Lady Vice (21 page)

But no—she pinched her lips—she had her returned letters as proof she had not been wanted. And Max would have told her if there had been a misunderstanding.

Thea reached out and clasped Lavinia’s hand. “You are right: if your mother thought herself a
tonnish
stickler, she would not visit the infamous Dowager of Wynchester. All will be well.”

Thea had meant to help, but, instead, had worsened her fears.

Outside, a carriage slowed to a stop, and Lavinia’s heart twittered and jumped like a startled starling.

“Peeking around the window dressing,” Thea said sternly, “isn’t good
ton
.”

“I fear I would not recognize good
ton
.” On the mantle, the clock chimed eleven. “Mother is prompt as always. She’ll likely insist on a strictly proper, quarter-hour visit.”

“You see how easily manners are remembered?” Thea brightened. “Besides, should she observe propriety, all the better. Anything can be borne for fifteen minutes.”

“Even Wynchester?”

“Don’t provoke.” Thea
tsked
. “Though I forgive you, considering your sorry state.”

Emma peeked in. “Are you ready, Lavinia?”

Lavinia swallowed and nodded, appreciating Thea’s finger-squeeze. The dowager smiled warmly before leaving, as planned, to greet their anticipated guest at the door.

“You’d think Queen Charlotte was arriving,” Thea said.

“I would be no less nervous,” Lavinia responded truthfully.

Muffled sounds of feminine chatter filled the hall. Thea pulled her to her feet as Emma’s butler opened the door.

“Mrs. Edward Wiggins,” he announced.

Lavinia blinked as the two older women entered. Her mother hung heavily on the dowager’s arm.

“Mother.” Lavinia became all at once a small child, unable to command her limbs.

“Lavinia?” Her mother lifted her chin, but her eyes failed to focus.

An odd clanging reverberated in Lavinia’s chest.

“Lady Vaile, would you lead your mother to a seat?” Emma asked, sweet and easy, as if the world had not just dropped.

“Yes,” Lavinia breathed. “Yes, of course.” She strode across the room. “Mother?”

“I am going to place your arm on your daughter’s arm,” Emma said in a soothing voice one would use with a child. “Would that be satisfactory, Mrs. Wiggins?”

“You are too kind,” her mother smiled into the empty center of the room. “Thank you, Your Grace. I hope I am not causing undo trouble.”

“No trouble at all, Mrs. Wiggins.” Emma guided Lavinia’s mother’s hand to Lavinia’s arm. “The settee is three steps ahead and one to the right.”

Had the Queen sauntered in offering sips of home-distilled gin, Lavinia could not have been more surprised. Her mother was blind. Why had Max kept this from her?

Emma touched Lavinia’s cheek and then said, “Thea, might I have a word with you in the hall?”

“Yes, of course,” Thea replied.

Lavinia had not yet introduced Thea, but the duchesses fled, leaving her alone with her much-altered mother.

“Mama,” Lavinia whispered, steeling against the inevitable, “you cannot see.”

“I
see
,” her mother replied, with characteristic bristling. “I see light. I see color.”

Ah, this was her mother—so stubborn. But Lavinia would not descend into argument’s familiar comfort. She led her mother to the settee and sat as if she were composed. As if she were solid. As if everything she understood about the last five years had not just turned to dust.

Her mother’s hands fluttered uncertainly, then steadied. One hand dropped to Lavinia’s elbow, while, with the other, she patted Lavinia from shoulder to cheek. Her hands—far too soft and cold—traced her daughter’s eyebrows.

“My only child,” she said. “I am so glad you sent for me.”

“Mama,” Lavinia said, her voice quivering. “I don’t know what to say.” She struggled against the ball of tears that bobbed beneath her eyes. Just as it wouldn’t have done to peer out the window like a curious child, it wouldn’t do to break down and pummel her mother’s pride. “How long have you had this affliction?”

Her mother’s mouth set in a tight little dash, as if deciding whether or not to acknowledge her near-sightless state. Finally, she sighed.

“The spring after your London season, the gardener suggested I seek help separating weeds from sprigs.” She sighed, folding her hands in her lap. “My vision continued to deteriorate.”

“But you never said…” Lavinia bit back her intoned blame and started again. “Why didn’t you tell me you needed help? Why didn’t you come to see me?”

Her mother frowned, as if the answer should have been obvious. “Your housekeeper made it clear we were not welcome at Vaile House.”

Of course she had. Vaile’s scent lingered on this mischief. Lavinia sucked in air like sharp needles, a slap against threatening tears. “After I left Vaile, you returned the letters I sent.”

Her mother shook her head vehemently. “After you left Vaile, I never received a single letter from you.”

“I did write,” Lavinia protested.

The crease in her mother’s brow folded Lavinia’s heart in half. She had never seen the letters.

“You did?”

“When I left Vaile, I wrote and asked you to visit,” she said. “I have been writing ever since—all returned.”

“Others deliver the post. Since I’ve moved to London, the parson of St. Andrew in Thistleton-on-Thames franks letters wrongly directed.”

Lavinia eased back into the seat.

“Vaile,” she said, as if a curse. She imagined her husband’s visit to the good parson.
You must not allow my fallen wife to influence the good people of your parish
.

“Vaile visited us after you left him,” her mother whispered, as if Vaile might be listening in the room. “He came with the man who held the mortgages on the brewery. The man told your father the notes would come due if we gave you shelter. Horrible, horrible days. Vaile’s threats and then your father grew ill. I do not know what we would have done without Maximilian Harrison…”

Lavinia reminded herself to breathe. She stiffened, picked up the handkerchief Thea had discreetly left behind and, without ceremony or comment, dabbed her mother’s eyes.

“Mr. Harrison didn’t tell me you were ill,” Lavinia said.

“Who is ill? I am perfectly hale.”

Lavinia looked askance at her mother. Warmth and sadness threaded through her pain.

Sun-shadow deepened the lines in her mother’s pale cheeks. Where once had been the gray-streaked black hair, all was ocean-froth white. Where once dark eyes had gazed direct, pale brown eyes fixed on nothing at all. She placed her hand over her mother’s—the gold betrothal band she always wore hung loose on her mother’s hand.

“I am glad Mr. Harrison invested in the brewery,” she said.

“Invested?” her mother frowned. “Oh no. He paid the mortgages as a gift. He advises the overseer, but all profits come to me.”

“I do not understand. Why would he be so generous?”

“He said he was paying an honor debt to your father, else I never would have accepted.”

Heavens.
“What honor debt did he owe Father?”

A crease appeared between her mother’s brows. “Mr. Harrison did not tell you?”

“No,” Lavinia answered as she twisted the fingers she held in her lap.

“When Mr. Harrison returned from India he was quite ill. You were married and lost to us, and your father regretted the challenge he had issued that had sent Mr. Harrison away.

Doctors came, medicines were prescribed, but Mr. Harrison was not mending. Your father said what ailed him was beyond a doctor—but he felt a man of the right understanding could assist. Mr. Harrison’s own father, had, of course, passed, so your father, he paid daily visits. Eventually, they became close as father and son. Mr. Harrison, of course, recovered.

“Close as father and son?” Lavinia echoed.

“And a good man Mr. Harrison has been since, has he not? How will we repay his kindness—the brewery, letting Wynchester’s house so that I might come to live with Mrs. Harrison, now taking care of you in your troubles—”

Lavinia’s head began to pound. “Did you just say you live in the Harrison household?”

“I am staying with Mrs. Harrison in her son’s London home. Naturally, he couldn’t stay as well, not without some whisper of your past connection.”

And she’d thought this morning’s protection of her modesty gallant. Astonishment did not begin to describe the feeling webbing together her thoughts. Then again, why should she be surprised?

What had he said when he’d first returned?
Tonight I have a duty to fill. If I surrendered my duty to you, or any other, I might as well have perished…

Her breath was getting tangled in her lungs. Love hadn’t kept him by her side. He’d only been thinking of his duty. His debt of honor to her
father
.
Her
father, whose home she had left still angry about his treatment of Max and who she had never had the chance to see again.

“Let us speak of you,” her mother said. “I haven’t asked after your health and we are almost out of time. I wouldn’t dream of imposing on the dowager.”

“Mama,” she said, “Emma would not feel a longer stay an imposition. Vaile cost us so much time.”

“If we thought you would have seen us, Vaile’s threats would not have mattered. Your father would have been there in a moment.”

Her tears bobbed with greater force, buoyed by unleashed grief.

“And you?” she asked.

Her mother touched Lavinia’s hair. “I would have been there first.”

Lavinia sniffed once. Then twice. Then, she laid her head down on her proper, private mother’s shoulder and freely wept. Wept for loss. Wept for love. Wept for the mixed-up world she had no idea how to make right.

Her mother laid a hand on her head and sighed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

For the third time, Max ran a finger along the edge of his bookcase, but the smooth, lacquered lip lacked even the faintest nub. Max hit the molding with the base of his fist. Why hadn’t he asked how the damn passage worked?

Settle.

Even though he’d returned an hour early, after what he’d seen, he needed, simply, to talk to Lavinia. Randolph had forbidden him mention of Eustace, his worry’s source. He had agreed to remain silent. The last thing he wanted was for Lavinia to come face to face with the Brute.

He could not bear the thought.

He needed to be wrapped in Lavinia’s softness, needed to be pressed against her breast’s comforting surety, needed to be inhaling her hair’s sweet scent. Beast and gentleman continued their war, and only the thought of the future they’d share was solid ground.

With a deep sigh, he began again. He removed waist-level books to examine the back of the shelf.
Ah ha!
The lever was hidden between the shelf support and the backing.

The mechanism clicked open and the passage swiveled. Without hesitation, he crossed the empty chamber and peered out into the passage beyond.

Against the balustrade atop the family stairs, leaned the smirking dowager duchess of Wynchester.

“Why am I not surprised you are here, neighbor?” she asked.

He pasted on a smile. “I hope Your Grace will pardon my odd entrance.”

The dowager laughed, a sound at odds with his stiffly held shoulders.

“Why would I show Lavinia my secret passage,” she replied, “if I hadn’t expected you both to use the door? My dear duke’s design is once again making mischief and for that I am heartily glad. I wonder what other things I thought past use might still function.”

She couldn’t have meant—but yes, she had. Outrageously, the dowager’s gaze grazed him forehead to feet as if he were being auctioned by old Tattersall.

She patted him on the shoulder, her fingers lingering a moment too long for his comfort.

“Have you an eligible uncle, perhaps?” she asked.

“Your Grace!”

“Oh, put down your feathers, young man. I jest, of course.” Her smile deepened. “Old habits survive a shocking amount of smothering.” She held out her hand for his kiss. “We haven’t been formally introduced, have we? I’m Emma, Dowager Duchess of Wynchester, though I prefer just Emma. You must be Mr. Harrison.”

“Your Grace.” He kissed her gloved fingers, just below her gems.

Though
Emma
was an enigma just beyond his ken, her merry eyes were hard to dismiss. By the time he’d released her fingers, his smile was genuine.

“Much better, my dear Mr. Harrison. I suspect you are here for Lavinia. You will have to wait your turn. She’s occupied.”

Max frowned. “Occupied?”

Her Grace nodded. “With Mrs. Wiggins.”

She could have inked “dunce” across his head, then knocked him over with the quill. Lavinia had made no mention of an intention to meet with her mother today. He’d thought he would have time to explain. He glanced at the duchess.

Meddling again?
He curbed his thought. That he hadn’t revealed the complex web of interconnections between Lavinia’s family and his was his own fault.

He envisioned Lavinia’s reaction—a return of last night’s bog-mud distrust and quicksand misunderstanding. He’d be tossed in to his waist, this time.

“Now, I must ask your pardon. I must continue on to the Magdalene House. You may wait for Lavinia in her chamber.”

The dowager winked before descending the stairs—outrageous woman.

…

Lavinia stepped inside her chamber and closed the door. Her mother’s locket warmed the snug valley between her collarbones. The gold pendant, with a braid of her father’s hair tucked within, was heavier than the sum of its parts. Her father’s loss, now real, burdened her neck like the locket’s chain.

She rested against the wood door. In her heart, sorrow wrestled with bone-deep anger.

“Would you like to be alone?” Max asked.

Her eyes snapped to the bed. Max sat, hands gripping the edge of the bed as if prepared to be sentenced by a judge.

He expected her to be angry, did he? Well, she was more than angry.

She inhaled through the mêlée of emotions, blocking everything, and looked away. She could not look at him. She could not bear to see the duty she’d misread as love in his eyes.

Duty was a millstone. Duty could be twisted. Duty was a hated,
hated
word.

“You may stay or you may go,” she said. “Do as you please.”

“I understand your anger,” Max said, “but do not feign indifference.”

“Oh? You
understand
my anger, do you?”

“Ask,” Max said, “whatever questions you will and then I”—there was the sound of paper ripping—“would like a few answers of my own.”

Lavinia glanced up. Around Max, like the feathers of a plucked chicken, curled the torn remnants of Montechurch’s sketches. She’d forgotten about the package and its contents, and now the contents were ruined.

Last night, he had said he would trust her judgment and not interfere if she must confront Montechurch—yet, he’d just ruined her proof. Of all the high-handed, presumptuous…

“I could have used those as evidence of Montechurch’s motive,” she said.

“No, you could not. Whatever Montechurch’s end, it will not come under the auspice of a court.” He spoke with a finality she did not like.

“You cannot forbid me from going after Montechurch.”

“I was not forbidding. I was stating fact. Montechurch will face justice, just not in court.” He spoke in a flat and dangerous tone she had not heard before. She attributed his deadly intent to what he’d seen in the drawings.

“I suppose you would like to know if those”—she swept her arm indicating the drawings—“are real?”

“Do you think
that
is what is on my mind?” He answered with a question.

Wasn’t it?
“Ask me again how well I know
Monte
. And then, I’ll ask you which of your actions since the night of Vaile’s murder have been driven by an honor debt owed to my father.”

“Do not do this, Lavinia,” Max said carefully. “You are distraught. As am I. Seeing your mother must have been a shock.”

Shock…frequently defined as a disturbing impression.

The impression of her sightless mother—and the knowledge that Max had felt beholden to her father—had stamped her like a signet ring stamped wax, sealing off what had come before.

How could he? How could he leave out this essential chapter, this part of their story that caused a pivot in their past?

“You did not tell me you are responsible for my mother’s care.”

“To make a fine point,” he said, “I am not. She owns the brewery. I am merely her trustee.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Max. But for your investment, the brewery would have been closed.”

“My business transactions have little to do with us,” he said.

“
You
told my mother your investment in the brewery was payment of an honor debt to my father.”

Max lifted a brow. “Would your mother have accepted my help otherwise?”

“So, you manipulated her into accepting your assistance. Whom else have you manipulated?”

“Do not do this,” he repeated—a command this time, not a plea.

“My mother said you and my father became ‘close as father and son.’ In a way, you came back and lived my life—the life I’d lost because you had left.”

He bit his lip hard, as if biting back a reply.

She lowered her voice, mocking his—“
Tonight I have a duty to fulfill
. Since then, you have refused to allow me to push you away. I thought your constancy was love, when all the while you stayed constant as a matter of honor and debt and duty. Tell me…was it a duty to my father, or a duty to me?”

“How”—anger threaded through his words—“would you have me answer?” He paused and looked away. “I have a duty to you both.”

She blinked away tears. “Just how far did you go—how far would you go—to fulfill that duty? What lies did you tell
me
to get me to accept your help?”

“You dishonor yourself with such an accusation.” He clenched his jaw.

“One
X
in the column headed ‘duty’—one ‘daughter to be cared for,’ offset into the double-entry column of ‘debt for help rendered.’”

He gazed at her for a long time, his green eyes steady and deep and intent.

“You imagine ungenerous ledgers,” he said finally. “When he helped me, your father felt he was paying a debt he’d created when he refused my offer for you. By his accounting, I owe him nothing.”

“By my father’s accounting, not yours.”

“Yes, in many ways and for many reasons, protecting you is my charge.”

“Be careful, Max. Duty will send you round and round and round like a barley-grinding quernstone, until nothing remains but chaff. Trust me,” she said bitterly, “I
know
. As Vaile often reminded me, a wife’s duty is to provide an heir.”

“Vaile was a bastard,” he said, “to use your honor to meet his ends.”

Which was not to her point. “We are talking about you and your
ends
. If you had to pick,” she asked, “which would you choose—duty or love?”

“A false choice, Lavinia. Love
is
duty.”

She laughed, harsh and bitter. “No. No it is not.”

“My duty and my honor are my sacred trust. They are essential to the man I am.”

“Oh? And was the duty that guided my choices merely female whim?”

“That is not what I said.” He shoved the sketches from the bed. “Vaile and Montechurch are to blame for your suffering. Not you or the ideals you chose to protect. Duty—and love—sent you out into the middle of a riot.”

A buzz louder than a swarm of hornets beset her conscience. “I will not be a means to preserve your male sense of honor. Any duty undertaken eventually becomes a burden. I will be loved for the woman I am.”

“Meaning,” he cocked his head, “
I
do not love you for the woman you are.”

An unbearable sting joined the buzz. “Duty is not love,” she reiterated.

He sucked in a heavy breath. “And how do you see me, then? Only a rough configuration of duties?”

She didn’t like the crease between his eyes. She knew that crease’s feel—the sudden sense of desperate aloneness when a trusted protection goes suddenly missing. But there was nothing beyond the pain.

She hurt—she hurt all over.

“Aren’t you?

He stood. Anger distorted his features. “If I gave up the male sense of honor you so deride, I sure as
hell
would not deserve you.”

In the terrible silence that followed, she held her ground. “You promised not to curse at me.”

“Would you have me become like them? Like Vaile? Like
Monte
?”

He had shouted the final word, and it seemed to echo. Little by little, Max’s features drained of color.

“You want me to separate duty and love. You want me to deny my duty to you.” With every word he spoke his voice grew increasingly quiet and his words distinct. “You do not want to know what would remain. Would you have a savage, burning with revenge and anger and hate?”

Fear fluttered in her throat. The buzz gave way to emptiness. What, exactly, had she unleashed?

He folded his hands behind his back. When he spoke again, his words were barely above a whisper. “A madman’s dungeon is a world without honor, duty, or ideals. Is that the kind of world you want?
Is it
?”

Lavinia stepped backward. “You are frightening me.”

“If you think I would hurt you”—his lips were thin and white with rage—“you do not know me at all.”

“I am,” she said in her own whisper, “not sure I do.”

She meant
in that moment
she did not know him. But, from the look that crept into his eyes, he’d taken her meaning far more deeply.

“Lavinia,” Sophia’s voice rang out from the passage. “You must come at once.”

Sophia opened the door. Max turned on his heel and strode to the window, hands still clasped. He looked like a gentleman in contemplation—not a man struggling to contain his rage.

Her gaze remained fixed to Max’s back. Fear sparked like flint against flint—fear that this time they had both gone too far.

“My news can wait,” Sophia said, starting to back out.

“No, I don’t believe it can,” Max replied, still facing away. “Lord Randolph awaits Lady Vaile belowstairs, does he not?”

“How did you know?” Sophia asked.

“Does it matter?” Max asked. “Our discussion is finished, Lady Vaile. I give you leave to go with Lady Sophia.”

“Max,” she said his name in a voice that was both question and plea, “you cannot ask me to leave you like this.”

He turned. His skin had recovered its hue, but a coldness that had seeped into his eyes made Lavinia shiver.

“If you wish, I will escort you down,” Max said. “So long as Lady Sophia permits.”

“You are welcome to come down, of course,” Sophia said.

“Very good.” Max held out a stiff arm. “My commitment stands. I will see you through this.”

He had stayed by her side—and not. He could not have meant what she heard. The conversation was not anywhere near finished.
They
weren’t anywhere near finished.

…Or were they?