“I must apologize, Mrs. Aubrey, for having no other ladies here this evening,” said Sir John, opening the dinner conversation. “I promise we gentlemen will forego our after-dinner chat and join you in the drawing room. Such old friends as you will forgive us, I know, if we make it an early evening. We find ourselves sadly fatigued by the journey north.”
“Of course, poor man.” She managed to make her sympathy sound sincere. She sat at Sir John’s right, across the table from her husband. Lewis seated himself by her side—better her attention should focus on him than on Jack or Maggs. Better still if she couldn’t see them at all. Short of blindfolding her, that was impossible.
Lewis’s father tasted the soup that had just been placed before him. “As for fatigue, young Wedbury here looks far more robust than you do yourself, Sir John. Are you quite sure it is he who’s been ill?”
Jack chortled. “Lord, Mr. Aubrey, m’father is never ill. Loses some hair every day, though. Say, Maggot—er, Maggs—are you going to finish your soup?” Jack’s bowl was already empty. Lewis felt his mother stiffen beside him.
“I am, sir,” Maggs murmured, his face expressionless.
“I say,” said Sir John to his guests, “you must tell me all that’s happened around town. Did they build that new mill they were talking about last winter?”
A thorough discussion of local business and politics ensued. Lewis did his part, while Jack devoted himself to his dinner and his wine. Maggs said nothing at all. As each new dish was served, his glance flicked to Lewis’s hands to see which utensil he should use. With that covert assistance, he acquitted himself well. Better than Jack, who, when he spoke, was likely to do so with his mouth full.
“Lewis tells me the new vicar has settled in nicely.” Perhaps Sir John chose the topic to remove Jack from the conversation. Each slight impropriety of speech or table manners brought a snicker or a smirk from Lewis’s father, another of those abrasive titters from his mother. Their expressions grew more smug, more exultant as the evening wore on.
It was Lewis’s turn in the game. “Seems so to me. I know Redfern is happy with Wrackwater Bridge.”
His father tsked, shaking his head. “Shows how out of touch he is with popular sentiment. Too unorthodox by half.”
Lewis leaned forward. “Because he’s not a sheep, following every stuffy tradition that’s ever been laid down? It’s good to have some younger blood in the pulpit.”
Father raised one eyebrow, feigned a yawn, and pretended to hide it. “Church and tradition go hand in hand.”
“But maybe they shouldn’t.” Lewis saw Sir John’s mouth open, but he forged ahead. His parents could not hurt him anymore. “Times change, Father.”
Mother rapped his knuckles with her dessert spoon. “That is quite enough, Lewis! Your father is right about Mr. Redfern. And she! So pert and frivolous. More appropriate to a tavern wench or…or an actress, than a vicar’s wife.”
“I know an actress.”
A dense silence fell as all heads faced Jack. The first words he’d said in ten minutes. Could he have thought of anything worse?
Jack took a bite of his lemon tart and looked up. He peered at all the faces, his expression bland, unaware.
With his nervous laugh, Maggs shifted beside him. “Oh, Mr. Wedbury, you—”
“That’s right, Jack,” Lewis said, leaning forward. “We saw a performance at Covent Garden, didn’t we?”
Jack nodded. “Saw several of ’em.”
“Of course,” said Sir John. “Everyone goes to Covent Garden. It’s expected, like attending concerts or balls. Or taking a lady driving in Hyde Park.”
Jack pointed his fork across the table. “Lewis did that. I never did. That yellow-haired chit you liked… What was her name? We saw her in Leeds, didn’t we, Papa?”
Who, Anna? Not in Leeds.
The heads turned toward Sir John. “No, no.” Sweat beaded on his face. “Merely someone who resembled her. We had only a glimpse—” He glanced at Lewis, then quickly away.
Why in God’s name would Anna be in Leeds? Visiting those relatives she’d mentioned in her final letter? Had she been there all through the autumn, so close, and he’d known nothing of it?
“No, you said it was her. I wouldn’t have recognized her at all. We talked to her, dammit. I just can’t remember her name. Though I s’pose she might have a different one now.”
Maggs and Sir John both started talking.
Lewis didn’t hear a word. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know.” Jack pushed his chair away from the table and gestured with his hand to show a round belly. “She’s breeding. ’Bout ready to foal, I should think.”
Cobwebs crept across Lewis’s vision as the blood drained from his brain. The room went silent. He felt the pressure of his fingers on the stem of his wineglass and carefully slid his hand away before he snapped it.
He’d never before been glad to hear his mother’s cackle. With it, the voices resumed. Sir John and Maggs. Then Jack said something. Father chuckled. The sounds buzzed in his head, meaningless, but the others must be listening to them, focusing on them. Focusing on anything but me, please God.
He had no idea how long it was before he drew a breath, before he dared to look up from his plate. Before a word fought its way through the fog.
“Velocipedes.” Sir John seemed to be describing those two-wheeled wonders for the benefit of Lewis’s parents, who gawped at him, eyes wide in astonishment. “For whatever fool reason, they’ve caught the fancy of the London dandies.”
How had they gotten on that subject? It didn’t matter. A surreptitious glance around the table showed everyone’s attention on the conversation, but for a flicker of concern directed his way from Maggs. Lewis could have laughed from relief. Or he could, more easily, have cried.
Father drained his glass. “With luck, they’ll never reach Yorkshire. What a ridiculous notion.”
“Oh, it’s great fun,” proclaimed Jack. “Going uphill, it’s only something you have to haul to the top. But egad, on the downhill you just lift your feet off the ground and fly! Friend of mine lost control once and ran straight into a milkmaid. Funniest thing I ever saw. Milk and maid went every which way, her skirts clear up around her—”
Maggs must have given Jack a kick, because he broke off with an “Ouch!” Mother turned red with shock, but the men all laughed. None of them, Lewis was sure, because Jack’s story was so funny.
No, they laughed to cover one thing or another. Maggs and Sir John to cover Jack’s ouch and the words he had thankfully not said.
Father laughed to cover his contemptuous glee over the fool Jack had made of himself this evening. Lewis could guess what was in his mind. The Aubreys had no title to pass on to their heir, as Sir John did. Their house and estate paled by comparison. Here, finally, was one area where Aubrey clearly outshone Wedbury. No bedlamite in their family, no indeed! Two healthy sons they had. True, one of them was unsatisfactory, a throwback to some inferior bloodline. But he was at least tall, and sane—and there was Gideon, a paragon to compensate for Lewis’s shortcomings.
Lewis laughed too, to hide the fact that nine-tenths of his mind was somewhere else entirely. Some inn or lodgings in Leeds where Anna sat out her confinement feeling… God, what must she feel? Despair the depths of which he could hardly imagine.
When the fruit and cheese had been cleared away and the party left the dining room, Maggs and Jack said their goodnights. Lewis longed to follow them up the stairs. But even if he’d been willing to leave Sir John to the dubious mercy of his parents, he was not about to let the man out of his sight.
Sir John had seen Anna, talked to her. Lewis intended to find out what he knew. Tonight.
Lewis bluffed his way through the next half hour in the drawing room. He laughed when the others did, nodded or smiled or shook his head as seemed most appropriate, uttered a noncommittal word here and there.
Finally, Sir John rubbed his face, to hide a yawn perhaps, and rose. “My regrets, but if I do not send you home now, I fear I shall embarrass myself by falling asleep in my chair.” He gently shepherded everyone out into the hall and called for the Aubreys’ carriage.
While Sir John exchanged some parting words with Father, Lewis helped his mother into her pelisse. Then he kissed that cold cheek once more.
“Imagine,” she murmured, “that Sir John would allow a servant to sit at table with company! Though it’s true that Mr. Wedbury needs a keeper. Poor Lady Wedbury.” She laid a hand over her heart as she said it, as though she really cared.
Lewis had nothing to say beyond, “Goodnight, Mother.”
Sir John approached, and Lewis went to bid his father goodbye. But instead of the handshake he offered, Father gave him a wink and an elbow in the ribs. “You’re a sly one, lad. I’ve been waiting twenty years to see a drop of Gideon’s blood in you. Seemed such a shame that package between your legs should go to waste.”
Lewis stared in disbelief. Had he fallen asleep and into some nightmare? What man would say such a thing to his son? And he wasn’t finished. With a glance at the others to make sure no one was listening, he laid one big hand on Lewis’s shoulder.
“I could see you were rattled to hear the wench is increasing. Don’t let it bother you. That sort drops ’em as easy as passing turds. Don’t worry about her.”
Rattled? That doesn’t describe the half of it. Lewis’s heart pounded, driving heat up his neck to his face. Yet his body shook, his bones cold with horror. For years he’d wished for his father’s approval. Now it sickened him.
He twisted away, but Father clasped his arm and wouldn’t let go.
The voice was a whisper now. “If the tadpole should die, that’s even better, isn’t it. Then she has no claim on you at all.”
Lewis wrenched his arm from his father’s grasp. “My God, what kind of creature are you?” He choked on the words. Seared by the fire raging through him, he almost forgot he was a civilized man. He stepped away, taut with the compulsion to punch this devil until bones crunched and blood flowed. My own father!
He turned his back and strode into the library. Oh, how he wanted to break something! If it were his own brandy on the silver tray, he would hurl the bottle into the fire and relish the explosion. He would follow that up with every glass he could find. Take up the poker and smash the clock that ticked mindlessly on the mantel, then the mantel itself. Books, upholstery, paintings—there was plenty of destructive scope for a madman.
But he was not mad. They were not his books and bottles. Making a ruin of this civilized refuge would not change his father. Nor would it return Anna Spain to innocence.
He could not stop shivering. The brandy was not his to destroy, but he could damn well drink it. He tasted nothing as it went down, but he felt its heat in his throat and gut as it seeped into his bones, calming his jitters.
Not five minutes later, Sir John entered the room. Already refilling his own glass, Lewis poured a second, sloshing some of the amber liquid into the tray. He placed Sir John’s drink carefully in the man’s hand and took one more sacrilegious gulp—the stuff was much too good to be used merely as a sedative.
He set off on a prowl about the room. Father’s colossal vulgarity made it glaringly clear where Gideon came from. But it had distracted Lewis from what really mattered.
Anna.