It had come to Rivers suddenly, this notion of taking Lucia to see Breconridge Hall, and following her plea, he’d acted on it suddenly as well, making the impulsive decision to bring her to the house where he’d spent most of his time as a boy. Impulse or not, he’d time to reflect on the short drive, sitting with Lucia close and snug beneath his arm and the last of the rain splattering on the carriage’s roof.
Even that wasn’t enough to reassure him. If only he’d taken another moment to consider, he would never have suggested such harebrained foolishness. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of the Hall, which was generally regarded as one of the most beautiful and impressive private houses in the country. The Hall had been the center of his childhood, the destination of school holidays when he’d been an adolescent, and remained the heart of his family’s major celebrations. It was the gilded, luxurious symbol of the power and good fortune of generations of Fitzroys, which was much of the reason that he’d decided to take Lucia there. How could he not be proud of it? Even His Majesty had admitted a twinge of envy when he’d visited.
And it certainly wasn’t that he was ashamed of Lucia. He would be proud to have her on his arm anywhere, and after her performance today and the grace and presence she’d shown, he doubted that anyone would question her right to be a guest of the Duke of Breconridge.
Nor could he be ashamed of his own family, who were, as families went, quite presentable and good-natured. Unlike most noble families, they harbored no feuds, dark secrets, or regrettable choices in their midst. His father was publicly proud of his three sons, and Rivers counted his two older brothers as his closest friends.
No, his unsettled feelings regarding Breconridge Hall were more complicated than that, and all of his own doing. He had the Lodge and the house in Cavendish Square for his own, and thanks to his mother’s family, a handsome income. He was free to do what he wanted, when he wanted, without any obligations. His life was exactly as he ordered it, and most men would eagerly trade places with him.
But the inescapable fact of his existence was that he was a third son: necessary, but ultimately extraneous. From birth he’d known he was the third son, and the likelihood of him ever becoming the next Duke of Breconridge was remote. He wouldn’t wish it otherwise, of course, because the cost would have been the deaths of his father and his brothers. But Breconridge Hall was the glittering, golden prize for every generation’s duke. It would never belong to Rivers or his sons, and as welcome as they’d be to visit, it would never truly be their home, either.
It was no wonder, really, that he couldn’t begin to explain this incoherent jumble of loyalties to Lucia, especially since he couldn’t really sort it out to his satisfaction within his own head. Thus he did what he’d always done when confronted with similar puzzles: he turned pedantic and tedious.
“There was an old manor house on the site when the land was initially granted to the first duke a hundred years ago or so,” he said, talking not so much to Lucia, who was still curled against him, but intoning to the air over her head. “Most of that was torn down in the 1690s when William Talman designed the south façade, with interiors overseen by Nicholas Hawkesmoor. Talman is not well-known today, but he was a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and his sense of proportion carried the master’s gravity, evident in the Palladian influences of the window bays.”
“Rivers,” Lucia said. “Please.”
“Please?” he repeated, though he could guess what she meant.
“I mean, please don’t,” she said softly, twisting about to face him. Her maid had brought her a short blue cape embroidered with silver flowers, and though it had covered her from the raindrops as she’d stepped into the carriage, the front kept parting as she moved, granting him tantalizing glimpses of her pale skin beneath. “You only become a schoolmaster like this when you’re uneasy, and you needn’t be with me.”
He frowned, knowing she was right but not quite ready to admit it. “I am not being a schoolmaster.”
“If any mere schoolmaster spoke of such lofty things as proportion and window bays, then yes, you are,” she said. She ran her fingers lightly across the breast of his coat as if to smooth away any harshness from her criticism. “I am certain that these gentlemen you mention were most esteemed in their time, but I care far more about what the house means to you than to them.”
He sighed, striving to think of things to tell her. “It was my home when I was a child,” he said. “My mother believed that children should be raised in the country, not in London. While my parents remained in town, my brothers and I were kept here with a phalanx of nursery maids, governors, and tutors attempting to mold us into proper young gentlemen.”
“That must have made for an enjoyable childhood,” she said, and he didn’t miss the wistfulness in her voice. Compared to her first years, his own had been positively idyllic.
“It was,” he admitted. “My brothers and I were—are—close. Being older, they led the way in the mischief, and I happily followed. There was much potential for mayhem for three boys in a house of that size.”
“That is what I wish to hear,” she said, and for the first time that day she smiled with the eagerness that he loved so well. “Master Hawkesworth is well enough—”
“Hawkesmoor,” he corrected from habit. “Nicholas Hawkesmoor.”
She laughed, the merry sound like Heaven to him. “Oh, Rivers, you cannot help yourself, can you? Show me the places where you and your brothers were wicked, and I shall be a thousand times more content than if I learned what joiners put the windows in place.”
He smiled sheepishly, realizing that he, too, had not smiled much today before now. Hawkesmoor had been a lofty and legendary architect, not a humble joiner, but Rivers would not give her the satisfaction of being a schoolmaster again by pointing out the difference. And she was right: it didn’t matter. He still wasn’t entirely sure why he was bringing her to Breconridge Hall, but he knew it wasn’t for an architectural lecture.
“Then I shall show you the picture gallery where we ran races with our dogs when it rained,” he said instead, “and the marble statue of a Roman goddess whose toe we knocked off with a cricket bat. We lived in fear that Father would notice, but I doubt he ever has.”
She laughed again, and he laughed with her: not because the goddess’s broken toe was that funny, but because laughing with her was one of the things he most liked doing with her.
“I promise I won’t be the one to tell your father,” she said, “though I’d like very much to see the poor goddess.”
“Father won’t be there, in any event,” he said. “No one will, not with Parliament in session and the Court in town until the end of the summer. The house will be empty except for the servants. We shall have the place to ourselves.”
“Truly?” she asked curiously. “None of your family?”
“Not a one,” he said. Their absence was so obvious to him that he hadn’t considered that she might have wished to meet them. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“Oh, I am not disappointed,” she exclaimed. “I am relieved. I do not think I could be presented to Mr. McGraw and His Grace the Duke of Breconridge in the same day. Dio buono, I would perish from too much magnificence.”
She smiled, full of her old impish charm. Yet the fact that she’d fallen back into that little bit of Italian—she’d nearly abandoned it entirely along with her old accent for the sake of Mrs. Willow—proved that her true feelings were likely as unsettled as his own. Had she expected him to introduce her to his family?
He loved Lucia, loved her more than he’d ever loved any other woman. Yet to introduce her to his father, in his father’s house, was so unthinkable that he hadn’t even thought it, and he didn’t like himself for doing—or not doing—so. In fact, as he looked at her lovely, trusting face as she smiled up at him, he felt shamefully unworthy, and a coward in the bargain.
“Perishing from magnificence is entirely possible where my father is concerned,” he said, striving to continue the jest. “I suspect there have been more than a few people at Court who have felt that way in his presence. Here we are.”
The carriage had stopped before the door on the West Front, the wheels crunching on the white stone that was raked daily. This wasn’t the main entrance to the house—that would be the even more formal South Front—but this was the closest to the Lodge, and the door by which Rivers usually entered. It was a mark of just how large the house was that it even had three separate fronts and formal entrances, each added by a different generation of dukes, and each, too, calculated to be more imposing. The West Front had been built by the second duke, Rivers’s great-uncle, and it was still sufficiently grand to leave most visitors awestruck.
It definitely had that affect on Lucia. He’d stepped out of the carriage as soon as the footman had opened the door, and now he stood waiting to hand her down, yet she remained half-standing in the door, her mouth open as she tipped her head back to stare up at the curving double staircase and the large house it led to.
“Madre di Dio,” she murmured faintly. “Non ho parole.”
I have no words. Perhaps Father should be here after all, thought Rivers, because he would have relished her reaction.
“I warned you,” he said, thankful they hadn’t gone around to the South Front. “The Hall can be daunting from the drive.”
Still she didn’t move. “It didn’t seem nearly this big from the Lodge.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed. “But from the Lodge’s roof, the Hall is a good two miles away.”
“That’s true.” At last she recalled herself and took his hand to step down. She flipped the hood to her cloak over her hair, looked up at the skies, and then flipped it back. “And at least the rain has stopped.”
“In your honor, madam,” he said gallantly, leading her up the curving stairs. He usually took the steps two at a time, but on account of her shorter stride and because she was openly gaping up at the front of the house, he kept to a more leisurely pace with her on his arm. Besides, he liked having her beside him, with her little hand in the crook of his arm and her silk skirts blowing against his legs in the breeze. “I’ve arranged the weather entirely to your liking.”
Skeptical, she glanced up at him from beneath her lashes, and found an appropriate quote from Hamlet. “ ‘How is it that the clouds still hang on you?’ ”
He laughed as they reached the door. “Because I’ve taken them away from your head to hang over my own, entirely for your benefit.”
The door was opened by a young footman that Rivers didn’t recognize. This wasn’t surprising; the butler, Mr. Maitland, usually stood guard at the primary door, and left the other entrances to lesser servants, especially when the family was not in residence.
“My—my lord, good day,” the young man stammered, bowing repeatedly as he held the door wide.
“Good day to you, too,” Rivers said, striving to sound as kind and unassuming as possible. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
“Since Michaelmas,” the footman said. From his downy cheeks to the livery coat inherited from a much larger predecessor, he could not be more than fifteen. “I’m Tomlin, my lord.”
“Welcome to Breconridge Hall, Tomlin,” Rivers said as he ushered Lucia inside the house. “I trust you’ll serve my father well for many years to come.”
“Yes, my lord,” Tomlin said, carefully closing and latching the door as he’d been trained. “Mr. Maitland didn’t say you was expected.”
“That’s because I wasn’t,” Rivers said. “I’m here on a whim, for a brief ramble about the house, that is all.”
The footman glanced at Lucia, flushed, and swallowed hard. “Will you be requiring tea, my lord, with the ah, the, ah—”
“My friend,” Rivers said with gentle emphasis. “This is Mrs. Willow, Tomlin, and she is a dear friend of mine. And no, we shall not stay for tea. I would not dream of distressing the kitchen staff by appearing without any warning.”
“Very well, my lord,” the footman said, bowing one last time and to spare him further embarrassment Rivers hurried Lucia across the patterned marble floor, past a pair of gilded crouching lions, and up the staircase.
“Poor Tomlin,” Lucia said when they were out of the footman’s hearing. “You were very kind to him. Many gentlemen wouldn’t be.”
Her genuine sympathy reminded Rivers of how often she herself must have been treated rudely by gentlemen in the tiring room. She had changed so much in these last weeks that it was hard to realize she’d still been working there less than a month before.
“At least you’ve been spared being greeted by Mr. Maitland,” he said as they turned down another grand hallway. Because his father was in London, the halls and rooms were all empty, and without the usual small army of servants bustling about and standing guard outside rooms. “He is the Hall’s butler, and never was there a more fierce Cerberus to guard our doors than Mr. Maitland. He has the unique ability to approach without a sound, and catch small boys in the very act of willful misbehavior.”
“I’m sure all three of you were quite willful,” Lucia said, gazing around her. “Poor Mr. Maitland must have had his hands full when you were home. Rivers, I have never seen so many paintings!”
“We Fitzroys do seem to have a weakness for them,” he admitted. She was right: every spare wall was hung with at least one large canvas, framed with a heavy gilded frame, something he took for granted. “I never gave it much thought, really. My cousin Hawk is the true connoisseur. He’s advised Father on buying new pictures, as well as suggesting which other ones might be better retired to the attic.”
She glanced at him curiously. “You have a cousin who’s named Hawk? Like Hawkesmoor?”
He chuckled. “It’s not his Christian name,” he said. “Not that I can recall exactly what that is. Most likely John or George or somesuch. And it’s not Hawkesmoor like the architect, but Hawkesworth for his ducal title, which we shorten to Hawk. The same applies to my older brother Harry, who isn’t really a Henry or Harold, but Earl of Hargreave.”
She paused, running her fingers lightly over the polished edge of a long satinwood sideboard while she considered. “So your true name isn’t Rivers after all?”
“No, it is,” he said, a little sheepishly. Most of the greater world went through life without any honorific whatsoever, but since his family was so riddled with titles of every degree, being a younger son had always been something just short of an embarrassment. “Being the third son, I have neither title nor name beyond Lord Rivers Fitzroy, and Rivers is what they poured over my forehead when I was baptized, or so goes the old family jest. Hah, here is wounded Juno, and still not mended.”
He stopped before a nearly life-sized marble statue of the Roman goddess, standing on a black pedestal between two tall arched windows. Juno stood with her weight on one foot with the other coyly bent, and it was this foot that had suffered the long-ago loss of a toe to the Fitzroy brothers. And it was still broken, awkwardly snapped off where Harry’s cricket bat had struck.
Rivers patted the statue familiarly on the knee. “I cannot believe no one has noticed it,” he said. “Nor, apparently, has the lady herself complained over the last decade.”
“She should have kicked you at the very least,” Lucia said, coming to stand on the other side of the statue. “What became of her toe?”
Rivers tried to look solemn. “I regret to admit that I do not know. My dog—a wicked small terrier named Scrap—seized it as a prize and ran off, and for all I know it’s now buried beside some prized mutton bone. So while it was Harry’s bat that dealt the blow, it was my dog that completed the crime, and so I am every bit as much at fault.”
She laughed, her head tipped to one side and the pale sun from one of the windows lightly gilding her cheek. Her beauty struck him once again, a kind of glorious enchantment that only she possessed, but this time there was something more, something amazing, that took him by stunned surprise.
Standing there with the arch over her head like a kind of halo, her blue flowered gown an extension of the now-blue sky through the window and her profile a twin to the marble goddess’s, she looked as if she’d as much a place here as Juno herself. She looked as if she belonged here, as if she’d spent her entire life at a house such as this. The realization jolted him, and he swiftly tried to control it with reason: it was the dress, the sunlight, her smile, together conspiring to make the playhouse tiring-girl look at ease in the country house of the Duke of Breconridge.
“And thus I have seen the deity’s toe, Rivers, or the absence of it,” she said playfully, unaware of his thoughts. “Show me more of you as a boy, if you please.”
Forcibly he pulled himself back to the present, the way she always wished him to be. He took her hand to lead her down the hall, trying to think of something else to show her in the vast house that was part of him. Absently he glanced at the large painting to his left, and smiled.
“Here’s another,” he said. “This is a portrait of me with my brothers, though we’re so young that you’d never recognize us from this now.”
Frowning with concentration, she studied the painting. “I wouldn’t know them anyway. I don’t believe your brothers ever came with you back among the dancers, did they?”
“No, they wouldn’t,” he said absently. “They’re both too occupied with their wives and children to bother with actresses or dancers now.”
He’d forgotten all about this painting. He and his brothers had been very young, but at least Harry and Geoffrey had been old enough to have been breeched, both of them dressed like little gentlemen in miniature with their dark hair curled and clubbed to resemble wigs. He himself was still in a young child’s long gown with a satin sash, and his pale blond hair in wispy ringlets to his shoulders. His brothers had teased him about those ringlets, he remembered that, just as he remembered posing for the artist in a makeshift studio in one of the guest bedchambers, and not beneath the shady tree shown in the finished picture.
“You don’t look as if you belong with them,” Lucia said. “You look different.”
“That’s because I was added in afterward, by a different artist,” he said. “I suppose I was considered too young when my brothers were first painted.”
It made sense to him, but not to her. “Why are you waving your arms about like that? Are you trying to get their attention?”
“I’m holding my hands out because I was still unsteady on my feet,” he explained patiently, but clearly she wasn’t going to believe him. “Here, I’ll show you a place where we used to dare one another to go.”
“A dare?” she asked, intrigued and perking up with interest as they turned down another hall. “Is it a frightening place?”
“No, but it was strictly forbidden,” he said, trying to sound mysterious. “We were never to go inside, let alone touch anything. No one was permitted there, yet still we did, and never were caught.”
He threw open the last door with a flourish and she hung back in the doorway, uncertain of what she’d see.
“It’s the King’s Bedchamber,” he said with family pride. To have a bedchamber reserved for royalty meant that a family was important enough to have the king visit their home. “Only to be used by His Majesty when he comes calling, and never anyone else.”
Tentatively she stepped inside the shadowy room. The curtains were drawn against fading from the sun, and the furniture was shrouded in drop cloths, but still the state bed rose in all its gilded glory, with a towering canopy and carved mahogany unicorns and lions supporting the bedposts.
“Does His Majesty visit often?” she asked in a respectful whisper.
“He has been here three times in my memory,” he said, tugging one of the curtains open to let in a splash of sunlight across the patterned carpet. It also lit the portrait on the wall of his father, sternly imposing in the red velvet and white ermine of his Garter robes.
“That must be your father,” Lucia asked, following his gaze. “You’re fair where he is dark, but I can see your face in his.”
“Then you’re seeing a resemblance that few others find,” Rivers said, considering the picture beside her. “You see how he’s glowering, reminding you that it’s treasonous for anyone other than royalty to be in this room. Why, if it were up to him, you’d be locked away in the Tower.”
Her eyes widened even as she laughed. “It is not treason to be here!”
“High treason.” He folded his arms over his chest and scowled ominously, trying to emulate his father. “The highest. Should you care to test me, madam?”
She grinned, then crossed the room and hopped up squarely into the middle of the enormous state bed.
“Test me, my lord,” she said, patting the coverlet beside her in invitation. “I dare you.”
Her audacity shocked him. Not even his brothers would have taken that dare as boys. For all his teasing, the state bed was sacrosanct and untouchable, and always had been.
Until now. Until Lucia.
“Dare accepted,” he said, jumping onto the bed beside her. Delighted, she turned her head and kissed him, and he thought of how this was the best possible dare in his entire life.
“Before, with the footman, you called me your friend,” she said, her voice a husky whisper. “Your dear friend. You didn’t have to do that, but you did.”
“Because it was the truth,” he said, brushing a stray curl back from her forehead. “I said the same to McGraw today, before you joined us.”
Her smiled tightened, and she glanced down. “He believes I’m your whore.”
“I told him you were my dearest friend,” he said firmly, “and that I hold you in the highest respect and regard.”
Her eyes fluttered up. “You did?”
“I did,” he said, leaving no doubt, “because it is God’s own truth. I also informed him that if he ever dares treat you in any fashion unworthy of you, he shall answer to me.”
“Oh, Rivers,” she murmured, the slight catch in her voice betraying her emotion. “That is why you were so—so short with Mr. McGraw this morning, wasn’t it? You were challenging him on my behalf?”
“I was defending you, sweetheart,” he said, leaning closer to kiss her again. “Because you deserve defending. Because—”
“Rivers?” said a woman behind him. “Heavens, Rivers, that is you.”
Instantly he whipped about, shielding Lucia with his body. The woman behind him wasn’t just a woman, but a duchess: Her Grace the Duchess of Breconridge, his stepmother, Celia.
Nor was she alone. In the doorway with her were not only Mr. Maitland the butler and Tomlin the callow footman, but his two sisters-in-law, Harry’s wife, Gus, Countess of Hargreave, and Geoffrey’s wife, Serena, Lady Geoffrey Fitzroy. They were staring with various reactions—dismay, horror, amusement, and most of all, surprise—but none of that could match the mortification he felt there with Lucia beside him. Damnation, why hadn’t anyone told him the ladies were here?
But all his ever-gracious stepmother did was smile warmly, a smile that included Lucia as well.
“How happy we are to see you, Rivers,” she said. “Will you and your friend join us for tea?”
When this day had begun, Lucia had expected to play her part for Mr. McGraw. She’d never thought her performance would continue in the late afternoon, sitting on the edge of a silk-covered gold chair in a parrot-green parlor in Breconridge Hall, before an audience that consisted of a duchess, a countess, another lady, and, of course, Rivers.
Rivers had assured her she’d been prepared for that earlier performance, but he’d said nothing of this one, and since they’d been discovered, they’d had no time alone together to discuss it. She had no lines to recite, no well-practiced and considered gestures to fall back upon—especially not after having made her entrance and first impression tumbled like the lowest, most wanton chambermaid on the forbidden state bed. Now she’d only herself to rely upon, and she’d never been more unsettled or uncertain in her life.
She didn’t know anything about ladies like these, the true versions of what Rivers had been trying to teach her to be. She’d seen plenty of gentlemen in the tiring room, but never ladies. And these women awed her: their grace, their jewels, their gentle voices, the way they smiled and held their teacups and laughed together.
Thanks to Rivers, she would not shame herself entirely, knowing important small things like how to curtsey when introduced and not to wipe her fingers on the tablecloth. Thanks to him, too, her flowered silk gown and blue short cape were entirely appropriate. But among these ladies, her accent sounded like a third-rate echo, her posture wrong, and her laughter strained and anxious. She felt ungainly and clumsy, as if she were back in corps de ballet rehearsal with her uncle Lorenzo critically noting every misstep and awkwardness. It was one thing for her to play at being Mrs. Willow before Mr. McGraw or Mrs. Currie, the mantua-maker, but another entirely to do so with these ladies.
“How long have you known Rivers, Mrs. Willow?” the duchess asked as soon as all the niceties of serving the tea had been accomplished. “I cannot recall Rivers bringing any other lady here to us at Breconridge Hall, so you must be a very fond friend indeed.”
Her Grace smiled pleasantly, full of encouragement as any good hostess would do. The pale late sun caught the diamonds that she wore in her hair, around her throat, and at her wrists; given the rest of the house, Lucia was certain they were real, and not paste, and of a value inconceivable to her. The duchess was an exceptionally beautiful older lady, with masses of pale gold hair and a serene smile, and while Lucia believed her question was intended to show genteel interest and not to pry, it still terrified her, and she took another sip of her tea to stall, and think.
Was she still to be Mrs. Willow, or should she confess her role in the wager? What had Rivers told his family? How much did they know of who she truly was?
“Yes, Your Grace, Lord Fitzroy has been an excellent friend to me,” she said cautiously. She’d succeeded as mad Ophelia; she could succeed again as Mrs. Willow, if that was what he wanted. “In fact sometimes it does seem as if we’ve known each other all our lives.”
“An excellent…friend,” the duchess repeated, delicately making it clear that she understood their true relationship, but that she didn’t care. “How fortunate that you have found each other.”
Lucia flushed. So the duchess had guessed she was Rivers’s lover. What of it? She was, wasn’t she? And if Her Grace was going to continue pouring her tea as if she truly were Mrs. Willow, then who was Lucia to disappoint her?
The younger ladies made happy sighs and coos of appreciation, a sign that she hadn’t entirely faltered yet. Still, she glanced pointedly at Rivers, praying he’d understand that she needed his guidance. “Isn’t that so, my lord?”
Rivers smiled and ladled more sugar into his tea, clearly enjoying himself much more than she.
“Indeed it is, my dear,” he said. “We met long ago on the Continent, Celia. Her late husband was an acquaintance of mine. A military gentleman.”
“Oh, sweet heavens, how very sorry I am for your loss,” the duchess said, reaching out to pat Lucia’s sleeve. “So young to be a widow! I, too, was scarcely a bride when my first husband was taken from me. How generous of Rivers to offer you solace in your grief.”
“The Fitzroys are most accomplished at offering support and comfort,” Lady Geoffrey said, smiling in sympathy. She was the most elegantly exotic woman that Lucia had ever seen in England, with golden skin and pale amber eyes and the merest hint of a foreign accent to her words that made Lucia wonder where she’d been born. “Before our marriage, I suffered through some difficult times, and I doubt I would have survived if not for Geoffrey’s strength to lean upon.”
“How fortunate for you, Lady Geoffrey,” Lucia said softly, turning toward the other woman. The mention of marriage to a Fitzroy brother made her uneasy, for there was no question that she and Rivers would never be linked in that way. “Such devotion is a marvelous thing in a husband.”
“My Harry has that quality as well,” Lady Augusta said, her hand resting protectively over the swell of her pregnant belly. Lucia recalled Rivers saying how these two young women had so far produced only daughters, to the disappointment of his father, and how the entire family was anxiously awaiting the birth of this baby, and praying it was male. To Lucia, that had seemed an unfair judgment on both the mothers, and the infant girls, and she felt even more sympathy for Lady Augusta now that they’d met. Lady Augusta, or Gus, as Rivers called her, was the least daunting of the ladies, her round freckled face and coppery hair cheerfully engaging, if not fashionable.
“No gentleman could be more loyal to me and our little girls than Harry,” Gus continued, “no matter what the rest of the world says.”
The duchess leaned forward with concern. “Hush, hush, Gus, please don’t vex yourself,” she said. “Pray remember why we’ve come here, to remove you from the stresses of town, for the sake of the babe.”
But Gus didn’t seem to hear her, or chose not to. “Have you any children of your own, Mrs. Willow?”
“No, my lady,” Lucia said. This was another awkward question that struck too close to her heart, and she was unable to keep the sadness from her voice. Because she’d had neither brothers nor sisters, she had always dreamed of having a large family of her own, and more than once she’d had to stop herself from including Rivers as the father in that dream. “Mr. Willow and I were not blessed.”
“Children are a blessing, the greatest blessing in life,” Gus said. “My three daughters are my little angels, a constant joy to Harry and to me.”
Rivers laughed. “Your daughters are little hellions, Gus, and you know it,” he teased. “Not that it makes them any less delightful.”
Gus didn’t deny it. “They are still a blessing,” she said firmly. “I’d wish nothing less for your friend Mrs. Willow.”
“Mrs. Willow and I have had other exciting events to occupy us at present,” he said, smiling at Lucia. “Isn’t that so, my dear?”
Lucia blushed with confusion at that endearment. What was he doing anyway? How did he wish her to answer?
“Forgive me, my lord, but perhaps we should not speak of that now,” she said. “It might not be, ah, suitable.”
“Now you intrigue us, Mrs. Willow,” Serena said. “Surely these events that Rivers mentioned cannot be unsuitable for discussion here.”
Gus nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes, you must tell us the truth, Mrs. Willow. One never can know with Rivers.”
“Don’t badger her, Gus,” Rivers said. “She won’t tell, and neither will I. It wouldn’t be a secret if we did.”
“His lordship is quite right,” Lucia said. She set her saucer down on the table beside her, fearing it would rattle in her hands. “This—this secret is still not ripe for telling. Suffice to say that in my present situation in life, I owe his lordship everything.”
“Everything?” repeated the duchess, clearly astonished.
“Everything,” Lucia repeated, her gaze locked with Rivers’s.
“Everything,” he echoed softly. “That’s very generous of you, Mrs. Willow.”
There was no mistaking how blatantly he was letting his admiration for her show in his eyes. Part of her—a sizable part—wanted to gaze back at him in exactly the same way, and even to rush across to his chair and fling her arms around his shoulders and kiss him for being so ridiculously important and perfect to her.
“It’s not generosity, my lord, but the truth,” she said, forgetting being nervous and uncertain as well as the ladies, and seeing only him. He had that power over her, or perhaps it was she who could focus so completely on him. “You have given me more than ever I deserved.”
He swept his hand grandly through the air. “You exaggerate, madam.”
“Not at all,” she said, raising her chin. “You gave me hope where I thought I had none, and made opportunity from the most insubstantial of dreams.”
“ ‘A dream itself is but a shadow,’ ” he said, quoting Hamlet. “You know that as well as I.”
She smiled, for the next line of the play was strangely apt, as likely he’d already known. “ ‘Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow’s shadow.’ ”
He didn’t answer, but smiled, letting her words float there in the air, meant for him, meant for her. She was only vaguely aware of the two other young women beside her, listening rapt, their tea forgotten.
“Puzzles within puzzles, Rivers!” exclaimed the duchess, perplexed. “What is the meaning of these lovely words that you and Mrs. Willow are tossing back and forth like a golden ball?”
He grinned, still not looking away from Lucia. “No puzzles, Celia,” he said. “These lovely words belong to the playwright Mr. Shakespeare, and Mrs. Willow and I often recite scraps of his plays back and forth to amuse ourselves.”
“Will you please recite more, Mrs. Willow?” Gus begged. “I vow you are more magical than any London actress.”
“Perhaps another day,” Rivers said, setting aside his cup as he stood. He bent down and kissed Gus’s cheek with genuine fondness. “Mrs. Willow and I have imposed upon you long enough, Gus. You must be weary if you came down from London this morning, and I wouldn’t want to risk my brother’s wrath by tiring you with my nonsense.”
“Then you must promise to bring her back while we are here in the country,” Gus said. “I’m not permitted to do anything, and you’ve no notion of how tedious idleness can be.”
Serena rose, gliding over to rest her hand on Gus’s shoulder. “Yes, Mrs. Willow, I hope you’ll return,” she said, smiling warmly. “No matter how close a friend you are to Rivers, he cannot keep you entirely to himself.”
“Yes, oh, yes,” the duchess said. “Fresh company is so hard to come by in the country, and you are a rare delight. You must bring her back to us, Rivers, and soon.”
“You are too kind, Your Grace,” Lucia said, overwhelmed by their kindness. Her head was still spinning when Rivers handed her into the carriage for the drive back to the Lodge.
“Well, now, that worked out well enough, didn’t it?” he said as soon as the door latched behind them. He reached out and pulled her close, his arm familiarly around her shoulder. “I didn’t expect Celia and the others to be there, but you, my darling Mrs. Willow, could not have made a better impression upon them.”
He tried to kiss her, but she twisted around to look him squarely in the eye. “You truly didn’t know they’d be there, Rivers?” she asked. “It wasn’t another of your tests or trials for me?”
“Not at all,” he said, and with such forthright indignation that she believed him. “Why in blazes would I have contrived to have you first meet my stepmother lying in the middle of the state bed?”
Her cheeks warmed at the memory, yet she laughed, too, because it had been so mortifyingly preposterous.
“No, you wouldn’t,” she agreed. “They all know now that I’m your mistress. A blind man could have seen that. And yet those ladies were so kind to me, Rivers. Such grand noble ladies! They needn’t have been kind, not at all, and yet they were.”
“There are plenty of noble ladies who believe themselves grander than God, but not those three,” he said. “None of them would ever judge you for what you were, but only on what you are.”
“Is that what you wished me to say, then?” she asked uncertainly. “Did you want me to tell them who and what I truly am?”
“I wanted you to tell whatever would put you at your ease in their company,” he said with maddening logic. “You chose to say nothing, and that is well enough, too. I told you, it was your decision.”
“But I couldn’t tell them, Rivers,” she protested. She understood perfectly well; why couldn’t he? “They are ladies, and they would not be pleased to have either a playhouse tiring-girl or your mistress sitting as their equal.”
“You are no longer a tiring-girl, nor will you ever be one again,” he said firmly. “Besides, you misjudge those good ladies. The duchess does look for good company wherever she finds it. She truly doesn’t care about a person’s station or past, nor do the younger women, either. It’s not my place to tell their stories, but each one of those ladies has suffered from life’s unfairness, one way or another, and they would never fault you for not being of their rank.”
“But you cannot deny that rank makes them different from me, Rivers, just as it makes you different,” she said slowly, remembering the richly appointed rooms, one after another, that she’d seen earlier in his family’s house. “It’s part of you, and you cannot escape it. That’s why you took me there in the first place, isn’t it? For me to see where you lived as a boy?”
He grunted, noncommittal. “In a way, yes,” he admitted. “I thought you’d enjoy seeing it. Quite the gilded pile, isn’t it?”
She shook her head a fraction, unwilling to dismiss the afternoon with a jest. “I have not met your father, Rivers, but from what you have told me of him, I can see that the Hall is his, grand and formal and stiff, while the Lodge is all yours.”
“To be sure, Father’s left his mark on the Hall,” he said, “but the estate more rightly belongs to all the dukes of Breconridge, past, present, and future, with father only the current example of the species.”
He was in a good humor, expansive and relaxed, and she hated to ruin it, but she still had questions.
“Breconridge Hall is undeniably beautiful,” she said carefully, “and yet while it was your home when you were a child, it can never be yours again.”
“It belongs to the dukes of Breconridge,” he repeated patiently. “I’ve explained that before. When Father dies, it shall go to Harry, who will become the fifth duke.”
She linked her hand into his, toying with his fingers. “And after that? What if he and Lady Augusta never do have a son? What then?”
“Then the estate goes to Geoffrey and his sons,” he explained. “Lucia, I’ve already told you this.”
“But now that I’ve met them, I want to be sure I understand,” she said. “What if Lord and Lady Geoffrey have no sons?”
“You are the pessimist today, aren’t you?” he said, only half-teasing. “Then the estate would pass to me, and my sons. But that is not going to happen. Both Harry and Geoffrey and their wives are young and clearly capable of producing a half-dozen sturdy boys among them. Now, if you please, Lucia, I would rather we not discuss this any further. Regardless of what you or I say, Breconridge Hall will always be inherited by some young Fitzroy fellow or another. That cannot be changed, and never will.”
The carriage bumped over a rut in the road, a jarring shake that gave extra emphasis to the finality of his words.
But it all made sense now to Lucia. He had promised to trust her with his past, and he had in fact trusted her with more than perhaps he’d intended, or realized.
“That is why you took me there,” she said softly. “You must remain who you were born. You cannot change your life, or your lot in it, but you have changed mine.”
He frowned. “You have changed yourself, Lucia,” he said, pointedly ignoring her observation about him. “I’ve only made it possible with a bit of advice and a few fripperies along the way. You did all the work. Look at how much you’ve accomplished, too. I cannot wait to see the look on Everett’s face. You must admit the transformation has been quite a success.”
“I suppose it is,” she said slowly, for this was hardly the conclusion she’d expected from him. “You will win your wager.”
“Oh, hang the wager,” he said. “I’ve never been more proud of you today, Lucia, first with McGraw, and then with the ladies. When I saw you sitting in the green parlor with a porcelain cup in your hand, taking tea between Gus and Serena, you looked as if you could have been their sister. You belonged there.”
But she didn’t. Not in that house, not among the welcoming ladies of his family. It was, in a way, a complement to her acting ability, her skill at imitating noblewomen as she sat in their midst. But she wasn’t one of them, and all the lessons in the world wouldn’t change that. She knew the truth, even if he pretended not to. Breconridge Hall was not her place, and all his wishful thinking could never make it otherwise.
“You mean Mrs. Willow belonged,” she said finally. Mrs. Willow: the lady he’d made her over into, the one he’d wanted, his creation, not the tiring-girl who’d first bluffed her way into his house to see him. “Not Lucia di Rossi.”
“I mean the woman I love,” he said, gently cradling her jaw in the palm of his hand.
“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
Her heart melted: how could it not? Such sweet words, such perfect words of love and devotion! He kissed her, and she kissed him in return, deeply, fervently, with all the love that she possessed. She would do as she’d told him to do, and love him and this moment as if no others would follow.
But never doubt I love…
It was only later, much later, as she lay beside him in his bed and the new moon rose high outside his bedchamber window that she remembered that those beautiful words of promise and fidelity had belonged to the doomed, disloyal Hamlet.