David Lord of Honor (The Lonely Lords) (26 page)

Loving
her.
Letty weathered that blow as best she could, cradled in his arms, his body sheltering hers, even as her heart went howling into an internal wilderness.

“And why would it be such a bad thing to change a bit, to adjust, or grow?”

He kissed her nose, probably to make sure she wasn’t crying. “You hoist me on my own petard, Letty, for I see now that when one changes, even for the better, one loses something of one’s old self, doesn’t one? You tried to make this point with me some time ago, I think.”

Letty snuggled the covers up around them, even as David slipped away in some sense that had nothing to do with the physical. “What part of yourself do you think you will lose?”

David extricated himself from her embrace and from her bed, firelight gilding him as he tossed away the sheath and tended to his ablutions. The dimensions he sported confirmed that he had not spent inside her, which Letty took for a consideration toward her, and a form of self-torment for him.

“You do trust me,” David said, climbing back into the bed and wrapping his arms around her.

Which in no way answered her question. “I do. In this bed, at least. I trust you more than I trust any other person, you may depend on that.”

He lay back, hands laced behind his head, not touching her because, Letty knew, he had his own issues with trust. “You don’t trust me enough.”

She thought he’d leave the conversation there, on that sad, if honest, note, but David wasn’t finished.

“The part of me I am afraid to lose,” he said quietly, “is the part that believes affection between paramours is quite sufficient, and any further degree of entanglement purely a bother. That part of me is a sensible fellow, and he’s spared me much heartache.”

And that part of him was still trying to make him think he could happily own a brothel.

Letty tucked herself against his side and rested her knee on his hairy, muscular thigh. She remained cuddled next to him, listening to his heart beat, until sleep tugged at her.

“I love you, you know,” she murmured long, quiet minutes later. He made no response, assuring her, as his steady heartbeat had, that her words would be held safely in the darkness while her lover slept.

Eleven

“Little Weldon is a bucolic little backwater,” Valentine Windham reported as Fairly handed him a healthy tot of whiskey. “And the handsome vicar appears to be a saint among men. He was, however, the previous curate, so I’m thinking he’s your man—or Letty’s man.”

“Describe him.”

Val lounged back in a comfortable chair near the hearth, thinking the viscount looked decidedly short of sleep.

“Vicar Daniel is about our height, perhaps three-and-thirty years of age,” Val said, trying to recall details. “He is well favored, dark-haired, and obviously a gentleman, but his study is that of a scholar as well. He rides a horse Greymoor would enjoy—a big, handsome, athletic beast with a wide streak of mischief—and he has the most extraordinary brown eyes.”

Fairly looked up from his desk and stopped trying to fit together some pieces of shattered porcelain. “Extraordinary
how
?”

Valentine searched for more words, frustrated by an inability to choose accurate terms when describing another man. A gentle lilting tune in A minor came to mind instead, one with a sturdy baritone accompaniment.

“The vicar’s eyes are kind,” Val said, “or more accurately, compassionate. Kind and understanding together. He’s not a fool, but he doesn’t judge, either. I gather his predecessor was an old dragon, and Daniel’s more humane approach to scripture is much appreciated. The ladies would be cramming into the pews for the pleasure of observing him; the men would like him because he’s unpretentious and without airs.”

“
You
liked him,” Fairly accused, frowning at a small pair of snowy porcelain wings.

“Very much,” Val admitted. “I was prepared not to. I wanted not to, in fact.”

Fairly hadn’t touched his drink, and peered around the confines of a roomy library the way a cit peered around in an art gallery—as if he’d never seen his own books before, never seen a hothouse rose gracing an end table. “What changed your mind about the vicar?”

“That’s hard to put a finger on. He apologized for his own untidy study; he suggested that being a vicar’s wife is hard on a woman. He rode that damned horse as if it was
fun
, and when I wanted to accuse him of flirting with a lovely widow, all I could observe on his part was simple concern for the woman. I could not find one iota of evidence upon which to suspect he’s a seducer of innocents.”

Fairly set the wings down on a handkerchief amid what looked like the remains of a shepherdess or an angel, and crossed to the fireplace, brandishing the iron poker like some household halberd. “Seducers are invariably charming and disarming. Did anybody mention Letty?”

“No one. I made a few comments that should have provoked mention, at least of the old vicar’s family, when I had my dinner in the common of the local watering hole. I might have caught a few raised eyebrows, an odd glance between the neighbors, nothing of substance. No one had anything to say along those lines but what a good fellow the current man is. Nauseating, really.”

“You took three days to determine essentially nothing?”

Determining that Oxfordshire had more than its fair share of pretty widows was not
nothing
.

“The widow suggested the vicar and his missus are disappointed not to have more children, and that their union is not blissful. What union is?”

“Damned if I know,” Fairly muttered, surrendering his poker to the hearth stand. “Certainly not my parents’, and from what I can gather, not Letty’s parents’ either.”

While Valentine’s parents still flirted after thirty years of marriage. On that baffling thought, Val rose. “If you’ve no further questions for me, I’m off to seek my bed, a hot bath, and some victuals.”

“Stay here tonight,” Fairly suggested. “It’s pouring out there, dark as pitch, and your horse has gone far enough. I keep the first bedroom on the right prepared for guests, because my brothers-in-law will occasionally avail themselves of my hospitality when they’re in Town unaccompanied.”

“Obliged,” Val said, sitting back down and tugging at his right boot. “And this potation, if I do say so myself, is superior even to what you serve at The Pleasure House.”

“It’s superior to what Prinny serves himself.” And Fairly would know exactly what the regent served his guests. “This is from Heathgate’s distillery, his personal reserve. God knows how old it is. He sends over enough to keep on my good side.”

“How fare the marchioness and the countess?” Val asked as he wrestled with his second boot.

“My sisters enjoy good, if gravid, health. I’m more concerned about Amery’s viscountess.”

Val looked up, surprised. He’d met the present Lady Amery when Moreland had taken a notion to meddle in the woman’s affairs. “Guinevere strikes me as an Amazon, one of those frighteningly competent women who could hurl thunderbolts with deadly accuracy and so forth.”

“She can,” Fairly said, and his expression suggested he heartily approved of her ladyship as a result. “But consider the prospect of, say, passing something the size of a melon from your body, and see how sanguine you become.”

“I’ve considered how much Her Grace must love His Grace,” Val replied, staring at his muddy boots. “She bore him eight melons, and none of us are petite, save little Eve, who arrived several weeks early.”

Fatigue was making him daft. Or perhaps the memory of a pretty widow had something to do with a sudden, baffling sense of envy regarding the Duke and Duchess of Moreland’s marriage.

“Did you happen to visit the cemetery?” Fairly asked, resuming his seat and recommencing his fiddling with the shards of porcelain.

“You are like a dog with a bone.” Or like a man besotted for the first time in his life. “The late Vicar Banks and his wife, Elizabeth, are interred, side by side. No other Banks there, and I read every legible headstone.”

And he hadn’t seen any sign of the widow’s late spouse gracing the churchyard either.

“So we really don’t know much more than we did,” Fairly said. “My thanks anyway. Sometimes the failed experiment tells you more than the one that simply confirms your hunches.”

Failed? Three days in the saddle, three days without a decent piano, and one stolen kiss in an overgrown wood to compensate for that lack?

The experiment, as Fairly called it, was not a failure, not for Lord Valentine. He’d be going back to Little Weldon, perhaps as a local landowner, or simply to see the lovely widow again, and sit sipping lemonade on her back porch. He took that pleasant thought up to bed with him, and dreamed in the happy, pastoral key of F major.

***

With rain drenching the morning in gray torrents, Letty went back to her private quarters, a cup of chocolate in hand.

“I love you, you know,” she told the cup.

She’d said those words a week ago to David, who had been scarce in the intervening days—and nights—suggesting Letty’s declaration had not fallen on sleeping ears. Whether he’d heard her words waking or sleeping made no difference, because in making the admission to herself, Letty had allowed some emotional safeguard, some self-discipline, to lapse.

As a result, the prospect of seeing him again had acquired another level of anxiety and another level of desperation.

Voices raised in anger, coming from the kitchen, interrupted her introspection—Etienne and Musette, having another one of their rousing Gallic differences of opinion. Half the time, the matter at issue was no more important than whether lavender was an herb or a flower, so Letty tried not to get involved. They had never escalated into violence—though some pots had been hurled in anger—and if Musette wanted to offer her favors on her own time, that was her business.

A soft knock had Letty rising from the bed, her chocolate unconsumed.

“Good morning, Letty.” Not “Letty-love,” not “my dear.” David looked as tired and worried as Letty had ever seen him.

“Come in,” she said, stepping back. “I hope you brought the coach, David Worthington. You do not need to be out in weather such as this.”

He’d shed his greatcoat in the office-sitting room, though his hair and cravat were damp. Before she could scold further, David wrapped her in his arms and held her fast. He’d always exercised a kind of restraint with her, never using his full strength to hold her. He used that strength now, embracing her so desperately it seemed he was trying to seal her body to his.

“What is it? David. Tell me.”

“Gwen’s baby. The child is coming a few weeks early, and her fancy London physician, whom I personally recommended, won’t attend her. It’s two hours on horseback out to Surrey, and I’ve every suspicion he simply doesn’t want to come out in this rain and mud, though his note pleads another urgent case.”

“You have to go.” Letty kissed his cold cheek. “Lord Amery is your dearest friend, and from everything you’ve said, his wife is his world. He’s lost too much already to lose his wife and child to a damned rainstorm.”

Particularly when David would hold himself responsible for any harm befalling Lady Amery or her baby.

“I’ve made the vicar’s daughter curse, for which I apologize. Will you come with me?” He put his question to Letty’s temple, which she suspected was a way to hide his face from her view. “My sisters are both quite pregnant, and I can’t ask it of them. Gwen has nobody else, nobody she’s close to. It’s a messy business, Letty, but not something to leave to servants, and there’s no midwife in the area worth the name.”

When had David asked her for something substantial? When had he truly needed her for anything?

“I’ll come. Of course, I’ll come.” How many lying-ins had she attended with her mother? Usually, she’d remained in the parlor or the kitchen, making sure the family functioned despite what transpired in the birthing room. Occasionally, with the poorer families, only Letty and her mother had attended, and once—

“Bring a change of clothes,” David said. “The birth could take that long.”

Letty took a precious twenty minutes getting dressed, packing a bag, gathering up some supplies, and giving orders to Watkins. At the last minute, she suggested David send a note around to Lord Valentine, asking him to discreetly oversee the parlors for the next few evenings.

Then they were in a well-sprung, luxuriously appointed traveling coach, speeding through the muddy streets.

“Why did you come?” David asked when they’d left the worst of the London streets behind them.

Because
you
asked
me
to.
“Growing up at the vicarage, I learned that some things transcend our petty vanities. Death will bring together family members who’ve been squabbling for years, and sometimes, they finally do apologize and find some peace. When a baby is on the way, all that matters is that the baby and mother come safely through the travail. Once that has been accomplished, I can be a fallen woman again, you can be a nabob, brothel-owning viscount, and Amery can be a prosperous member of titled society. Until that happens, however, we will be focused on a shared objective, to the exclusion of all else.”

David took her hand in his, his grip blessedly warm. They’d been in such a hurry, neither was sporting gloves, and Letty was glad for it.