Leslie Lafoy (20 page)

He couldn’t take any more. Swallowing down the prickly lump in his throat, Carden pushed himself to his feet and retrieved his coat and the shell of his walking stick. Sheathing his small sword in the latter instantly brought Sera’s gaze up to meet his. She looked so young, so very vulnerable, so determined to be strong and brave. Something deep inside him twisted and he tore his gaze from hers, trying to make the pain go away.

It was still there as he draped his coat over Amanda’s shoulders and Camille said softly, “We have to have a funeral.”

A funeral? His heart lurched and then sank into his stomach. Oh, Jesus. No, not a funeral.

“Of course we do,” Sera agreed, releasing Bea and Camille to scrub her cheeks with the palms of her hands. “I’m sure there’s a place in Uncle Carden’s garden that the puppy will like.” She unbuttoned her jacket and shrugged out of it, adding, “Now let’s get these poor little creatures home so that we can see them dried and warmed. We’ll put them in this and let Uncle Carden carry them to the carriage for us.”

“You’re coming to the funeral, aren’t you, Aunt Honoria?” Camille asked as the others placed the surviving puppies into Sera’s satin-lined jacket.

Honoria dabbed at her nose with a lace-edged handkerchief. “Only if no animals attend.”

Christ on a crutch. It was a family affair? Would the staff be invited, too? His stomach clenching, he decided that the only thing to do was expedite the matter. The sooner it was done, the sooner he could drown his demons. “Honoria, may Beatrice and Camille ride back to the house with you?” he asked, tucking his walking stick under his arm before scooping up the jacket and puppies and more than a few blades of grass. “There won’t be room in mine for all of us and the animals, too.”

“Thank you for not asking me to transport the dog.”

“I thought about it.”

“Of course you did. Come along, my dears,” she said, offering her hands. As the girls dutifully took them, she glanced between them and asked, “Now which of you is Beatrice and which is Camille?”

Sera saw the sparkle in Beatrice’s eyes and knew what the child intended to do. Under other circumstances, she would have intervened and spared Honoria the confusion. But she had other matters to attend at the moment, Bea wasn’t wrapped in grief and anger, and Honoria needed to learn that her nieces were neither angels nor passive china dolls. No, Honoria was on her own.

And so was she, she realized with a start. Carden was heading toward the fountains and their waiting carriage. Amanda, awash in his coat, was going with him, still carrying the lost puppy in the cradle of one arm. The mother dog trotted along between them, her attention on her puppies and her makeshift leash trailing along the path behind her.

“Never mind me,” Sera muttered with a dry chuckle. “I’ll be along.” As though he’d heard her, Carden stopped and turned back to watch and wait for her, a chagrined smile quirking up one corner of his mouth.

Sera quickly gathered the girls’ abandoned hoops and sticks, retrieved Carden’s boots, and then paused to glance around to see if she’d missed anything. What she saw were shoes, pant legs, and hems. A good number of them. And in something approximating a half-circle. She brought her gaze up, knowing and dreading what she would find.

Yes, they’d drawn a sizable crowd. Which, thank heavens, seemed to have realized that the free show was over. As they turned and started off in their own directions, she did the same. She’d taken only a single step when a movement at the edge of her vision stopped her in her tracks. Her heart racing and her stomach cold, she turned to look squarely at the man. He was moving away, his stride long and deliberate, his head bowed and angled away from her.

No, it wasn’t possible, she told herself as she hurried to join Carden and Amanda. Her imagination had been overstimulated by the ordeal of the puppies. All those fears had simply allowed an older, stupidly persistent one to percolate to the surface. Gerald was dead.

C
HAPTER
11

Sawyer had warned him at the front door, but actually seeing John Aiden Terrell leaning against his desk—dry, clean, warm, wearing boots, holding a brandy glass in hand—and then—on top of all that—knowing why he was there … There were limits to what a man ought to have to endure in the course of a single goddamned day.

“Good Lord, Carden. What happened to you?”

“The door bell rang,” he snarled, pouring himself a full glass of whiskey, “and I opened it to find Seraphina Treadwell standing on my step.”

“I meant the sopping clothes.”

He tossed half the whiskey down his throat in one quick movement. The fire was still burning its way to his empty gullet when he answered, “And she had three little girls with her.”

Aiden was staring at him and he was throwing the other half after the first when Sawyer arrived, clearing his throat and then saying, “The Bible, sir.”

“Do you know where the ashes to ashes part is?” Carden asked, refilling his glass.

“Of course, sir.”

He filled a second glass. “Good. I don’t, so consider yourself temporarily ordained.” Sawyer was standing there slack-jawed when Carden thrust the other glass into his free hand, saying, “Here, have a drink. You’re going to need it. The crocodile tears and stoic sniffling will rip your heart out.”

Aiden straightened. “I gather there’s been a death?”

“Some bastard tried to drown a litter of pups in the Long Water,” Carden answered as the first slug of whiskey connected with his senses. “We managed to save all but one of them.”

“Bully for you, Carden!”

“Yes, indeed. Very well done, sir.”

“Well,” he drawled as the second dose began to slide in over the first, “in a few moments, my one failure is going to be center stage. How goes the chaos, Sawyer?”

“Lady Lansdown is in the parlor with a sherry, a fresh handkerchief, and decidedly pink eyes. Anne brought down sheets and an old blanket out of which Mrs. Blaylock and Mrs. Treadwell are fashioning a bed to the side of the hearth for the dog and her remaining pups. Cook is heating water for baths—including one for the dog—and preparing a concoction he swears will have the animals as—he says—plump and pleased as piglets by sunset tonight.”

“And the girls?” he asked, the edges of his senses beginning to go very nicely numb.

“They have gone with Anne to find and prepare a suitable coffin, sir. I believe that once they conclude that task, they intend to select a site for the interment.”

With any luck, he’d be sufficiently fuzzy by then that he could get through it without being really conscious of anything in particular. “I suppose I should stand by with the shovel, shouldn’t I?”

Sawyer handed back the untouched glass of liquid memory-killer, saying, “I shall ascertain their progress in that direction, sir,” and promptly left.

Carden drank the contents of his glass, set it aside, and then drank half of Sawyer’s, thinking about what a god-awful thing grave-digging was to do. Filling it in was even worse. That made it all so final, so damn undoable and forever. All the words that hadn’t been said and never would be. All the things you wished you’d known and hadn’t until it was too late. All the things you wished you’d done … A nice coffin, quoting Scripture, planting flowers … None of it was ever enough to make the pain of loss and the sorrow of regret go away. And cherubs. You couldn’t forget the carved cherubs.

“God,” Carden muttered darkly into his glass, “you don’t suppose they’ll want a headstone, do you?”

Aiden laughed. “For a man who has absolutely no experience with children, you’re doing quite well at this, you know. You and Sera ought to have a houseful of your own.”

Sera.
The words rippled slowly through his rapidly clouding awareness. In a vague sort of way he knew they had a significance. But fully and firmly grasping it just wasn’t possible. He’d have to think on it later. Much later. Right now, there were some things he needed to set straight with Aiden. “Are you here to ask Seraphina to attend the Martin-Holloway dinner with you?”

“Yes,” his friend replied slowly, warily. “Unless you have a reasonable objection.”

“No objection. Just a caveat.” Carden drained the glass and set it aside. Meeting his friend’s gaze squarely, he smiled and said, “Lay a hand on her, Aiden, and I’ll
break
it.”

“Are you making a formal claim to her?” his friend asked incredulously.

Formal? Hell, he didn’t know. Being unaware was the whole point of drinking hard and fast. And since he didn’t have a sufficient number of his wits about him to see the maze Aiden was asking him to navigate, he opted for covering familiar ground instead. “You may escort Seraphina out for an evening, but you’ll treat her like one of your sisters.”

“There will come a day when you get bored with her, you know.”

And Aiden was licking his chops in anticipation. The bloody scoundrel. He could damn well cool his heels. “Well, it’s not going to be today or tomorrow. Or even the next day.”

“How about three days from now?”

Which was when the Martin-Holloways were having their dinner party. Aiden could only hope and dream. “Sorry to disappoint you,” Carden replied smugly, “but I rather doubt it.”

Something about the way his friend was looking at him—something in his smile … Whatever it was, it was damn irritating. And unsettling, too. “What?” he demanded.

Aiden shrugged, but his expression didn’t change. “I was just thinking about digging holes. Shouldn’t we be about the one for the puppy?”

That was one of the problems of drinking; you knew in your gut that there were layers to what people were saying, but your mind wasn’t sharp enough or fast enough to figure out what they were. He’d remember, though, and think on it later. Perhaps tomorrow, he decided, heading for the door—when it would be safe to be sober. Or, better yet, the day after when his head stopped pounding.

*   *   *

Sera glanced around the foyer and, seeing Sawyer nowhere in sight, decided that the only polite thing to do was to see Honoria out herself. “I’m sure you’ll feel better when you get home, Honoria,” she said, pulling open the heavy front door. “It was very nice of you to endure for the sake of the girls.”

Honoria sniffled daintily and dabbed at her nose with a lace-edged handkerchief. “It was a lovely service.” She raised a silver brow to sniffle again and add disapprovingly, “Despite the fact that Carden’s attention was awash. He drinks entirely too much, you know.”

“But far less than other men,” Sera countered firmly, “far less often, and he isn’t mean when he does. There’s a great deal to be said for that.”

“It’s still a bad habit and doesn’t…” Honoria silently struggled against the urge to sneeze again and then pressed the handkerchief to her face a mere fraction of a second before it overwhelmed her.

“Bless you.”

“Thank you. Reflect well on him or the fami—”

Another sneeze interrupted her discourse and Sera seized the opportunity to put an end to it altogether. “Bless you again,” she said, pulling the door wider and stepping aside. “Do feel better, Honoria. And thank you again for attending.”

Honoria nodded, sneezed twice in rapid succession, waved her hand in hasty farewell and fled. Sera waited until the carriage door was closed before doing the same with Carden’s front door. As she turned away, her gaze passed over the foyer table and the walking stick Carden had flung there as they’d entered with the puppies.

Curiosity niggling at her, she picked it up and examined it, marveling at how very ordinary it appeared. The shaft was of some sort of dark, almost black wood that started at a smallish silver-tipped end and gradually widened up the length until it came to a long, relatively thick and heavy piece of silver with ripples along one side. She slipped her hand around it, noting that her fingers instinctively fitted into the grooves. With one hand on the shaft and the other on the grip, she pulled in opposite directions, starting at the sound of metal hissing against metal, at the speed and ease with which the small sword fully cleared the scabbard. Shaking her head in amazement, she carefully sheathed the sharp-edged instrument and laid it back on the table.

“You did that very well, Seraphina.”

She looked over her shoulder to find Barrett leaning against the jamb of the parlor door. “I wasn’t aware that you’d come to visit,” she said brightly, glad that Aiden wouldn’t have to manage the situation entirely on his own. “Carden’s in his study.”

He grinned. “Sawyer says that I have impeccable timing and, yes, I’ve already seen the rapidly declining state of Carden Reeves.” He pointed to the walking stick. “It’s an interesting little toy, isn’t it?”

“I thought it was an ordinary walking stick.”

“That’s the intention. You always want the element of surprise on your side.”

Sera chuckled. “I didn’t realize that Hyde Park was such a dangerous place.”

“It’s not, generally speaking.” His smile faded by slow degrees as he considered her, his mind clearly working through a decision. “But once you acquire the habit of being armed,” he said carefully, “you feel a certain vulnerability without a weapon easily at hand. Carden has always favored the cutting weapons. Myself … I’m much less personal about my violence. The pistol is my weapon of first choice.”

“I didn’t realize that there were different kinds of violence,” she admitted, sensing that Barrett had both an objective for their conversation and a reason for it.

“I was already with Her Majesty’s engineers in the Transvaal when Carden was assigned to the regiment,” he went on, still leaning against the doorjamb. “Our commanding officer at the time was a bureaucrat who fancied himself a man of considerable technical talent and expertise. A combination that made our work extremely—and quite unnecessarily—dangerous.

“We were spanning a gorge and he and Carden had a strong difference of opinion as to how it ought to be done structurally. Carden, being a subordinate, lost the contest. And when the trestle collapsed—just as Carden said it would and despite his every effort to keep it from happening—we lost seventeen good men.”

Sera held her breath and watched Barrett gaze back into the horror of the past. After several long moments, he shook his head and straightened, saying bluntly, “Carden went after him bare-handed.” He held up his own hand, a mere sliver of space between his thumb and forefinger. “And came this close to beating him to death.”