The Duke's Bridle Path by Burrowes, Grace, Romain, Theresa (16)

 

---

 

Just a few hours by mail coach, Colin had once told Ada. From Berkshire to London was an easy journey.

But he’d been wrong. The journey from Rushworth Green to the London printing house of Botolphus Bright included some of the most difficult hours Colin had ever passed.

He’d left the White Hare as soon as he could pack his things. A groggy Samuel, confused and startled, had taken in Colin’s explanation and said he’d follow in a day or two.

So. Ada had won their bargain, and Colin had left. Not because he couldn’t play the part she asked of him anymore, but because he had to return to writing whatever would pay, even if it skated through lies.

Damn the woman. She’d made him care about her, and she’d made him care what he’d made of himself. She had defeated him soundly, not by asking him to be someone else, but by being herself. He couldn’t face her anymore. It was hard enough to look in the mirror.

By evening, Colin was in their rented rooms in London, his belongings stowed and his brain in a muddle. What would he do next? He wished he could turn time back a fortnight, so he’d never gone to Rushworth Green, or met Ada, or had a half-baked idea about making his own fortune, and Samuel’s, through a skill he did not possess.

Well… no, he didn’t wish that. Not entirely. He didn’t want to forget Ada, magnificent in her suspicion and throwing caramel candies about. Ada, soft and moonlit and yearning to be kissed.

Ada, asking for more, not knowing how much she did not know about Colin.

He’d returned to London before Bright expected him, so he didn’t go into the printing house the following morning. Instead, Colin spent the day at home. First, he took Ada’s letter out of his coat pocket and made his winding way through the lines she’d written.

Sweet lines. Hopeful lines. Ignorant lines, unknowing of the truth.

When he’d read it, he wished he hadn’t. The very sight of words written in her hand was a shameful reminder, a precious remembrance.

He tossed it into the fire.

Then he raided Samuel’s desk for paper, ink, quills, a bit of pencil. Enough of this ridiculousness about wavering letters and switching positions. Letters didn’t move once they were down on the page. They were written, and they stayed, and he would make them stay and read them and understand them and then be able to write the sort of piece Ada deserved. Or a letter of apology to her.

Or, as the hours went on and the words he scrawled refused to remain still and obedient, maybe a note.

Or a line or two.

As afternoon faded dim and gray, he looked around him at all the ruined papers, and he put his head into his hands and wished the world away.

In the morning, he was determined anew. He was in London again, he was himself, and his life would go on as it always had. Samuel would be back in London sometime today, he’d promised, and they’d continue on.

So Colin turned his steps toward Botolphus Bright’s printing house, which was located near St. John’s Gate. Bright copied the prestigious, established Gentleman’s Magazine in as many ways as possible, including locating his headquarters near that of the magazine’s. The magazine’s editors operated from a large office and maintained a fast newfangled press for their popular journal. The rents being costly, Bright squeezed his combined business and printing offices for The Gentleman’s Periodical into less space than one might imagine.

Colin pushed open the door to the cramped space, greeted as always by the sharp scents of ink and machine oil and the sulfurous smell of heated rag paper. It wasn’t printing week, fortunately, or he’d also have encountered a clatter from the press that was fit to burst his eardrums, and he’d have wound his way between papers hanging to dry on lines like squared-off laundry across the room.

As it was, Bright was laying type, his fingers stubby but nimble as they whipped between type cases and page forme. About the age Colin’s father would have been had the elder Goddard lived, he was a garrulous man of average weight, but with a double chin that softened his look. One could tell nothing of his rapacious ambition from his appearance.

“Goddard!” Bright hurried around the table where he’d been working, hand outstretched to shake. Eyeing the ink all over his fingers, he thought better of it, then motioned Colin into the space and retook his place by the type case. “Good to see you, good to see you. I’m working on the questions for the next issue. You don’t mind if I continue, do you? You’re back earlier than I expected. Must be good news, hmm?”

In the time that he talked, he’d already pulled a few dozen sorts from the type case and fit them into place. “This is going to be the best issue yet. I think we’ll split your pieces, tease them out as long as possible. The page of questions can connect, anything to do with society gossip. We’ll make it fit. We always do, hmm? Brought your pieces in person, did you?”

He finally looked up, Colin’s silence sinking in. Which meant that now Colin had to determine what to say.

“Samuel has all our notes,” he began. “I expect him here within the next day.”

“Fine, fine. What’ve you got for me before then? What can you add to the questions page?” He tapped an inky finger on his chin, leaving a blackish smudge behind. “Something to do with Lavelle, I think, to tie into your new series. What have we run before on Their Graces? It’ll have to be something new. ‘Did the Duchess of Lavelle seduce the duke into marriage?’ No, not enough punch. ‘Was the duchess with child when they wed?’ Better, better. We’ll get there, hmm?”

“I don’t have any questions,” Colin said slowly.

“Ah, you already know everything.” Bright winked broadly. “Confidence of the young! What a gift. But of course you can think up questions. The questions page is your baby, much as this press is mine. Hmm?”

“I don’t want to give you any questions for the new issue,” Colin said, his voice firmer this time. “I don’t—it doesn’t seem right.”

Birdlike and quick, Bright darted back around to Colin. Looked him over, prodded his face until Colin swatted away the inky fingers and wiped at his cheek.

“It’s you, right enough,” Bright said. “But it doesn’t sound like you. What the devil happened to you in Berkshire? Lost your nerve?”

Colin set his jaw. The less said around Bright, the better.

But silence was clue enough. Bright whistled. “Lost your heart, hmm? Well, well. Well, well, well. Who’s the lady?”

Colin gritted his teeth.

Bright burst into laughter, easing back around his worktable. “The duke’s sister? Oh, this is rich. Too rich, hmm?”

“I didn’t say it was the duke’s sister. Or anyone at all. Maybe I came to this conclusion all on my own.”

“You don’t have to say a word. Your expression says it all. Want to flay me alive, hmm? Oh, Goddard, you’ve got it bad for her. I can get a dozen questions out of this. ‘Did Lady Ada Ellis fall in love with a writer of scandal?’ Or maybe more salacious. ‘Was the duke’s sister seduced by a rogue traveling under false pretenses?’”

“The duke’s sister,” Colin ground out, “was not. You won’t put her in the questions, will you?”

“’Course I will. There’s no harm in a question or two, and they do bring in the coin most marvelously.” Bright stabbed the page forme with a forefinger. “There’s good work here, Goddard, and it’ll get better yet once you give me your pieces. Vir Virilem, wasn’t that the name you decided on?”

He’d thought it so comical when he came up with the name. Now it seemed foolish. Presumptuous. An apt enough description of the whole trip to Rushworth Green.

“I don’t plan to write that series after all,” he told Bright. “Sorry. It just doesn’t interest me.”

“I don’t give a damn whether it interests you or not. It’ll interest the Periodical’s readers right enough.” Bright looked at him shrewdly with eyes like shiny black currants. “You don’t want the lady’s name in it, do you? You needn’t mention any name. Or you could make up ridiculous ones, like in that novel Glenarvon. We’ll have all of London guessing who Lady Ella Adis is, hmm? Maybe that’s too close to the real name. You can come up with something better.”

The smell of ink and the closeness of the office were making Colin’s head pound. “I can’t keep you from writing it yourself, but put it under your own name. I want no association with it.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to be paid?”

Colin pressed at his temples. “I have to be paid, sir. I can’t live on air and hope. But I don’t want to be connected with lies.”

Bright eyed him closely, then softened. “She really did get to you, didn’t she?”

He let his hands fall to his sides again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Do you want to write about it?” Colin must have looked murderous, for Bright lifted his hands. “All right, all right. But consider this a firm offer. If you’ll write for the Periodical about your love affair with Lady Ada Ellis, I won’t have to put in the page of questions.”

“A bribe?”

“A business proposition.” Bright winked. “If you do it right, you’ll have that editorship. Just one piece, Colin, and you and your brother won’t ever have to worry about money again.”

Chalmers, who knew everything, as good butlers always did, told Ada that Colin Goddard had departed the White Hare the afternoon before.

She had suspected as much, but thanked him for the information. Then she went to the study. Put on her spectacles. Prepared to work.

After writing a brief letter of inquiry and having it posted.

There, that was done. She didn’t need Colin Goddard to be a part of her life. She’d miss him, but so what? She missed her parents, she missed her brother Jonas. Colin was one more person to miss. She would set that feeling aside, along with the Lavelle ledgers—once she’d finished her day’s work with them.

For the work needn’t consume her. She realized she’d let it; she’d tied herself to it too closely. But a day’s work on the estate’s accounts could be finished, and finished well, and then set aside. And if that wasn’t enough for Philippe once he and Harriet returned from their wedding trip—well, then, it wouldn’t be enough, and they would sort that out between themselves. Maybe he’d hire a steward.

She paused, quill in hand, before she’d made a single entry in the current ledger. A steward. Now, that was an idea. Maybe Philippe should have hired a steward years ago. Maybe she should have demanded that for herself, instead of clinging to every scrap of the familiar.

But she’d done what she thought was right. What she’d needed. And Philippe, being a good brother, had gone along with it.

For now, she had work to fill her time. And she was in her study, surrounded by books. The little volume of German poetry that always sat on the desk bore the remembrance of Colin’s touch on its binding. She bore the same on her hands, her lips, her throat, her face, and the promise of more on her breasts and thighs, spoken in secret words by moonlight.

She shut her eyes, remembering.

And then she opened them, found a fresh ledger intended for the next quarter, and dipped her quill again.

Bother the accounts—just for now. She was of a mood to write, and she would write as she hadn’t allowed herself to for some time. Oh, there was a great deal to write about now. A heart split and confused, a fortune in emotion gambled and lost. All the truths and worries she’d carried within.

The lines she wrote were dark and clear. She was angry. She hadn’t even known how angry until the feeling spilled forth in harsh, sharp words.

Not at The Gentleman’s Periodical, for all its tactless feasting on grief and scandal. Not at Wrotham, for dropping her hand as soon as it lost its marble perfection.

Only one person had kept her from London for the four years since. Only one person had trapped her with ledgers in this study, resigning her to a solitary life.

She, Lady Ada Constantia Ellis, had done all of that to herself. And the wound she’d inflicted was deep. Even now, she did not know how deep. But she would get to the bottom of it.

She had covered two pages, front and back, in a neat and regimented hand, by the time Chalmers announced a Mr. Goddard to see her.

Her head snapped up.

“Mr. Samuel Goddard,” added the butler. She thought she heard pity in his voice.

She squared her shoulders. “Show him in, Chalmers.”

As she waited, she removed her spectacles and wiped the quill she’d been using.

When Samuel appeared in the doorway, a young man of slight build and dark coloring, she stood up on impulse. “Mr. Goddard. Let’s go somewhere brighter to speak, shall we? Let’s go to the blue parlor. Or the pink one. Ah—do you have a preference?”

He nodded several times. “I’m partial to stripes, myself.”

“The blue one, then.” She smiled, then led him from the study—God, she had almost been living in there, hadn’t she?—to a smallish parlor, sunny and pleasant with its striped blue paper and velvety chaise longue.

“Tea for you?” she asked Samuel as she seated herself. He swayed, then dropped into a chair opposite hers.

“No, thank you. I came to give you something, that’s all.” Samuel held out a thick packet of papers. “He hasn’t been sending them to London.”

Ada took the papers from Samuel. “Who hasn’t…what… oh.” She flipped through them, page after page written in a clear hand, and realized. Colin. The articles he’d described to her, the ones that would win him the coveted editorship. This was everything he’d drafted since arriving in Rushworth Green, left behind, handed over to her.

When she looked up at Samuel, wondering, he ducked his head. “Surprised me too. Seems he wants something more than money or that editorship.”

Ada looked at the sheaf of papers in her hands. “Which is?”

“Honor. You.” He chuckled. “He lost, according to the terms of the bargain you made. He didn’t convince you he was in love with you.”

Ada let the papers fall to her lap, caught Samuel’s eye. “He didn’t have to convince me. Our bargain was for the sake of others.”

“Who better to convince than you?”

She shook her head. “I lost the bargain. I called it off, forfeited it. I’d promised your brother if I lost, I’d write all the pieces myself. In fact, I’ve written a letter to the editors of The Gentleman’s Magazine, promising them just such a series.”

“No, it’s The Gentleman’s Periodical.”

“Mr. Goddard, I couldn’t bear to enrich a publication that profited off my brother’s death. I promised your brother I’d write the pieces myself, and so I will. I didn’t promise where I’d send them.”

A grin spread over Samuel’s angular face. “You are sly, my lady.”

“I think I will like writing them. I can make certain there isn’t anything in them I don’t want there to be.”

“The power of the written word.” He smiled. It was a sweet smile, making him look very young. “I ought to have thanked you before for giving my brother the sack of candies. He shared them with me. They were excellent.”

The caramel candies. She had almost forgotten about them. “I don’t deserve much credit. I did it on impulse.”

“A generous impulse. Would that the world were full of them.”

“I can’t argue with that.” She smiled back, then collected the papers in her lap. “Here, you must have these. You and your brother can sell them where you see fit.”

Samuel took the papers from Ada with a hand that clenched and unclenched, almost scattering them. He seemed hardly to notice. “Lady Ada. I wonder if it’s occurred to you that everything Colin said in front of the other guests was true. About hoping for your heart and all that.”

She gaped.

Samuel hunched his shoulders. “He told me about it. He said you didn’t receive it well.”

“I didn’t, because he sounded as if he were mocking me. He made a fool of me before…” She trailed off.

“Did anyone else think he was mocking you?”

“No, I don’t suppose they did.” Lord and Lady Wrotham hadn’t looked amused. They’d looked uncomfortable at the unexpected display of emotion.

Ada had to think about this for a while. If Colin had not been mocking her—if he had been perfectly sincere in everything he’d said—

Dear God.

“But he didn’t read my note,” she said. “He couldn’t have cared that much for what I felt about him. He didn’t even bother to read it.”

Samuel’s eyes, as blue as his brother’s, had clouded.

And she realized, all at once. The book of poetry— it’s not in English, is it? The little cards on the tea treats, dismissed. The reading he was asked to do night after night, which he’d refused time and again.

The note he had left untouched.

“He cannot read,” she realized.

Slowly, Samuel shook his head. “He can, but not well. It takes him a long time. He says the letters wiggle and change when he looks at them.”

Ada had never heard of such a thing. But she had never heard of a man having Samuel’s condition of twitches either, and here he sat, large as life and friendly as anything.

“How can he be a writer,” she asked, “if he can’t read?”

“He remembers everything,” Samuel said. “He tells me who he talks to and what he learns, and I write it down. It’s been a good partnership for years.”

“Has it? It allows neither of you to have all the credit you deserve.”

“What’s credit worth? You can’t spend it.” Again, that sweet smile. “We’ve got by, and that’s all we could have asked.”

No, she thought. They could have asked for more. They could have asked for admiration or love or an editorship or…why, anything.

But that was her upbringing talking. Dukes’ daughters and sisters weren’t shy about asking for what they wanted. Unless it was the heart of a stubborn, wily, kind, exasperating man.

“He told me he wasn’t real. That he was dishonorable. Did he mean that too?”

“How would I know? I’m only his brother. He doesn’t confide everything in me. Especially not when he’s heartsore and discouraged and trying to convince himself he did the right thing by leaving Berkshire.”

“He thought up the questions, didn’t he? About my brother’s death, for the on-demandes?”

Samuel swayed, nodded. “He always thought up the questions.”

She looked at him, perched uneasily in her chair, and smiled. “I thought so. I think I’ve known it since the first time he apologized.”

He’d looked so troubled, so sincere as they sat in her study. His were lies of omission, but he’d never lied in how he felt. She thought he regretted what he’d done, truly.

At this distance in time, she didn’t. Colin’s questions, tossed off for coin and scandal, had pushed her life onto a road entirely new. It had brought her home from London, led her to constrain herself. But she’d kept traveling, and after all this time, the road had brought her to a place she quite liked.

“He didn’t know you then,” Samuel excused. “When he wrote the questions.”

“It’s all right,” Ada reassured him. “I am beginning to think I didn’t know myself.” She searched the face of the young man across from her, looking for further hints. “Did you encourage him to leave Rushworth Green?”

Samuel looked insulted. “Of course I didn’t. He was wrong to leave. But I didn’t say that. All I said was that I was tired and would take a mail coach and return by night. I’m usually awake at night.”

“Not today.”

“No. Not today. And maybe not more days from now on. I want to venture out more.”

Ada regarded him. Yes, he twitched. He had also carried his brother for years, just as Colin carried him. “I think it a good plan. How can you get the credit you deserve otherwise?”

He laughed.

“What will you do, Mr. Goddard? You didn’t want to go with him?”

“Samuel, please. No, he and I disagreed on the timing. I thought he had unfinished business here.”

Ada waved this off. “I had forced his hand enough. If he wanted to go, I’m glad he left.”

Samuel looked skeptical at this. “Maybe so. Anyway, I’ll be leaving too, by the next stage. Colin and I have rented rooms. I have a few friends. It’s not a bad life at all.” He shook the papers in his fist. “I’ll be Vir Virilem yet. And I’ll make sure there isn’t anything in here you don’t want there to be. Though I don’t think there is.” He leaned forward, confiding, “Colin was yours at once. He probably wouldn’t like me telling you his secrets like that, but he’s not here, is he?”

Now she had to laugh, even as she flushed. “Right you are. And you’ll like that, you think? Going about in London?”

“Taking up a bit more of the life Colin and I’ve shared? I think so. I’ve been hiding.”

“Yes,” she said faintly. “I have too. But writing is one way around that, isn’t it?”

“If it feels like it, then it is.”

“You’re a wise man, Samuel. And what will he do?”

There was only one possible he. Samuel did not misunderstand. “That depends on you.”

She squinted. “I can’t see up close,” she murmured. “I don’t have my spectacles with me. Samuel, will you wait for a few minutes while I return to the study? And when you return to London, will you take a parcel along?”