Come Near Me (3 page)

She sighed audibly, remembering the day she
had been sitting beside the stream, worrying about her failings as
the wife of a marquess. It had been then that she’d met Richard
Brimley, brought the man into all of their lives....

“Well, that sounded heartfelt,” Geoff said,
touching Sherry’s hands as they lay loosely curled in her lap.
“Have you changed your mind, sweetheart? Perhaps I have, too. The
park is well enough from this vantage point, but I admit to
dreading the moment our sturdy coachman stops the carriage and the
footman lifts me down into my chair. Strange. I used to rather
enjoy making a cake of myself.”

Sherry shoved her unhappiness quickly to the
back of her mind and turned her brightest smile on Geoff. “Oh, but
only think what would happen if Biggs were to drop you?
Plop!
A Daventry on the drive! Why, I imagine I would be
crushed in the stampede of young ladies rushing to your rescue.
Should I whisper a hint in his ear, do you think?”

“We’d better not. I don’t flirt half so well
on my arse, sweetheart,” Geoff said, but he was smiling now, so
that Sherry relaxed. “Still, I don’t think I’ll ask to stop, and
have my chair put out, if you don’t mind. We’ll just keep riding,
and I’ll sniff up the fresh air as you’ve told me I should, and
I’ll tip my hat to the ladies. Much better than tipping my—”

“You’ve said the word once, Geoff, and that’s
quite enough,” she told him, wagging a finger in his face. “And
Adam says I have corrupted you? Ah, he should eavesdrop on our
conversations, shouldn’t he?”

“Better yet, he should be dropped on
his—”

“Geoff...” Sherry warned.

“Head, Sherry. I was about to say he should
be dropped on his head. Maybe it would shake some sense into his
brains. To watch him with you,
listen
to him with you—well,
I never thought my brother could be so stupid. Thick, that’s what
he is. Thick as a plank.”

Sherry began pleating the long ribbon of her
pelisse. “He did find us together, Geoff,” she reminded him,
wishing her eyes wouldn’t sting so with sudden tears, tears she
refused to allow permission to fall. “If only I could push time
back, have it all to do over again.”

Geoff playfully pinched at her cheek. “What?
You mean you can’t do that, sweetheart? Well, I’m crushed. I
thought you could do anything. Which is why I haven’t yet wielded
the drawing-room poker on my brother’s thick, stubborn head. He’ll
come around, Sherry. He blames you because he can’t blame himself,
or me, seeing as how I’m stuck in that damnable chair for the
moment.”

“Because of me.”

“Because of
me,
sweetheart. You begged
me not to attempt that last race, told me the course was dangerous
in the rain. I must have been insane. We both know Dickie goaded me
into it, fool that I was.”

“Adam thinks I goaded you into it. He thinks
that, after promising him I wouldn’t have anything more to do
with... with the races, that I’d handed you my favor and sent you
out to be crippled, perhaps die.”

“You can say his name, sweetheart,” Geoff
prodded as the carriage slowed to a stop. “The races were
secondary. You promised Adam you wouldn’t have anything more to do
with Richard Brimley. Dear, deceitful, dangerous Dickie. He
certainly did a quick flit, didn’t he? I wonder where he’s
gone.”

Sherry’s jaw tightened. “To hell, I hope.”
She lifted her head, realizing that the carriage had stopped, and
saw that Lady Gytha Jagger’s equipage had come abreast of theirs.
Even now her ladyship was all but bouncing herself across the width
of the seat, bringing herself close enough for conversation below a
bellow. “Why, Lady J,” Sherry said, pushing her dark thoughts away
in order to be polite to the old woman, “how good to see you this
afternoon. You’re looking well.”

The old woman sniffed, her hatchet nose
puncturing the air. “Liar. I look wretched and have always done.
Wasn’t even pretty as a gel, you know. Passable, I suppose, but
never pretty. Never like you, my dear. So, you’ll come to dinner
this evening? You and that mad, brooding husband of yours? You,
too, Lord Dagenham. You don’t brood, and I like that. My nephew is
in town, you see, and he and Daventry have struck up a
friendship.”

Sherry frowned, trying to remember the name
Adam had flung at her, twice, in the midst of his usual insults.
“Mr. Burnell?” she asked hopefully.

“Precisely! Dear, dear Edmund. He was much
taken with you last night, m’dear, not that he got to say two words
to you. But he and Daventry got on famously, I believe. At least
Edmund remarked this morning that he’d be more than delighted if I
were to have you all to dinner this evening. You’ll come, won’t
you?”

“Geoff?” Sherry asked as she looked at her
brother-in-law, knowing he had so far refused any invitations to
socialize. “Adam said I could pick any entertainment I wanted for
this evening, remember? It would be good for you to be out and
about again. And it would be a small party.” She turned to Lady
Jagger. “It would be a small party, wouldn’t it?”

“Infinitesimal, my dears,” Her Ladyship said
sprightly.

Sherry bit her lip, looking hopefully to
Geoff once more. It would be so good for him to enter society
again, concentrate on something other than his injury and her
sinking relationship with her husband.

“My goodness, Sherry, you look as if you
literally want to
pull
my agreement out of me.” He shrugged
eloquently. “Oh, why not, sweetheart,” he said, looking to Lady
Jagger. “We’d be delighted, ma’am. Tell me—do I bring my own
carriers, or are your footmen brawny enough to hoist me up your
stairs?”

~ ~ ~

Adam was faintly surprised by the decor of
the room Edmund Burnell led him to after dinner, then remembered
that once, long ago, Lady J had been married. Strange, though, as
the man had been underground and unlamented these twenty years,
that she hadn’t done the study over in some more feminine
fashion.

Or at least opened the windows and let in
some fresh air.

The room was oppressively dark. Dark
paneling, dark drapes, dark wood. A large room, made small by the
dark but never cozy; a high-ceilinged room, whose top disappeared
beyond the candlelight, the glow of the fire.

He recognized the mantelpiece as being one
designed by Sir William Chambers. It had been carved in a single
huge piece of black marble that included matching four-foot-high
female figures partially released from the stone, their attire
rather scanty, although their hands seemed to be drawn into an
attitude of prayer.

Carpets the shade of clotted blood matched
the blood-red velvet draperies, their oriental design added to only
with vague designs picked out in black and gold.

The chair Adam sat in, however, was
completely comfortable. Chippendale had been at the top of his form
with chairs, he knew, and this one was no exception, even if its
Chinese style did not appeal.

Edmund Burnell sat in the chair’s mate,
warming a brandy snifter between his hands and smiling, rather
enigmatically, at Adam.

“You’re waiting for my reaction, I imagine?”
Adam said, indicating the room with a languid wave of his right
hand, his left fully occupied with its own snifter of dark amber
liquid.

“Breathlessly,” Edmund admitted on a smile.
His golden hair shone in the candlelight, his blue eyes danced in
obvious amusement. “Damned dreadful, ain’t it?”

“The hangman’s retreat,” Adam concurred
brightly. “Machiavelli’s inner sanctum. Nero’s music room.”

“The devil’s den?”

“Yes,” Adam said, taking a sip of brandy.
“That, too. Are you sure Lady J didn’t have her husband stuffed and
mounted in one of the corners? It’s so dark in here, anything’s
possible. Oh,” he added a moment later, “that was tactless. I know
you address Lady J as your aunt, but whether it is by marriage or
you’re truly her nephew—well, either way, I believe I’ve just
insulted your family. Forgive me.”

“No harm done, I assure you,” Edmund
answered, sitting back more comfortably, crossing one leg over the
other. “As happenstance would have it, Lady J is mine. I’m afraid I
never met His Lordship. Was he badly oppressed, do you think?”

“Hounded straight into the grave, I’d
imagine,” Adam said, and the two laughed, then settled themselves
again, staring into the fire.

It was comfortable, sitting there with
Edmund, a man who was an interesting conversationalist but also
knew when a comfortable silence was preferred.

Adam and Edmund had spent a most enjoyable
afternoon together, talking of deep things, speaking of nonsense.
They seemed to share every interest, every opinion. With most of
his friends not in town for the Small Season, Adam had been
grateful to have met such a kindred spirit, felt himself lucky to
find a friend to lighten his mood, lighten his days.

Edmund had delighted the ladies all through
dinner and had thoroughly charmed Geoff, speaking of his travels,
the sights he’d seen, some of the outrageous characters he’d met.
It was nice to see Geoff smile, to watch him partake in society
again, even in this limited way.

Everything would be even more pleasant if
there had never been a Richard Brimley. Because Adam really liked
Edmund Burnell. A few months ago, he would have trusted the man,
trusted his own judgment.

“It’s a pity your brother had to retire,
Daventry,” Edmund said, as if knowing Adam had been thinking about
Geoff. “Do his legs pain him?”

Adam frowned as he remembered carrying Geoff
down to the carriage, hearing the echo of his brother’s sharp
rebuff as he had attempted to insist he and Sherry also return to
Grosvenor Square. “No—at least he never complains. Although
tonight’s dinner is the first time he’d been, well, out and about
since the accident. It may have been too much for him. And it’s a
problem with his hip, not his legs, although the result is the
same, as he can’t walk until his injuries heal.”

Edmund nodded, then rose to fetch the
decanter from the small table he’d set before the fire to warm its
contents. Refilling Adam’s snifter, he sat down once more, steepled
his fingers, and asked, “It was a fall from a horse, I
understand?”

Adam felt the tic begin its work beside his
eye and drank deep from the snifter before answering. “No. A
curricle accident,” he said as coolly as he could. “A stupid
accident, as are most, I suppose. An idiotic challenge, a wet
course, a splintered wheel—a ditch.”

He looked into the fire, seeing Geoff’s body
crumpled, broken, pinned beneath the overturned curricle. The
vision shook him, sickened him, so that he took another deep drink
of brandy.

“There was also the obligatory storm that
blows up whenever a loved one hasn’t returned home and one must so
out searching for him. It took hours to find Geoff. The longest of
my life.”

His eyes darkened at another memory, a memory
even worse than that of his brother lying unconscious in the mud.
It knocked at the doors of his mind, begging to come in, sit down,
laugh at him. “Hours,” he repeated, shaking himself back from the
brink of that other memory. “He nearly drowned in that damnable
ditch.”

“I’m sorry if this conversation hurts you,
Daventry, and I can see that it does. But I must ask you. Your
brother is such a likable fellow. From what you’ve said, he will
walk again, won’t he?”

The brandy was warming Adam, soothing him,
yet burning deep in his belly. “If there’s a God, yes.”

“Oh, there’s a God, Daventry,” Edmund told
him, his smile one of almost indulgent amusement. “Most assuredly.
A God. A Heaven. A Hell.”

“And a purgatory, Burnell?” Adam asked as
some of his own good humor returned. He began to relax, became
determined to enjoy himself in Edmund Burnell’s company. “Does that
exist as well?”

Burnell spread both his arms, his grin
lighthearted, mischievous. “A purgatory? We’re
surrounded
by
it, Daventry. Most especially in this room, wouldn’t you say? I’m
particularly fond of that hideous, grinning gargoyle hanging atop
the mirror behind you. If that vision alone isn’t enough to make us
suffer for and repent of our sins, I don’t know what is. Now, let’s
speak of more pleasant things. Tell me how you met your lovely
wife, that dear, delightful creature who is no doubt even now
yawning into her hand and wishing the pair of us back in the
drawing room. My aunt blatantly cheats at whist, you
understand.”

“Sherry?” Adam closed his eyes a moment, yet
another vision crowding into his brain. How well he could see. Step
back, review the past. See her, hear her, smell her, taste her. It
was the brandy, of course. Tonight it seemed to heighten all of his
senses. He employed it to dull his mind, and, for the most part, it
did its job well. But not tonight. Tonight, when the past crashed
into his skull with such clarity everything and everyone else
disappeared.

How strange. How wonderful. How sad.

The room he sat in was forgotten. Edmund
Burnell was forgotten.

“How we met?” Adam kept his eyes closed, his
hands wrapped around the snifter, the memories drawing closer,
clearer. “We met by accident. Literally by accident,” he began,
speaking softly, almost to himself, allowing the memories nearer,
allowing them in....

Before...

O tender yearning, sweet hoping!

The golden time of first love!

—
Johann von
Schiller

I
t was one of those rare,
golden, early-spring days, an afternoon of sunlight following a
morning of sweet, gentle rain. Tender green leaves glistened damply
as sunbeams danced over them. Freshly scythed grass perfumed the
air.

Bees droned lazily overhead as Adam Dagenham,
Marquess of Daventry, walked the hills near Daventry Court, his
white shirtsleeves billowing in the breeze, his high, tight leather
boots protecting him now, as he picked his way across a bubbling
stream, agilely hopping from flat stone to flat stone.