Three hours later, Michael staggered out of a shop on Saville Row. He turned to glare at the doorway through which he had come. When next he saw Fauconbridge, he was going to give him a piece of his mind.
“Morsley?” The object of his ire had materialized there upon the pavement, along with his brother.
“What in God’s name were you thinking?” Michael burst out.
Fauconbridge’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t know what you—”
“Sending me to that—that—” Michael gestured toward the shop, unable to summon words sufficiently heinous to describe it.
“Look, Morsley, I know you’ve never much liked going to the tailor—”
“How could any man like it? It was horrific.”
“You’re blocking the pavement,” Harrington said, seizing his upper arm and towing him along.
“That Pinkerton fellow all but had a fit of vapors over my jacket,” Michael grumbled. “He went on and on and on about how he’d make me a new one straight away because he’d never ‘suffer’ me to be seen wearing something so ‘grotesque’ in public.”
“Hmm,” Fauconbridge said.
“I was tempted to tell him I wore it to a ball last night. With buckskin trousers. The only reason I didn’t is because I honestly thought he might suffer some sort of thrombosis.”
“Gallant of you,” Harrington said.
“And have you seen how tight the latest fashions are? How am I supposed to chop down a tree or paddle a canoe or field dress a moose, if I can scarcely move?”
“Conveniently,” Fauconbridge said, “in your future role as the Marquess of Redditch, you will be doing precisely none of those things.”
“There’s also a real dearth of moose in London,” Harrington observed.
“I tried to leave after that, but they wouldn’t let me. No, first I had to look at three dozen spools of identical blue fabric, then it was three dozen spools of identical black fabric, and then—well—you know. And he kept asking me all these ridiculous questions I couldn’t answer about buttons and swallowtails and something about an M-knock—”
“M-notch,” Harrington said. “It refers to the shape of the collar.”
“Why couldn’t this Pinkerton fellow just decide what was suitable?” Michael fumed. “Isn’t that what I’m paying him for? Do I look like the sort of man who knows what kind of coat to order?”
“No,” the Astley brothers replied in unison.
Michael paused long enough to narrow his eyes at the both of them. “And the worst part is, he made me promise I’d visit the shoemaker straight away. To get fitted for a pair of dancing pumps.”
Harrington steered him into a left turn. “Perhaps they’ll write an ode someday to commemorate your sacrifice.”
“Well, they should. I’ve got to present myself at the shoemaker in one hour, and…” Michael glanced around. “Say, where are we going?”
“We were just on our way to White’s.” Fauconbridge nodded toward the building they were approaching. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“White’s, you say?” Michael squinted at the building’s columned façade. “I’m not a member.”
“You’re the future Marquess of Redditch,” Harrington said. “Of course you’re a member.”
“I’m not. I—”
“We were both there when you were voted in, Morsley,” Fauconbridge said, steering him up the short flight of white stone steps.
They led him to a room upstairs. Michael’s impression of White’s improved considerably when he learned that he could obtain not just a drink, but a beefsteak.
He ordered three. After all, he hadn’t eaten in five entire hours.
“It certainly is good to have you back,” Fauconbridge said as they settled around a corner table.
“It’s good to be back,” Michael said.
“Your father must be beside himself,” Harrington said.
“Gad, I forgot to send him word of my return.” Michael started to rise. “I’ll have to arrange for a messenger straight away.”
“I took the liberty of dispatching someone to Ravenswell last night,” Fauconbridge said.
Michael sat back, surprised. “That was good of you.”
Fauconbridge shrugged. “He’s missed you.”
“And I have missed him.” As he said the words, Michael realized how true they were. He’d been raised to be stoic about such things, as had every man in the room, no doubt. But his father was his only living family, and Michael was suddenly struck by how good it would be to see him again after four years.
“How is my father?” Michael asked. “I’ve had letters from him, of course, but—how is he really?”
Fauconbridge nodded his thanks as the waiter set a brandy in front of him. “He’s well enough. Much the same as you remember.”
“About as well as he’s been for the past fourteen years,” Harrington said.
Michael understood Harrington’s meaning perfectly. It had been fourteen years since Michael’s mother’s death.
As horrible as it had been to lose his mother, Michael had eventually recovered in a way that his father had never quite managed. His parents had been a love match, the kind the poets wrote of, and Michael’s father showed no interest in moving on. He never remarried and, from what Michael could tell, he hadn’t so much as looked at another woman in fourteen years.
Whenever Michael walked by the family plot, he always found fresh-cut flowers lying atop his mother’s grave. And he couldn’t count the number of times he’d walked into the gallery to find his father standing before his mother’s portrait, gazing at it with unabashed longing. Once he even observed his father dabbing at his eyes with his handkerchief (an unheard-of display for an Englishman), prompting Michael to slip silently from the room. He’d known better than to say anything. Whenever Michael mentioned his mother, the marquess, who was usually the best of fathers, warm and interested in his son’s life, would rise and leave the room.
But Michael understood his father’s feelings, far better than he’d ever wanted to, because four years ago, the same thing had happened to him.
He’d lost Anne.
He didn’t like to think back on those early days, when despair had consumed his every thought, and just being awake had been a form of agony as his bleak, Anne-less existence loomed before him for the length of a lifetime. He’d eventually not recovered so much as become inured to the pain. That trite old truism that time healed all wounds was a bunch of rot. He had never gotten over Anne, and he knew with absolute certainty that he never would.
It seemed that the inability to love more than one woman in a lifetime was a family trait.
That was why he couldn’t leave anything to chance. He had to marry Anne this time. The alternative was unthinkable.
And once he did, he was going to wrap her up in cotton gauze and make sure nothing bad ever happened to her. The thought of how rough and tumble they’d been as children now made him break out in hives—what if she’d fallen out of a tree and broken her neck?
And when the time came for her to give birth, he was going to have a half-dozen accoucheurs on hand, all the best ones in England. He didn’t care if it cost him a king’s ransom.
“He’ll be so glad to have you back,” Fauconbridge said, interrupting his reverie.
“For a few weeks, anyways,” Michael said. He nodded his thanks to the waiter as he set a trio of plates before him.
“A few weeks?” Harrington frowned. “We were all hoping you were here to stay.”
“No,” Michael said, sawing into his first beefsteak, “my future is in Canada, for many years to come. It’s what Lord Hobart wanted to discuss with me this morning. He wants me to start training to take over for Sir Robert Milnes.” He speared a hunk of meat and shoveled it into his mouth.
“Sir Robert Milnes?” Fauconbridge said. “Am I to understand that you’re to be the next Governor General of Canada?”
Michael swallowed. “It won’t be for some years. I’m sure I wouldn’t even be a candidate were it a position anyone else wanted. But the Crown wants a peer for that type of post, and most peers are unenthusiastic about life on the frontier. That I have a title and that I’m willing to do it are my only qualifications.”
“Not so,” Fauconbridge said. “Such a position requires a man of unimpeachable character and sound judgment. Both of which you have in spades. To say nothing of your”—he tapped the side of his glass, searching for precisely the right words—“decisive, authoritative disposition.”
Harrington leaned forward. “What he means is that you’re bullheaded and overbearing.”
Michael laughed. “I fear I can’t deny it. Well, I’m fairly certain that ‘bullheaded’ and ‘overbearing’ are both requirements of the position. I grow more qualified by the minute.”
“So, if you’re only staying for a few weeks, why did you bother to come back?” Harrington asked.
Michael swapped his now-empty plate for one that held a beefsteak. “I may as well tell you. Not that I need either of your permission. But I’m going to marry your sister.”
“We know,” the brothers replied in unison.
Michael sighed. “I had a feeling you probably did.”
“Everyone knows.” Harrington paused, then added brightly, “Except for Anne, of course.”
“Superb,” Michael grumbled, sawing into his beefsteak.
“So,” Harrington continued, “when are you going to propose?”
Michael pointed his fork at Harrington. “It happens that I was attempting to propose last night. But someone interrupted me.”
“Aw, bad luck, Morsley,” Harrington said, his voice annoyingly chipper.
“I’m starting to think you don’t want me for a brother-in-law,” Michael said.
“Of course we do,” Fauconbridge said. “We want Anne to finally be happy, after all.”
Michael gave him a sharp look. “And was she not happy? With Wynters? If he mistreated her—” Michael wasn’t sure what he was going to do, given that the man was already dead.
But if his suspicions about what happened four years ago proved to be correct, he would require only the slightest pretext to go out and desecrate his grave. If that two-faced lying snake had laid a finger on Anne…
“Nothing like that,” Fauconbridge said. “Come, Morsley, I would have met him at dawn.”
“We both would have,” Harrington said.
Michael sighed. He knew they would have. The Astleys looked after their own. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”
“What I meant was...” Fauconbridge trailed off, considering his words. “It’s not that Anne was unhappy with Wynters, from what I could tell. He was nice enough to her, allowed her to do her charity work, that sort of thing. But it also wasn’t the case that he made her... particularly happy. If that makes any sense.”
“I will make her happy,” Michael vowed, raising his glass to his lips.
“At least you’ll be able to get some children on her,” Harrington said cheerfully, causing Michael to come alarmingly close to spewing port across the table.
Michael won his fight with his drink and came up coughing. “Harrington,” Fauconbridge said in a tired voice as he began pounding Michael on the back.
“That is,” Harrington continued, ignoring his brother, “I presume you’ll be able to. Everything’s in working order and what not, isn’t it, Morsley?”
“Dear God,” Fauconbridge muttered, taking a fortifying sip from his own glass.
“Surely,” Michael replied once he had regained the ability to speak, “you do not expect me to dignify that with an answer.”
“I for one,” Fauconbridge interjected, “would very much prefer that you not.”
“We’re of one mind on that.” Michael went to spear another bite of meat, only to have his fork clang against an empty plate. As he pulled his final beefsteak close, Michael saw the four men who had been occupying the adjacent table rise and depart. He glanced around. They were now the only ones in this end of the room.
There was a question that had been bothering him for four years, one he hadn’t had the opportunity to ask in the crush last night. He leaned forward, dropping his voice. “Listen, there’s something I need to ask you two. I’ve always wondered how it came to pass that Anne didn’t receive my proposal.”
“We’ve wondered that as well,” Fauconbridge said. “Yarwood swears she read your letter. Says he placed it in her hands himself. But it eventually became clear that Anne had no idea you had proposed.”
“I have a theory,” Michael said. “Perhaps you can confirm something for me. The man she married, Wynters—did he carry a walking stick with a silver handle in the shape of an icicle?”
“Took it with him everywhere he went,” Harrington confirmed. “Because he was ‘Lord Wynters.’” The exaggerated eyeroll with which Harrington accompanied this statement conveyed his opinion of the late earl’s sartorial choice.
Fauconbridge’s eyes had sharpened. “I didn’t realize you’d met Wynters.”
Michael stared unseeingly across the room. It didn’t really come as a surprise. Deep down, he’d known it all along. “Apparently I did. You see,” he blinked out of his trance, and found both Astley brothers staring at him intently, “he was there. That morning four years ago, when I scrawled out my proposal for Anne, then hurried off to board my ship. He was there, and I think he must have—”
“Fauconbridge, thank God you’re here.” Michael turned and saw the speaker’s eyes narrow as he noticed Harrington. “Oh. It’s you.”
It was the Marquess Graverley. Michael remembered Graverley from school, and he looked much the same—lithe, blond, and haughty, with preternaturally high cheekbones and boots so shiny Michael could have checked his teeth in them.
An argument ensued about whether Fauconbridge would be willing to join Graverley for a drink. “Alone,” the marquess clarified, glaring at Harrington.
It happened that Fauconbridge was unwilling to abandon his brother. Michael sighed. He’d finished his beefsteaks and, glancing at his watch, he saw that he needed to get going if he was going to make his horrifying appointment with the shoemaker. It appeared that he had learned as much as he was going to about Lord Wynters.
Well, no matter. He had learned what he needed to know.
He excused himself and wandered down the stairs and out onto St. James’s Street in a daze. Yes, he had learned what he needed to know, had confirmed what he’d suspected all along: that it had been no unfortunate happenstance that Anne never received his proposal. That he had been sabotaged, and the man who had done it had gone on to become Anne’s husband.
Now he just had to figure out what he was going to do about it. Should he tell Anne? After he proposed, she was bound to ask how his decision came about. He didn’t want to lie to her. Hell, he doubted he could lie to her convincingly (growing up, they always joked that they knew each other so well they could practically read each other’s faces).
He wanted to tell Anne that he loved her. He wanted to laugh with her about that picnic they’d had when they were fifteen, when he’d wound up lying on top of her and still somehow managed not to kiss her. He didn’t want to give her some nonsense about how it was a smart match, and about how they would get on well because they were “such good friends.”
The problem was, telling her the truth, that love had struck him down like a bolt from the blue when they were fourteen, when he’d returned home from Eton for summer break and had suddenly seen his best friend with the eyes of a young man, rather than those of a boy, was bound to lead to a whole series of questions. Questions like, Why didn’t you propose before you left? that had answers like, Actually, I did. Answers that led inexorably to the dishonorable act carried out by her first husband.
It wasn’t hard to guess that Anne would have strong feelings about being informed that her marriage had been built on a lie. Would she blame Wynters? Or would she resent Michael for telling her an uncomfortable truth? Hell, a lot of women would probably refuse his proposal on the grounds that he had besmirched the honor of their dearly departed husband.
And so he had a decision to make.
It wasn’t as if much was riding on it.
Just his future happiness.
He shuddered as he mounted the steps to the shoemaker’s shop, but not for the reasons he would’ve supposed an hour ago. How remarkable. There was something he was dreading even more than getting fitted for that pair of dancing pumps.