Rakes And Radishes Part 24

"You read Mrs. Fairfax?" she asked.

"Do you?"

Henrietta shrugged. "I used to."

"But you don't now."

"I find her work...almost too fanciful. It's fun to read. That is all."

Lady Winslow rose. "They are rubbish, then?"

"Yes."

"Frivolous dribble read by the ma.s.ses. Something base, to tantalize their lower natures."

"To some degree."

"You are very diplomatic." Lady Winslow reached around Henrietta and took out a slim volume. "Perhaps our Mrs. Fairfax wasn't always that way. Perhaps once she had other aspirations." She handed Henrietta a book-Quiet Reminisces by Miss Frances Fairfax. by Miss Frances Fairfax.

Henrietta gasped, the full understanding coming to her. "Oh no! I didn't mean-"

"Yes, you did. I am a horrid writer now. Selling Lord Damien and sensation instead of the truths I feel inside. I tell Edward to write what is true, but I can't myself, afraid I will receive the same harsh welcome as that volume in your hands." She collapsed back in her chair, rubbing her forehead with her thumb. "No, I'm old and scared now. What could someone like Edward ever see in me?"

Kesseley could barely think for the dull aching in his head. He couldn't separate the details of the evening before, the places and people compressing into one loud scene. It was three in the afternoon, and he was just coming home. His evening clothes hung uncomfortably on his skin, stained and smelling of the last evening's debacles.

Looking at his stark, gray row house on Curzon Street filled him with that tangled mix of sweet nostalgia, bitterness and dread. Boxly let him in. The house was as quiet and somber as a chapel. Was Henrietta gone? He felt an unexplainable disappointment in his chest. He stomped up the stairs, his steps reverberating around him, letting everyone know-including his mother, hiding in her chamber-that he had come home at three in the afternoon.

Henrietta never came out.

The previous evening, Kesseley had promised to meet Bucky at Hyde Park for fas.h.i.+onable hour. He bathed and changed into doeskins and a blue coat, lingering in his chamber even as he was ready to go. He always found something that needed to be done, a letter to reread, a number to commit to his ledgers.

Admit it, you're waiting for her.

He grabbed his hat and headed downstairs, as Boxly let Henrietta and Samuel in. His dog came running to Kesseley, wet and smelly, his tail wagging the back half of his body. Kesseley knelt and Samuel started turning circles between his knees, rubbing his face on his master's hand. He patted Samuel's ribs. "There, there, big boy."

"We are happy to see you," Henrietta said, a small tentative smile on her lips. She removed her bonnet and pelisse and handed them to Boxly. She was pale, no l.u.s.ter in her eyes. For a weak moment, he wanted to draw her into his arms and comfort her. Then his anger came back. He was finally free of her control. He would be d.a.m.ned if he was going to be dragged under again.

"May we speak for a moment?" she asked.

Kesseley nodded.

"I-I am concerned about your mother," she began after a pause. "She is very sad. She doesn't leave her chamber. I've been managing the house these last few days. I will be leav-"

"You don't have to protect my mother. This is a game to her."

"And to you? Is this all a game to you as well?"

Kesseley smiled, the same phony one he gave the ladies who flaunted themselves before him. "You tell me. You're the one who is so good with games."

"There is no game. I love you. But I'm scared. The things I hear about you..."

"Why are you so afraid for me?" He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. "I'm having a wonderful time. h.e.l.l, I won eight thousand last evening."

"To make up for the seven thousand you lost the previous evening?"

"Keeping account of me?"

She came to him and raised her hand, letting it hover over his arm, then pulled it back as if she'd thought better of touching him. "I am afraid because when I look in your eyes, I don't see the Kesseley I knew."

"The Kesseley you controlled, who did your bidding?"

"No," she said. "The Kesseley who lets his poorest tenants live in their homes without rent-it's no secret in the village, you know. I don't see the Kesseley who gave a milking goat and food to Mrs. Rogers when her children were sick, who makes sure all the village children have good shoes and coats for the winter. You're acting out some nightmare. It has nothing to do with me."

"Then stay the h.e.l.l out."

Kesseley found Bucky waiting at the gate. He had donned pedestrian clothes for his secretive mission, which involved finding some merchant's daughter-a mousy brunette with an unusual quant.i.ty of beauty marks and wealth-who frequented the park at fas.h.i.+onable hour. Bucky's uncle had been turning her family up sweet last week and had talked Bucky's cousin into sending the homely gel and her family an invitation to her ball this evening. So Bucky figured he had best secretly see her so he could prepare himself.

"Afterwards we can head over to Two Sevens and curse my fate over some drinks. You are coming with me to my cousin's ball. She's been bragging to my other cousins all week that you're coming."

"Give me enough brandy and point the way," Kesseley said. Henrietta still colored his thoughts. Twice on the way to the park he wanted to run back to Curzon Street, but he held himself back.

Don't give in to her. All she's ever done is hurt you.

Inside the park, Kesseley could feel everyone's gaze on him, taking in the tiniest aspects of his person, as if he were their personal property. He and Bucky could hardly move in the crush. People he could scarce recognize greeted him as an old friend-insisting on drawing him into conversation, introducing him to their sisters, daughters, nieces or other female friends. Merely bowing to the ladies caused them to blush and stammer. He gave them the most mundane of compliments-faint praise for bonnet or gown-and they clung to his words, as if they were the dearest tribute anyone had ever bestowed upon them. After half an hour, Kesseley could tolerate no more and veered into the interior of the park.

The wind had picked up and ma.s.sive oak branches waved over the path. The breeze felt cool on his cheek, and he let out a long breath. Ahead of him, the Serpentine expanded. There were no people wanting something from him, staring at him, trying to draw his attention, only bickering ducks and swans gliding along the brown water.

"Did you see how those ladies looked at you?" Bucky said. "I just want to make one thing clear. You are my closest friend. Those years I didn't send you a single letter, be sure I was thinking about you every day."

"I like you, Bucky, but you're not my closest friend."

"Can I call you my friend if it helps me with the ladies? Do you even have a close friend?"

Kesseley looked at the water, the wind raising little ripples on the surface. He remembered how long ago, he and Henrietta, too young to be conscious of their bodies, had waded in the Ouse in the hot summer afternoons. Just their heads stuck out of the water, their hands held underneath, keeping each other from flowing away.

Bucky jabbed Kesseley with his elbow. "It's your wife," he said in a chastising shrill falsetto.

Lady Sara was not thirty feet away. He couldn't escape. Lady Sara had already seen him.

Oh h.e.l.l!

He braced for the collision. She was coming along the narrow path by the water, flanked by two friends. All in white, they looked like moving Greek columns. The wind blew Lady Sara's gown around her becoming curves and lifted her pale blond curls. She looked as serenely beautiful as the lush surroundings.

"Good afternoon, Lord Kesseley," she said, performing a demure curtsey. The small, beguiling smile that quivered on her lips looked too perfect to be spontaneous. She wore it like a lure. "You are much improved since I last saw you, not nearly so frightening. So I must deprive you of the opportunity of holding me in your arms."

Her friends giggled in their hands, all but a rather cool, tall girl with creamy freckled skin and almond-shaped hazel eyes. She appeared confused by the whole interaction.

"Lady Sara swooned when I last visited her family, allowing me the opportunity to be gallant," he explained. Really, Lady Sara was as relentless as her father. "Would you be so kind as to introduce me to your lovely friends?" he said rather severely, taking her to task for her lack of decorum.

The girls leaped forward for the introduction, except for the tall one. Kesseley learned she was the American cousin of Lady Sara's friend.

Kesseley must have smiled too warmly, or displayed some small hint of favoritism to the sensible American, for Lady Sara said, "She is marrying a very handsome gentleman in Charleston this summer," with that practiced innocent look of hers, as if she were unaware of any subtext in her words.

"Please accept my best wishes for your happiness," Kesseley said. Then the conversation fell into a lull, everyone's eyes on Kesseley, waiting.

"Well, shall we all take a turn together?" he begrudgingly suggested.

The ladies looked at Kesseley, then Bucky, then back to Kesseley. He wound up with Lady Sara on his right arm and some giggly thing on his left. Bucky got the American.

"You have not said anything about my new gown. You must know as a gentleman that it is your duty to compliment a lady." Lady Sara's smile held a challenge, as if she were expecting him to say something roguish.

Behind him, the American was explaining that her husband-to-be and father grew rice and tobacco on their plantations.

"Yes, very nice," he said of the d.a.m.ned gown, then turned his head back to the American. "Surely you couldn't grow rice and tobacco in the same soil?"

"No, our land is quite spread out. We abandoned our home on the low marshes, where the rice fields are, and built another home forty miles away, where the soil is sandy and the air is drier. Perfect for tobacco."

"Are you going to Lord Southington's ball this evening?" Lady Sara said, tugging on Kesseley's arm.

"No, I believe I am attending another ball," he said, then addressed the American again. "How long do you dry tobacco before you s.h.i.+p it?"

"We harvest at the end of June, then put it in sheets and carry it to Charleston three weeks later. My brother and I used to climb up the eaves in the tall hot tobacco barns and smell the drying leaves. I suppose that is why I am so homesick. Everything here is so different-the smells, the weather, the homes," she said, gesturing to the sky. "It never clouds like this. The sun is always large and warm, hence my freckles." She laughed, a pleasant, easy sound. "Please don't compliment me on them. It is a gentleman's duty not not to compliment some aspects of a lady's appearance." to compliment some aspects of a lady's appearance."

"Surely you could grow some lemons with everything else. If you applied lemon juice daily, you could fade your freckles by your wedding," Lady Sara said, then arched a pretty brow at Kesseley. "Oh look at me, spilling my feminine secrets to Lord Kesseley."

"The winters in the Carolinas are too cold for lemon trees," he stated. Lady Sara frowned. He refused to play her game. Wasn't it Henrietta who'd complained of him being obtuse? Wasn't it Henrietta who'd complained of him being obtuse?

"I say, Lady Sara, your bonnet is loose," Bucky observed. "You might want to retie it."

"I don't know what you mean."

"It's falling to the right side," Kesseley said.

"That is the fas.h.i.+on. I hope I am not unfas.h.i.+onable."

"No, of course not," Kesseley resigned himself.

But it only took a slight breeze and- "My bonnet!" Lady Sara cried and hurried in chase to the river's edge. She reached futilely over the water like a bad actress. Kesseley's gut tightened. He had seen this all before- Arabellina sinking in the water, Lord Blackraven having to drag her melodramatic a.r.s.e out. Surely Lady Sara wouldn't try something so outrageously obvious, would she?

Oh G.o.d, she's going to do it!

She turned, seemingly slipping on a rock and plunging into the water with ballerina-like grace, splas.h.i.+ng a nearby swan on her nest. "Help me!" she cried.

Kesseley saw everything happen before he could stop it. "Get out! Get out!" he shouted as he ran for the water.

The swan's jealous mate came skimming across the lake, beak straight out like a sword, ready to defend his unhatched family. Lady Sara's eyes widened. She shrieked as the raging swan flew at her, making its terrible hissing noises. She tried to s.h.i.+eld her face, but it clamped down on her arm. She lost her balance and slipped under the water. The swan went down with her, pecking her hair.

Kesseley leaped into the cold water, knocking the swan away, sending white feathers flying. The bird let out a high, shrill hiss and rose up in the water, flapping his wings, making swipes at Kesseley's back.

Kesseley pulled Lady Sara to his chest, protecting her with his body. He lifted her from the water. Her body shook with ragged coughs and water spilled from her mouth.

When she couldn't cough anymore, she started screaming. Kesseley called the footman to deliver the carriage and then laid her under a tree. Blood oozed from her arm where the swan had bitten her. The torn fabric of her gown exposed her ripped stockings.

She latched on to Kesseley's hand, wrapping her fingers between his, all pretense gone from her face. She was cold and scared. Her lips and ears had turned a pale blue.

Kesseley had pulled her shaking body to his by the time the footman returned. The carriage was waiting on Park Lane.

"Lady Sara, I've got to carry you to your carriage."

She clutched him tightly as he lifted her from the ground.

Word had reached Rotten Row. He could see the fas.h.i.+onable people hurrying down the path, coming to view the spectacle.

An open landau waited for them with the steps folded down.

"d.a.m.n it!" Kesseley spat.

The footman and Bucky climbed aboard and helped lift Lady Sara up. She refused to let go of Kesseley's hand. "No, don't let me go!" she cried.

He shook his head in frustration, but when he spoke, his voice was gentle and resigned. "Don't worry, Lady Sara. I will take you home."

The footman and Bucky jumped down. Kesseley pulled himself up. Lady Sara clung to him, trying to get warm. Her fingers were wrinkled and red. Wet droplets fell from her curls.

Her mother was in the parlor entertaining a dozen callers amid the flowers when Kesseley carried Lady Sara inside-shaking, bleeding, her limbs exposed. Kesseley couldn't explain for the screams. The household staff descended upon them. The duke came huffing into the room, his face reddened from the exertion. Words and demands were shouted. Kesseley had to yell to speak above the roar. Lady Sara needed warm clothes and a fire.

"This way!" the duke said, and Kesseley followed him up the curving stairs to Lady Sara's chamber on the second floor. He laid her upon the bed as the household staff buzzed around. She clung to him, refusing to let him leave.

"Dearest, you have to let Lord Kesseley go," said an older female, probably Lady Sara's abigail.

"No!" she cried.

"We have to remove your clothes," the lady pleaded with her charge.

"I don't care!" Lady Sara replied. "He's already seen me."

Her mother screamed and buried her face into her husband's chest.

Kesseley swallowed, trying to speak calmly. "Lady Sara, you are distraught. You must get dry. I won't leave until I know you are well. I promise."

"Don't leave," she said. "Please don't leave."

"I have to, for now," he said. Pulling his hand free, he slowly backed out of the room and closed the door to protect Lady Sara from the d.u.c.h.ess's friends clogging the corridor. The feigned concern in their eyes barely concealed their sordid curiosity at his wet dripping pantaloons and b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt.