The Captive (9 page)

She smiled at him, appearing perfectly charmed by his mulishness.

“I’ll bet you did exactly that, and your papa pretended not to see you until your mama bid you come give her a kiss. You were likely adorable, too. How we do change.”

He had been adorable. His mama had told him so. With some effort and no little consternation Christian identified the temptation to…smile.

“Perhaps we might compromise?” He winged his left arm at her, his momentary good humor fading. This confrontation with the child really would be better put off to when he wasn’t sporting the dust of the road, bone-weary from hours in the saddle, and completely without a plan as to how the reunion should be handled.

But thank God, the countess was filling her sails.

“…She writes to me regularly, and I to her, as I have a paucity of cousins worth the trouble, much less with legible penmanship. Hers is exquisite, though, even for a child.”

“As mine is…was.”

“Really? Well, we know she didn’t get her penmanship from Helene. Why you never hired the woman an amanuensis is beyond me, Mercia. In any case, Lucy is very much looking forward to seeing her papa, and worried she won’t recognize you. You must be sure not to look so forbidding to her. You can be the duke later, when her beaus and swains come calling. For now, enjoy being the papa.”

She marched up the steps, a ship’s captain determined to dock her vessel safely at the pier of her choosing.

“Excuse me, Countess, but refresh my memory: How many children have you had the pleasure of raising?” Perhaps if he scrapped with her a bit she’d be less nervous, and then
he
might be less nervous too.

She paused at the second landing, forcing him to do likewise.

“Low shot, Your Grace. Unsporting of you, though I raised my younger brothers because my mama was in a perpetual decline, which ought to be impossible. I will forgive you though, because you are anxious. A papa doesn’t rise from the dead every day.”

She’d taunted, dragged, and talked him to the nursery door.

“Hello, Nanny, Harris.” Her ladyship nodded to the nurse and the governess. “Nothing would do but His Grace must come directly to the nursery to see Lady Lucy. His Grace has reminded me her ladyship prefers to be called Lucy. She’s in the schoolroom?”

“At her letters,” Harris said, bobbing a deep curtsy. “Your Grace.”

He nodded in response, not recalling this Harris person in the least. Nanny was another matter, though, for she’d been Helene’s nanny too.

“Nanny, I hope we find you well?”

“Better now, Your Grace. Better now that my lamb’s papa is with us again.”

“Where I much prefer to be,” he said, wanting to run howling for the stables.

“Well, let’s get on with it,” the countess said, taking his hand again.

Since when had grown women been permitted to take the bare hands of grown men, so that said fellow—a duke, no less—might be hauled about like a load of garden produce? He counted himself fortunate Lady Greendale did not grasp him by the ear.

She guided him to the schoolroom, which enjoyed westerly windows that let in a good deal of afternoon sunlight. A child sat at an ornate little desk, carefully dipping her pen in the inkwell. Her tongue peeked out the side of her mouth, her lips were pursed in concentration, and her feet were wrapped around the legs of her chair. Her pinafore was spotless and nearly free of wrinkles.

She did not move, except for the hand guiding the pen, and she was so focused on her work, she didn’t look up. She had the look of a Severn, blond hair, a lithe elegance to her little frame, dramatic eyebrows…

While Christian stared at his only living child, the countess silently melted back into the sitting room. Now, now when he needed chatter and brisk efficiency more than ever, the woman deserted her post.

Nothing for it but to charge ahead.

“Lucy.”

She looked up, staring straight ahead at first, as if she weren’t sure from whence her name had been spoken. She set her pen down and turned her head.

“Lucy, it’s Papa.”

She scrambled up from the desk and started across the room, her gaze riveted on him. He went down on one knee and held up his arms, and she broke into a trot, then came pelting at him full tilt.

“I’m home,” he said, taking in the little-girl shape and sheer reality of her. “Papa’s home.”

She held on to him tightly, arms around his neck like she’d never let go.

“You’re glad to see me, hmm?” He kept his arms around her too. They were alone after all, and he hadn’t seen her for three damned years.

She nodded vigorously, nearly striking him a blow on the chin with her crown.

“I’m glad to see you too, Lucy Severn, very glad. What were you working on?”

She wiggled away, though letting her go was an effort, and pulled him over to the desk—another determined little female towing him about.

“‘Welcome home, Papa. Love, Lucy,’” he read. “Your hand is lovely, Lucy. What else have you written?”

She showed him, opening sketchbooks, copybooks, and pointing out books she’d either read or was reading. He did as his father had done, exclaiming here, praising there, asking a question occasionally.

But only occasionally, and all his questions were answerable with a nod or a shake of the head.

Lucy led him into the sitting room, her expression radiant.

“Look who you’ve found, Lucy,” Lady Greendale said, rising from the settee. “He isn’t lost anymore, our duke, you’ve found him. Will you take him to see the kittens in the stables now?”

“Really, kittens are perhaps more in line with a countess’s responsibilities than a duke’s, don’t you think?”

Christian speared the lady with a look, but his daughter swung his hand and peered up at him with big blue eyes.

Severn eyes, but prettier for Helene’s contribution to their setting.

“You come home from war only once,” Lady Greendale said. “Why don’t we all pay a visit to the kittens?”

She reached for Lucy’s free hand, but the child drew back. At first Christian felt an unbecoming spurt of pleasure that Lucy wanted to hold only her papa’s hand, not her cousin’s, but as he led the child toward the door, she dropped his hand too, and shook her head.

“She doesn’t want to go out,” Lady Greendale said. “Nurse warned me it was getting worse.”

“It’s a lovely day,” Christian said with a breeziness he’d likely never feel again. “I want to spend time with my daughter, and what’s more, Chessie will want to see how much she’s grown while he was off campaigning on the Peninsula. You recall Chesterton, don’t you, Lucy?”

She nodded, her gaze going from one adult to the other.

“Well, come along then.” Christian scooped the girl up bodily and settled her on his back. “We’ve a stable to visit.”

The countess started in with her chatter, which was a relief, for the child continued to say nothing.

“Chesterton is quite the largest horse I’ve seen under saddle, but he seems a steady fellow, and very handsome. I would guess that did your papa take you up on such a horse, Lucy, you might be able to see clear to France.”

Because he carried her on his back, Christian felt his daughter chortling—silently.

And by the time they’d inspected the entire stable, he was glad for the countess’s patter, glad for her ability to comment on everything, from the knees on the new foals to the whiskers on the kittens.

For it became obvious Lucy had inherited her father’s propensity for keeping silent, and she intended to remain that way for reasons known only to her.

Christian approached the nursery suite, Lucy still clinging like a monkey to his back. He set her down when they reached the sitting room, and she scampered off to the schoolroom, leaving Christian to wonder if his daughter’s manners had lapsed along with her words.

“She’s not normally given to rudeness of any kind,” the countess said, looking worried.

Before Christian could frame a reply—what did he know of his own child, after all?—Lucy was back, her copybook and pencil in her hand. She held the book up to her father.

“Will I come tomorrow? Yes, if you wish it, and we’ll visit Chessie again, or the kittens.” He passed the book back to her.

Why wouldn’t she speak, for God’s sake? That she’d withhold her voice from her own father made him feel
punished
.

The child waved her book under his nose.

“Cousin must come too?” Excellent notion, given the awkwardness of one-sided conversations. “Countess?”

“Of course, I will be happy to come,” she said, smoothing a hand over the child’s golden hair. “Maybe you will have written a poem about clouds and lambs and kittens when we come back, or maybe about a great chestnut charger who can see to France.”

This provoked a smile from the child.

“Until tomorrow, then.” Christian turned to leave this maudlin little gathering only to find a pair of small, skinny arms lashed around his waist. The child’s embrace held desperation, and ferocious if silent determination.

“I forgot,” he said, lifting her up to his hip. “You will come down to see us after tea, won’t you?”

Lucy shook her head, pointed at her father, and drew her finger to her own chest.

“I’m to come to you? No, I think not. I came this time. You must come next time, but it will be only two floors down. If you don’t come, I’ll realize you were too fatigued, and content myself with Cousin Gillian’s company.”

He set her down, not too hastily, and turned on his heel to go, then stopped. “Countess, may I offer my escort?”

She looked torn, but made no objection. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

The door was safely closed behind them before he spoke.

“I suppose you think I bungled that, but making a great fuss over what might be nothing more than a child’s stubbornness could be ill-advised. Of course, I’m assuming the child
will
not
talk, though it might be more accurate to say she
cannot
.”

Silence met this observation, unnerving coming from the countess—Cousin Gillian—and how odd that silence—Christian’s last, best, most trustworthy friend—was in some wise no longer welcome in his life.

***

Over a substantial tray served on the terrace, Gilly admitted that the distinction between unwillingness to speak and inability to speak
mattered
. His Grace was brusque, troubled, and sometimes difficult, but he was neither stupid nor free of paternal impulses.

And for that reason, Gilly confessed a transgression to him.

“I saw you greet her, Your Grace. I apologize for peeking, but I didn’t want you to start interrogating her when she’s been so anxious about seeing you.”

He sat back, a shaft of sunlight falling across his face. The sunshine was of the benevolent, early summer variety, but it illuminated both his fatigue and the white scar on his earlobe.

“And now you disclose your spying?”

He seemed amused, but Gilly did not trust her ability to read this man. She’d had no warning at all that he was about to kiss her, and she still had no idea why he’d done so or what she felt about his presumption.

“I wanted you to know what I’d done, and to express my apologies. I should have allowed you both privacy.”

He’d been exactly right with the child, perfect in fact. So kind and understanding Gilly had wanted to weep with relief—and he’d been affectionate. Little girls needed affection, particularly from their papas.

“My privacy has suffered far worse violations, my lady. You should have given us a moment, true, but you’re protective of the child, and one can’t castigate you for that, under the circumstances. You aren’t eating much. Does the company put your digestion off?”

Was he teasing her? She sat up straighter. “The company is agreeable.”

He held up a section of orange, and rather than take it from his hand, Gilly took it with her teeth, a shockingly informal way to go on. Nonetheless, he’d started it, and something about the daring of such behavior—she might one day abuse his trust and bite him—appealed to her.

“The company,” he mused, “is
agreeable
. Such profuse emotion, Countess. I assure you the sentiment is mutual.” He took a sprig of lavender from his lemonade glass and pitched the garnish with particular force into a bed of daisies. “I will review the physicians’ correspondence, we will have an outing with Lucy tomorrow, and I will consider where we go from here.”

Mercia twitched his fingers together—the lavender had been wet with lemonade—and Gilly wondered what exactly had been done to his hand.

To the rest of his body, to his mind. His privacy, his heart, his soul.

None of her business, as she was none of his.

“We have other business to conduct, Countess. More orange?”

“No, thank you,” she said, feeling off balance at his word choice—business, as in finances and ledgers. That sort of business. He’d eaten all but two orange sections, and put one on her plate.

“What are your long-term plans, my lady? I ask both as Lucy’s papa and as the husband of your late cousin.”

“My plans?”

Her bread and butter turned to sawdust in her mouth when she saw the considering light in his eyes. He’d ambushed her, the wretch, out here in the sunshine and beauty of a perfect summer’s day. Greendale had been a master at the ambush.

Next Mercia would explain, politely, that he needed privacy with his daughter, and an extraneous cousin-in-law on the premises must needs be a temporary imposition.

Well, damn him. Damn him and his elegant, scarred hands and his beautiful, soft voice and his lovely eyes and his kindness toward the child. Damn him for all of it.

And especially for kissing her. Those gentle, nearly chaste kisses had been so…so… Gilly had lost sleep trying to find words for Mercia’s kisses. One word kept careening into her awareness, no matter how stoutly she batted it away. Mercia’s kisses had been
cherishing
, as if Gilly were the reason he lived, the reason he’d bested demons and nightmares to return to her side.

Which was balderdash. He’d meandered home from Carlton House through the park, and she was pathetic to make so much of a small late-night lapse between two tired adults.

He regarded her now with an expression so far from cherishing that Gilly’s food sat uneasily in her belly.

“We’ve only just arrived at Severn, Your Grace. Must we discuss plans and arrangements now?”

“We must.” He picked up one of the sections of orange and held it out to her. “Please.”

Please eat, or please reveal her hopes and fears, as manifest in the next year’s residential particulars? His blue eyes held an odd light, and Gilly abruptly wished she had the protection of her black silk shawl, for all the afternoon was pleasant. She used her fingers to take the orange from him and popped it into her mouth.

“The army enjoys a surfeit of discipline and structure, as if to counteract all the chaos and upheaval of its daily existence,” Mercia said. “I have not had a settled life, a life to my liking, for more than three years. I impose on your good nature that we might coordinate plans, my lady.”

She chewed her orange, trying not to blame him for wanting his household to himself.

“I have no set plans for the near term.” Marcus had sent her a note of condolence upon Greendale’s passing, and that note had not included assurances that she’d be welcome in the dower house. Maybe he’d assumed assurances hadn’t been needed—she could occupy the dower house as a matter of right—but the Greendale dower house was little more than a ruin.

Across from her, the duke screwed up his thin-lipped, elegant mouth in a grimace of impatience.

“For the near term, you will stay here, my lady. We are agreed on that for the child’s sake. I’d like you to consider making your home with us permanently, though. You are in mourning, and I certainly intend to live quietly. You know this household, and I have no hostess, no lady to see to the maids and the housekeeper.”

He had no one to see to
him
, as far as Gilly could tell, which apparently mattered to him not at all.

“You would take me on as a charitable relation?” Her question held caution and surprise, for his invitation was as tempting as it was unexpected.

He pushed back from the table and shot her an annoyed look.

“I am the relation deserving of charity, Lady Greendale. I will be up to my ears in estate matters, for Easterbrook made it clear the stewards and tenants were as reluctant as the bankers to do anything on his say-so as my successor. I have no time for the household matters, no time for the child, no time for the social nonsense that ought to go along with my title. I quite honestly need your help, and I am asking you to give it on a more or less permanent basis.”

For him that was a protracted and reassuringly loud speech. The part of Gilly that had wanted only to be useful rejoiced to hear it, but some other part of her—that had been briefly cherished in a shadowed library—was disquieted.

“You’ll remarry,” she said, drawing on that sense of disquiet. He should remarry, and not because he needed an heir. He needed somebody to sit with him in the library when he could not sleep, needed somebody to see that he ate regularly. Needed somebody to find him the perfect valet.

Needed, and deserved, somebody to cherish
him
.

“I might remarry eventually, particularly if Easterbrook doesn’t sell out. I don’t look forward to the prospect though, and intend to observe some mourning of my own. I learned of Helene’s passing only when I met up with Easterbrook outside Toulouse.”

This was news. “And Evan?”

“At the same time.”

He was so matter-of-fact…so heartbreakingly matter-of-fact. Gilly was especially glad she’d seen him on his knees, hugging Lucy to him so tightly.

“I will think on this, Your Grace. You are generous, and as a place to bide during first mourning, Severn has a great deal of appeal.” A place to be needed and busy, a place to heal from eight years of being Greendale’s countess.

“First mourning is only six months for some, your ladyship.” He held out the last orange section to her. “Give me a year. Give me and Lucy your full year of mourning.”

In that year, would he give her more kisses? She took the orange and set it on her plate.

“I will think on this,” she said again. “We will see what transpires with Lucy. You might well decide to send her to a convent, where her silence will be viewed as a spiritual achievement.”

“No, I will not.” He appropriated the orange section from her plate and munched it into oblivion. “I am disinclined to send her away for any reason. You have a scar, Countess.”

What
on
earth?

He took her hand in his and rubbed his thumb over the back of her knuckles. For all his hand had been mistreated, his grip was firm. Also warm. Perhaps even cherishing.

“A burn, I think,” he said, studying her hand. “A nasty burn, but old. Well healed.”

His touch was a delicate, sweet caress to Gilly’s nerves, like the summer breeze and the dappled sun. “Spilled tea. It happens.”

He patted her knuckles and let her have her hand back.

“We do heal, hmm?” He did not smile, but Gilly had the sense they’d shared something, a wink, a joke, a secret, about scars and the stories they concealed.

Not a harmless secret, for some.

“You should tell Lucy you will never send her away. Harris no doubt threatens with every imaginable dire fate to try to inspire the girl to speak. I forbade the use of violence in your schoolroom, though.”

Her presumptuousness caught His Grace’s curiosity. “An occasional birching befalls most English schoolchildren, and usually to good effect.”

“According to whom? The tutors who’ve beaten the children to silence? The pious hypocrites who misquote Proverbs?”

She should not have broached this topic, not with him, not when he had so recently noted the scar on her hand. An outburst threatened, worse than any of her previous lapses.

“A stubborn child who is never disciplined cannot learn to govern himself,” Mercia said, as if reciting some platitude he’d heard before his own backside had been caned.

“Helene was stubborn. Did you take a switch to her in hopes of eradicating the failing in your duchess?”

They were arguing. The last thing Gilly wanted was to annoy His Grace, and yet on this topic, she could barely be rational.

“I would never raise my hand to a woman.”

“But you would raise that same hand to a small child, and expect brute force to teach her self-possession and restraint. I can assure you, resorting to violence for the betterment of those helpless to defend themselves is anything but an example of restraint.”

She stared at the empty plate, her hands fisted in her lap lest she hurl the hapless porcelain against the nearest hard surface.

His Grace’s handsome head, for example.

“No birchings for my daughter, then, and no more threats, either. Not from anybody.” When Gilly dared a glance at him, his Grace’s expression suggested talk of Gilly’s eventual departure qualified as a threat. “I commend the lemon cakes to your excellent care, Countess.”

He rose, bowed over her hand, then departed, his back militarily straight.

Leaving Gilly to wonder if His Grace’s hospitality was a great and subtle kindness, or if—the notion chilled—he’d threatened her with a gilded cage.

Another gilded cage.

***

Christian wasn’t precisely glad to be alive. Surviving torture turned a man into a ghost toting a bag of memories that could not be shared, and inhabiting a body no longer reliable or easily maintained. That body, after torture, did not sleep well, did not exert itself unproblematically, did not ingest food easily, and certainly could not be relied upon to deal with amatory pastimes—not that Christian would be indulging in any of those.