Come Near Me (16 page)

She was
awake.

Perhaps if she closed her eyes, and wished it
enough, she could go back to sleep, back to her dream. Back to the
time Adam had loved her, to the time she’d loved him.

Had either of them really loved?
Really?

If she really loved him, she’d forgive him.
If he really loved her, he’d never have believed she could have
betrayed him with Dickie. If they’d been anything other than
foolish dreamers, desperately trying to make their impossibly
romantic paradise last, perhaps they would have had time to know
what love really is.

Now, he was sorry. Now, she couldn’t forgive
him. Couldn’t forgive herself. Couldn’t forgive the dream.

Was it really too late? People who can’t feel
don’t fall asleep crying, wake smiling. People who don’t care
shouldn’t feel a small leap of the heart at the thought that maybe,
just possibly, there was hope. That there had always been hope.

Always been love.

A love based on a dream—even Adam had said
so. A marriage forged by a mutual passion before either of them had
time to think, to reflect, even to learn anything about the other
person except that they were both quite certain they couldn’t exist
without each other.

And now there was to be a child. Her child.
Adam’s child.

Sherry rested her hands on her still-flat
belly, felt a tear slide toward her temple, lose itself in her
hair.

She could still feel.

And it was time for her to grow up. Time for
her to take charge of her life. She was a woman now, no matter that
she had entered this marriage as a silly child. She was soon to be
a mother. There were dreams, and there was real life.

Real life was Geoff in pain. Real life was
hurting, and living, and being true to yourself so that you could
be true to others, most especially to your husband, the man you
loved. Real life was truth.

Real life, Sherry thought, sighing, was also
Emma Oxton, who had just entered the bedchamber, shuffling her
feet, her expression its usual faintly hostile smirk.

It’s past time to wake up, Charlotte
Victor Dagenham, time to grow up. Start small,
Sherry told
herself.
And then build from there.

“Emma?” she said, sitting up in bed, pushing
at the mound of pillows behind her. “I’d like my breakfast now, if
you please. Served to me right here in bed, because I think
that
would please me. In fact, I’d like it served to me in
bed every morning, served at precisely this time. What time is
it?”

“Clock’s on the mantel,” Emma said,
halfheartedly poking at the fire, which she’d nearly allowed to go
out. “Yer goin’ ta make me track all the way back down two sets of
stairs, just ta bring yer breakfast when there’s a whole mess of
breakfast waitin’? Waitin’ in the
breakfast
room. That’s why
they calls it that, I imagine. No, ma’am, I don’t think so. What
put such a hair up yer nose, anyways? Uh-oh. His Lordship weren’t
here last night, were he? Maybe tonight, hmmm?” she ended, winking
in a way that made Sherry feel dirty.

“Emma,” she said, sliding her feet over the
edge of the bed and standing up very straight, looking at the
woman, staring her down. “You’re dismissed.”

The maid nodded, sitting down in one of the
small, upholstered chairs in front of the fireplace. “Good. I
knowed yer’d change yer mind and see the right of goin’ down ta
breakfast.”

Sherry rolled her eyes, wondering just how
distracted she must have been since coming back to London, ever to
have put up with such insolence. “No, Emma, I mean you’re
dismissed. Discharged. Let go, as of this moment. I’ll see that his
lordship’s secretary arranges for a final payment of wages, but
there will be no letter recommending your services to an
unsuspecting world. I’m not that accomplished at fibs. Which is
probably a good thing,” she said, softening just slightly, “as I
really don’t think you were born to be a maid, Emma. You’re very
pretty, too. Perhaps a future treading the boards? Or—or, perhaps
selling things in a milliner’s shop? But, no matter what, you can
no longer work here. Is that understood?”

The maid blanched. “Yer doesn’t mean that,
ma’am. Yer can’t.”

“Oh, Emma, but I do. You’re incompetent,
unwilling to learn, and seem to believe that you’re in charge here.
You’re not. I certainly can blame myself for allowing this
impossible situation to go on for as long as it did, but it can’t
continue any longer. You’re dismissed.”

Emma’s expression lost its fear, filled
itself to the brim with cunning as she stood up, jammed her fists
against her waist. “And that’s it? You’d turn me off with no
character? I’m not
good
enough for the little country baby
turned whore? Oh, why so shocked? You think I didn’t hear about it?
About
Dickie
Brimley tossing up your skirts and your husband
finding you together, playing the beast with two backs while his
only brother lay trapped in a ditch?”

“How dare you!” Sherry’s palms itched to slap
Emma’s face. “Where did you hear such a lie?”

“Servants talk,” Emma told her casually,
picking up Sherry’s new shawl and draping it around her own
shoulders. She picked up a pearl brooch that hadn’t been put away,
pinned the shawl closed at the bodice. “Turn me off,
missy,
and all of London will know. Whose bun do you have slowly baking in
the oven? That’s what they’ll ask. Oh, yes, I know about that, too.
Isn’t it your
maid
who cleans up after your monthly flux—the
flux you haven’t had since I’ve been here? And His Lordship? He
won’t be able to stand for the gossip. Not him. He’s too proud.
Proud as Lucifer. We’ll see who’s ordering who about then, won’t
we—
whore.”

Sherry held on to the bedpost as she sank
unsteadily onto the side of the bed. “Your speech...” she said,
wetting her dry lips with a nervous flick of her tongue. “What—what
happened to your speech?”

Emma stuck a diamond-encrusted comb into her
hair, pocketed more than a few pots from the top of the dressing
table, then turned to Sherry, raising her hands as if in alarm.
“Lawks! Criminy! Wot happened ta the maid’s speech?” She walked
over to Sherry and bent down, going nearly nose-to-nose with her.
“Look at those eyes, would you? Innocent enough to turn a person’s
stomach. So sweet, so damned pure. So bloody stupid! But you won’t
get me into trouble with him, can tell you that, whore. I’m here,
and I’m staying, or else the babe’s branded a bastard, I promise
you. Bah!” she said, stepping back. “I don’t know what he sees in
you. I truly, truly, don’t. This should have been over months ago.
But he keeps dragging it out, dragging it out. And for what? For
you?”

As Emma turned to leave, Sherry grabbed onto
her wrist, held her fast. “What are you talking about, Emma?
Who
are you talking about? Someone put you in this
household, didn’t they, made certain you’d be put in this
household? Was it Dickie? Was it Richard Brimley? Dear God, it has
to have been Dickie.
Why?
To watch me? To watch my husband?
Geoff? It’s another game, isn’t it? Another terrible game. Where is
he, Emma? What is he trying to do? I want to talk to him. I
have
to talk to him.”

“Let... me... go,” Emma ordered slowly, her
face a mask of cold fury, each word she uttered even colder,
harder. Her eyes seemed to glow, her gaze was so hot in that cold
face, so intensely hot. “There’s a smart girl. Now why don’t you
get yourself dressed, big girl that you are, and go eat some
breakfast. I’ll be taking a small nap in my room.
Ma’am,”
she said as Sherry released her, then watched as the maid—no, never
the maid—slowly walked out of the room.

Sherry pressed shaking hands to her mouth.
She’d awakened from a dream this morning and entered into a
nightmare. Richard Brimley was back in her life.

~ ~ ~

“What have you there, Geoff?” Adam asked his
brother as he walked into the drawing room, thinking about a
snifter of brandy, although he’d settle for a single glass of
wine.

“A puzzle,” Geoff said, holding up a wooden
sphere that seemed to be constructed out of more than two dozen
small, variously shaped wooden pieces. “Edmund sent it round. I’m
to take it apart, then try to put it back together again, so that
it looks the same as it does now. Edmund’s note informs me that it
is possible, but not probable. I’m deciding whether I want to try
it, or simply tell Edmund I took the dratted thing apart and had it
all back together in five minutes flat.”

Adam took a sip of wine, then placed the
glass on a table, relieving Geoff of the sphere, hefting its weight
in his hand. “He’d only ask you to do it again, in front of him. Or
hadn’t you thought of that?”

Geoff’s mischievous smile was infectious,
always had been. So Adam smiled, too.

“Oh, I see,” Adam said, handing the sphere
back to his brother. “I’m to be your witness, aren’t I? Clever,
Geoff. Very clever. I won’t do it.”

“No, I rather thought you wouldn’t. And
asking Sherry would be a pure waste of breath. Never met a person
less suited to fibbing, even in a good cause.”

Adam’s mood, not really good when he’d come
into the room, sank a notch. “If you’d thought of that before you
asked her to lie for you, we might be in better shape now. All of
us.”

Geoff began dismantling the sphere, pulling
out different pieces of wood, each a unique shape, and laying them
in his lap. “I was going to run that race, Adam. That day or the
next, wet roads or dry. I’d become obsessed with those races. So
were you, for a time.”

“I was running a different sort of race,”
Adam said quietly, picking up his wineglass again, taking another
sip of the pale liquid. “I lost, by the way, even as I won,” he
ended, lobbing the wineglass into the fireplace with only
halfhearted force, watching as it shattered against the
andirons.

“Sherry never loved Brimley, Adam. She was
fascinated, I’ll grant you. So was I. So were you. It was a crazy
few weeks. Heady. Exciting. Stupid.”

Adam sat down, knowing Geoff hated looking up
at everyone. “Where do you suppose he went? I even hired a Bow
Street Runner, but to no avail. It’s like he dropped off the edge
of the earth.”

“Earth’s round, brother, like this sphere,”
Geoff said, then grimaced at the pieces in his lap. “Perhaps not
this sphere. Not now, anyway. But I know what you mean. He was
there, and then he was gone. Poof!”

“Leaving you in a ditch as he pawed my wife,”
Adam bit out, knowing that even now, months later, he could choke
Richard Brimley to death without a thought to the consequences.
“I’ll never forgive him.”

“Yes, he may have sensed that,” Geoff said,
holding up two of the pieces, one shaped like a house with a curved
roof, the other in the image of a dog. “For a while there, I
thought you were going to murder me. Did I tell you I can stand
now?”

Adam was immediately shaken out of his bad
humor. “You can what? Geoff—why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just did, brother mine. I think this new
man you’ve set on me has discovered my problem. It’s my pelvis, you
see. I looked it up in one of your books. Quite a big bone, Adam,
and fairly important, as it turns out. I broke it. Probably into
more than two pieces. Knocked those pieces around a bit. Best thing
I could have done, it turns out, was lying down and staying down.
But the bone is healing now, and I can stand again, with a little
help. Just don’t ask me to walk. Not yet.”

“When?” Adam asked, staring at his brother
with an intensity of purpose that should have had the younger man
on his feet and skipping around the room.

“When?” Geoff repeated, smiling. “When I can
stand the pain—stand the pain—less than I can content myself in
this chair, I suppose. He’s bringing me canes today, as a matter of
fact. Two of them, one for each hand. God, Adam, you’re not
weeping, are you? I told Sherry this morning, and she all but
ruined my new jacket with her tears. Maudlin bunch, you are, when
I’m handing out good news. We always knew I’d walk again someday.
Or at least hoped it.”

Adam brushed at his cheeks with the back of
one hand. He felt hope again. Such intense, nearly overwhelming
hope. “We’re going to get it back, Geoff. Everything we lost. We’re
going to get it back. It’s going to be like it was before—for you,
for Sherry, for all of us. I can feel it.”

Geoff shook his head sadly. “No, Adam. We’re
never going to get it all back to the way it was. I wouldn’t want
to, would you? It was too good, too perfect to last, to be real.
Like a dream. Very unlike this sphere. Look at the pieces, Adam. A
tree, a small bust of Shakespeare or some dead poet—and I think
this one is a cat. Yes, a cat, licking its paw, although part of
its back is obviously also the outside of the sphere. They’re
amazing pieces. They’re real. I can hold the pieces in my hand,
enjoy each cleverly shaped one, even if I can never get them back
together again to the same perfect way they were before I took the
sphere apart, examined it, held the pieces in my hands. Lord,
that’s profound, especially for me. But perfection doesn’t exist,
Adam.”

“It did. I thought it did. I wanted to
believe in it, believe in the dream,” Adam said quietly, almost to
himself. He looked at Geoff. “How did you get so wise, little
brother?”

Geoff smiled. “Lie in a bed staring at the
ceiling for a month, brother, then sit in a chair for another.
Gives a person more than enough time for thinking deep thoughts.
But that’s enough for now, as I refuse to be maudlin today. Did I
tell you I’m going to Lady Winston’s masked ball with Edmund and
Sherry? Outmoded, costume parties, but there’s little enough
amusement in the Small Season, so it might be fun. You won’t
believe the costume Edmund had sent over along with his little
puzzle. It’s the most clever contraption. I’m to go as the throne
of England. All gold and gilt, with my head sticking out as part of
the decoration. Clever, yes? As long as no one decides to sit in
me.”