Discreet Young Gentleman (24 page)

Rob's eyes were closed, and he looked on the verge of liquefying himself. "Better?"

Dean asked.

"Almost perfect." One of Rob's hands was holding onto one of the brass rings set into the wall of the bath, the other tugged at the trousers of his bathing costume.

"Apart from a bit of chafing, but it's a small price to pay."

"I'm glad," Dean said. "I mean, that you're feeling better."

Rob opened his eyes. "Thank you, Dean. I think, under other circumstances, we could have been good friends." Or more. Tactful as always, that part was left unsaid, by all but the wistful expression on his face.

Dean swallowed at a lump in his throat. "You're so easy around people, so pleasant to be with. You must have quite a circle of friends back in Hereford."

"Well, no." Rob made a business of readjusting his canvas smock. "I don't get close to people. Who would care to know someone like me?"

"I'm sorry," Dean whispered. "But it's beneath you, Rob. You know that. When I think of you selling yourself to men like Parker, I get so—so angry."

"Angry? Or perhaps jealous?" Rob's steady gaze seemed to challenge him to speak freely for once, admit his feelings.

Dean shook his head. "It doesn't matter how I feel—it's still wrong."

His friend smiled at him gently. "It matters to me. But don't fret. In a few years, I can put this all behind me."

"What will you do then? Once you've retired."

The water swirled as Rob resettled himself on the bench. "Buy a little house somewhere in the country. The Lake District, maybe, or the seashore. Learn how to play the piano. Read, and fish." His smile picked up some of its customary sparkle.

"Go ghost-hunting when I feel like it."

Dean felt himself smile in return. "I enjoyed that, Rob. I've enjoyed this whole trip, really. Oh, hell, not all of it—we've had some bad patches, but..." He knew how that sentence should conclude. Would it be so wrong to hint at what Rob wanted to hear, here at the end? Would it hurt Rob if he did so? It was confusing, this instinct to shield and protect a fully-grown man who had shown himself more than capable of meeting whatever life threw at him. Dean continued cautiously. "We've had some bad patches, but even then.. .I was with you."

"I know," Rob said. "Me, too."

Dean looked away first. Minerva waited, and a long future without the person he would have chosen, above all others, to spend it with. The least he could do was make their remaining few hours together as pleasant as possible. "Is there anything you'd like to do this evening? Some entertainment, I mean."

Rob considered. "I saw a notice for a concert at the Upper Rooms. Do you like Mozart?"

"Very much."

"Didn't you say you'd met Miss Lewis at a concert?" Rob asked. "Perhaps if you're lucky, she'll be there tonight."

And that, Dean thought, depended very much on one's definition of "luck."

Minerva did not appear to be at the concert, but the Upper Assembly Rooms were so packed with London's summer refugees that it would have been difficult to pick any one person out from the crowd. The string quartet was one he had seen perform several times in London, the two violinists especially remarkable. Tonight, they were to play a Mozart quartet in B flat.

Rob studied the handbill outside the Assembly Rooms before they went in. "Why is this piece called 'The Hunt'?"

"You'll understand once it starts." Dean set a gloved hand on the arm of Rob's new tailed evening jacket. "Come on. If we don't claim seats quickly, we'll have to stand."

Once the concert began, Rob closed his eyes and relaxed, visibly opening himself to the music. Dean envied that ability: he could not himself escape his early training, which forced him to keep an appraising eye on the musicians as they played. They performed admirably tonight, he thought, but his attention wandered despite the quality of the music.

They walked back to their lodgings after the concert. The third time Dean had to reach out quickly to steady Rob when the latter stumbled over an uneven patch of paving on Broad Street, he laughed and said, "Rob—I'd swear you were drunk, if I didn't know better. Watch your feet, will you? Bath's very proud of these gas lights, so stop ignoring their illumination."

"Sorry." Dean's companion gave a vehement shake of his head, as if to clear it, and his high-crowned beaver hat tumbled neatly to the street.

Dean stooped to retrieve it. "Here. Seriously: are you feeling all right?"

Rob gestured to a low brick wall running in front of the Grammar School. "Do you mind if we sit for a moment? It's a gorgeous night." After they sat, Rob twirled his hat in his hands. "Can you play music like that?"

"Like a professional?" Dean considered. "Yes, and no. I'm proficient enough with the notes, but I never had the passion that sets a brilliant player apart. I'm not up to the level of the quartet tonight, but I suppose I could find employment in a provincial orchestra. Or even one of the London music halls, if it weren't top drawer."

"And yet you hate playing." Rob put up a reflexive hand to smooth his hair, disordered by his hat's tumble. "If I could create sounds like what we just heard..." He lifted his face to the gibbous moon.

Dean cleared his throat. "My father..."

"Yes, I gathered. He was a harsh man, and he forced you to play."

"He.. .Father came to music late, since my grandfather wouldn't let him pursue it.

He always thought that if he'd only had an earlier start, he could have been great."

Rob nodded. "So he tried to make you into what he could have been. And all you wanted to do was fish."

His words sounded bitter, and Dean couldn't help stiffening in reaction. "Was that reason enough to beat me when I made mistakes? Refuse to let me stop until my bladder hurt so badly I cried?" And worse, but he would never admit that, would never put into words the anguish and humiliation he'd felt when the warm gush of urine could not be held back any longer. Gall rose in Dean's throat. "Would you do that to a child?"

"No." Rob looked at him. "But if it happened to me, I'd hate the man, not the music."

"I don't hate the music. I need the music, Rob, I told you—"

"But you won't play it. Every day, you could bring those sounds forth, could create them for yourself or anyone close to you."

"I've never told anyone what I just told you," Dean said tartly, rising from the bench. "Thank you very much for your sympathy."

Rob stood up, replacing his hat. "Don't you see? You're not spiting your father, you're depriving yourself. It's all of a piece with the way you feel about your looks, isn't it? You get stuck on an idea, and can't get past it."

"You're a fine one to talk." A well-dressed couple strolled by, the lady glancing over in interest at his raised tones, and Dean fought to control his voice. "Easier to let your gentlemen use you than search for an employer who would value you for your gifts, not your one disability."

"Ah. But at least my disability is real." Rob took a long breath. "Please. I don't want to fight with you tonight."

Dean felt his anger drain away into the moonlit night. "I don't want to fight with you, either."

"Good." Rob put his hand on Dean's shoulder. "My apologies if I've hurt you. Let's make a bargain, shall we? If you try to let go of what your parents did to you, I'll try to forgive God for what He did to me."

Dean couldn't think of anything to say to that, except, "I'm sorry."

They resumed walking, and had barely turned from Cheap Street onto Stall when a figure detached itself from the shadows near the Pump Room and approached them. It was a woman, dressed in a grey traveling dress with a matching veil. "Pardon me, my lord," she said, curtseying to Dean. "I must speak with you."

He exchanged a glance of confusion with Rob. "Haven't I seen you somewhere?

This morning. Was that you on the steps in Chippenham?"

Rob folded his arms. "You were in Tewkesbury, too. Have you been following us?"

"I have," she said simply. "But this isn't something we can discuss on the street.

May I come up to your rooms?"

"We're not to bring women up there," Dean said automatically. He couldn't think of what this stranger might have to speak to him about, and after this latest argument with Rob, was certain it could wait until morning.

"Please, my lord." The woman sounded near tears. "I know it's presumptuous to approach you, but I don't know what else to do."

"Perhaps we could start by who you are, and what your business is," Rob suggested gently.

She took a breath. "My name is Mrs. Westport. The Honorable James Westport is my husband."

Dean shook his head slowly. "I don't know any James Westport. I don't know any Westports at all."

The woman stared at him. "You most certainly do. I don't know why—perhaps he's still in hiding from his family—but he's been pretending to be your coachman."

Rob's mouth dropped open. "Jim. She means—"

Dean's followed suit. "Erich. You're Erich's wife?"

Rob shared a look of surprise with him. "I thought you said Erich didn't have any family?"

"As far as I knew, he didn't." Dean said with a shrug. "Jacob was under the impression that Erich's brother was his only family."

"Erich?" The woman in grey looked from one man to the other. "Who in God's name is Erich?"

Rob laid a hand on her arm. "You'd best come upstairs. This is going to take a while to explain." He whipped off his long black cloak and settled it over her shoulders, arranging the hood low over her face. In the shadowy street, with the grey veil beneath, she might have been a faceless phantom, a Black Lady or Hooded Monk.

Dean smiled against his will. There had been a Grey Lady haunting the inn in Malmesbury, hadn't there? He'd never imagined they'd be smuggling one of them upstairs. "Now, put your own hood up," Rob instructed Dean. "I'll stay out here for a moment, while you go on up with Mrs. Westport. With luck, the dragon will think she's me."

Luck was with them, for the landlady did not emerge, neither when Dean and his charge ascended the stairs, nor when Rob followed stealthily a few minutes later. In the cozy sitting room, the woman removed her hat and veil, revealing a pleasant face of something less than thirty years. Her light brown hair, blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones would have made her quite pretty, had she not been saddled with an air of such bitter defeat. Napoleon, surveying the aftermath of Waterloo, could not have looked worse.

Rob poured them each a glass of port from a bottle Uncle Phineas kept stowed in the bookcase. "Now," he said, "shall we begin?"

The explanations on both sides took some time. First, Mrs. Westport, whose first name was Charlotte, briefly described her James's background. He and his twin brother Michael had been the youngest scions of the Earl and Countess of Dannemora...

"Dannemora?" interrupted Dean. "Jim's Irish?"

Charlotte blinked at him. "Of course. Can't you tell from his speech?"

"We'll get to that," Rob murmured. "Please, go on."

Charlotte had met James when he was studying at Oxford, where her mother ran a bakeshop much frequented by the students. He had been taken with her, but Charlotte was too respectable a young woman to yield to him without the benefit of clergy.

Impulsively, Jim had secured a special license, and they were married, taking rooms in Oxford so that he could continue his studies. They'd been surprisingly happy, the only cloud on the horizon the prospect of breaking the news to the Earl and Countess.

"Michael finally did it," Charlotte told them. "He was always the stronger of the two of them, looking out for Jim." She paused for a swallow of port. "A few weeks later, he came barreling back into town, his horse half-dead beneath him. Michael said they had to leave at once, that his father was sending a couple of toughs to abduct Jim and bring him back home by force. They were going to annul our marriage, and make him wed some knock-kneed cousin instead." Charlotte's hand tightened on the glass.

"So Jim and Michael ran away. The only place they could think to go, to get Jim out of his father's reach, was into the Army. It was dreadful, saying goodbye, but what else could we do?"

"I see," Dean said, blowing out a breath. "Did the Army not contact you when Jim was wounded?"

"Wounded? I didn't even know he had been." She shook her head. "No. He must not have dared put my name on the enlistment papers, and the two of them doubtless used a false last name as well, so that their father couldn't trace them. For the first year, Jim sent letters occasionally, through an acquaintance at Oxford. He couldn't even risk sending them to me directly. After that, nothing. For over two years, nothing.

I thought he must be dead, he and Michael both, because his brother would have written to me if anything happened to Jim alone." Her face reflected the bleakness of these long, uncertain months.

Rob fiddled with his glass, seeming subdued by the story. "How did you find out Jim was still alive?"

"My cousin Christine, who'd stood up for me at our wedding, saw him driving your coach in Worcester, my lord. She wrote me at once, but by the time I got to Carwick, the charwoman there said you'd gone off on a journey with a friend. I've been following you ever since, trying to catch up." Charlotte raised tired blue eyes to Dean.

"Now, can you please tell me why Jim won't even acknowledge my very existence?"

Dean looked at Rob. "You're so much better with stories. Will you tell her?"

It did sound much better, coming from Rob, who painted the tragic picture in indelible colors. Jim and Michael, and their Hessian friend Erich, facing death together on a battlefield in a land foreign to them all. The loss of the real Erich, followed so closely by Michael's terrible, messy end.

Charlotte raised a horrified hand to her mouth on hearing of the grapeshot canister that had taken her brother-in-law's life. "Poor Jim. Oh, my poor Jim. Michael was his protector, half of him. He must have been insane with grief."

Rob and Dean exchanged a sober look. "In a way," the former said gently. "Mrs.

Westport, Jim couldn't face losing Michael that way. He still can't face it." Succinctly, Rob described the transformation from Jim into Erich. "He's no raving lunatic. As Erich, he gets on quite well. But he didn't recognize you this morning because Erich has never met you."