The Proposition, page 25
Clemency shook her head, her slipper crunching one of the bold-faced dandelions, its yellow head smeared across the stones. “I am keeping no secrets, sister. You know everything there is to know.”
And that was true. For Honora knew of Delphine’s tragedy and of her own relationship with Mrs. Chilvers, the two knife points upon which Boyle kept Clemency balanced.
“But you seem so unhappy,” Nora said, stroking her hair. “You should be all joy and lightness on your wedding day, dearest.”
“Whoever is? When marriage is the man’s game.”
“Surely it is not so bad,” Honora murmured. Her sister stepped ahead of her and into the house.
“It’s worse,” whispered Clemency. If Honora heard her, she made no indication of it. She had always assumed that if she married, it would bring her and Honora closer together. It would be a shared experience, one that, though Honora’s ended in tragedy, would bond them, and Clemency might go to her for advice and comfort, but now what could she say of her marriage? Keeping secrets, even for a noble reason, might only tear them apart. Honora’s wisdom lay in her heart, in her intuition, and for one as sensitive as her sister, there would be no mistaking the pain radiating from the open wound of Clemency’s spirit.
“I was nervous too,” Honora said softly, coaxing Clemency into the house, through the kitchen, and through the salon toward the winding staircase. Holding Clemency’s hand, she patted her like a fretting child. “Who would I be? I wondered. Would I feel not myself? Like I had given my whole being away? In the end, it was just a few words spoken in a church. Even if I felt the presence of God there, or if my happiness increased, afterward I was the same person.”
Clemency huffed out a dry laugh. “I promise you, Nora, I will not be the same person after I speak those words in the church.”
“Yes, you have always had your qualms with marriage….”
Her instinct was to argue, but Clemency found she had grown very tired. Every step toward the bedchamber where she would dress felt like a chore. At the open door, her mother waited in her frilliest and finest, the ostrich plumes of a tall bonnet brushing the ceiling as she gave a soft squeal of excitement. The maids were there. Everything was prepared.
She took Clemency’s other hand and squeezed it hard enough to bruise.
“Oh, smile,” her mother said with a sigh. Her own bedchamber had never felt colder or more foreboding. “You are going to your wedding soon,” her mother reminded her, “not your funeral.”
* * *
—
Audric felt much like a gargoyle as he stood at the bannister on the wide balcony overlooking the west lawn of the Beswick estate. From that height, the grounds gently sloped through sparse forest, down to the stream that wound like a fine blue ribbon across the green velvet of the grounds.
A perfect day. A horrid day.
A gargoyle he remained, stony, silent, hunched, waiting for the bells to toll at the church and signal proof of his torment.
Yet the French doors behind him swung open loudly, no doubt Ralston’s attempt to warn him in case he was up to any humiliating weeping. Audric’s face remained dry as he glanced over one shoulder toward the doors, finding Ralston there, straight and serious as ever, and beside him a stout, well-muscled gentleman with a square face and reddish nose.
“Mr. Jack Connors to see you, sir.”
Ralston knew that Audric was accepting no visitors, particularly not that accursed morning. He was about to remind his man of just that when he noticed the intruder, Jack Connors, gulping desperately. His eyes never seemed to stay in one spot, jumping from Audric’s face to his hands to his feet, and back again. This had every indication of a confession.
“I beg your pardon, sir—” Connors began, stumbling forward on clumsy feet. He had the bearings of a man who boxed for pleasure and boxed enthusiastically but not well.
“No, I beg yours. I am not receiving company today. Good day, sir.”
Audric had hoped the finality in his tone was impolite enough to shock the man and make him leave, but Connors held his ground. In fact, he strode forward, impertinently joining Mr. Ferrand at the bannister. Audric pulled his hands away from the stone with a grimace and inhaled sharply through his nose.
“I know what you will say,” Connors blurted. He shook his head vigorously. The deep, dark smears under his eyes spoke of many sleepless nights. “But today is not yours alone to mourn. I suspect many of us are in great pain today….”
Ralston disappeared before Audric could call on him to dismiss their unwanted visitor. No matter, Audric would see to it himself. He held out his hand toward the French doors and cleared his throat.
“You are invited most forcefully to leave, Mr. Connors. You do not know me and you certainly do not know my state of—”
“Lee Stanhope.”
Audric arched one brow. “What of him?”
“Turner—Lord Boyle—knew about him. He’s no man of honor, only a man of greed. He doubled your payment and had Stanhope report all of your dealings in London to him. Miss Fry’s too.”
“Preposterous,” Audric thundered. “Stanhope is a friend. And you say Boyle doubled my fee? How? With what money?”
His temper, which had been quelled by the shattering of many a vase in London, flared again and more dangerously. He crowded Connors against the railing, his vision blurring at the edges as if the man’s accusations had driven him to the verge of madness.
“With mine,” Connors murmured, shrinking. “Might be a baron, but never had a farthing to his name. He had you both followed. Every step you took in London, he had you followed, and he did it with my money.”
A misplaced urge to strike the man rose sharply in Audric, but he stowed it, taking a pronounced step back and away from Connors. All of his questions, all of his swirling, spiraling thoughts, might be answered by what this man had to say. But to be betrayed by both Clemency and Lee…
In how many places and configurations could a man’s heart break?
“Why come to me with this now?” Audric barked.
“The drink had me and…” Connors shuddered and tugged at his chin. “And so did Boyle. God help me, I loved him. Love made me a fool, but no more. My eyes are open, and I have no doubt he’ll expose my secrets to the whole world. Let him. I don’t give a damn; a man has his pride and his code or he has nothing at all.” He paced away from the bannister, grabbing his head with both hands as he hurried on. “I found at last the receipts that had bankrupted me. Boyle spent a fortune having you followed and buying off Stanhope’s loyalty. I tried to confront him but he already had what he wanted. Listen now, Clemency was always kind to me, and even knew of my proclivities but told no one—”
Audric raised his hands, trying to convince the man to slow down.
“What exactly does Boyle intend to do?” Audric asked carefully.
Connors threw up his hands but ceased his pacing, turning to him with a splotchy, pale face. “He has already done it. Miss Fry had no choice but to marry him, to protect her sister, to protect you and your family.” Connors pinched his mouth shut as well as his eyes. “To protect me. Oh, he is a fat, contented spider abiding in his web, a ruinous scandal his prized clutch of eggs.”
Audric heard only to protect you and your family.
Delphine. Perhaps they had found the forged documents too late. Perhaps Boyle was already in possession of the child. If not, then only Clemency’s decision to marry might have kept him from procuring the boy.
“In the late and lonely hours so many unkind thoughts have come to me,” he whispered, not caring if Connors heard him or not. “I allowed myself to imagine Clemency as the worst sort of person, unfeeling and callous, deceitful, cruel…”
Connors grunted. “Boyle holds the axe above all our heads, sir. Clemency is keeping it aloft with this marriage.”
“And I can do nothing.”
“But, sir—”
“My sister’s past, her secrets, are not mine to share, nor her pain a plaything to be toyed with carelessly.”
Connors riffled for something under his jacket, then produced a pistol, boldly aiming toward the wood below the balcony. “Now that I have come to my senses I just need one shot. One chance…”
But Audric gently lowered the man’s pistol. The hunt was over, no blood would be spilled. “We both know Boyle is cleverer than that. He will have put contingencies in place. There are others in possession of his secrets, powerful, rich others.”
Hell and damnation. Boyle was going to win after all. Audric could forget his pride, but not the knowledge that Clemency was sacrificing her happiness to save them from Boyle’s wrath, to protect Delphine’s innocent child from him.
“Then there is nothing we can do,” Connors murmured, holding the gun in his hands and staring down at it.
“Nothing you can do, perhaps.”
Audric set his jaw, slowly swiveling to regard his sister in the open doorway, her black gown and shawl ruffled lightly by the morning breeze.
“How long have you been listening?” Audric asked, glaring beyond Connors’s shoulder.
“Long enough,” his sister replied with a shrug. “I have made up my mind, Audric. This has gone on long enough. I refuse to let Boyle control all of our lives like this. Word will be sent to London. All the scandal sheets may know of my past, of what Boyle did to me, of the child it created, and the loss I endured. If he wants a fight, then so be it, I will contest his right to take that child.”
Audric pushed past Connors and met Delphine at the doors, taking her by the forearm. At once, she eased out of his grasp.
“I forbid it, Delphine. You will be ruined, any future prospects—”
“What future prospects?” She laughed. Her big eyes shimmered with tears, but strangely, she smiled and pulled the shawl closer around her arms. “There is no man I love better than Ralston. I have no intention of aiming higher, for I know he can protect and love me as no one else could. A man is not his fortune or his breeding, he is his word and his actions. He has shown me all the love, protection, and loyalty a woman could ever desire.”
Audric glanced around for Ralston, but the man was nowhere to be found. Perhaps he had foolishly missed what was right in front of his eyes. It would not be the first time. And that conversation could wait, Delphine’s heart was not in question, but her safety was.
“Delphine, you will not do this—”
“ ’Tis already done.”
“What?” Audric recoiled. “How—”
“The messenger has been dispatched,” Delphine told him calmly. “My past is one less card in Boyle’s sleeve.” She breezed by her brother to join Mr. Connors at the railing. Primly, she set her hands on the bannister and drew in a deep breath. Her eyelashes fluttered shut briefly before she opened her eyes to survey the grounds as Audric had done.
“Let the whole world say what they will about me. I will be here, where I am safe and loved, and you…” Here she turned to face her brother, though she gave Connors a look in turn too. “You will mount your horse and go to that church, and you will not let Clemency marry the architect of all our misery. Because you love her, because she deserves better.”
Audric did not know if the lump in his chest was from pride or fear. He did know, in that moment, that his sister had never looked so lovely or so strong.
“Because I love her,” he repeated, his right hand curling into a fist.
“Go,” Delphine whispered. “Now go to her.”
Audric did not hear her, he was already gone.
25
Someone had brought her wedding gown and laid it among a table of flowers in her room. Someone, presumably her mother and sister, had seen to it all—the gown, the invitations, the breakfast that would follow, the flowers spilling out of the church and lining the pathway that would take her and Boyle to the open-air carriage and, afterward, their marriage.
Someone had taken care of it all as Clemency drifted through what felt like another person’s life. The gown was sewn to her size and the flowers were what she preferred, all of it evidence that this was indeed her wedding day, despite what her heart insisted. Round Orchard was a very small, very close place, and it was not uncommon for most of the town to attend a wedding, and if not to sit in the church during the ceremony, then to celebrate afterward as a general sentiment of joy and future bliss swelled through the village, into the tavern, down the roads, like a sweet colorful mist perfumed with wildflowers and promise.
And every moment, Clemency expected another woman to walk through her own bedroom door and take her place. She trod to the table with her dress, past the vanity where she brushed her hair, and touched the delicate lace of the skirt. This was hers and it was not, and when her skin brushed the fabric it felt hot to the touch. Never mind it had been sitting under the sunshiny window, Clemency was sure it would burn her up, incinerate her until there was nothing left but ash, the ash of a dream once had and now impossible.
It might have been a gown meant for a different day, for a wedding to a different man, for the joy of real love deeply felt.
“I cannot do this,” Clemency whispered. She imagined, all at once, Boyle’s touch as his fingers skimmed her face, the sickness she would feel sitting beside him at every church service or walking out with him at a dance, the horror of expectation, of the children that it would be her duty and burden to bear him. The fake heirs she would bear for a fake baron. Clemency could only resolve to be the best mother possible, and believe that somehow she could mother and nurture away any of Boyle’s vile influence.
And each time she glanced at the boy, she would remember Delphine’s pain.
“No,” she said, closing her eyes. “No, no, no…”
Clemency backed quickly away from the gown and turned, fleeing out the door and into the back garden of Claridge. Down the lane in the church townsfolk and extended members of the family waited, and terrifyingly, Turner Boyle.
She walked to the big tree with a dilapidated swing, where she would spend hours and hours reading as a girl. When she sat down on the crooked wood, it threatened to buckle. Facing the valley and the river and Beswick, she tried to conjure Miss Taylor and wondered what her favorite writer would have to say.
“You were right,” Clemency whispered. “All along, you were right. The scholar, the poet, and the philosopher can all agree that love is an ungovernable mystery,” she recited. “And yet we seek to govern it.”
“Govern, Miss Fry, or preserve?”
It was the last voice in the whole of England she expected to hear. As far as she knew, Lady Veitch was not even aware of her specific wedding day. Clemency shifted, swiveling to look back at Lady Veitch as she stood in the shade of a poplar and a scalloped-edge pink parasol. The frothy concoction of her gown sparkled, glowing from the sunlight shining behind her.
“Lady Veitch…” Clemency whispered, dumbstruck. “Forgive me for asking, but what are you doing in my garden?”
She noticed an elaborately enameled barouche waiting on the graveled drive to the left of the house. The old woman tilted her head to the side, imperiling the silk and feather bonnet pinned to her gray curls. “You may think me a very old, very traditional woman, and I am that, something of a relic from a bygone era that you now sneer at, but I also cannot abide injustice when I see it unfold before me.” Lady Veitch closed her parasol and stabbed the pointed end into the dirt with a flourish. Behind her, Clemency saw both Arabella and Adeline peering out at her from the waiting barouche. “Mr. Boyle is a snake and a liar, a rude pretender who is not a baron’s heir, and indeed hardly a man. The insult cannot be supported.”
Clemency gradually stood, clinging to one rope of the swing for support. She opened her mouth to speak but Lady Veitch would not allow it.
“I find myself in the difficult position of thinking you hopelessly misguided, Miss Fry, but loathing Mr. Boyle, and as life is a series of lesser evils chosen, I have decided to intervene on your behalf. Tansy is a darling girl, and dear to me, and she assures me that you are worth the effort, though indeed I remain dubious.”
“Lady Veitch, I am already quite at my wits’ end and—”
The old woman chuckled and stabbed the ground with her parasol again. “By and by your wits may be spared, young lady. Mr. Boyle will not be arriving to marry you today, and unless I have gravely misunderstood the situation, I should think you will be very happy indeed to hear that.”
It was shock and not relief that almost brought Clemency back to her knees. “N-No, whatever you have done you must undo it. You do not understand how dangerous Mr. Boyle can be!”
“Oh, I am quite aware.” Lady Veitch snaked through the rosebushes toward her. She pursed her lips and then glanced through squinting eyes at Clemency. “Miss Fry, it was brought to my attention that a suitor of dubious means had become…unduly attached to my daughter. As I became aware of this, I also became aware of your role in steering her away from this unsavory character. Through my own means I discovered that the rogue in question was none other than our mutual acquaintance Mr. Turner Boyle.”
Clemency covered her face with both hands. “That is hardly surprising, yet he is in possession of such damaging secrets, such ruinous information, that I cannot risk angering him. Please, Lady Veitch, I beg you—”
“There is no need for begging, Miss Fry. He is already apprehended and, I should think by now, on his way to Fleet Prison. Worry not about his pernicious ways, I have already put about to every corner of London society that his lies are not to be believed. And do not worry about Denning Ede.” She reached down and picked a bit of leaf off Clemency’s sleeve and flicked it away. With a sniff, she turned her face toward the church. At Clemency’s gasp of surprise, she said, “Oh, yes, I am aware of his involvement now. If it is his wish to remain free of scandal and advance his promising career, then he will not debate me. I hardly think King George would look fondly on his dear friend elevating an upstart bastard to be the heir of a disgraced, extinct family. The Boyle line is well and truly dead; they have no legitimate son. Lord and Lady Boyle fled London when Ede discovered the boy’s true parentage, but America is not far enough. They will hear of this.”
