A Gentleman’s Game (14 page)

For the first time, Nathaniel was relieved to see her gone. He didn’t want her to answer her brother’s question. He
certainly
didn’t want to
hear
her answer. What could she say? If it wasn’t to be a kindness, it would have to be a nothing. And leaving the room in such a hurry—that was a nothing.

With Rosalind slipping through the doorway back to the kitchen, Nathaniel decided to ask a question of his own. To the room at large, he asked, “What was Miss Agate—Rosie—like as a child?”

Mr. Agate held out a glass of port to him, dark and lovely as a garnet. Nathaniel declined in the guise of leaning forward to await an answer.

“Noticed everything, but closemouthed as a clam.” Severn accepted the same glass from his father with thanks, and Mr. Agate continued around the room with glasses. “Which was good, because she knew everyone’s secrets.”

“Was she? I wonder if that has changed.” The noticing hadn’t. Her eyes were curious; he’d been drawn to that about her at once.

“Probably not. Did she tell you about her, ah—” Severn waved his glass vaguely in the region of his torso.

“Her port? Her gown? Her fondness for gestures?”

Alec snorted.

“Rosie was badly burned as a girl, Mr. Nathaniel,” Mrs. Agate said placidly. “She’s quite all right now. Elder, hold up your foot so I can see if this sock is large enough.”

He hopped over and stuck a shod foot into his mother’s lap. “Can I have some port?”

“When you quit being a pest,” said Alec.

“How did you get a glass, then?”

To his credit, Alec gave a hearty laugh.

And that was that, the end of their list of Rosie’s quirks. She was a great one for keeping secrets; she had been burned. And she was all right now.

Yet Rosalind had told Nathaniel about her burns and her debts. If she was still accustomed to holding information close, surely it was a mark of fondness that she had revealed so much to him.

He could only hope. And he wondered if she held any other secrets.

Did it matter if she did? Her family loved her. Despite her long absence, they welcomed her immediately. She was still a part of their circle.

If he had five siblings who laughed and smiled and called him
Nate
, he would never want to leave their home. Hell, if he had even
one
such sibling. But Hannah had her own home now, and Nathaniel could never be more than a visitor. Especially once Hannah delivered her baby in a few months.

How could Rosalind have stayed away from her family for ten years? And for that matter—“How could you let her go for so long?”

* * *

Tucked next to the doorway, Rosalind listened, wishing for more ears. Her brother had asked a question she could not answer, all but wondering if Nathaniel had won her over, and if so, how he had managed it.

He had; oh, he had. Yet she was not sure how he had done it. She had not noticed him winning her until she was already won; until his lips were on hers and she was kissing him back as though he were her medal, her crown of flowers. Her beautiful unwonted triumph.

This worried her, because she couldn’t afford not to notice how such things happened. She could not bear another lapse in attention, or another burn.

Thank goodness Carys had left the kitchen for a moment. Rosalind was alone with a tray of tea things only half-assembled and her thoughts even less so.

Now Nathaniel asked a question she had never dared pose.
How could you let her go for so long?

After a pause, Papa answered. “We wanted her alive, even if we couldn’t be with her.”

“She was thirteen,” added Mama. The faint clicks of the knitting needles stopped. “That’s an age when plenty of families send their girls off to service or their boys to the sea. It wasn’t what we wanted to do, but—we had to make a choice between paying for a doctor’s care or paying for a burial. We wanted her safe more than anything, but we hadn’t the money. One of our neighbors, a saint among women, paid for Rosie’s care. In exchange, Rose worked off the debt afterward.”

Click, click
. The knitting began again. “Rosie has done quite well for herself in all these years. Worked her way up through different households. And now she’s secretary to a baronet.” Her mother’s voice held pride.

Rosalind hardly heard Nathaniel’s reply. She had hardly heard anything after the frank words:
It wasn’t what we wanted to do
. Some choices were between bad and worse. She hadn’t been able to make the choice, so her parents made it for her.

Love could do no less, could it? Love made the bad choice instead of the worse one. Love sent letters for ten years. Love welcomed her back in an instant.

How simple it sounded. Ten years and so many agonies in a few sentences, all ending with pride.

Aunt Annie described as
a saint among women
.

Her parents didn’t know what it had been like for Rosalind, leaving them to work for Aunt Annie. The loneliness of snipped-off friendships. The gut-turning worry as she searched desks in the stealth of night for the papers Aunt Annie needed. Tranc like a shadow following them both. Cold, strained, fearful.

They didn’t know any of that. And because she loved them, she would never tell them. She didn’t have to. Once she reached Epsom, she would pay that old debt, and those days would be over.

Leaning against the wall, so warm she let it soak through her, she shut her eyes. A deep emotion seized her, so hard it almost hurt her heart, but it was not pain. It was too sweet for pain and too strong for fear. Too solid for all the filmy worries that had layered on her.

It was contentment. Joy. Happiness. It was a blessing with a bladed edge, one she knew she could hold for only one evening, one night. A bit of the morning, then another good-bye.

If she had not accompanied Nathaniel Chandler on this trip, she wouldn’t be here at the Eight Bells. If he hadn’t known so well how to deal with all the difficulties of travel, she wouldn’t be here.

What was his part in the family business
, her father had asked. Nathaniel had avoided the answer. Rosalind knew those quite well, the dances around the real answer. The dodge about words one couldn’t bear to say.

But what was there not to bear? He sold things; he fixed things. He led groups of people with dogged patience and cheer. She would have followed him across Europe for the way he laughed with her and watched over her.

She had brought him home to meet her family, after all. The family he had given back to her without a moment’s hesitation.
Of course you must go.

Opening her eyes, Rosalind smiled.

“Let’s all have some more port, shall we?” said Papa from the sitting room.

“You’ve finished the bottle, Mr. Agate.” Mama sounded amused. Papa had always liked his drink, but Rosalind never remembered him showing signs of intoxication. He became a little sleepy, that was all. But who didn’t at the end of the day?

“Then let’s get another,” Rosalind heard Papa reply. “Our Rosie’s return is worth celebrating, isn’t it?”

“There’s always something worth celebrating,” said Mama. “Elder, let me see your foot again—oh, this will never fit…”

Rosalind rubbed at her right elbow, where the scarred skin pulled tight. If there were always something to celebrate, what a wonderful way that would be to live.

For tonight, it
was
true, wasn’t it? For one single night, for a sliver of a morning.

And once the evening passed, she knew exactly with whom she wanted to celebrate.

Rosalind tucked the folded clothing beneath her right arm, then knocked at Nathaniel’s door.

“Come,” he called. When she eased open the door, he added, “Is that Severn? You’ll have to excuse me; I’m still bathing.”

The privacy screen had been shifted to hide the large copper tub made available to guests who wished a hot bath. Rosalind had just made use of another such, and her unpinned hair still hung damp and drying down her back. With her belongings in a trunk in the traveling carriage, she wore a print muslin gown belonging to Carys that, though pretty, fit her tightly and loosely in all the wrong places.

“It is Rosalind,” she said. “I brought clothing from Severn. There’s a shirt and cravat for tomorrow, and a nightshirt for tonight.”

A splash from behind the privacy screen. “Rosalind. I—ah, didn’t expect you to bring the clothing yourself.”

“This is the sort of household where one does what one can to help,” she said lightly.

Severn had been only too glad to deliver this small errand into her hands, though not without a wink. And then he was off, his eye on the comely lady’s maid that had arrived with another party of travelers that evening.

“Well—don’t look behind the screen. I’m not dressed.”

“The bath would be less effective if you were.” She shut and secured the door, then sat at the end of the bed, the neatly folded clothing beside her.

It was a small but high-ceilinged chamber, one of a spread of rooms that had been carved from the family apartments of the former manor house. The wooden floor was laid over with a knotted rug, pleasant underfoot. The room was furnished with a small writing table and a painted privacy screen of three panels behind which resided the chamber pot and, for now, the copper tub. Nathaniel had angled the screen to invite the warmth from the fire.

And there was a bed, of course. This one was covered with a quilt Rosalind had first smoothed as soon as she had been old enough to change sheets and coverlets. It was a piecework mosaic of golds and browns and reds. She had once thought of it as shapes, tiny interlocking hexagons. Now it looked like medals, which could be won for any number of ridiculous things.

Another splash. “Rosalind? Are you still there?”

“Yes. I’m sitting at the end of the bed. I can’t see behind the screen, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“In truth, I’m wondering why you are here.” Nathaniel’s tentative tone stripped the words of any harshness.

Because I don’t want to go
. Perhaps the words would come more easily when she and Nathaniel were face-to-face. When she could see his warm blue eyes, the strong line of his jaw, the thoughtful curve of his mouth.

She gave him a different reply instead. “My family asked questions they’d no right to. I’m sorry.”

“Your family is delightful. Their questions mean they are interested in the sort of person who might bring you for a visit all in a scruff. If I didn’t want to answer, I just said something else.”
Splash.
“A trick I learned from you. And yes, I noticed you just used it again.”

What was he doing when he splashed? Was he stretching out his limbs in the tub? It was too small, surely. Rosalind had to fold her legs when she sat in it, and his body was much larger than hers.

Knowing he was in the bath, naked, made the whole room seem smaller.

She traced the old lines of stitches on the coverlet, not knowing what to say next or what to do. “Shall I feed the fire?” she fumbled. “You must be cold.”

“Not yet, but once I get out of the water I will be. Did you mean it, by the way, when you said you were staying at the end of the bed? Because I have finished bathing, and I can’t stay behind this privacy screen forever.”

She traced another line of stitches, a pattern spiraling and repeating on itself. “I would like to stay. A little longer. If that is all right with you.”

More splashing, and then he peered over the top of the privacy screen. Rumpled wet hair, sharp brows, curious blue eyes, all licked golden by firelight. “You know. I can never resist. Your short sentences. Here, I’ll wrap up in a bath sheet”—the eyes disappeared, and the tone became somewhat muffled behind the screen—“and if you could just kick that chair over, I’ll sit behind the screen by the fire and dry out my wetter bits. Stay as long as you wish. I like your company.”

Again, he peered over the screen. “Tell me about whatever you wish, too.”

Standing, she dragged the chair over from the desk to the edge of the privacy screen. A bare forearm—well muscled, its hairs faintly gilded—stretched forth to pull the chair behind the screen. “All right, Miss Agate. Rosalind. Rosie. What’s brought you in here with a stack of Severn’s clothes and a verbal trunk full of short sentences?”

Rather than retreating to the bed, she sat on the floor beside the screen. “Thank you for bringing the traveling party to the Eight Bells.”

“You’re welcome. It was your own excellent suggestion.” He sounded so close, just a thin panel between them. His voice rained down like the warm water of a bath.

“I should have answered my brother’s question about whether you know how to get a lady to like you. The truth is that you do.”

“I would have been shocked beyond reason if you had said so before such a crowd.” A faint thump, as if he had put his palm against the screen on the other side. “How did I manage such a feat?”

“Fishing for a compliment?”

“Ah…let’s call it ‘searching for evidence.’” He must have stretched out his legs; she saw a bare foot slide from behind the screen toward the brazen coal fire. “I am wondering what I did to make you like me, because I want to keep doing it. And I am also wondering whether you liking me has anything to do with you being in this room, or if you are just tormenting me.”

“Can liking and tormenting go together?” she wondered.

“Anyone with relatives knows the answer is yes.”

She laughed. “I did not seek to torment you.” Her booted foot was inches from his bare toes. Heat was pooling, soft and slippery, through her whole body. “And I do not know how I have come to like you. It came upon me gradually.”

“Like an illness?”

“If an illness can be thought good.” She had thought words would flow more easily under his gaze, but this was better. The screen made it simple to speak phrases that would otherwise have been impossible. “I cannot think of any reason not to like you.”

“Oh, is that all?” His tone was dry. “If you simply need a bit of persuasion in the other direction, you’ll find plenty of reasons in Chandler Hall. Not that I’m fool enough to remind you of that. In fact, forget I said anything.”

“But I remember the things you say.” If she tipped her left foot just so, she could almost touch one of his toes. “You told me once that you don’t play the suitor. So I wonder why you kissed me.”

“Ah, now
you
are doing the wondering.” He cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded tight. “I did it because I wanted to, and because I thought—I hoped—you would like it. It had nothing to do with having drunk some ale.”

“Ale?” She searched her memory. “That’s right, I had offered you ale. You didn’t want it, but you drank it all the same.”

“I don’t drink ale anymore. Or port or brandy or—”

“—any sort of intoxicating spirits?”

“Exactly.”

“Ah.” She rubbed at her elbow, wondering how they had quickly swung from kissing to drink. “And why is that? If you’d like to tell me.”

“
Like
to? Not really.” He chuckled. “Ought to, maybe. When I drink wine or spirits or anything like that, I feel I’m not myself anymore. For a long time I liked that. Now I don’t.”

So simple, not to do something one didn’t like. As simple as buying sugared almonds if one liked sweets. Or so he made it sound.

“I didn’t know,” she said.

“Of course you didn’t. I hadn’t told you. I don’t usually want people to know, because then they feel awkward.”

“But if you don’t tell them, then you feel awkward.”

“Better me than someone else.”

A low rasp, as if he had slid his palm down the panel. Were there nothing dividing them, where would his hand be? Would it rest upon her hair? On her shoulder? Would he stroke the line of her neck?

Here was yet another reason to like him: for protecting the world from any small awkwardness. For wanting something but choosing not to have it.

She wondered if he wanted her. If he did, would he think of a reason he should choose not to have her?

These were questions she could not answer. She only knew this room was where she wanted to be, and that she wanted him to claim her as no one ever had. She had few choices, but she had retained this one.

“There is one question I didn’t yet answer.” She drew up her legs again and began to unlace her boots. “Why I am here in this room. I heard you ask my family how they could have let me go away from them for so long.”

“Ah.” His own bare foot drew back behind the screen. The small chair creaked as he stood. “Well, that’s the sort of thing a man wonders once he gets to know you. I hope you heard their answer too.”

“I did.” Her wet hair dripped onto the laces as she leaned forward, fumbling with the knots. “The answer was a gift.”

“They would keep you on any terms, even bad ones, rather than lose you completely.”

“And what do you think?” Was he looking over the top of the screen? She tipped her face up and met deep blue eyes.

“I would keep you on any terms too. But it’s not for me to ask.”

She tugged off her boots, one after another, then stood. “You could ask.”

His brows lifted. “May I come around the screen?”

She managed a small nod. “No one has ever—seen me. Bare.”

He stepped around the privacy screen, a bath sheet wrapped about his waist. His chest was broad and strong and unscarred, all flame and shadow from the lamp and the fire. Its hairs were gold. His skin was gold. He was a medal she had never thought to win. “You’ve seen yourself. And anything you have seen, I want to see too.”

His words made her eyes prickle.
This is why I like you
, she thought. “I meant it, Nathaniel. No one has ever seen me as you do. Not even myself.”

“That has always been true.” He tucked the fabric about his waist more tightly, then took her shoulders in gentle hands. “For you see yourself as a secretary above all, and it took me very little time to notice the woman beneath the role.”

He had no idea how much of a role it truly was.
I will not lie to you
, she said. But she did not promise never to leave out the essential.

She swallowed that thought. There was no room here for the past, for worries about Spain in 1805, or whatever Aunt Annie would ask of her next. There was not even room here for the trip to Epsom and the promise of freedom at its end. He chose her now, and she chose him.

She only wondered if he would ever choose her again, or if once would be enough. She already knew it would not suffice for her, not when he looked at her as though she were a wreath of red blooms or a half inch of brandy. A long-wished-for treasure, an essential part of the day.

His hands slid from her shoulders to the cap of one long sleeve. “This is different from your usual sort of gown.”

“I have my own gowns made with buttons up the front, so I can dress myself without a maid’s help. This dress is borrowed.”

“You cannot do the buttons yourself?” His hand was gentle, tracing the line of her collarbone.

She shook her head. “They march down my back.”

“You can’t undo them either, then. Let me help you.”

Still facing her, his hands slipped around her. It was like an embrace, but better, as the tiny circles of horn slipped free from their buttonholes. Beneath his fingers, teasing free each button down to the high waist of the gown, she shivered.

When the bodice parted and loosened, she hesitated. “My right arm…”

“Do you want to tell me about it? Do you want me to touch it?”

“There is nothing to tell that you don’t already know. It was burned, and it healed with scars.” She looked toward the fire, then back at Nathaniel. “There are scars on my right side too. And on my hip and back.”

“Do you want me to see them, or do you want to keep them covered?”

She swallowed. “What do you want?”

“What I don’t want”—he tipped her chin up with one strong finger—“is to be an arse by doing the wrong thing when I think I’m doing the right thing.”

“If you don’t know how to do the right thing in the bedchamber, then we’re in a bit of trouble. Because I’ve never done this before.”

He raised his eyes to heaven, though a plaster-and-timber ceiling was in the way. “I am not referring to the mechanics of the act. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t think you will.”

Finally, she touched him. There was stubble on his chin, rough as other parts of his face were smooth. She explored them all with curious fingers: the hollow behind his jaw, the back of his earlobe, the arch beneath his brow, the crease of his lid. “There are so many places to touch,” she murmured.

“You haven’t found nearly all of them. And neither have I.” He wrapped his arms around her, the loosened bodice bunching in his embrace. “If you were a proper Rosalind, you’d be as high as my heart. But look, you fit so nicely beneath my chin.”

And when she stood on her toes to catch his lips with her own, the fit was nicer still. She kissed him as he slipped her bodice down her arms, letting the gown pool about her waist. In her shift and front-lacing stays, her arms were uncovered. She opened her eyes, prepared to see him staring with disgust.

He wasn’t, though. He was only staring. Not with disgust, but with what instead?

She folded her arms across her breasts. The scars over her right elbow tugged. “Not what you expected?”

“I never know what to expect where you are concerned.” He smiled. “But if you refer to your scars, they saved your life. I can only be grateful to them.”

He took her within his arms again, kissing his way down from her smooth shoulder to the puckered web over her arm.

She felt little on the scarred areas of her body—less heat and cold, and hardly a gentle touch at all. Sometimes she felt her skin was too tight. Sometimes it itched.