The Rules of Seduction (23 page)

Alexia followed and perched on the bed, waiting. She did not say a word while he washed his face and torso in the morning water long gone cold. Its frigid splashes brought him further into the world.

He found his razor in the washstand drawer and began to prepare to shave. He could see her quizzical expression in the looking glass.

She waited for an answer to her question. What was he doing here? He could hardly blame her for wondering, but that did not mean he had to like feeling an obligation to explain.

“My brothers and I all inherited my mother’s ability to lose ourselves in our thoughts,” he said while he tested the razor’s edge. “We do so on occasion, each in his own way.”

“For days on end?”

“Not usually. Several hours at most.”

“This was not several hours.”

“It happens sometimes. It is neither dangerous nor remarkable.”

“That dark mood you spoke of caused this, didn’t it?”

He paused in his preparations. He supposed this was inevitable. Married couples showed the world a formal alliance, but it was impossible to avoid the stark familiarity that emerged in the marriage bed. The physical intimacies exposed one to the other in spiritual ways, unless an effort was made to avoid it. Her curiosity was understandable, probably. He wondered what lay in those distant fields, after all.

“Yes, that mood did provoke this. My retreat dispelled that mood, however, so it was for the best.”

“You warned me that I should leave you to it. Are you angry that your brother brought me here?”

“No.” Nor was he. Not really. He could have done without her seeing him like this, however. He suspected he appeared very weak right now.

“Your mother wrote when she lost herself in her mind. What do you do?”

He picked up the razor. “There is a table and desk in the other chamber, near the window. My work is there.”

She left to see what he meant. He dealt with his beard, then thoroughly washed and dressed. When he emerged from the bedroom, she was still examining the sheets of mathematical notations.

“I do not understand most of it, of course,” she said. “It is like a language where one knows the words but cannot read the sentences.”

“Like any language, there can be poetry in it.”

“I have sensed as much at times.” She set down the sheets. “If unending poetry awaits in these chambers, perhaps the wonder is that you ever leave them.”

“I enjoy the world of the senses too much to give it up overlong.”

He liked the way she nodded, as if he made perfect sense. He did not doubt that she also appreciated the discipline required to move from one realm to the other and how circumstances might defeat him for a while.

His day had begun in that rarefied consciousness, but now it was totally ordinary and physical. The only unique note was Alexia’s presence in this office.

“Did you go to Elliot because you were concerned?”

“I only wanted to send a message to you. I thought he might know how to do so.”

A small disappointment stabbed him. She had not speculated about the worst or worried over him. Nor would she have questioned him upon his return. She expected nothing from him, least of all explanations.

“What message?”

Her posture subtly straightened. Her eyes reflected the low, angry lights he had seen so often since they met. That always meant one thing.

“Rose wrote to me. I intend to make a small journey to see her. I thought I should inform you, so you would not think me devious.”

“Did you write to her again, Alexia?”

“Yes. Twice.”

“You directly disobeyed me. Your concern about being devious is a little late.”

“I did not disobey you, if we are particular about the details of that command. I was not disloyal to you in my brief notes to them. In fact, you were not mentioned at all. You promised when you proposed that you would not interfere with my friendships, and I took you at your word.”

Annoyance prodded at his temper, and not only because she had parsed his words to her convenience. He doubted she could see the Longworths, or even think about them, without hating him. Fifty years hence, the mere allusion to them would probably still cause that expression in her eyes.

“Has your cousin invited you to visit?”

“If I wait on that I may grow old first. She has at least admitted I am still alive, and I will go anyway. If she refuses to see me, so be it. I do not think she will.”

This meeting was inevitable. Eventually, Alexia would reclaim them. He did not want to deny her that, but he would be damned before he gave them unfettered influence over her.

“I will not forbid this journey, Alexia. However, I will join you on it. We will go down to Aylesbury Abbey for several days, and you can meet with your cousin while we are there.”

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

A
damp haze hung over the town of Oxford, creating a watercolor of muted, misty tones. University scholars walked by the old stone buildings in little packs, their youthful faces displaying a joy and lightness that seemed inappropriate amid the formalities of the colleges’ architecture.

Hayden’s carriage rolled up St. Giles’ Street, leaving the university’s territory behind. Here shops and inns strung out as in other country towns, and the mood was less rarefied. They stopped across the lane from St. Giles’ Church.

Alexia began to move. Hayden’s hand firmly covered the door latch, stopping her. “We will wait here in the carriage until she arrives.”

“I would prefer to wait in the church. I do not want her to leave if she sees you.”

“If she requested you meet her here and not call at her house, if she is paying to hire the conveyance to get here, she will not leave. It is not my intrusion she fears but her brother’s.”

Alexia was not so sure. Rose had responded quickly to the letter suggesting they meet. Perhaps she guessed that if she did not comply, Alexia would turn up at her door anyway. That had been the plan. She had sent a note when she arrived at Aylesbury Abbey, asking to be received, but had fully intended to call and risk a door being slammed in her face.

She peered out the window, looking for the approach of a hired carriage that Rose could ill afford. “Will you at least allow me to greet her alone?”

“The coachman will hand you down. She may not even realize I am here.”

They spoke in flat tones. Yesterday, when Rose’s response had arrived at Aylesbury Abbey, they had argued about his accompanying her to Oxford. She had itemized the sensible reasons why he need not and should not. He had proven uncompromising.

Neither of them had raised a voice, but the air had been full of silent anger. The debate had centered on her safety and protection, but she suspected the argument was really about other things. Her cousins’ situation remained an unhealed wound between them. He did not like that she was doing this.

He sat with her now, his expression the remote one that made the world think him cold. His distance caused a worry to tremble in her heart.

“If your brothers had cut you off because of your choice of wife, would you not attempt to build a bridge back to them?”

“That would depend on what they expected me to do to placate them and the cost of that compromise.”

“There is no cost to me in attempting this rapprochement.”

“Nor would there have been one to me in building the bridge you describe.”

His meaning slowly unfolded in her mind. He was not anticipating that
she
would be made to pay a price as a condition of success with her cousins. He thought their expectations would have to do with him and would compromise her loyalty to the “horrible Lord Hayden.”

A silence fell, one heavy with the anger he did not show. She feared if she said a word he would order the coachman to drive away.

A humble gig rolled to a stop in front of the church. Rose, wearing the fur-trimmed pelisse that Alexia had borrowed for her first visit to Easterbrook’s house, alighted. She did not acknowledge the presence of the fine coach across the lane but walked to the church and disappeared through its portal.

The coachman opened the carriage door and set down the steps. Alexia looked through the opening. A clear path led to Rose. Her heart filled with joy at the promise the day held, but confusion shadowed her happiness.

She hesitated in taking the coachman’s hand. Would there be a cost? A compromise? Would again embracing her cousins bring grief to her new life?

Hayden’s distance and anger pained her. Physically pained her, in her heart. She felt chilled, as if a warmth that bathed her had been withdrawn. She had not noticed its importance, but now its absence frightened her.

She looked at him. When had that warmth spilled out of night’s hours? When had she begun waiting for him so hard and found such comfort and peace in merely embracing him? He had not come to her last night, and her disappointment had been so intense, so sad, that she had not known what to do with it.

Nor did she know what to do with the jumble of emotions assaulting her now. She could not sort through it. She feared that leaving this carriage held the danger of losing something important.

A warmth covered her hand. Hayden’s glove lay atop hers in a gesture of comfort and possession. She looked over to his profile. He also gazed through the open door.

He raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it. Then he passed it to the coachman.

Rose waited right inside the portal, veiled by the old church’s shadows. She peered out at the carriage looming behind her gig.

“Is he in there?” Her question bit the quiet of the church’s narthex.

“Does it matter? I am here now. Just me. No man stands beside me. You look lovely today, Rose. But then, you always do.”

Rose’s attention snapped to her. In the dim church light they faced each other. Alexia ached to move closer. She wanted terribly, desperately, to make things right with Rose at least.

“You are most lovely yourself, Alexia. For all my vexation at your escort, that is what I thought as you approached. He is taking care of her, at least. She is finding contentment with her situation.”

“Would you have preferred if I did not find contentment, Rose? Would it soften your heart if I were miserable?”

“Yes.” A long sigh followed the hard reply. “No, that is not true. Oh, I have had my moments when I cursed your betrayal.” She laughed sadly. “Picturing you unhappy gives me no satisfaction, however. It would have grieved me if he had destroyed you too, and in such an irredeemable way.”

She sounded more the dear friend now instead of the vengeful cousin. Alexia forgave her the insults to Hayden. Rose knew only the public man, the one who could be hard.

“Will you allow me to embrace you, Rose? I have badly missed you.”

A moment passed during which the ache became physical. Perhaps Rose felt it too. Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, laughing when their bonnets bumped, sniffing back tears.

Alexia closed her eyes and inhaled with deep contentment. Her whole being glowed from the contact and love.

They entered the church and sat in a back pew.

“I apologize for making you come to this cold, damp pile,” Rose said. “However, Timothy…”

“He is still ill?”

“He is ill often enough to be useless. He is quite well other days. I prefer the sick ones, I confess.”

“He is not cruel, I hope.”

“Not cruel, just…sad. And angry. If you had arrived at our door, I do not know what would have happened. He was furious about the news of your marriage. He said horrible things. If he knew I had come to meet you…”

“I am very grateful you came, Rose. I have been so alone since you left London. No friend can replace the woman I see as my sister.”

Rose clasped her hand. “I came because we are like sisters but also for reassurance that this marriage was your will. Timothy says Rothwell must have…that the rogue importuned you. The sudden wedding, your dependence on him—well, Tim tells a lurid story.”

Not a true story, however. She did not expect them to forgive Hayden, but she would not allow their imaginations to add to his crimes.

“Rose, I was careless with my virtue. However, he did not importune me. I will admit that I succumbed to passion’s lure, probably because I had so little experience in its power.”

“If there was a lure, someone held the line. I suppose I should give him some credit for doing the right thing after his seduction. He could have abandoned you, ruined. Too ruined to be his cousin’s governess, so without income or protection as well.”

Alexia said nothing. If Rose admitted Hayden had behaved honorably in the end, she did not want to disabuse her of that conclusion.

“But to marry such a man, Alexia. To be bound to a man with no mercy.” She made a face of distaste. “To share a bed with a man when there is no love.”

“It is less horrible than we think it will be. Love has never been a requirement for marriage, and I am understanding why.”

“That is useful to know. I have wondered of late if intimacy on those terms is tolerable.”

Alexia did not like the sound of that. Rose appeared to still be contemplating the scandalous notion of becoming a courtesan.

As if her allusion desecrated the church, Rose stood. “Let us take a turn in the churchyard. It is out this door over here.”

The mist in the yard made little improvement over the damp in the church. They strolled side by side through spare plantings and rows of graves.

“How is Irene faring?” Alexia asked.

“I slapped her last week. She was pouting and acting childish, and I lost my temper and slapped her. I hated myself for days. She has only just begun speaking to me again.”

“I daresay she acted less childish in the intervening days.”

Rose chuckled. “Oh, yes. And one cannot whine if one is being silent out of pique. I try to remember that this is hardest on her. She knew little else but luxury in her life.”

“I would like to be allowed to help her.” She broached the subject with caution and waited for Rose’s reaction.

“You have to know that Timothy will never allow it. To accept charity from Rothwell, on top of everything else—it would send him to his grave, and I fear he would take us with him.”

“You speak as if he has gone mad. Surely he is not dangerous.”

“Bitterness can turn a person’s mind, and I fear it is turning his. He has even begun to blame Ben for all of this.
Ben,
who is long dead. If that does not suggest a touch of madness, I do not know what it says.”

“How can he blame Ben? I realize that Hayden might have stayed his hand if Ben lived, but—”

“He says we would have had enough to survive this if Ben had not sent all that money to Bristol. You can see how he is irrational. Ben paid one of our father’s debts. He behaved with honor, but Tim now finds blame.” She slid an arm around Alexia’s waist. “Let us spend the time left on more pleasant conversation. Tell me about your new silks and jewels. I may hate the husband who bought them for you, but I am glad you are finally indulged. I will eat them with my imagination and try them on in my mind.”

“I must go if I am to return home by nightfall,” Rose said.

They sat on a bench in the yard. The cold had long ago numbed Alexia’s fingers, but she did not want to end this interlude. This last hour had been much like old times, sharing casual talk of simple things.

They trailed back to the side church door. Hayden had been waiting in the carriage all this time. She did not think she would find him any softer upon rejoining him.

When they reentered the church, she tried again to offer help. “I understand that you cannot accept anything from my husband. I have a little of my own, however. Our settlement secured my old income to me. I have also been thinking that I will continue making hats, very discreetly. I would like you to accept a few pounds from me on occasion that would be my own money, not his.”

Rose paused at the front portal. She leaned over and kissed Alexia’s cheek. “It is all of a pot now, isn’t it? Your money is his. Will you be so discreet that even he does not know? No, dear cousin, let us not rely on deceptions that might expose you to his anger. You and I will be friends as circumstances permit, but I will not accept money from you.”

They opened the portal and walked outside. Rose halted at once, staring straight ahead.

Hayden’s carriage had moved. It waited right at the end of the short stone path that led to the church. Hayden stood beside it, biding his time. Rose’s gig was gone.

He walked toward them. “Miss Longworth, I perhaps have been too bold. Your driver grew impatient and was set to come find you. Rather than have you disturbed, I paid the man and let him depart.”

Rose appeared fit to kill. She glared daggers at Hayden.

Alexia glared a few of her own. “Perhaps it would have been wiser to allow the man to seek my cousin out. Then she could have decided her own course of action.”

“I knew how important this meeting was to you, my dear. I sought to give you both whatever time you wanted.” He gestured to the carriage. “We will be staying at Aylesbury Abbey tonight, Miss Longworth. We will take you home.”

“I must decline.”

“It is on our way and no inconvenience.”

“It is not your convenience that forces my refusal.”

“Nothing forces your refusal but pride, Miss Longworth. I will sit with the coachman, if that will allow you to accept.”

They waited for Rose to come around. Alexia could see her weighing the options, debating if she could hire another gig in town immediately, considering the compromise Hayden offered.

“He will not be
in
the carriage with you,” Alexia whispered. “And we will have a little more time together.”

Reluctantly, Rose allowed Alexia to coax her into the carriage. Hayden closed the door and climbed up beside the driver.

It was a long, quiet ride back to the Longworths’ house. Rose refused to be drawn into conversation. She kept glancing to the carriage roof, as if she sensed the man whose weight hovered above them.