Let Me Be The One (25 page)

Elizabeth nodded. "I suppose that no matter what the circumstances of our growing up, we never think of it as being different from anyone else's. We end up believing that what we know is what
should
be." Her sigh was nearly soundless, and though she was thinking of herself and what had passed for usual in her home, she said, "You learned differently at Hambrick, I take it."

"Hmm. When Gordon came of age he was sent to public school. Eton. It was where my father went. I missed him terribly, envied him almost as much. When it was my turn to go, I was sent to Hambrick. My grandfather, my mother's father, had come to live with us by then, and he had gone to Hambrick. He felt as strongly about sending me there as my father did Eton. Grandfather won, though, as he usually did when he set forth his arguments."

"Were you disappointed?"

"Not overmuch. I was old enough then to know that being at Eton with Gordon would have forever placed me in his shadow. I would always be compared to him in a way I had never been at home. From the very beginning our parents encouraged us on different courses. My father would have seen the wisdom of sending me to Hambrick earlier if it had not been proposed by my grandfather. They never agreed on anything, beginning with my father marrying my mother."

Elizabeth laughed. "But your grandfather did eventually agree. After all, your parents married."

One of Northam's brows kicked up. "They eloped," he said in a stage whisper, adopting the feigned secretive tone everyone in his family had used to discuss the event. "To Gretna."

"Really?"

He nodded solemnly."It was a scandal." He smiled when Elizabeth laughed again. Releasing her hand, he sat up and drew a sheet modestly around his waist. He patted the space beside him and she left her place on the edge of the bed to sit in the crook of his arm. "Where was I?"

"The scandal."

"No, I wasn't. That's another story. I was going to tell you about Hambrick."

"Lord Southerton told me about your Compass Club. Sworn enemies of the Society of Bishops and all that."

"That's right."

"He said you were an exclusive club."

"He said that?"

She tried to remember South's exact words. "Well, he said that you wouldn't let anyone else in."

"He probably didn't mention that no one ever asked. We weren't exclusive, Elizabeth. We were excluded."

She frowned, unable to imagine such a thing. She remembered seeing them all together on the first day of the picnic, sprawled across a blanket, laughing so boisterously when Northam juggled peaches from her still life. Who would not want to join them? She had. Not even knowing them, she had wondered what it would be like to share their blanket and their laughter. "How could that be?"

"The simplest explanation is because of West," he said. "But that's only part of it."

"What is it about Mr. Marchman?"

"He's illegitimate."

"A bastard," she said softly. She felt Northam stiffen at her side. "No, I didn't mean anything by it. It's just... it's just that I was thinking how cruel the boys could be to... to someone like him."

"Someone like him," Northam repeated, not liking the taste of that phrase on his tongue, liking it even less that he heard it from Elizabeth."It doesn't make him different from you or me."

"Oh, but it does."

Northam removed his arm from around her shoulders. "Explain that to me."

She knew he was unhappy with her but would not take back her words. It was better this way, she thought, better that he was reminded that her perspective could be at odds with his. "Illegitimacy does not make him intrinsically different," she said. "Not at birth. But soon after it changes him in some way. It could be because his mother is ashamed or his father is indifferent. It may be that someone responds more slowly when he cries or does not comfort him so easily when he is hurt. He begins to see himself as someone apart from others.

"You cannot say that society is kind to bastards, North, and in the end society has its way. An illegitimate son learns that what he wants he must take, that nothing will ever be given to him, and that sometimes even what he earns he cannot claim. He comes to believe one of two things about himself: either that he has no right to hold his head up or that he must hold it higher than everyone else. Whatever he chooses, it soon becomes visible to others, and they respond to what they see: a young man who accepts that he is everyone's whipping boy or one who constantly challenges the biggest and strongest and cares nothing for how badly he's beaten.

"I know nothing about your Mr. Marchman, but I suspect after meeting the rest of your little Compass Club that he falls into the latter category, and that you became his friend because he would have let you kill him before he would have stopped challenging you."

He was silent for a long time. Elizabeth turned her face toward him, expecting to see that derision or defense had changed the shape of his mouth. Instead she saw a sheen of tears. She found his hand under the covers and held it between both of hers. His decency made her want to weep. His kindness made her frightened for him.

North felt Elizabeth's head return to his shoulder. He collected himself, drawing in an uneasy breath at first, then another that came less painfully. "It was just as you said," he told her. "West kept coming at us. Me first. Then at East. Later South. We had to do something about him or it would never have ended." Northam shook his head, memory tugging at the corners of his mind. "He broke my nose. That's how this bump was fashioned." He ran his finger along the offending bridge. "He said I needed it. That I was too pretty by half and that without it I should be better off a girl."

Elizabeth laughed softly. "I think it is safe to say that Mr. Marchman was a bit envious of your very fine looks."

He grunted, unappeased by this defense."My grandfather said much the same thing. Told me it gave me character. Made a point of meeting Marchman at the next visitor's day and thanking him. My mother was less forgiving of West. She still brings it up from time to time. She is likely to think of him as a ruffian, though he has better manners than the lot of us put together."

"I imagine she's prejudiced in your favor."

"I suppose," he agreed reluctantly. "She's the other one besides you, by the way, to comment favorably on my looks. She thought it was a great pity about my nose. Said I had character enough without it."

Elizabeth pretended to study his face with great care. "I'm afraid, my lord, that without your nose you would
be
a character."

"Hah! I meant the bump and well you know it. You must think you're very amusing."

"No," she said. "But I should like to be."

"Why?"

"To make you laugh." She said it without thinking and, once said, could not draw it back. Her eyes darted away from his, knowing she had revealed too much. "You have a very nice laugh," she said lightly, as if it was of little significance.

"Do you think so?"

"Well, it is not so fine as Lord Southerton's, but it is a shade more robust than the marquess's. Though, now that I consider it, perhaps robust does not quite serve. Have you been to the zoo, my lord? There is an animal there that has a laugh—"

He kissed her. There was nothing else for it. If he let her, Elizabeth would spend the rest of the night trying to assign no importance to what had just spilled past her lips. It would be highly diverting, somewhat humbling, and certainly an invention from beginning to end. Far better to kiss her.

"Oh." She blinked at him widely when he raised his head.

"Indeed."

It was all she could do not to bring her fingertips to her mouth. It was something an ingenue would do, she thought. Something
she
had done once. She did not know what bothered her more: that she remembered being so innocent, or that he made her feel that way again. She heard herself ask in a tight little voice, "Do you want to take me now?"

She was like a cornered kitten, he decided. Back arched. Spitting. Tiny claws bared. He was beginning to know this aspect of her character better, not that he felt any assurance about the best way to handle it. Upon reflection, he suspected that it was something about the kiss that troubled her. Then again, perhaps it was only a wayward thought that had prompted this reaction. Whatever the source, she was clearly feeling threatened.

Northam ignored her tone and responded only to the words."No," he said. He made a show of choosing a pillow, plumping it, and stuffing it behind the small of his back for his comfort. "Not just at this time. Perhaps later." Out of the corner of his eye he saw her mouth open, then close again. Good. Keeping her confused seemed to render her speechless. He filed this tactic away. He had virtually no doubt he would be presented with the opportunity to use it in the future.

Settling comfortably back against the headboard again, he said, "I believe I was telling you about Hambrick Hall. None of us was very popular with the other boys. I was too serious. South was too brilliant. And East... well, East was rather... how shall I put it?... well,
round
in those days."

Elizabeth was interested in spite of herself."Do you mean to say he was a roly-poly?"

"Just so. Almost as wide as he was tall. His mother was forever sending him boxes of baked goods. Scones. Cakes. Hot cross buns. He was fond of the icing and picking out the raisins. What was left he fed to the birds."

"He doesn't sound the kind of person Mr. Marchman would have picked on."

"Oh, East had a reputation as a thrasher. He could knock anyone down. Had to. He was always being teased, and there were the cakes to protect, you know." Northam caught a glimpse of Elizabeth's smile. "So Marchman went after him. Never ridiculed him about his size, simply tried to remove his rep as the best thrasher."

"What happened?"

"You may have noticed that the marquess does not have a bump on his nose," he said dryly. "East won, of course. Several times. I don't know precisely how the fighting ended and the friendships began, but one day we noticed we were all sharing Eastlyn's feast from home and that was that."

"And you never thought to exclude Mr. Marchman?"

"Never."

"It seems he caused you all a good deal of trouble."

"He brought us together."

"The Compass Club," she said quietly.

"Mm. It was odd, that. None of us expected to inherit titles one day. It was one of the things that set us apart from many other students at Hambrick, most particularly the Bishops. Marchman's contention was that everyone in England was in line for a bit of land, a country home, and a title. It was only that so many people had to die first before one could claim it. To prove his point, he showed how each one of us could come by another name. Privately we took to calling ourselves by them."

"Rather ghoulish."

"It sounds so now. It wasn't at the time. Just a bit of silliness. There wasn't one among us who preferred a title. I was already determined to be a soldier. South intended he should serve in the Royal Navy. East fancied himself a diplomat, someone who could attend state dinners but still mend things."

"And Mr. Marchman?"

Northam paused then answered carefully, "It is not so easy to say about West."

Elizabeth considered pressing him, then decided better of it. "It all came about though, didn't it?"

"Our titles? Yes. That all came about. Or will. There is still Marchman." He was quiet a moment, thoughtful. When he began again it was with more deliberation. "I was with the colonel in India when I received word that my brother had died. It was the influenza. I became Viscount Richmond. A month later a letter reached me in Delhi that my father had succumbed to the same illness. I did not even know he had taken sick."

"And so you became the earl."

He nodded. "Responsibilities to my family meant resigning my commission and returning home."

"Do you miss the soldiering?"

"Sometimes. I miss my father and brother a great deal more."

"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean—"

He found her hand, squeezed it. "I know what you meant. The truth is, I had lived in dread of them dying for years. When it finally happened there was almost a sense of relief, and then, of course, the terrible burden of guilt that settled on me. I thought I should have been able to
do
something."

Elizabeth was not surprised. Northam's nature remained unchanged.

"I was not much good to my mother or my sisters early on. It was not that I drank too much or gambled the family fortune away; it was simply that I was not
there.
It is considerably difficult to explain. I was going through each day, each week, because one knows it is expected, but feeling disconnected from it all, completing the routines of living without any sense of life."

Elizabeth thought he had explained it rather well. Or perhaps it was only that she had intimate knowledge of the very same. "What changed circumstances for you?"

He shrugged. "Small things. Many things. My grandfather's lectures were compelling, if only because they were so unwelcome. My mother was able to see through her haze of pain to my own. Leticia married. Pamela had her coming out. Regina left the schoolroom." He stopped, considering all those things, then added one more. "And the colonel sent for me."