Part 1 (2/2)
Lydia smiled even as she blinked away fresh tears. She loathed feeling like a watering pot; she'd always been so careful to hide her emotions, especially the stronger ones, which tended to frighten her. ”Actually, I think that would be very nice. Very...Nicole.”
”Don't tell Rafe, but I agree. Oh, speaking of Rafe, he's downstairs with our friend Tanner, who has come to take you for a drive on this unusual warm day in dreary London. It's so lovely to see the sun, even when it plays hide-and-seek with us as it is today. Honestly, the only reason I came upstairs instead of leaving you some time to yourself was to tell you about Tanner's offer. Not only am I as big as two houses, I may be turning senile. At any rate, Tanner somehow knew Nicole was leaving today, and thought he'd bear you company. Such a wonderful friend, isn't he? So you go fetch your bonnet and pelisse, and I'll tell him you'll be down directly.”
Lydia nodded, finding it difficult to speak, holding in her sigh until Charlotte had quit the room.
Was this to be her life for the remainder of the Season?
Charlotte and Rafe happily married; kind, caring, but also very much wrapped up in each other. Captain Fitzgerald, irrevocably lost to her. Nicole, her very best friend, off on a new adventure in her life.
And Tanner Blake, the man she'd initially taken in such dislike through no fault of his own, the man who still seemed so doggedly determined to live up to his promise to his friend Fitz, could soon be married as well, with a whole new set of obligations.
Why, were she the dramatic sort, she would say that she was alone in the midst of a mult.i.tude, which was not a very pleasant place to be.
”If the exercise weren't so fatiguing,” she told herself, ”I should most probably throw myself to the floor and drum my heels against the carpet. Nicole always vowed it made her feel better. But I'm much too polite and restrained and civilized. Much too dull and boring. No wonder I sit with the desperate wallflowers. I may as well be invisible. Then again, if my inside were on my outside, if I were to act as I think and d.a.m.n the consequences, like Nicole, I should probably shock everyone to their cores, including myself.”
Lydia allowed herself another deep sigh before she lifted her slightly pointed chin and dutifully went in search of her pelisse and bonnet. The bonnet with the sky blue ribbon Captain Fitzgerald had picked out for her last Season, saying it went so well with her eyes. Thus armed, she then headed for the staircase, having firmly decided that she was a Daughtry, not a mouse, and it was time she began acting like one.
CHAPTER TWO.
”IT WILL BE A YEAR SOON,” Tanner Blake, Duke of Malvern, remarked as he accepted a gla.s.s of claret from his friend Rafe. ”Sometimes it all seems a lifetime ago, and then at others it feels like yesterday.”
He knew he didn't have to say more than that for Rafe to understand to what he was referring. Last year's battle was a fact in all of their lives, one never to be forgotten.
”At least this time it looks as if Boney will be staying where we put him.” Rafe took up a seat on the facing couch in the large drawing room, a handsome man with a firm jaw and intelligent eyes. He put forth his gla.s.s in a toast. ”To Fitz. And to all the good and true men who died in that d.a.m.ned unnecessary battle.”
Tanner solemnly clinked gla.s.ses with his friend. He wasn't the sort who indulged overmuch in spirits, but it was easier to trust the wine of France than it was the cloudy waters of London. He was much of an age with Rafe, but knew he looked younger, thanks to his dark blond hair with its tendency to wave when he neglected his barber, and to features his late mother had often cooed over as being ”nearly Greek.” It was only his eyes, seemingly turned a deeper green in the past year, which aged him beyond the schoolroom.
”They're calling it all Waterloo now, you know, because Wellington stayed at an inn there while he wrote his dispatch to Parliament after the battle. I suppose it's as good a name as any. A grand and glorious battle, they say now, a great victory for the Allies, destined to be one of the most memorable battles in history. All of these gus.h.i.+ng fools forgetting that if they had just locked up the man more securely, none of it would have happened. To Fitz,” Tanner said, raising his gla.s.s. ”To Fitz, and to the rest-and to stout locks.”
Both men drank, then fell silent for some moments, each of them lost in their memories of Captain Swain Fitzgerald and all the other good friends they had lost.
”I think she's doing much better,” Tanner said at last, because it wasn't a far leap in his mind from the captain to Lady Lydia.
Rafe nodded his agreement. ”To forget him would appall her, but Lydia knows that he'd want her to go on without him. You've been very good for her, Tanner.”
”Have I? It's no secret that she saw me as a constant reminder of what she'd lost, at least at first. But our time apart may have taken some of the edge off the events of that day last spring. I'd like to think we've become friends this Season. It's what Fitz wanted.”
”And you, being such an honorable man and all of that, also feel obligated to make good on your promise to a dying man. Tanner, I appreciate what you've done, what you're doing. Left on her own, especially now that Nicole has quit the city, it's no secret to either Charlie or me that Lydia would prefer to return to Ashurst Hall and a quiet life.”
”I enjoy her company,” Tanner said, his eyes s.h.i.+fting toward the carpet at his feet. ”Taking her out for the occasional drive, visiting the Elgin Marbles. I certainly wouldn't say I've felt any of it a hards.h.i.+p.” He lifted his gaze again. ”Have there been any suitors? I should think you'd be knee-deep in them.”
Rafe shook his head. ”Oh, no, let me correct that. There has been one, but I sent him away. d.a.m.n near booted him down the stairs, as a matter of fact. One dance at Lady Hertford's ball, and the mushroom had the nerve to come propose marriage to Lydia's dowry, and then only after his plea for Nicole's dowry fell on deaf ears. It hasn't been easy, coming home from the war, falling into the dukedom, dealing with the twins who, to my shame, I barely remembered. Thank G.o.d for Charlie's steady common sense.”
”Your wife is much too good for you, yes, but then you've always been a lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
Rafe grinned, his eyes twinkling with mischief. ”Don't tell her. She mistakenly believes I'm quite the grand catch.”
Tanner sat back against the cus.h.i.+ons, content to be with his friend, in this place, in this time. He enjoyed visiting Grosvenor Square, and would miss Rafe when the Season was over and they all deserted the city for their country estates. It probably would be another year until he saw Rafe again. Or Lydia.
”Rafe? Just because her sister isn't here, Lydia can't be allowed to shy away from Society for the remainder of the Season.”
”I know. But Charlie is adamant in refusing to go into Society as she is. Women,” Rafe said, his handsome features softening. ”She's never looked more beautiful to me, but she has vowed that until she can see her own shoe-tops again, she is banning herself from all social engagements outside this house. And now that Mrs. b.u.t.tram is spending the majority of her time with her wrapped foot on a cus.h.i.+on-gout, she tells us-I imagine it's up to me to boost Lydia out of here from time to time.”
”Not necessarily. My cousin is in town, and-”
”The one you're to be betrothed to at any moment, according to my wife, who may not go out in Society, but still manages to know every piece of gossip?”
Tanner once again took refuge in examining the fine Aubusson carpet. ”Jasmine Harburton, my third cousin, yes. Her father seems to take the marriage as all but an accomplished fact, and he's a man not known for his reticence. The rumor has come back to me a dozen times, and I've been told at least two adventurous souls have written down a wager on the thing in the betting book at White's. Supposedly it was my father's deathbed wish that I marry Jasmine, you see, bringing their small estate into our holdings. She's an amenable enough young woman, but...”
”But, honorable man that you are, you're finding yourself growing rather weary of dead people planning out your life for you?” Rafe suggested, and then quickly took a sip from his gla.s.s, keeping his expression blank.
”Thank you for saying that for me. When I say it, or even think it, I feel rather cold and callous. Especially where Fitz is concerned. But, G.o.d, Rafe, the man was dying. Clinging to my hand with his last strength as the battle still raged a few miles away from that pitiful ruined barn where I'd found him. I would have agreed to anything he'd asked at that moment, to make his pa.s.sing easier.”
A flash of pain crossed Rafe's features. Fitz had been his closest friend during six years of war on the Peninsula. If he hadn't inherited the dukedom, hadn't been handed the responsibility for his sisters and mother and all of the Ashurst estates, he would have gone to Brussels with his friend for that last confrontation with Bonaparte. Instead, he had stayed behind, to work inside the War Office. Tanner knew what the man thought: Rafe could never know if his presence on the battlefield might have made a difference, to Fitz's future, to his own. ”But now?”
Tanner saw Rafe's expression and mentally kicked himself for a fool, bringing up old pain. Yet fool he was, as he debated as to whether or not he should keep his own counsel. But this was Rafe, his good friend. ”And now I'm here because I want to be here. I think I've known that from the moment I first pulled Lydia into my arms as she flailed at me in her grief.”
Rafe shook his head ruefully as he slapped at his thigh. ”Right again. Blast that Charlie, she's always right. She was right about Lucas, and now she's right about you. How do women do it?”
”I don't know,” Tanner admitted, almost sighed...except that women sighed; men got themselves royally drunk. ”Lydia no longer sees me as the enemy, her personal agent of death or whatever, but now I'm Fitz's good friend, probably a constant reminder of him. h.e.l.l of a turn, isn't it? He asks me to take care of her, watch over her...and I'm seeing myself as usurping his place in her life. I doubt that's what he had in mind.”
”And now you're feeling guilty, disloyal? Don't do that. The past is the past, Tanner. It's gone.”
”Is it? She loved him, Rafe. It's too soon. I need to give her more time.”
”Don't wait too long, my friend. If Fitz's death taught us nothing else, it taught us that the luxury of time is just that. A luxury.”
Tanner got to his feet, unable to sit still any longer. ”Now that she's out from beneath Nicole's...well, s.h.i.+ning star, I suppose...let me take her into Society, Rafe. My cousin's chaperone can easily handle them both. Lydia needs to understand that she is a beautiful young woman, inside and out. She always allowed Nicole to s.h.i.+ne while she positioned herself in the background. If I'm to seriously pursue my suit, she needs to first find someone to compare me with other than Fitz.”
”You want her to be courted by other men? Is that what you're saying?”
”G.o.d help me, yes, I suppose I am.”
”You don't fear compet.i.tion?”
”Not live compet.i.tion, no, heartless as that sounds. A good man in life, in death I fear Fitz has been raised very nearly to sainthood by what was at the time a younger, very impressionable girl. She's known only his companions.h.i.+p and now, to a very small extent, mine. I want to win her, I won't lie about that, but not by default.”
”Charlie has mentioned to me, and not all that kindly, that men in love all seem to have maggots in their heads. Once again, Tanner, you're proving the woman right. However, since you seem to be offering to take my place shepherding Lydia around Mayfair, who am I to argue, or to point out the obvious pitfalls? Although I will ask this, as I am Lydia's brother and protector. You aren't also using her to teach a lesson to Miss Harburton's father about his presumptions?”
Tanner didn't understand for a moment, and then smiled. ”Well, now, Rafe, do you see that? I'm not as unselfish as you might think, am I. Even if I didn't realize it until you pointed it out to me. Thank you.”
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