Like No Other Lover (3 page)

It had been so passionately cleaned and polished that every piece of furniture—the walnut dressing table and matching mirror above it, the wardrobe where Violet’s obliging abigail had tenderly hung Cynthia’s gowns, the tall posts of a bed that could fit three of her across and six of her down—seemed to have its own halo. But no carved acorns or vines decorated the hearth. No friezes enhanced the walls. The legs of the dressing table and bed and chair were unturned rectangles. The carpet possessed no discernible pedigree.

Quite
a contrast to the furniture she’d seen downstairs: gilded, delicate, haughty refugees from the French revolution, no doubt purchased cheaply from fleeing aristocrats by an opportunistic Redmond (was there any other kind?) at some point during the last century. The carpets, she knew, were Savonnerie and Aubusson: thick and soft as pelts, colors rich despite their advanced age, fringe luxuriant.

In other words, Mrs. Isaiah Redmond was making an eloquent point by assigning Miss Brightly this room.

Cynthia smiled as though an entire ballroom of guests was watching her at this very moment. If one thing could truthfully be said about her, it was that she was equal to a challenge.

She was startled when one of the curtains began to shimmy; the window was open. And though this room was doubtless one of the smaller ones in the house, it still seemed to take a quarter of an hour just to cross to the window to close it.

Before she did, she hesitated. Then parted the curtains wider to look out.

Millions of stars crowded the Sussex sky, and below it and beyond it was a vast soft dark punctuated by the woolly dark shadows of trees. For a dizzying moment she was a little girl again, shivering between her parents atop a cart in the dead of night grinding over a rutted road to a new home in Little Roxford, leaving behind the noise and crowds of their rooms atop the Jones family in Battersea in London—such a
lot
of rambunctious boys the Jones’s had. And when London at last gave way to the endless skies and endless dark and ringing silence of countryside, she’d looked up to see a shooting star arcing across the sky.

It had struck Cynthia as odd that an event so startling, so unnervingly beautiful, should also be silent. It was something the entire world could see all at once but would miss if they blinked. And she’d thought at the time a funny thing to call it—a shooting star. It didn’t so much shoot as
bolt
. As though it had seen an opportunity to escape its place in the firmament and taken it.

Then again, perhaps it had been
ejected
by its fellow stars, she thought dryly.

She knew a thing or two about bolting from firmaments. And about ejections.

A minute twitch of motion caught her eye: a little spider was shifting in its web in the corner of the window.

Cynthia reared backed in alarm.

The spider reared back in alarm.

Cynthia leaned forward to slide the window closed and then dropped the curtains abruptly. It had been years since she slept in a room where a spider would be allowed to build a home. Since Battersea, and the room above the Jones’s.

She rubbed the fine hairs on the back of her neck, where a bit of fear pricked.

When she was younger, after her parents had gone, she often woke in terror from a dream of falling, falling, falling through an impenetrable blackness. Just like that star. Once awake, she would knot the sheets around her fists as if to anchor herself to the bed, and turn her face into her pillow to stifle her gasps so the vicar and his wife wouldn’t hear them. It wasn’t so much the fear of striking the ground, which is what she’d always halfhoped would happen in the dream. That, at least, would have been an
ending
—albeit, granted, not of the happy variety. It was the nothingness; it was the not knowing; it was the possibility of flailing alone for eternity.

Cynthia restlessly turned to the mirror. What she saw there cheered her immensely. She was an optimist, after all.

But she’d done something uncharacteristic as a talisman against the flailing: through an acquaintance in Little Roxbury, she’d learned of a certain savage old woman in Northumberland who spent the entirety of her days in a bath chair and was always in need of a companion, as she exhausted the goodwill of companions very rapidly. A Mrs. Mundi-Dickson.

Cynthia had written inquiring about the availability of the position and given the Redmond address. It was an admission that straits were dire, indeed.

The very idea of Mrs. Mundi-Dickson drove her to the wardrobe to restlessly do what had become a habit over the past few weeks: she fished her reticule out and gave it a little shake. It still scarcely clinked. It wasn’t as though her few remaining shillings would mate and create pennies that would grow up to be other shillings when she wasn’t looking, after all. Still, that pathetic jingle—and the fortnight duration of this house party—was all that remained between her and destitution. And Mrs. Mundi-Dickson.

She could, perhaps, parlay those remaining few pounds into more by suggesting a card game among the members of the house party—

No. She was to be
good
. Testing her luck was how she
found
herself in this position.

She suddenly realized her palms had gone damp.

She shoved the reticule back into the wardrobe and sat down abruptly to test the bed. Soft. She gave a bounce: no creaks. She peeled back the counterpane and slid a clammy hand underneath: cool, smooth, very fine sheets, ironed by one of the battery of maids she’d seen scurrying for other parts of the house like mice for their holes when she entered with Violet and Jonathan.

She felt more cheerful. As long as such a bed was hers to lie in at night—as long as she was a
guest
and not an employee, and not, heaven forfend, a
mistress
—there was hope.

In particular, there was hope in the form of the Redmond heir.

Though admittedly her first encounter with him had been brief, and she’d seen more of his back than his front as he stormed out of the pub. Hardly promising.

Violet had assured her this was an aberration. “Good heavens. I must apologize for my brother, though I believe it would be the first time I have
ever
apologized for Miles. His manners are usually so beautiful, Cynthia.”

Cynthia had shrugged lightly, and silently regretted deeply he was not an Eversea, which would be have been
delightful
, or the dashing, proud, center-of-everything oldest Redmond, Lyon, who had done the extraordinary and disappeared a year ago, allegedly out of thwarted love for the most inappropriate woman possible. Leaving dour Miles as the heir.

“He felt unwell,” the older gentleman called Mr. Cooke had volunteered, stoutly defending Miles. “He’d gone a claret shade in the face.” His eyes slid sideways to his friend.

“Russet,” Mr. Culpepper said quietly.

Something had glinted in Miles Redmond’s dark eyes as he stood over Cynthia. It wasn’t just admiration—this she invariably saw in the faces of men, and she most definitely saw it in his. It was something she couldn’t quite identify. Her hand had almost seemed to hum as she took it away from him.

She reflected again upon Miles Redmond’s big, dark, retreating form, threw herself back on that comfortable bed and beamed up at the ceiling. She would have rooms in the family quarters one day, she was certain of it.

Because, really…how much challenge to
her
charm could that dour, bespectacled man possibly pose?

Miles turned when he heard his father’s footsteps. Isaiah Redmond: very tall, lean where Miles was broad, still conspicuously handsome in the way that Lyon was. So nearly the twin of Lyon it sometimes startled. Green eyes, clear as gems.

Miles was fond of his father. He even sympathized with his father that he didn’t happen to be Lyon. Not enough to attempt to be anyone other than who he wanted to be, of course.

“Good evening, Father.”

“Good evening, Miles. Your mother may have told you that we must away to Cambridgeshire to see to a property matter concerning the Tarbell side of the family—one of your mother’s cousins left a fortune, no will, and a squabble.”

Miles had no doubt that his father would find a way to neatly, legally, fold the fortune into his own.

“She did. I shall be happy to step in and see that the house party goes smoothly.”

They spoke to each other politely, which was how any Redmond would speak to someone who felt rather like a stranger.

“Very good. I wanted to speak to you of a business proposition, and as time is rather of the essence, I needed to speak to you about it before we departed.”

Miles went still. Isaiah had never wanted to speak to him of a business proposition in his life. And the last proposition Miles had brought to
his father
—the financing of his extraordinarily expensive second journey to the South Seas—had been met by incredulity and cold dismissal.

“Very well, sir,” Miles said cautiously.

Isaiah strolled over to his polished walnut table, gestured a question with one hand to the brandy decanter. Two crystal glasses so clean they were nearly invisible flanked it. Miles gave his head a shake.

“Have you given any thought to marriage?” His father said this evenly, his back turned, decanter in hand. Expensive brandy gurgled into a glass.

Miles refused to allow his surprise to show. But this was Isaiah Redmond, after all. This was not a casual query.

“A thought or two,” Miles said dryly. “A man does when he reaches my age.” Nearly thirty.

His father turned slowly around, brandy glass cupped in his hand. He hesitated.

“May I ask if you already have a particular bride in mind?”

The hesitation amused Miles. No doubt his father thought visions of bluestockings danced in his second son’s head. Wait—a bluestocking wouldn’t dance. They would
march
—march with baskets of food hooked over their arms for the poor.

“No. I haven’t a particular bride in mind,” Miles said calmly. “Though I should like her to have a brain in her head, a good family, a fortune, a pretty face.”

A pause that seemed inordinately long ensued. Miles wondered which part of his sentence troubled his father. No doubt the brain part.

“Do you…do you need to be in love?” his father asked grimly, at last.

Miles stopped himself just in time from gaping. He
did
dig one of his fingernails hard into his palm to prevent laughter. Dear
God
. He wasn’t to have a conversation with his father about
love
, was he? He could not imagine anything less bearable. Not scorpion stings, nor overhearing cannibals discussing his fate.

But all at once he recalled that “love”—for Olivia Eversea, that was—was what had allegedly caused Lyon to cast all reason to the wind and disappear, presumed dead or never to return, leaving Isaiah with the far-less-comfortable-for-Isaiah Miles for an heir. Lyon, victim, perhaps, of the unfortunate legendary curse: once per generation, an Eversea and a Redmond were allegedly destined to fall in love with each other.

Doubtless Isaiah wondered if he harbored any similarly fatal romantic flaws.

Suddenly, unbidden and vivid, came the image of a homely gray cloak hanging from a peg in the pub. Miles inhaled sharply.

“Love,” he declared with quiet and absolute conviction, “of the sort you’re suggesting, is absurd. I don’t need love in order to marry.”

Isaiah regarded his second son, the shadow of a frown touching his forehead. His mouth parted, stayed parted briefly. He seemed in a state of indecision about what next to say.

But then he nodded crisply and said, “Very good.” As though this were a meeting of the Mercury Club and the two of them had just put the notion of love to the vote.

“May I ask if
you
have anyone in particular in mind, sir?” Because now Miles was curious, and knowing his father, Isaiah most certainly did.

“Georgina Mossgate, Lady Rutland, is a lovely girl, and she has been invited to the party.” His father didn’t even pretend to issue this statement casually.

“Hmmph.” The name surprised Miles because he’d known the Mossgates for most of his life. Her father, Rutland, was an avid amateur naturalist and had taken to corresponding with him. But what did he know about Georgina? As a child she’d worn a long braid; as an adult, she invariably wore her pale hair wound into a coil so perfectly symmetrical it reminded him whimsically of a henge. He’d once conversed with her about the ants of Sussex and their habits, about which she knew a surprising amount, and her gray eyes had been soft and attentive and alert, and never once moved from his face. She had a quiet but not retiring way about her, and her bosom—Miles never failed to take note of a bosom—was remarkable. He approved of the way she’d turned into a woman; he’d danced with her more than a few times over the years; she intrigued him not at all.

This struck him, suddenly, as a very peaceful and desirable quality in a wife.

“And as you know, I’ve wanted Rutland as a member of the Mercury Club for years now.”

It took Miles less than a tick of the clock to know precisely where this conversation was heading. The neatness of the solution was exhilarating, brilliant, cynical, and utterly typical of his father.

In short: he and his father would both get what they wanted most.

His heart thumped. He revealed nothing. He simply waited for his father to spell it out.

Isaiah wasted no time. “If you and Georgina were to wed, Rutland will at last consent to become a member of the Mercury Club. And with Rutland’s support and extraordinary resources, I’m convinced it will be a simple and swift enough thing to persuade the group to finance your voyage to…” He frowned faintly.

“Lacao, Father,” Miles said calmly. By now, most people in England knew the name of the place he’d written about so extensively. Not his bloody father, however.

“Yes. Lacao.” His father never asked about the place. Isaiah had always been more comfortable with what to him were the infinitely more compatible and practical sensibilities of Lyon, who had the making of money in his blood. There
was
money in writing and talking about Lacao, and Miles had become modestly independently wealthy as a result of it. But the making of money had been rather inadvertent and serendipitous and beside the point.

He stayed silent.

“You’re amenable to the match, then?” Isaiah said finally.

“I’m amenable.” He saw no reason to object.

“Very good,” his father said crisply again. “Georgina will be in attendance this fortnight at the invitation of your mother, and was expected to arrive this evening. Your mother has arranged various entertainments for the fortnight, dinners for the neighbors, and dancing, and so forth. So dance with the girl. Talk with her. Make yourself agreeable by—”

Oh, for God’s sake.

“You may be relieved to learn you needn’t tell me how to make myself agreeable to a woman, Father,” he interjected dryly. Or
any
woman, he didn’t add. But anticipation twinged when he considered making himself
agreeable
to Lady Middlebough. Georgina was a bit of a complication, but Lady Middlebough’s stay would be brief and she wanted only one thing from him, which should be a simple enough thing to arrange.

His father gave a short placating laugh. “Yes, of course. Forgive me, Miles. It’s simply that your mother and I are invested in ensuring that our children are well and appropriately matched in a way that does credit to the family. We cannot countenance matches of any other kind.”

The faintest, faintest whiff of a warning was contained therein.

The warning was unnecessary. Miles could not imagine an instance in which he would be tempted to make an inappropriate match. Marriage was perhaps the most important business arrangement a man would ever make. He knew by “do credit to the family” Isaiah meant “increase the family fortunes and expand its already outrageous range of influence,” and Miles had no real philosophical objection to this, either.

“I understand your concern, sir,” he said gravely. “And a match with Lady Georgina would be expeditious for all of us, and I hope for Lady Georgina as well. I’m certain we shall manage to suit.”

Isaiah went curiously quiet for another moment. At last he nodded.

“Speaking of concerns, Miles,” his father continued dryly, “I have another of them. Your sister has made the acquaintance of a certain Miss Cynthia Brightly. She has invited said Miss Brightly to our home for a fortnight’s stay.”

It was as though his father had uncorked a bottle containing a genie. Those two words uttered side by side in his voice—“Cynthia” and “Brightly”—brought her so suddenly and vividly into the room that the muscles banding Miles’s stomach tightened in response. He couldn’t breathe to speak.

“Yes?” he at last managed calmly enough,.

His father hesitated. “Word has reached me about Miss Brightly.”

“What sort of word?”

His father produced a humorless smile. “Does it matter?”

No, Miles supposed it did not: “word” reaching one about a young lady was often sufficient warning that the young lady in question was far too interesting. For instance, “word” often reached one about the Everseas, though word had rather reached a crescendo with the recent events surrounding Colin Eversea, and the broadsheets had been rather quieter on the topic of them since then. With the Everseas, however, it was always simply a matter of time.

One did not find Redmonds in the broadsheets. Good and scrupulous breeding, and the judgment his father described, and money for bribing all manner of officials, took care of that.

“And Miss Brightly is…” Miles invited his father to complete the sentence with a list of objections. He was suddenly rabidly curious to hear what his father might know of her, and why she was here. Isaiah Redmond did have a way of knowing things.

“This is all I know so far: she’s far too pretty and charming for someone with no money and no family, very likely ambitious beyond her right to be, surrounded by a cloud of rumor that cannot be substantiated—though I have
certainly
tried—and in light of this, not at all a suitable companion for Violet or for any of the Redmonds.”

And thus was the only woman who had ever stopped Miles’s breathing summarized and dismissed by his father.

Of course, he knew that his father wasn’t at all wrong about Miss Brightly.

“I imagine Violet wishes to be controversial and has befriended Miss Brightly for this reason,” his father continued, sounding weary and rote as he said this; Violet generally endeavored to be controversial, and managed both to charm and alarm in the process. “What do you know of Miss Cynthia Brightly, Miles?”

I know she makes my thoughts explode into poetry the way butterflies burst from cocoons. And see? It’s already happening. And if we keep discussing her, I’m liable to begin speaking in the sort of metaphors that will embarrass both of us. And have I mentioned that the curve of her bottom lip is perhaps the most carnal thing I have ever,
ever
in my life—

“I think perhaps an engagement was broken.” He made Cynthia Brightly’s engagement sound like an urn toppled by reckless horseplay. “I find it impolitic to speculate.”

He didn’t mention that he’d seen her once that evening already. He knew his father would approve of the use of the word “impolitic.” Redmonds
lived
to avoid being impolitic.

“Doubtless your sister knows what happened,” his father said.

“Doubtless.” Though according to Jonathan, Violet did not.

“Regardless, I mention this because, given her choice of guests, I think Violet bears watching during this fortnight. If we must extend our hospitality to Miss Brightly, we shall, but only for the fortnight of this party, not beyond, and undue warmth is probably not necessary.” He added dryly,

Irritation plucked at Miles again: Violet
always
bore watching, in large part because of the way she’d been indulged by her father.

“Your mother has invited Lady Windermere for a stay,” Isaiah continued, “and Lord and Lady Middlebough, as you know, will also arrive, though I believe his wife will precede him. I’m expecting Milthorpe, who will be disappointed to find me gone, no doubt, and Mr. Goodkind, who wishes to enlist me in a financial partnership. Nevertheless, I do think your sister bears watching.”