Hadrian (2 page)

“Of course I won’t be a threat,” Hadrian muttered as he resumed his study of the infernal list. “What is this here? Looks like chocolate, or chandler, or God knows what.”

They spent the rest of the morning deciphering Harold’s penmanship, but each time Hadrian glanced up at the clock, try as he might to focus on the blighted list, all he could think was that they were closer and closer to Harold’s departure date.

And while travel might be a rebirth for Hal, who’d struggled along with secretive half-measures for years as far as his Andy was concerned, for Hadrian the looming separation was yet another loss in a life that had become a long progression of sorrows and disappointments.

Since Hadrian had left his final church post weeks earlier, he’d wandered through his days with a sense of unreality. Harold’s leaving was unreal, putting off the vestments and mannerisms of the clergy was unreal, and resuming life at Landover, where Hadrian hadn’t spent any appreciable time for a dozen years, was particularly unreal.

Hadrian watched his brother preparing to leave and tried with limited success not to brood—or pout.

One tonic that effectively banished the dismals was a dose of Cumbrian morning air on a pretty spring day, particularly when enjoyed on the back of a fine, handsome steed. Hadrian ordered Caesar saddled—how long had it been since someone else had groomed and saddled his mount?—and prepared to seize the day.

The temperature was perfect, brisk at first, but suited to the exertion of riding. Caesar, well rested from his jaunt home from Yorkshire, was happy to canter along, soft spring grass under his hooves.

Hadrian had brought his mount down to the walk to cool out when Caesar’s ears pricked up and his forward progress hesitated.

“Easy, lad.” Hadrian stroked a gloved hand down the horse’s crest, for he’d identified the sound his horse had reacted to.

A solo flute, rising up on the crisp country air, was incongruous, though it conjured the unbridled exuberance with which earth and spring reunited. Following the sound, Hadrian nudged Caesar up the track, higher, closer to the music. On and on the melody went, swooping, laughing, and caroling along, until Hadrian could see the musician through a thick stand of pine.

She sat on a rock like some kind of wood sprite, tootling away, no written music, just notes and skill and a flashing silver flute. She swayed minutely with her melodies, eyes closed, fingers slipping over the keys. Gradually the music changed, from vibrant rejoicing to a tender, lyrical, and not quite happy melody.

A cradle song, though the flutist rendered familiar melodies new and sweet. When she finished, she held still for a single moment, then slowly lowered the flute to her lap, eyes closed.

He ought to slip away, for he recognized the soloist now and he did not want to re-introduce himself to her up here, not far from the scene of her assault.

“Is somebody there?”

Lady Avis’s voice was lower than Hadrian recalled. He swung off Caesar’s back and led the beast from the concealing foliage, because her ladyship shouldn’t have to endure the sense of unseen eyes spying on her.

“An appreciative audience,” Hadrian said. “An impressed, appreciative audience.”

“Sir, you have me at a—
Hadrian?
” Her expression, initially guarded, dissolved into consternation, then sheer joy. Why should she be happy to see him, of all people, and so willing—

She was in his arms, a solid female weight thumping into his chest, her flute set aside as she hugged him.

“Oh, you naughty, naughty man,” she said, laughing, holding him at arm’s length, then hugging him anew. “I have missed you so, and now here you are, and you look so bloomingly good, Hadrian Bothwell. You do. You caught me, just as you used to, skipping my lessons and playing truant.”

She stepped back enough to hold him at arm’s length again, leaned in and took a shameless sniff of Cumbrian morning air.

“You still wear a positively delicious scent. The wonderful impression you make on a lady’s senses must have helped filled the pews on Sunday mornings.”

More than few of the ladies in the congregation had been damned nuisances, while Avis seemed so…normal. If anything, she’d grown more attractive—lovely dark hair, a fine figure, sparkling eyes. She accounted good looks an asset to a vicar, but would she view beauty as an asset in herself?

“And you,” Hadrian heard himself say. “You still carry the scent of spring and meadow flowers.” She still had that smile, a curving of her full lips that made a man think she knew wonderful, special secrets, secrets that gave her joy, very possibly secrets related to the fortunate object of her smile.

Though the secrets Hadrian shared with Lady Avis related to nothing worth smiling about.

“May I hope you were on your way to pay a call at Blessings?” she asked.

“You may,” Hadrian replied, his vicar’s skills allowing him to offer a kindly lie with deplorable smoothness. “Harold will leave on an extended sail later this spring, and I had hoped we could send some of your pigeons along with him.”

“I’ve discussed this extended sail with Hal on many occasions.” Avis’s voice became censorious. “I trust you have too.”

Harold had made up his mind, politely, of course, and the discussion had been quite limited. “I owe Hal much. If he wants a break from Landover, he’s my only brother, and I’m his man.”

She regarded him with a frankness not many women exhibited, and Hadrian was reminded of other qualities he’d forgotten—through significant effort—about Lady Avis Portmaine.

Her smile was only the start. He’d missed that smile, missed how it warmed his heart and had his own lips curving up. Avis was a bright woman, not only book smart—French, Latin, Greek, Italian, German book smart—and quick with facts and numbers, but also intuitive.

She was pretty too, though not in any conventional sense. Tallish for a woman—the Portmaines were all on the tall side—and dark-haired, as her full siblings were as well. On Avis, that hair carried red highlights, as if some lusty Norseman stalked her ancestry. This wasn’t the pale beauty of the English rose, this was an older, more earthy and lasting sort of beauty, less apparent at first glance, and yet more capable of lingering in a man’s memory.

“Harold is your only brother too,” Avis observed as she deftly disassembled her flute and packed it in a velvet-lined case. “You have a life with the church, and Harold has no business calling you from the Lord’s work to hold the reins at Landover while Harold larks about for a few months.”

Of course she would think Hadrian was here only for the nonce. God willing, every gossip in the shire would see Hal’s trip in exactly the same light, until the permanence of Hal’s remove became quietly apparent.

“The Lord’s work in Rosecroft village was not urgent,” Hadrian answered truthfully. “Not to me and not to my parishioners.”

“You had unhappy memories there.” Avis draped a cloth over her flute and closed the case. “One can understand this.”

She referred to Rue’s death, and her solicitude left him feeling like a fraud. He fell back on small talk—a vicar’s handiest weapon.

“I have happy memories too,” he said. “But tell me how you go on, Lady Avis. Harold was a fine correspondent regarding crops yields and pounds of fleece, but not much for passing along the neighborhood news.”

She slipped her arm through his, as if they hadn’t walked home from church together for the last time more than twelve years ago.

“Harold was so happy when you took a post here in the North. It’s all we heard about for months. He’s very proud of you.”

Which made one of them. “He’s the best of brothers. Overlooking my flaws goes with the description.”

Hadrian admonished himself to work on his sincerity. Hal
was
the best of brothers, regardless of his travel plans or preferred company, and Hadrian was nobody to judge him.

Hadrian was out of the judgment business, and glad of it.

“Will you join me for breakfast?” Avis asked as they made their way through the pines. “I rarely have company at Blessings, much less company I’m so glad to see.”

“I would be pleased to join you.” The church imbued a man with surpassing manners, though sooner or later, the past must intrude on Hadrian’s dealings with Lady Avis. That moment would make all of his awkward discussions with Harold pale in comparison. “Riding in this air gives a man an appetite.”

“You always could put away a decent meal, and your gelding looks like a horse who enjoys a good gallop.”

“Caesar is a St. Just horse,” Hadrian said, taking the reins in his free hand. “He’s fit as the devil without being hot-tempered.” Rather like Harold.

“And handsome,” Avis added as they turned onto the track down the hill. “St. Just is the new Earl of Rosecroft?”

“He is,” Hadrian replied, pushing a pine branch aside for her. “Former cavalry, as well as a friend.”

“I’m glad you had some friends in Yorkshire. I imagine leading a flock can be a lonely business.”

All manner of well-polished scriptural allusions begged to come bleating into the conversation. Hadrian pushed those aside too.

“Some flocks engender loneliness, for the congregation as well as its leader,” Hadrian allowed, though it had taken him two years to put that label on the emotion his pastoral duties had inspired. “I hope that’s not the case here?”

He was done with church business, utterly, absolutely, and that meant he didn’t have to listen to griping about the vicar’s sermons or the curate’s inability to patch together a church without funds. Nonetheless, he hoped Avis found consolation in the company to be had at services.

“I do not attend,” she said, dropping his arm.

Silence descended as they made their way down the hill, with Hadrian resenting the need to say something. He wasn’t her spiritual authority, not her vicar, not even officially a fellow parishioner that she should burden him with this.

“I’m sorry,” Avis said when they reached the bottom of the hill. “It will be like this for us, won’t it? I’ll understand if you want to decline breakfast, and you’re welcome to as many pigeons as Harold can stow on his yacht.”

They had been doing so well with the platitudes and small talk. Hadrian made a doomed attempt to regain that false, friendly footing. “Be like what?”

“We will try for cordiality and succeed swimmingly until something slips out amiss, and then all will be awkwardness until somebody tosses out another social nicety. While I cannot expect you to forget, I’m so very—”

She broke off and patted Caesar’s neck.

“So very what, Lady Avis?”

She kept her back to him and leaned her forehead against Caesar’s shaggy mane. “I used to be plain Avis to you, or even Avie, and now I’m this Lady Avis creature, whom I hardly know, and don’t think I’d enjoy. I’ll hush now and thank you for your escort.”

She reached around him to retrieve her flute case from where he’d tied it to his saddle, but he reached it first, keeping possession.

Hadrian had left the clergy, and thus the only status remaining status to him was that of gentleman. A gentleman would admit that his past with Lady Avis included far more than the scandal she’d endured.

“When a neighbor extends a hungry fellow an invitation to share a meal, that fellow does not expect the invitation to be retracted.” He winged his arm at her and kept his smile genial.

Her expression went from puzzled to briefly mutinous, but she took his arm.

“Your gardens are impressive for so early in the season,” Hadrian said as they approached the grounds behind Blessings. “You must tell me about them.”

She accepted that challenge, pausing in her recitation only long enough for Hadrian to hand Caesar off to a groom. Then she fell silent, apparently content to stroll with him up to the stately expanse of the Blessings residence proper. The family seat was a huge old place, befitting a wealthy earldom, and yet to Hadrian, it had never seemed cold or lifeless, particularly not when the grounds were bursting with daffodils, tulips and all manner of flowering trees.

“Blessings looks to be thriving. Your landscaping is sumptuous.”

“Winter is so long and cold here, I’m usually desperate for color and beauty by spring, and each year, I grow a little more ambitious.”

These beautiful gardens were her passion, then, so he kept to that topic. “Those beds look similar to some we have at Landover. Did you do ours as well as your own?”

“I gave Harold my designs, because he complimented the patterns. Harold is the only man I know who isn’t too proud to admire a pretty flower.” She went on, describing what species went well together and why, while Hadrian was still trying to puzzle out their little exchange at the foot of the hill. He hadn’t precisely been avoiding Blessings, but he had been reluctant to see Avis.

A bond still stretched between them, intimate, precious, and intensely private, but not altogether comfortable for either of them. Or maybe, he thought as she chattered on, there had been a bond, obliterated now, worn away by time, maturation, and the experiences that made up their separate lives.

“What is your favorite flower?” Hadrian asked, because he wasn’t quite ready to closet himself with her over kedgeree and toast.

“I love them all,” Avis said easily. “From the first crocus to the last chrysanthemum, and everything in between. What about you?”

“I like purple flowers. Purple and blue. Irises, pansies, bluebells, violets and so on. We can’t quite replicate that palette of blues, lavenders, and purples God has given to the flowers, and I never tire of admiring it.”

She plucked a pansy of a soft periwinkle shade and tucked it into the pin securing his cravat. “I wonder: Would the flowers appeal to us as strongly if the blooms never faded?”

Hadrian let her natter on and occasionally stop to pull off a spent bloom. The morning air was warming up, and wandering around her garden allowed him time to adjust.

This Avis Portmaine was pretty, vital, and confident. In some ways, Hadrian resented her, for she’d replaced a quiet, withdrawn young woman who’d needed him when he’d never been needed before. But that young woman hadn’t entirely faded, either, for it had been she, the victim of an unspeakable crime, who’d made that comment about it being “like this” for them before she’d invited him to depart.