“Dinner has been waiting,” Lady Emmie said. “Miss Sylvan, would you prefer a light meal in your room, or would you join us as our guest of honor?”
With an invitation like that, Sylvan couldn’t refuse, and a pleasant hour laden with food and wine passed before the family returned to the study to finish their gossip. Sylvan lagged behind, her gaze on the letters tossed on the table in the entry. She shouldn’t read them now, she knew, but she worried what her father had said, so she slipped them into her pocket and carried them into the study where already a quarrel had developed.
Standing in front of the fireplace, Aunt Adela folded her hands across her stomach. “This is what comes of owning the mill.”
Seating herself, Sylvan accepted a sherry and sneaked the letters out.
Rand sighed loudly. “Oh, Aunt Adela, we’re not going to go through that again.”
Sylvan first sighed as she juggled the missive from her father, then smiled as she clasped the missive from her mentor. Bad medicine first, she decided. With a guilty glance at her hosts, she broke the seal on her father’s letter.
With lofty indignation, Aunt Adela said, “Why not? It’s the truth, isn’t it? I admit, I had my doubts about this young woman before she arrived, but she has proved to be a well-spoken, genteel lady. And what have we turned her into? A drudge who treats the village women with their ailments.”
“It wasn’t an ailment, it was an accident!” Rand protested.
Garth sneaked toward the doorway.
“There wouldn’t have been an accident if there weren’t a mill,” Aunt Adela answered.
Garth backed out of the room.
“Come back here, young man.” Aunt Adela chased into the hall after Garth.
Skimming the sprawling epistle, Sylvan wondered if her father simply recopied one letter, over and over.
She was a disappointment. He’d worked hard to make money so she could have everything she ever wanted. He’d bought a barony for himself to help her get into the ton with the expectation she would find a nobleman to wed. But no. She’d obstinately refused all offers. She’d ruined her best chance when Hibbert died, but living at Clairmont Court, she could get herself a duke. Stop dithering and nab him.
“We’ve discussed this before, and nothing has changed.” Garth appeared with Aunt Adela dragging him by the arm. His rough appearance contrasted with the spotless room and its fashionable occupants. “Use all the excuses you like, but we all know you care only for the spoiled reputation of the duke of Clairmont.”
Sylvan crumpled the letter in her hand, walked to the fire, and threw it in.
“Well, somebody has to,” Aunt Adela said. “Obviously it’s of no concern to you.”
Sylvan wished she could toss her anger aside as easily. Slipping Dr. Moreland’s letter in her pocket, she decided to save it for the morrow. It would be discourteous to read it amid the discussion swirling around her, and after her father’s letter—she sipped her sherry—she had a bad taste in her mouth.
Going to the rack of bottles, Garth poured himself a brandy. “My reputation is my own.”
“But it’s not! Your reputation will taint us all. Trade!” Jumping into the fray, James said the word as if it were dirty. “The dukes of Clairmont have lived right here in this spot for five hundred years—”
“Four hundred,” Rand interrupted.
“—And not one of them ever dirtied his hands with trade.”
“I’d say it’s about time someone did some work, then.” Rand accepted a brandy from his brother, and their cut-glass goblets clinked as they touched.
“Oh, yes, you two will stick together. Always do.” James’s bitterness was palpable. “Don’t appreciate that it’s damned embarrassing when a fellow makes the rounds in London and some upstart merchant asks me how our enterprise is proceeding.” His lip curled in disgust. “A merchant, daring to speak to me as if I were an equal.”
“When of course you’re not,” Garth said.
That sounded like sarcasm to Sylvan, and apparently it sounded like sarcasm to Aunt Adela, too, for she swelled with indignation. “James is the most dutiful of cousins. Although he is in direct line for the dukedom, he begrudges you boys nothing. He wants only his position and his dignity.”
“I have stripped him of neither,” Garth said.
“For God’s sake, you don’t take me seriously,” James burst out. “No one ever takes me seriously, but I know my politics, and I have no patron. Just sponsor me—”
“Send you to Parliament so you can work against everything I believe in?” Garth laughed, short and ugly. “I think not.”
Amazed, Sylvan stared at the duke she’d thought mild-mannered and tranquil. His serenity masked a powerful will, it seemed, and a determination to proceed on his own course whether or not it met with approval. What other secrets did his composure hide?
“Privileges of the aristocrats are daily being eroded by the middle class, and if something is not done, we’ll all be serving tea to our butlers,” James argued.
The spectators looked from one to the other with more than speculation. Sylvan thought these must be old quarrels, old wounds.
“So we should legislate our privileges rather than adjust to the times and earn them? It’s a losing battle, James.” It sounded as if Rand had mediated this conflict before. “Can’t you see that?”
“Better to fight a losing battle than surrender without a shot.”
“Oh, I’m not surrendering,” Garth said. “I’m joining the enemy.”
James flipped open his snuff box and took a healthy pinch. “You should be ashamed.”
A paroxysm of sneezing muffled any further protest, but Aunt Adela took up the banner. “There’s no use talking to him, James.” She swallowed her sherry in one large, unladylike gulp. “His Grace revels in his disgrace.”
Garth put his hand on one hip in exaggerated gentility. “Does this mean you’ll be unsupportive when I start my drapery factory?”
“Tell me you’re jesting,” Aunt Adela said.
“Garth never jests, Mother.” James took his mother’s arm and led her toward the door. “We’ll just go to our rooms now and practice threading a needle.”
“My heart.” Aunt Adela pressed one hand to her chest and let James lead her out. “My heart can’t bear such demands.”
Garth watched them with a crooked smile, then said, “I’m sorry you had to listen to that, Miss Sylvan.”
Looking down at the residue of sherry in her glass, Sylvan was sorry, too. She hadn’t realized the discontent that bubbled beneath the surface of this seemingly temperate family.
Garth continued, “But we fight about it every few months, and that will continue until they realize I’m not going to back down.”
“Or until you sponsor James in Parliament,” Rand said.
“I’ll not pay to have my own cousin work against me,” Garth roared.
“Then you’re a damned fool,” Rand roared back. “At least we’d have peace at Clairmont Court, and what could he do? One man could no more stop this revolution than he could halt the tides.”
“James would work specifically against me.”
“He wouldn’t.” The long-quiet Lady Emmie spoke up. “James is a nice boy with a good sense of family.”
“He might be a nice boy, but he’s a frustrated boy, too.” Picking up the decanter, Garth poured himself a brandy, then took it to Rand and filled his glass. Sylvan held out her sherry glass, and after a sharp glance at her features, Garth poured it full, also. Holding it up, he asked, “Mother?”
Lady Emmie made a face, then reconsidered. “Maybe a little. There’s no malice in James.”
“He doesn’t pull the wings off of flies, if that’s what you mean,” Garth said. “But he hates my mill, and he’d do anything—”
“Not anything,” Lady Emmie insisted.
“Anything to destroy it.” Garth laughed a little. “He actually worries about other people’s opinions.”
&nb
sp; “One does that, Garth, if one is not the duke,” Rand said with fine irony.
“You never did,” Garth said.
“Of course I did. Why do you think I wouldn’t go outside before Miss Sylvan forced me?”
“I never thought,” Garth said.
“I wish you would, dear,” Lady Emmie said. “I doubt even Sylvan could persuade Rand to return to London, and until James has a patron he’ll not return. A frustrated man in the house is very difficult to live with.”
“I’ll consider it.” Garth glanced at the doorway and said to someone out there, “Are you ready?” Apparently someone nodded, for he said, “Well, I’m off. Good night, all. Let’s sleep on this and see what the morrow brings.”
Lady Emmie stared after Garth, and Rand commanded, “Don’t fret, Mother. You know there’s no use worrying about Garth. He’s strong-minded, and he’ll do as he thinks best.”
“I know.” Lady Emmie hoisted herself to her feet as if she were exhausted. “I just wish I agreed with his assessment. Good night, dear.” She kissed Rand’s cheek. “Good night, Sylvan.” She kissed Sylvan, too, and drifted out of the room.
Rand was amused to see Sylvan touch her cheek and look at her fingers as if she expected to see some residue of the kiss. “She’s a lovely lady, isn’t she?” he asked.
“You have a lovely family.” Standing, she located the decanter and poured herself another brandy.
“After witnessing an outburst like that, you say I have a lovely family?”
She looked at him, and the expression in her eyes seemed as ancient as the hills. “My family fights, too.” Taking a drink, she shook her head as if to clear it. “Our fights consisted of my father saying unspeakable things in a controlled voice, and my mother murmuring reassurances, giving up everything to make him happy.” She chuckled bitterly. “And not succeeding.”
“What about you?”
“Me? Oh, I’m stubborn and silent and disobedient as always.”
“Funny.” He rolled closer to the fire and she followed. “You’ve never mentioned your mother. I thought she was dead.”
“She is. She’s still breathing, but she doesn’t dare talk, and she’s never allowed to think.”
“Sit down.” He pointed to the chair opposite his, and she obediently slid into it. “Is that why you haven’t married?”
Tipping the glass up, she took a drink. “The husband has all the power, the wife has none, and I’ll never submit to that kind of tyranny.”
“It’s not all tyranny. My parents adored each other until the day Da died, and though you’d never suspect, Aunt Adela adored Uncle Thom, and he her.”
She bit her lip and rolled the glass between her palms while watching the swells form on the brandy. “No marriage for me.”
“Did Hibbert ask you to wed him?”
She smiled poignantly. “Hibbert was my dearest friend.”
“So you said. But did he want you to marry him?”
“Yes.” She looked at him, her eyes heavy lidded. “And if I didn’t marry that sweet man, you can wager no one else will persuade me to the altar.”
Funny, Rand experienced intense gratification at having his curiosity allayed. Hibbert had been the best of men, the kind of fellow one liked in spite of his predilections, but Rand didn’t want to think of Sylvan living with him—not in sin, and not in innocence.
“So you sacrificed your reputation for Hibbert.”
Sylvan laughed, a tipsy laugh that ended in a hiccup. “Not really. I lost my reputation the moment I stepped into a hospital in Brussels.”
Rand remembered the filthy sheets, the stench of blood, the unmoved corpses. It made him shudder even now to think he’d been there for a short time. “Then why did you do it?”
“I was searching for him.”
“Hibbert?” Rand wrinkled his brow. He’d been unconscious or in a frenzy after the battle, trying to deal with his condition. Hibbert had died, he knew, but he remembered no other details. “Did you find him?”
“On the battlefield.” She rubbed the glass on her forehead and shut her eyes against the tears that leaked out. “Quite dead. He’d been stripped of every valuable, including his teeth, which they tell me are selling as transplants for those fortunate to be alive yet unfortunate enough to be toothless.”
“Sylvan.” He stretched out his hand, but she ignored it.
“There were other women who searched the battlefield, too, but they searched for husbands or brothers, and they didn’t succumb to the urge to help those still living.”
His hand dropped back to his side. She didn’t want his comfort right now. A combination of rage and sorrow squeezed the words from her, and she continued, “The thing that I didn’t understand—the thing I’ll never understand—is how the noble ladies can hate me so much.”
The candles guttered out, and Rand allowed his gaze to drift toward Sylvan’s face. The firelight glimmered on her lips, moist with brandy, and she slurred her words. But she knew exactly what she was saying.
“Before I went to Brussels, the ladies gossiped about me. They put their fans before their faces and gossiped, then they came to me and made snide comments, and all the while I knew they envied me my freedom.
“Then I went to Brussels to dance and drink and create more scandal, and instead I became a nurse.”
Her breath rasped into the glass as she lifted it to her mouth. “I found out what prejudice really was. I would speak to a lady whose son was alive because of me, and she’d give me the cut-direct. I’d try to tell her how to care for him, explain how to irrigate his wounds, and she’d turn her back on me. I saved her son. I saved his life, and that’s what ruined my reputation. When all I did was dance and drink and act like a fool, I was exciting, fascinating, wicked! When I did something worthwhile, when I got blood on my hands and saved good English lads, I became a pariah. Where’s the justice in that? I gave up my peace, and for what? God.”
The glass fell from her hand and rolled across the stone hearth. She rested her head against the back of the chair. He saw her swallow, and his tenderness all but choked him. How had this beautiful woman come to such a pass? What could he do to help her?
“I have no friends, no family who cares about me.”
“How can you say that? We care about you.”
She continued on as if she hadn’t heard. “I can’t even sleep, and all for men who treat me like a tramp and for their mothers who don’t trust me at all.” She stumbled to her feet.
“Don’t go away.” Rand caught her hand before she could flee. “My mother thinks the sun rises in your smile, and the only other people she thinks that about are her children. James teases, and Gail worships you.”
“Gail’s a child.” She peered at him searchingly. “What does she know?”
“Gail sees more than most adults,” he answered gently. “Anyway, even Aunt Adela approves of you, and if Aunt Adela approves…” Carefully, he chose his next words. “You’ve won me over, too. Let me show you.”
“How?”
“Come to bed with me.”
She didn’t stop to think. “No.”
“We’d be good together,” he urged.
“No.”
“It’s not because I’m crippled.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Not that.”
“Then what? I’d take care of you.” He wanted to take care of her. “I’d make you happy.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” She jerked her hand free and glared at him as if she hated him. “I don’t want to be your experiment. I don’t want to be the woman you use to find out whether you still have your masculinity.”
“That’s not—”
“Oh, isn’t it?” She stripped his pretensions from him with one scathing look. “Isn’t it?”
She ran from the room and he cursed his own stupidity. Yes, he’d wanted to find out if he were still functioning properly, but there were any number of women around the estate who would be glad to help
him establish that fact. In truth, he hadn’t been interested until Sylvan Miles came into his life, and if she were to leave, he’d be uninterested again.
But he knew better than to proposition a lady so bluntly. Women liked to be courted, flirted with, not offered a toss between the sheets as an anecdote to melancholy. In the morning, he’d—
The great outer door creaked open, then slammed.
That wasn’t Sylvan, was it? She wasn’t going outside, was she?
Wheeling himself to the window, he cursed as he saw her race down the steps. “Jasper!” he yelled. “Jasper, come here.” When no one arrived, he picked up a gold candlestick and beat it against a table. God, had he chased Sylvan into danger with his eagerness?
He could barely see her now; she danced like a silvery shadow across the lawn. “Damn it, Jasper!” Rolling back, he grabbed an upholstered stool and threw it through the window.
It shattered in a glorious dissonance. The breeze blew into the room and he shouted, “Sylvan!”
A footman ran into the room, then another, and another, and the disheveled butler followed them all. “Lord Rand,” Peterson said, gasping. “How can I serve you?”
“She’s getting away!” Rand gestured to the window. He couldn’t see her anymore. “Can’t any of you dolts stop her?”
The footmen milled about like sheep, confused and bleating. Rand cursed them, then a half-dressed Garth ran into the room. “What’s the matter, Rand?” Feeling the wind on his face, seeing the shattered glass, Garth roared, “I was in bed! I’m not in the mood for a scene.”
“Sylvan’s outside,” Rand said. “You’ve got to go after her.”
“Couldn’t you have told us in some less dramatic way?” Garth demanded. “These broken windows are—”
Betty stepped into the room and took in the situation in one glance. Calm as always, she said, “Garth, this is important. There’s a madman loose, and we don’t want Miss Sylvan hurt.”
“There’s probably no danger.” Rand failed to reassure even himself, and he said hoarsely, “Organize a search party. Bring her back.”
Lady Emmie and Aunt Adela arrived in a flurry of Belgian lace and feather-light cotton, elbowing each other for first place through the door. Their outcry only added to the babble of voices as Garth organized the men and sent them out to comb the estate. Rand struggled to still his panic, but the men’s drawn faces told him how seriously they took the rumors of ghost and attacker.