Laura Kinsale (34 page)

Tess pressed her hands over her mouth. It was a quick, instinctive move, to keep the cry of joy from bursting from her lips. In that same moment, Gryf looked up.

He saw her.

The shock hit him with a violence that was physical. For a split second his knees failed him. His breath stopped in his chest. Darkness threatened behind his eyes, driving the chamber and the lords and Tess to a pinpoint of light down a long tunnel—far, far away from himself. He had been numb, blessedly numb, and now—

Bright pain arced through him, silent and searing, like the sob that choked his throat. The joy was a kind of
agony, a dreadful fear that his brain was playing tricks, that the slender figure half-hidden in the shadows at the corner of the room was no more than the creation of a mind pushed to the breaking point. That he would awake, and find himself again in the dark cell, knowing too well she was gone

But the chains on his hands were real, and the sound of the lord chancellor’s voice, speaking words that barely registered. “…a statement clarifying for Their Lordships this decision not to prosecute?”

“Your Lordships,” the attorney-general said, “the facts in this case are extremely complex. Without taxing your patience, let me say that we are assured that the prisoner entered the premises without intent to commit the felony of robbery or of murder. We are further assured that the victim had sufficient motive to attack the prisoner, that the victim did so, and that the prisoner retreated as far as was possible out of a genuine desire to avoid bloodshed. These facts are substantially consistent with a plea of self-defense, and the counsel for the Crown sees no purpose in pursuing the case longer.”

“You will submit a written report of this evidence to Their Lordships?”

“Of course, my lord. Within the week.”

The words ran past Gryf like babbling water. As the image of Tess remained real and solid, his fear began to turn to panic. Believing her dead, he had longed for death himself. To find her alive wrenched away even that. One part of him cried out to her in need; the other shrank away, dreading the pain, the possibility of suffering again. He had built himself into a fortress, stone by gray stone, and she had brought it down around him with one blink of her storm-colored eyes.

Tess stared back at him, unable to read his face or the sudden peculiar stiffening of his frame as he met her
eyes. The lord chancellor said, addressing the room at large, “Your Lordships have heard that there is no evidence to be submitted on which the prisoner may be properly convicted. I suggest to you that it is your duty to return a verdict of not guilty of the felony and murder whereof the prisoner stands indicted. What say Your Lordships—is the prisoner, Lord Ashland, guilty of the felony and murder whereof he stands indicted, or not guilty?”

It was only a formality. The room rang to the intoned chorus of “not guilty.” The lord chancellor turned again to Gryf. “Lord Ashland, the lords have considered the charge of felony and murder which has been brought against you; they have likewise considered the statement of the attorney-general and upon the whole Their Lordships have unanimously found you are not guilty of the felony and murder whereof you stand indicted.”

A guard immediately stepped behind Gryf and freed his hands from the shackles.

Gryf did nothing. He simply stood gazing at Tess, his face white. She looked back at him, feeling her cheeks go hot with agitation. She wanted to smile and was afraid to, afraid to see his rigid expression turn to something worse. What thin hopes she had cherished dwindled away to the vanishing point. He did not want her. He wasn’t relieved to see her, or even pleased. He was…she didn’t know what. Angry? Shocked? Disgusted? All of those things might have been in his face, or none of them. The only thing she could positively tell was that the sight of her brought him no happiness.

The sergeant at arms repeated his bawling “Oyez!” three times and announced, “Our Sovereign Lord the Queen does strictly charge and command all manner of persons here present and that here attend, to depart hence in the peace of God and of our said Sovereign
Lord the Queen, for His Grace My Lord Chancellor intends now to dissolve his commission.”

The junior who had brought Tess touched her arm again. She had to tear her eyes away and go with him, back to the little room. She sat near the window, staring out. When the door opened behind her, her heart nearly stopped beating.

It was not Gryf. It was Serjeant Wood.

He swept in, in his black robe and wig, grinning. He went immediately to the window and threw open the leaded glass. “Air!” he exclaimed. “Unruly clients give me the vapors. By God, I thought I was going to expire when he wouldn’t even plead.”

Tess gave a half-hysterical giggle. “Have we won, then?”

Serjeant Wood turned, sending his robes in a whirl around him. “Won! Of course we won, dear girl.
Nolle prosequi.
No case. No case at all of premeditated murder. The Crown had all the same evidence we did—the falsified annulment records; Stark’s arrest in Tahiti and his telegram to Eliot; the witnesses who saw Eliot nab you; the fact that Eliot shot our man in the back…it’s endless. No other sensible construction to be put on it than just what all the papers have been saying: that your husband went to Eliot to demand your whereabouts, and Eliot took his chance to rid himself of an embarrassing detail. The Crown was sunk, as soon as the lords recognized him as Ashland. And that, I must concede, is wholly due to the worthy Mr. Stark. Perhaps we won’t make him go back to rot in a French jail after all.”

Serjeant Wood winked at Tess.

She smiled nervously, her mind not really focused on the details of some rather hazy legal threats which had been waved over Stark to make him tell the truth after they had extradited him from France. “Where is Gryf?”

“Receiving his accolades. He’ll be along; I told Fleece-man to bring him in here.”

“Oh,” Tess said. She was slowly tearing the lace from a small handkerchief into tiny little shreds.

Serjeant Wood came and stood behind her. He laid one of his great hands on her shoulder. “He won’t be all wine and roses, I’m afraid. Not at first.”

“He’s exhausted, I expect.” Tess was trying to be rational. Her voice only shook a small amount.

“Dazed,” said the serjeant. “You look exhausted yourself. I’ll leave you to peace and quiet for a while.”

Tess nodded. She sat alone in the little room for a long time after he had left. The peace and quiet drove her slowly crazy.

And Gryf never came to see her.

H
e didn’t sleep well in the closed bed curtains of the lord’s chamber at Ashland. It was a ritual with Badger, that the old butler always came in and stood until Gryf got into bed, and then pulled the curtains. Suggesting otherwise did no good—apparently Badger could not comprehend so monstrous a change in the scheme of things.

So for the sake of the old man’s rest, Gryf had taken to retiring almost as soon as the sun had set. He would lie awake in the suffocating dark of the bed until he could stand it no longer, and then he got up and fought his way out of the clinging curtains and dressed.

Outside was the only place he could bear to be at night. Outside, in the free air under the sky. He walked down to the little lake in its amphitheater of hills and watched the moon rise. He sat on the grass. It was still a wonder, to feel the rough, living texture; still precious after months on cold stone. Far more than all the wealth and status that had suddenly crashed upon him.

There was a certain black humor in it, he thought. To have everything now, when he could not mobilize the slightest trace of feeling in his heart. He should be glad,
and instead he was frozen. Unnaturally calm, like the shining, silent surface of the lake. Underneath that sheet of polished steel was something else, dark and frightening, but as long as he did not think of it, as long as he did not question or feel, he was safe.

He forced his mind to the goal he had set for himself, which was to think about the future. To make some plan, sight some course. To look ahead. He could go anywhere. Do anything. Buy whatever he might want.

And he found he wanted nothing.

In all his midnight walks beside this lake in the time since he had been released, he had come down to that. All dreams, all hopes; they seemed to have vanished into air. Even the ship—what point, to outfit her and load her and sail aimlessly about the ocean, when the paltry money she might make was nothing to the sum of his inheritance?

Ironic, it was, to have life lose its point just when it was given back. Ironic—and bitter. Sometimes his insides twisted with the pain of it: that was the surface cracking, the pebble in the smooth and shining lake. What monsters lay beneath he did not want to know.

But they were moving. They threatened him, demanding release and entry into the calm, cold spaces of his soul. He wanted to run from that buried part of himself before it rose up to engulf him.

Where he would go made no difference. He only knew that he could not stay here. Ashland was not really his. He did not want it. All the years he had raged and hated and despaired of his lost heritage—he had not understood. Or perhaps he had, deep down. Perhaps some part of him had always known that what he’d really wanted back were impossibilities—his childhood, his family…irreplaceable things. Not a house and a title. Not the money he had coveted so long.

But it was not so easy to shake off his fortune and go back to what he had been. It was not possible simply to walk away. Something had to be done with the estate. Whenever he came to that thought, the monsters started stirring. He trod around them delicately in his mind. Charities, schools, conveyances to the Crown: those were the things he could rationally consider. For nights on end he had come out here and considered them, endlessly, pointlessly, because he had no legal or moral right to give Ashland to a single one.

What he had, instead, was a wife and son.

He leaped up suddenly, and began to walk the shore. The thought of Tess was like touching a lacerated wound. Instant agony. He retreated from it in frantic haste.

The thought of his son was easier to bear. There, he could maintain some distance. The baby was little more than a name on a piece of paper, a theory. When he’d been told he was a father, Gryf had simply stared blankly at Serjeant Wood, with no more emotion than he might have felt at the news that an extra scullery maid had been hired for the kitchen. A baby…the idea was impossibly remote. It seemed almost unreal and therefore safe to contemplate. He could even talk about it; had, in fact, held lengthy conversations with his solicitors.

His solicitors. How convenient, he thought wryly, to have solicitors at one’s beck and call. They did not even argue with him, as he had thought they might. They only listened gravely to his plans and pointed out, lawyerlike, that it might be politic to consult the boy’s mother before Gryf saddled her with sole charge of his son and his estate without appointing a trustee.

But that was what he wanted to avoid at all costs: seeing Tess. At the very thought of it, he had to lock one
fist inside the other and press them to his mouth to still the trembling. He had thought before that he knew the full extent of his weakness, but he had not. To let himself love again—a human being, a fragile life that could be torn from him in an instant—the idea made him sick with panic. He did not want to see her. He did not want to speak to her. He wanted to be stone, cold and unfeeling and safe. And he knew that if he met her, he’d be shattered glass instead.

After a moment, he forced his hands back into his pockets. Old habits were falling into place: he sought a way out, some loophole he might slip through and disappear into the protection of anonymity. In the letter that had come today, he thought he might have found it. Abraham Taylor had written to say that he had returned to England after the death of his wife. He was planning to retire; he would like to discuss with Gryf the transfer of the trusteeship Taylor still held for Lady Tess to her husband, which was where the earl had intended for it to rest. Could a meeting be arranged?

Gryf’s course came clear in his mind. He would talk to Taylor, and decline the trusteeship. That was Gryf’s choice—once again, he had the solicitors’ word on it. Taylor would be forced to appoint someone else. Gryf had faith in the consul’s judgment: Taylor would choose someone worthy. It was only one more step to place Ashland, too, in trust and appoint the same trustee. Taylor himself might even be persuaded to change his mind and reassume the reponsibility.

Best of all, Gryf could send Taylor to speak to Tess. Even the solicitors would understand that: an old family friend and associate. They were all the same breed, Taylor and the solicitors. They could copy great mounds of documents and sign them to their hearts’ content, and
Gryf would be free of walls and bed curtains and the threat of what lay barricaded in his own heart.

Two days later, he was waiting in his grandfather’s study, drumming his fingers anxiously on the black and gold writing desk given by Louis XIV to the first marquess, when old Badger shuffled in. “My lord,” he announced, and read from a card, “Her British Majesty’s Agent and Consul-General to the province of Pará, Abraham Taylor, Esquire.”

Gryf knew this routine by now. He stood up, and said, “I’ll see him directly.”

“Here, my lord?”

“Here.”

Taylor was ushered formally in. He looked older, more lined and less ruddy beneath the black whiskers, but he grinned when he took Gryf’s hand. “Your Lordship—”

Gryf shook his head. He smiled briefly. “For God’s sake, don’t call me that. I get enough verbal genuflecting from the bloody butler.” He held the consul’s hand a moment longer than necessary. “I’m sorry,” he said softly, “about Mrs. Taylor.”

Taylor looked down. His grip tightened a little. “Thank you.” There was a pause, as if he might say more, but then he let go of Gryf’s hand and turned away. “It’s time for a change for me now, you see. I have a place in Hereford—I thought I might go up there and potter about. I’d like to have things set out properly with you first. The documents are all in order. It’s just a matter of a signature.”

Gryf spread his fingers and leaned on the writing table. His mouth felt dry, now that he was faced with saying what he intended. “Mr. Taylor—” He glanced down, not quite able to look the consul in the eyes. “I don’t want the trusteeship.”

Taylor said nothing for a long moment. Then he asked, in a level tone, “You decline it?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

Gryf looked up, affecting a shrug. “Lack of experience.”

Another silence.

Gryf took a breath, and said, “I’m putting my own assets in trust, too. I thought I would ask you to help me choose a suitable administrator.”

Taylor was looking at him in a most peculiar way. Gryf doubled up his fist and tapped it on the table. His nerve was failing already.

Finally, Taylor said, “If you feel unsure of your acumen, I can put you in touch with some excellent advisers to help you administer the trust, though I doubt the need of it, myself. And I certainly don’t think another trustee besides yourself would be appropriate for Lady Tess’s property, or—if you’ll suffer my advice—for your own. You’re a young man, with all your faculties. There’s no need to put your estate in trust.”

“Well,” Gryf said, “that’s what I’m going to do.”

It was hardly a persuasive answer.

“But your responsibilities—”

“Damn my responsibilities.” The words were twisted with bitterness. Before Taylor could speak Gryf turned away. “My
responsibilities
nearly got me hung.”

He heard the floor creak as Taylor shifted his feet. “I see.”

The hell you do, Gryf thought. There was no way to put the explanation into words. No way to say that he was in complete emotional rout, afraid to risk meeting his own wife for fear of smashing the fragile shell of detachment he’d built around himself. He only knew that he could not take over the trust. The very idea raised a film of sweat on his palms.

“I’d have expected better of your grandfather’s lineage,” Taylor said harshly, after the silence had spun out to awkward lengths.

That hurt. Gryf frowned down at his reflection in the polished ebony. “I know I don’t belong here,” he said in a low voice. “I’m trying to go away.”

“Run away, I think you mean.”

Gryf let out a long breath. “Call it what you like, then. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Taylor clasped his hands behind his back and took a turn the length of the room. Gryf waited. The consul came back to an abrupt halt in front of him.

“I’ve been at Westpark these two weeks,” Taylor said. There was a warning challenge in his tone.

Gryf kept a careful silence. He felt the pulse speed up in his throat.

“Would you like to ask after anyone there?” Taylor inquired with deadly courtesy. “Your wife and son, perhaps?”

“How are my wife and son?” Gryf returned flatly, making it clear he had no interest in the answer.

“Your son is well.” Taylor glared at Gryf. “Your wife is miserable.”

“This is a pointless conversation.”

“Is it? Shall I tell her you said so?”

“Yes!” Gryf snapped. “Tell her that. Tell her I won’t take her trust and I won’t see her and I don’t care if she and her son fall off the face of the Earth and land in Hades. Do you understand that, Taylor? Is that clear enough?”

The consul’s face had hardened into a mask of hostility. “Quite clear,” he said. “And I shall tell her none of it. I’m sure I couldn’t do justice to your invective.”

Gryf did not answer. He wanted to throw something. His equilibrium was cracking, dissolving, giving way to
things underneath. He made a desperate effort to pull himself together. “I’m sorry,” he managed finally. “I didn’t—”

His voice failed him again. He turned his face from Taylor and stared at the satin upholstery on the desk chair, burningly aware of the older man’s scrutiny.

Taylor spoke, at length, and his voice held a softer note. “Do you know, when first I heard who you really were, it came to me that Lord Morrow had guessed it all along. He knew your grandfather, and your uncle. I understand you greatly resemble them both.”

Gryf looked up, suspicious of this sudden reverse of temper. “So I’m told,” he said stiffly. “Although people haven’t exactly stopped me on the street about it for the last seventeen years.”

“People see what they expect to see.” Taylor inclined his head thoughtfully. “Most people. But Lord Morrow was a master of accurate and unprejudiced observation. He also had a formidable memory. I think he guessed.”

“I think it’s highly unlikely.”

“Perhaps. In his last instructions to me, he was very insistent to put his daughter in your way.”

“The more fool he,” Gryf said.

“Not at all.” The consul smiled. “Eccentric, I will give you. A fool, no.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Taylor shrugged. “I’m wondering if what Morrow saw in you is really there.” He waved his hand slightly toward the window. “
Probitas Fortis
. Isn’t that what it says over the front door here?”

Gryf narrowed his eyes. “Believe me,” he said slowly, “I have never—ever—stood up to that motto. I haven’t even tried.”

The older man smiled. “What a liar you are.”

There was no answer to that. Taylor nodded, in obvi
ous farewell. He went to the door and stopped. “She deserves better from you, you know.”

Gryf took a breath. He had his armor back.

“We don’t always get what we deserve,” he said softly. “Do we?”

The nursery at Westpark overlooked the eighteenth-century pleasure gardens: the wide promenade and the boxwood maze, with its little crystal and white greenhouse that Tess’s father had built in the center, an enchantingly filigreed prize within the reasoned squares and rectangles. Westpark itself was like that, a serene and orderly magnificence, a house of exact proportions, each silvery stone and window and door in its perfect place—but with a surprise at the heart: the round room beneath the huge glass dome at the center of the house, filled with wild trees and flowers; plants her father had collected and Mr. Sydney had cared for, until they were grown to great heights and formed a green canopy that delighted the little parrot Isidora.

From the nursery, Tess could step to the door or the window and see either view: interior or exterior. It was the outside she watched fretfully this morning, her eyes focused on the little slice of drive that was visible as it curved through the far trees on its way to the house.

She was dressed. The baby was dressed. She’d been up since dawn at work on both their toilettes, driving the nurse and the housemaids and her own lady’s maid to the same mental distraction she was in herself. She had chosen first a pink gown, then demanded a gray one, and finally settled on a dotted swiss of palest apple-green, with puffed bishop sleeves and a pearl-white sash. It made her look very feminine, she thought. Breakable, like a delicate porcelain. No one could possibly connect her now with the rough-and-tumble girl
who slogged through mud on the Amazon and speared eels in Tahiti.