The Charmer (29 page)

“A gash on his thigh. Having it tended delayed us. I advised him to return home, but he insisted on coming here.” He glanced pointedly around the chamber. “I do not think that he expects an assembly.”

“Stidolph?” the duke asked.

Laclere said nothing, which said everything.

Wellington rose and bid his leave. He extracted a sealed letter from his coat. On his way to the door, he threw it in the fire. Jacques and Attila kissed her and departed in his wake.

“You must stay, Dot. You must see him,” Sophia said.

“If you do not mind, just for a moment . . .” She wiped her eyes. “I never want to go through that again, let me tell you.”

Laclere offered his hand to his wife. “Let us remove ourselves, my dear. I see that you have been riding. You rarely indulge in that pleasure when in the city. You used a sidesaddle, I trust.”

“Really, Laclere. How can you be concerned about such silly little things on such a day? This has been about the great experiences. Life and death. Passions both grand and evil. Proper calling hours and proper saddles are of no account.”

“In other words, no sidesaddle.” He turned his attention to Sophia. “He may appear in a strange mood when he comes. It is not an easy thing, what has happened. Do not be surprised if he appears less than joyed with his victory.”

“I understand. Thank you for everything that you have done for him today.”

Sophia and Dot went to the library to wait for Adrian. Dot left the room as soon as the carriage sounded on the street. Whatever she said to her nephew was communicated privately in the reception hall.

Adrian entered the library slowly, carefully supporting some of his weight on a walking stick. He paused and faced her.

He wore no coats and his trousers stretched over the thick bandage that wrapped his thigh. His clothing was spotless, however. He must have traded with Colin in the carriage.

He looked at her with fiery eyes. Laclere had been right. No triumph. No joy. Just the stark awareness of what had occurred, and what might have. And deep lights of naked resolve.

Her heart ached with love and relief. She feasted her eyes on him, breathless with gratitude that he was alive.

He had never looked less English. His black eyes sizzled. His dark hair was disheveled. A thin, colorful sash belted his hips with its Eastern weave.

He carefully walked toward her. It gave him pain. A bad wound, then. He should have gone home, but she knew why he had come here instead. The reason showed in his eyes and the line of his mouth.

It had become a day for finalities. She prayed that she could convince him that there was no need of one with her.

“Laclere told you?”

“I already knew.”

“I had hoped you would not, until it was over.”

“That was not fair. There are some things that you should not protect me from.” She stepped the few paces that separated them, to embrace and kiss him. He winced slightly, and she felt another bandage on his shoulder. Not only his leg had been wounded. He had changed his clothes so she would not see the blood.

She gingerly rested her head on his chest and listened to the sound of his heart. He pressed a kiss to her hair.

“Won't you sit?”

He shook his head.

She lifted the end of the sash. “What is this?”

“My father gave it to me. He is still in England.”

“Did he come?”

“He was there. He stayed in a closed carriage off a ways, but I recognized the coachman and went to him. He gave this to me for good fortune. It is his. He suggested that I stuff it in my shirt. I decided that its power might not work as well that way.” He looked down at the band of color. “He has thirteen other sons, but he stayed in that carriage to the end and prayed that I was fated to live.”

She fingered the woven patterns that he had displayed to the world. It had been a day for declarations as well as finalities.

“Why did you meet Gerald?”

“He challenged me. Fifty men will swear that it came from him. I did not provoke him.”

Maybe not directly, but he had managed this. It had worked out the way he wanted it to.

She still tasted the torture of waiting to learn if he was dead. “Why, Adrian? Why risk so much? Why not just have him arrested?”

He laid his hand against her cheek. “Do you trust me? Do you trust me enough to believe me when I say that it was better to handle it this way?”

She gazed in his eyes and knew that he would not explain more than that. Not now, maybe not ever. Wellington had been right. The reasons had to do with her. Adrian had done this to protect her, and she might never know why.

“Yes, I trust you. Completely. I believe you. I believe
in
you.”

She began to embrace him again, but he slowly paced away, distracted by emotions dark and deep. “I have killed before. Not like this, though. Those were like military skirmishes. Country against country. Laclere warned me that it would be different. He has stood to a man, and confided that the memory is a hard one.”

She felt the rawness in him and it wrenched her heart. He might know that there had been no other choice, but he still wrestled with the deed.

“Laclere has been a good friend to you. I am glad that he was there.”

He nodded absently and paced some more. “I dined with him the night before I gave my speech. His young children were there. I had never seen him with them before. He spoils them. They have a little joke that it is Bianca's American influence, but he can deny them nothing. All the discipline comes from her, not him. Seeing that domestic joy, sitting amidst that love, moved me so much that I wanted to weep.” It came out in bits and phrases, as if he gave voice to random thoughts. “I would like to have that.”

“I am sure that we can have it. We may not know what to do, but we certainly know what
not
to do.”

He shook his head. “You will never be forgiven if you marry me. It will never be forgotten, who I am. What I am. Nor will I ever pretend otherwise again. Many will never accept that.”

“I can think of a few who will never forgive me if I do
not
marry you. The people who matter.”

“Do not think lightly of it, Sophia. Your title will not protect you. Half of the people who attended your dinner party will cut you as soon as a marriage to me is announced. I was tolerated as long as I stayed on the edges. I will never be accepted in the center.”

“Then we will learn who our true friends are, and who the fools are. I said before that there are some things that you should not try to protect me from. This is one of them. I will not let you ruin the happiness that we might have, in the name of shielding me.”

He stopped his thoughtful pacing and turned to her. His expression made her breath catch. Vividly alert. Ruthlessly focused.

“It is not about that, is it?” she said. “You know that I do not care about being cut. I spent eight years ignoring those people. Their opinions cannot wound me now, and you know it. This really has nothing to do with your birth.”

“Maybe it doesn't. I suppose I never thought that mattered much with you. But I cannot bear to think of your being hurt because of me.”

“Why don't we admit what it
is
about.”

He evened his weight, standing tall. He might have arrived unscathed.

His gaze penetrated her. “Do you love me? Not only need me, or want me, or depend on me. I welcome all of that, but I want to know if you love me as I love you. There is nothing careful and contained in my feelings for you. It is rash and hot and saturating and perfect. Nothing else really matters. Nothing. Not Everdon and the past, not scandal and the future. Not the assumptions we will face that I use you, or that you buy me. I do not love what you are, I love who you are. That will make all the rest insignificant, but not if I only have your need and your passion.”

“I love you. I have loved you a long time. It frightened me, so I kept it contained and hidden. I kept giving it other names and kept trying to turn it into something else. Perhaps I did not believe that I deserved the happiness. I have failed people whom I had loved before.”

“You deserve every happiness. And if you feared it, you had cause.”

“Not from you. Also, it was more than that. I did not trust myself to love well. Last night you gave me the chance to learn that I could. Now I know that I can love you very well. Better than any other woman in the world. If you will let me give to you and protect you as you have done for me. If you will bring me your burdens as you did last night, and have done again today.”

His expression softened. His eyes glistened. Last night's beautiful intimacy flowed across the ten feet of space that separated them.

She absorbed the emotions reaching her, afraid to move, lest she disturb them. She branded her memory with the sight of him. Strong despite his wounds. Mysterious in his dark, hybrid beauty. Brave and exciting.

In love with
her.
How astonishing.

“Didn't you feel it last night, Adrian? Didn't you know?”

“I felt it. I hoped. I carried that hope in me today. I came at once because I had to know that I had not misunderstood.”

“You have always understood me. I do not think that you ever got it wrong. I only learned who I was by seeing my reflection in your eyes.”

“The reflection of a beautiful woman, magnificent and strong. I am glad that you learned the truth of it.”

His love made it true.

“I want us to fill each other's voids and end the loneliness forever, Adrian. I want us to make a happy family, where you can always sit amidst love.”

His smile made the world sparkle. “If we are going to have a family, we should get married.”

“Is that a proposal, Mister Burchard?”

He leaned his weight on the walking stick, and reached his free hand out to her. “We have both traveled alone for too long, darling. Will you complete the journey with me?”

Her happiness flew to him before her feet moved. She ran across the empty space and joined the man who had brought her home.

The man who valued and loved her, in her own right.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

In 1831–32, England came as close to open rebellion as it ever has since the seventeenth century. THE CHARMER uses that crisis as a backdrop to the love story of Sophia and Adrian. The conclusion of the episode may be of interest to some readers.

As Adrian anticipated, a Reform Bill passed the House of Commons in September of 1831. Although relatively moderate, it completely reapportioned the representation in the Commons according to population distribution. It gave new seats to the growing industrial regions in the north. It also abolished most “rotten boroughs,” areas that had been sending representatives although they no longer had many voters. That seriously affected the lords, whose landholdings put those old, rural boroughs “in their pockets.” The bill doubled the number of men eligible to vote to approximately one million (the right to vote was still contingent upon income, gender, and property).

The bill then went to the House of Lords, the very men who would see their power diminished if it became law. In October the Lords rejected it. Raucous debate in Parliament and massive demonstrations in the streets filled the next months.

In April 1832, the Lords passed a different reform bill, but they planned to severely modify the reform provisions in committee. Prime Minister Grey, a Whig, resigned his ministry. The population went wild and violence broke out. Hundreds died in rioting in several cities. King William asked Grey to return, and Grey agreed to do so only if the King agreed to a plan that Grey had concocted.

The true sentiments of the King known as “Silly Billy” are hard to pin down, but he accepted Grey's scheme. He threatened to create enough new peerages to pack the House of Lords with reform supporters.

Faced with the inevitable, in June 1832, the House of Lords passed the Reform Act that signaled the beginning of the end of aristocratic dominance in British politics.

The Duke of Wellington, who had been uncompromising in his opposition to reform, told the Tory lords who opposed the bill to either abstain or not attend. He abstained himself, a symbolic move that demonstrated his acceptance that the battle was lost.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Madeline Hunter
has worked as a grocery clerk, office employee, art dealer, and freelance writer. She holds a Ph.D. in art history, which she currently teaches at an eastern university. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, her two teenage sons, a chubby, adorable mutt, and a black cat with a major attitude. She can be contacted through her web site, www.MadelineHunter.com.

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