Hadrian (38 page)

“I don’t think so.” Hadrian could give her this much and hope she was willing to aid him in exchange. “Lady Avis and Lady Alex have enjoined their brothers from further vengeance. If Benjamin and Wilhelm have abided by their sisters’ wishes all these years, only substantial provocation will deter them from that course now.”

“Substantial provocation.” She grimaced delicately, a woman who’d once been pretty, but whom care had rendered faded and fatigued. “That is my son, substantial provocation personified. You needn’t spare me, Mr. Bothwell. Better than anyone, I know what Hartley is capable of.”

Her sadness might be mostly for the execrable excuse for a man who was her son, but she was sensible enough to be sad for herself as well.

“I’m sorry.” The words were out, from the long habit of a man who’d made his living dealing in sympathy and social conventions.

“I do not believe a single person has expressed to me that particular condolence.” She picked up her tea cup and paused before taking a sip. “Lady Avis will thrive in your care.”

Thus were Hadrian’s condolences neatly tucked aside.

“
If
Lady Avis marries me. This is not a foregone conclusion.”

The baroness rose, and Hadrian was struck again by the woman’s inherent grace. How had the late baron merited the hand of such a lady, and how had she endured her marriage, if what Gran had said was true?

“What can I do to help, sir?” She faced him, arms crossed. “I called on Lady Avis after Hart used her so ill, offered her what consequence I had, but my visit seemed only to upset her and then she was off to her aunt’s in the north. Harold’s advice was to let sleeping dogs lie. Lady Avis seemed to be doing better, but then Lady Alex left up her majority, and matters have been difficult ever since.”

“What does that mean?”

Lady Collins let her arms drop to her sides, the gesture calling attention to a complete lack of ornamentation about her attire. Not a watch pinned to her bodice, not a bracelet, not a ring.

Could any woman draw close to Hart Collins without suffering his rapaciousness?

“Lady Avis had put the incident behind her, or appeared to,” the baroness said. “When she came home from the north, she attended services, guided her brother’s domestic staff, and rode about the neighborhood, the same as any young lady of the manor might.”

The incident
. Hadrian wanted to up-end the tea service all over the faded Axminster carpet. “That changed?”

“After Lady Alexandra decamped, Lady Avis disappeared. I honestly see more of Lily Prentiss than I do Avis Portmaine.”

“Lily calls on you?”

Lady Collins ran her hand over a cherry wood sideboard that sported not a single decanter, though a long scratch marred its surface.

“Miss Prentiss calls on my abigail. They have the same half-day, and the help can be more bound by convention than the titles, you know? Lily works for an earl’s daughter, Tansy is employed by a baroness who is also an earl’s daughter, albeit one aging in obscurity, so they must associate with each other rather than with the chambermaids.”

“Working for the church, one grasped the hierarchies.” Particularly a rural northern church, far from the plethora of titles sporting around in the south.

“I was surprised you chose the church.” She resumed her place on the settee and poured another round of infernal damned tea. “Harold was relieved, though, and said as much.”

“I am his heir. The military would not have been a prudent choice.”

She peered into her tea cup, which sported a chip near the handle. “I thought you’d marry Lady Avis, all those years ago.”

Some of Hadrian’s ire dissipated, though he left his tea cooling on the tray.

“So did I.” They shared a smile, two people at whom life had thrown unplanned challenges.

“Why are you really here, Mr. Bothwell? I appreciate the niceties, but if you’ve a point to your visit, you’d best get to it, for I won’t be calling upon you.”

To business, then.

“I am investigating what happened all those years ago between your son and Lady Avis. I’ve reason to think somebody is perpetuating awareness of that sad day, and doing so in a manner that casts Lady Avis in as poor a light as possible.”

“My nephew once suggested the same thing.”

“Your nephew?”

She apparently found that chipped blue tea cup fascinating. “He doesn’t bruit it about. Ashton Fenwick is my late brother’s child. He turned up here years ago, and while he avoids me now, he does keep an eye on his cousin, Sara Bennett, who is my younger sister’s child.”

Hadrian’s meager serving of tea abruptly sat uneasily in his belly. “Fenwick never said a word about his connection to you.” In twelve years, Fenwick had never said a word, not to Harold, and Hadrian would bet, not to Avis.

“Would you, in his place?” She glanced to the window, where some small bird thumped and fluttered against the glass, as if sunshine and nectar had rendered it drunk and blind.

While Hadrian silently reeled.

Fenwick was Collins’s
cousin
? A blood relation to the man who’d all but raped Avie? “What reason would Fenwick have for remaining silent about his relationship to you?”

“His antecedents are unfortunate,” she said. “I acknowledge Ashton openly, but what can association do for either of us? Ashton could easily have been tarred with Hartley’s brush, and my late husband never did a thing for my nephew beyond basic hospitality. Then too, Hart delighted in tormenting Ashton when they were younger.”

“They associated?”

And God above, what would this knowledge do to Avis’s fragile sense of safety?

The lady set her tea down untasted.

“They associated occasionally, as boys. Common he might be, but Ashton is more a gentleman than my son will ever be. Ashton traveled immediately after university, but then showed up in the area again some years ago.”

“This leads me to my next question.” Hadrian rose, though it was rude. The frantic bird would soon come to harm if nobody dissuaded it from attempting to fly through a pane it could not comprehend.

“Ask.”

Hadrian opened the window—that was all it took—and the bird came to light on a bush several feet away. “Who was with Collins the day he assaulted Avis?”

“You’ll file charges at this late hour?”

Charges were not out of the question, for premeditation in this case had involved accessories before the fact, a conspiracy even.

“I’d rather not, for her ladyship’s sake,” Hadrian answered honestly. “I want to deduce where the ill will and gossip regarding my intended are coming from, and put a stop to it.”

“Fair enough, but other than a William Asterman, the son of an old friend, I’m not sure who was with Hart that day. Not all of his guests were party to that particular outing. He was forever bringing crowds of young fellows home with him when he was between terms or sent down. I put them in a guest wing, kept the maids out of sight, and made sure the firearms were locked up. Even his father grew impatient with his impromptu house parties. They were expensive in many regards.”

“Where can I find this Asterman?”

“He was killed on the Peninsula. I will ask Tansy who else was about. She has the recall of an elephant and was in my employ at the time.”

“I would appreciate it.”

Hadrian offered the required parting platitudes, though h was frustrated with what he’d learned, and what he hadn’t. He paused when Lady Collins had escorted him to the front door.

“If the baron intends to come north, will you tell me, my lady?”

“I hope Hart has learned a little discretion in twelve years. But yes, if he deigns to inform me he’s coming this way, I will make sure you know. Lady Avis is owed that much, at least.”

He wanted to leave, but common decency required that he ask one more question. “You’ll be all right?”

She fell silent as a footman handed Hadrian his hat and gloves, then she took Hadrian’s arm and walked out onto the front steps with him.

“You were raised without mother, sisters, or female relations of any kind. How is it you are such a gentleman?”

And how had her son turned out to be such a grease stain on the family escutcheon?

“Harold raised me to be what I am. You didn’t answer my earlier question.”

“I love my son, but I see his faults, Mr. Bothwell. If he sends word he’s traveling north, I will give every maid under the age of forty leave, and remain with my relatives in Scotland until Hartley has resumed his wandering. Hartley is not welcome in my family’s houses.”

A snippet of Second Peter flitted through Hadrian’s head, about a washed pig returning to its wallow, or—Proverbs 26—a dog returning to its vomit.

“I wish you safe journey, then, your ladyship. I cannot imagine the baron would set foot on English soil without assuring himself his birthright was in good repair.”

Or stripped of all valuables.

“You will give my felicitations to Lady Avis on her upcoming nuptials?”

“If she sets a date, I’m sure she’d like you to attend the wedding breakfast.”

He’d surprised her, but pleased her too—and when had this tired, lonely woman known any real pleasure?

“I would be honored, but likely decline.”

“I understand.” He bowed over her hand and took his leave, wondering how he would pass along the day’s revelations to Avie, and if there was an innocent reason she hadn’t yet heard from Fenwick.

“Who was responsible for tending to my room yesterday?” Avis asked her housekeeper.

“Really, Avis,” Lily interjected, “you needn’t concern yourself with such details. Mrs. Ellerby has the scheduling of the domestics quite in hand.”

Across the tea tray, Mrs. Ellerby’s shrewd gaze skipped from one lady to the other, while Avis mentally composed the character reference she’d send along with Lily.

“Mary Ellen and Angelina,” Mrs. Ellerby said. “They are my upstairs maids, unless it’s half-day or Sunday, and then one of the tweenies fills in.”

“They would have swept the hearth, drawn the drapes, made the bed and so forth?”

“Aye, ma’am. Most days, they’ll do a room together, so they can chat as they work.”

“You’ll send them to me later?”

Lily expelled a sigh, while the housekeeper murmured assent, rose, and excused herself from Avis’s private parlor.

“Why you’re taking this odd start is beyond me,” Lily said, sorting through the tray of biscuits and tea cakes. “We’ll determine the scheduling of the maids at the dower house when we remove there, which I hope will be soon. I cannot think of leaving you until that challenge has been met.”

Avis could think of sending Lily away that very moment.

“I want no feuding among my help, Lily. Whoever I take to the dower house could be seen as making a come-down, and I don’t want rebellion on my hands before I’m even settled in.”

Lily popped the last chocolate biscuit into her mouth. “When will we move?”

“I don’t know.”

“This has to do with your so-called engagement, does it not?”

It had to do with twelve years of threats escalating to encompass harm to another who’d done nothing to deserve it. “My so-called engagement?”

“Your intended has barely been in evidence this week, Avis.” She moved on to a ginger biscuit that would have gone nicely with Avis’s second cup of tea. “I know you don’t want to be seen as a jilt, but after all that calling on neighbors and trotting around, relations between you and Mr. Bothwell have decidedly cooled. I, for one, would not blame you if you sent Mr. Bothwell packing.”

Avis had sent her siblings packing, Fen packing, and now Hadrian was to be banished. While Lily—whom Avis had formally dismissed—remained nibbling biscuits and swilling tea?

“I thought you liked Hadrian.”

“I hardly know the man,” Lily said, her expression shifting toward puzzlement, “and I have to wonder how well you know him, despite sharing a distant youth as neighbors. If he’s neglecting you now that the banns are being cried, Avis, he’s acting like a typical male, and he won’t improve once you’re married.”

Avis set her tea cup down rather than dash the contents in Lily’s face.

“That is a most unchristian, ungracious attitude to take toward a man who has done nothing—”

“Good morning, ladies.” The object of their conversation stood at the door, smiling a welcome at them both. “I trust I am not intruding?”

“You are not.” Avis went to him, not even blushing when he kissed her cheek.

How decidedly cool is that, Lily Prentiss?
The sooner Lily was preparing some rich cit’s daughter for the marriage mart, the better.

“Hadrian, please eat these scones before Lily and I consume them all.”

He let her lead him by the hand to the settee.

“You’re looking a little more the thing, my lady. Miss Prentiss, a pleasure as always.” He offered a bow, Lily nodded, and went back to munching her ginger biscuit.With admirable skill, Hadrian engaged both women in small talk, keeping the discussion to inconsequential matters, until he asked Avis for a stroll in the gardens before the heat of the day set in.

When they were out of earshot of the house, Hadrian slid Avis’s hand off his arm and threaded their fingers to lead her to a shaded bench.

“You’re feeling better, Avie?”

“Physically.” Avis sank down beside him and sat so their thighs touched. “I’m in a temper with dear Lily. I’ve told her that her tenure at Blessings has come to a close.” They sat among blooming daisies, and the sun was lovely, and yet, Avis’s mood would not lighten.

“I overheard more than I should have. She is ever protective of you, and that’s not all bad.”

“She’s a bitter old woman in training. As a cautionary tale, she serves admirably.”

Hadrian ranged an arm along the back of the bench, an invitation for Avis to cuddle up.

“You could not be like her if you tried, Avie. When you marry me, you can send her packing without a qualm.”

“I haven’t said I’ll speak any vows with you, Hadrian Bothwell. Your very life might depend on my jilting a second fiancé.” While Avis’s happiness depended on becoming his wife.

He kissed her temple. “If you weren’t such a stubborn, determined woman, the past twelve years would have ground you to dust and ashes.”