even with their shared past, in this instance, she was no different than any other lord who stepped through his doors to sell him a valuable title. “I expect you can find someone else who might aid you in the sale of your late husband’s collection.”
Adrina lifted tear-luminescent eyes to his; twin pools of hurt. “The title, Vail. Look at the title.”
He found the title. Wordsworth’s Poems.
When he’d met this woman before him, he’d been so captivated, so convinced he’d fallen in love at first sight, that he’d enlisted his friend Huntly’s aid to woo her. Poetry had been Huntly’s solution. Mocking derision is what he’d been met with and pouts and pretty calls for baubles and ribbons. “It’s hard to believe you’ve developed a sentimental appreciation for poetry now,” he said dryly, holding that book out. “Byron,” he reminded her. “It was Byron’s earliest works I read to you from.” The same day she’d urged him to seek out a commission from his father, the duke, for she could never wed a bastard without prospects. He’d humbled himself for her before that man he’d spend his life hating, and he resented himself as much as he did her for that faulty decision.
She jerked as though he’d struck her and then her tears fell freely, noisily. “I-I certainly understand y-you were hurt,” she said, her soft weeping and words muffled by her palms. “B-but you needn’t be cruel.” Over her hands, she stared pointedly at him.
Swallowing a sigh, he fished out his kerchief and held it out.
The lady took the white scrap and proceeded to cry her sloppy tears into it. Mayhap he was as heartless as he’d been referred to by business partners and written of in the newspapers, for those well-timed crystalline drops left him unmoved. He remained coolly aloof until her tears dissolved into a shuddery hiccough.
“I am sorry you have regrets,” he finally said. “But this,” he motioned between them, “ended long, long ago.” And he was better off for it. He knew that now. “Given that…” And the fact that he wanted nothing to do with her in the present. “It is better for the both of us if you find another buyer for the works you are intending to sell.”
Her too plump lower lip trembled and he braced for another onslaught of her tears. But her sharp cheeks remained evenly set as she drifted over. That same cloying hint of jasmine that clung to her frequent missives, hung now on her willowy frame, oddly pungent. Pungent when there was a soft, sweet pureness to Bridget’s floral scent. “Do you know what I believe, Vail?” she whispered in sultry tones, mature ones she’d acquired in their years apart. “I believe,” she continued, gathering his lapels and stroking her fingertips over that fabric. “That you would send me to someone else because you want me as much now as you did then, and you fear yourself around me.”
He stiffened and gathered her hands in his, setting them from his person. “I—”
Footsteps sounded in the hall. “Vail—”
He and Adrina looked to the doorway. Bridget, a journal in hand, jerked to a stop in the doorway. Her mouth formed a small circle of surprise that met her eyes as she lingered her gaze first on him then Adrina, and slowly back to Vail. “Oh. I… Forgive me, my lord,” she said, her voice revealing not a hint of emotion.
He shook his head. “Mrs. Hamlet, Lady Buchanan was just leaving,” he said, making the decision for that other woman.
Despite the terse command there, Adrina revealed that time and life had shaped her into an unapologetic noblewoman. “Mrs. Hamlet,” she greeted. “And you are?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that she’d no right to come into his household and question anyone—particularly this woman before him—but Bridget quietly answered before he could bring forth the stinging rebuke.
“I am His Lordship’s housekeeper.” She dropped a belated, but respectful curtsy.
Adrina passed an up and down glance over her, lingering a horrified stare on Bridget’s crescent-shaped birthmark. A lesser woman would have wilted under the regal noblewoman’s censure. “His housekeeper?” A tinkling laugh escaped his former love’s lips.
Bridget merely inched her chin up and met that dark stare.
Vail’s hands curled reflexively into tight fists and fury blazed to life inside. This was the scorn she’d faced. Through it, she’d remained strong and unflinching. His admiration for her grew.
“Vail,” the countess said, angling her body dismissively, giving Bridget the cut direct. “I want you to keep this,” she spoke in hushed undertones, pushing that wholly unsentimental book into his hands. From the corner of his eye, he detected Bridget casting her focus to the mural overhead. “Please, think on what I’ve said.”
Which part of it? Her collection he could do without, for the sheer reason it was his business to know the most well-stocked libraries and her late husband’s was decidedly not one of them. And her presence in his life proved tedious for the reminders it raised of his own past mistakes. “My lady.” He dropped a requisite bow.
She swept past him, the hint of jasmine lingering in the air as she took her leave.
Her leather journal held close, Bridget shifted back and forth on her feet. “Forgive me,” she said somberly. “I’ve now interrupted two meetings.”
“And both interruptions were welcome,” he said truthfully, loud enough that she might hear him clearly from where she stood.
A hesitant smile tipped her lips. Where Adrina’s even, plastered grins contained the same hint of artifice as her tears, Bridget’s rang clear with sincerity. “Marlborough’s?” she asked, dryly.
“Perhaps not at first, but certainly after.” He motioned her forward.
She met him in the middle of the floor. Teasing smile aside, she opened the leather journal and turned it toward him. “I found this.” He followed her point to the bottom of the page. “Lord Waters was slated to turn over an original first edition Aphra Behn – Poetical Remains.”
“And?” he asked.
She shifted her ink-stained finger to the column beside it. “The title was originally published in 1698. By the markings, this copy is a second edition dated to 1699.”
Vail traded Bridget the book in his hand for the records she held and skimmed the columns. Bloody hell. That was the price one paid for dealing with drunkards like that one. In the short time she’d been here, she’d singlehandedly identified two missteps in terms of the works he’d purchased, and also secured a meeting with Lord Marlborough he’d not have had a hope of having if it hadn’t been for her.
He glanced over the top of the journal. Bridget eyed the tome in her hands. Had he not been closely studying her, he’d have failed to note the way she sniffed the edge of that copy. “Are you one of those who enjoys the smell of an old book?”
Gasping, she yanked her head up. Color splashed her cheeks. “Jasmine,” she blurted. “It doesn’t have the scent of leather or aged pages. It smells like…jasmine,” she finished weakly.
“Yes.” Adrina had always doused her skin in that strong, cloying scent. In his youth, it had been heady and seducing. Now, it reminded him of betrayal. He made to return his attention to the page.
“Who was she?” she asked. It was a brazen question that a proper lady would wonder about and perhaps probe servants over. Bridget, once again, revealed a candid honesty.
Handing back her records and accepting that book of poems, he settled for the simplest, most uncomplicated reply, “She is someone I knew when I was younger.”
“I see.” And by those two syllables, she spoke as one who, in fact, did. Bridget dropped another one of those formal curtsies. “I thought you should know about Lord Waters. Once again, it was not my intent to interrupt you, twice.”
He searched his mind for a reason to keep her here. “Bridget,” he called out as she reached the door. “Until our meeting tomorrow.”