Anna was in Leeds, for God’s sake. A half-day’s drive away.
Jack had a long way to go if he was ever to fully regain his faculties, but he seemed certain of what he’d seen. And with that one wary glance at Lewis, Sir John had confirmed it.
“You weren’t going to tell me.” Lewis spoke from a dark corner as he eyed Sir John, who sat slumped into a chair by the fire.
The man didn’t even look up, merely sighed and stared into the flames. “I hadn’t decided. I knew you would take it hard. There’s—”
“Hard?” Lewis marched out of the shadows. “How else should I take it? I admit I don’t know much about pregnancy, but it’s nine months, right? If Anna Spain is with child—how did Jack put it? About ready to foal?—then the child must be Gideon’s.” My own niece or nephew. His parents’ first grandchild, a by-blow of their much-favored first son.
Sir John cleared his throat. “It might not be.”
“My God, you’re accusing me? It’s what my father thinks. For the first time in my life he’s proud of me, for a shameful thing like that.” Lewis tasted disgust like bile in his mouth. “But you! Don’t you know me better than that?”
Sir John gaped up at him. “That’s not at all what I meant, dear boy.”
“So you think she was raped by some random gent at just the same time she was falling for Gideon’s tricks? That’s bull.” He remembered who he was talking to and lowered his voice. “Sir. Sorry, sir.”
Lewis retreated to the shadows and forced his jaw to relax. That lasted all of five seconds. Because like that fictional random gent, Gideon was perfectly capable of rape.
Lewis squeezed his eyes shut, but it did no good. The pictures were inside his head.
He crossed to a chair and sat on the edge of it. Not the companion to Sir John’s comfortable chair by the fireplace, but a hard seat off to the side. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“Tell me what she said, who was with her…oh, everything.” His hands covered his face, muffling his voice. He heard Sir John swallow in the quiet room, the click of his glass as he set it on the table.
“She was with an older woman, I think a servant. She didn’t introduce us. We came face-to-face at the Rose and Crown—I believe they were collecting a parcel that had come in on the mail coach.”
Sir John paused and Lewis dropped his hands, watching as the narrative continued.
“She was dismayed, as you may imagine. I feared she might faint. She answered my greeting civilly enough, even asked after Jack’s health, but the words did not come easily, poor girl. If we had not come upon her so suddenly, I would have let her go without acknowledging the acquaintance. Jack hadn’t recognized her, so he would never have known the difference. I had no time to consider, however, and at a distance of three feet there was really no choice in the matter.”
“How did she look? Healthy? Happy?” Could this possibly be some other scenario, something innocuous? If the pregnancy were less advanced than Jack thought?
Sir John shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Rather drawn, perhaps. Her eyes seemed huge.”
“Jack seemed to think she might have married.”
Sir John shook his head. “Only because of her condition. Don’t suppose it ever occurred to him to think of London or Gideon. I addressed her as Miss Spain and she didn’t correct me, which you’d think she might be at some pains to do. To let me know all’s right and proper.”
He picked up his brandy and finished it. Lewis’s own glass was missing—he must have left it somewhere on his circuit of the room.
It didn’t matter, he didn’t want it. His rage had fled, leaving him in a state of oppression that felt oddly like grief. No one’s died, you idiot. He dropped his forehead onto the heels of his hands, his fingers burrowing into his hair, no doubt turning it into a ragged jumble.
He heard Sir John stand and approach him but did not move, even when a hand came to rest gently on his bent back.
“I’m sorry, lad. I wish I had told you yesterday so it wouldn’t have taken you by surprise, but I didn’t see the point. Even if it was Gideon, there’s nothing you can do. It’s not your responsibility.”
Lewis did not respond, and the hand withdrew.
He heard a yawn and Sir John said, “I’ll see you in the morning, then.” The door opened and closed. Lewis had what he wanted, silence and solitude.
Not his responsibility? It surely felt like his. Gideon would not be interested, even if he knew. And after tonight, there could be no question of his parents taking in their grandchild.
Don’t worry about her sort. What in bloody hell did Father know about Anna’s sort?
If his parents ever learned of the joyless event, would it have any effect on their opinion of their heir? Lewis thought not. Oh, Mother might pout and lament Gideon’s lack of consideration for her feelings. But he would gift her with his grin, throw an arm around her shoulders, and toss off some line about a man’s needs. She would gaze adoringly into his handsome face, pat his cheek, and all would be forgiven.
Father would feel nothing but pride in his son’s virility. That had always been the case. When Gideon was expelled from Durham School shortly before graduating, Lewis had been privy to his parents’ conversation as he sat reading in the library.
“It’s no great matter, my dear,” Father had said. “I never expected him to be a scholar. Gideon is a man, he doesn’t need book learning. He’s like one of those ancient gods—he knows his due and takes it. No namby-pamby foolishness from him.” Here he’d turned toward Lewis with a sneer. “Gideon has more manliness in his little finger than Lewis will ever have.”
“Lewis is only twelve,” was Mother’s defense, offered with a dubious frown at her youngest. “Do you not think…?”
Mr. Aubrey had scoffed at that. “A fool’s hope, my dear.”
Pretending he’d gone deaf, Lewis had hidden behind his book. He refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing his hurt.
The clock struck ten. Still early, but there was no reason to stay downstairs. No reason to go to his room, either—it would be a miracle if he slept tonight—but at least the servants could go to bed. He found his brandy in one dark corner, topped it off, and carried it with him as he left the room. Muttering a goodnight to the footman in the hall, he trudged up the stairs.
He’d never known precisely what offense brought his brother’s schooling to that abrupt end, but he knew it had something to do with a girl. There had been plenty of such offenses, including one of their own serving maids when Gideon was just fifteen—the reason he’d been sent to school in the first place. Was that rat seducing them even then? Raping them? Had Anna been the first? Or merely the first lady of quality? Or not even the first of those?
Gideon had another girl on his arm when the Wedburys arrived in London. Lewis did not know her background, but she was part of the social season, no maidservant. Before her, who would know? In the years since leaving school, Gideon could have taken any number of women, with or without their consent. It would be easy to conclude that they were all stupid.
Without a doubt Anna was naïve. Trusting. Vulnerable. Romantic. None of those traits made her stupid.
But they made her a dreadful match for Gideon. Anyone who knew him must have predicted he would grind her to dust under his heel.
Lewis stripped down to shirt and trousers and splashed icy water on his face. Then he went to the wardrobe and pulled from its depths the leather portfolio he’d bought in Leeds on his way home from Bath in August. Together with a generous supply of paper and good black lead pencils, it had cost more than his talent deserved or his pockets thought wise.
Had Anna been in Leeds already at that time? Would he have seen her, if only he’d looked in the right place?
He laid the portfolio beside him on the bed and untied the straps. There were the drawings for the dressing-room modifications in Jack’s bedchamber. Preliminary studies for the portraits of the Redfern household. Landscapes, plenty of them, and detail work of plants, rocks, and such.
And there was Anna. One of two small portraits he’d done in London in an attempt to amuse her, when she was long past any possibility of amusement. She had chosen one to keep, and asked for a drawing of him. He’d glanced in the mirror and dashed something off—quite dreadful, no doubt, but he felt sure she’d asked merely out of courtesy. What anguish she must have endured, even then.
Since that day he’d drawn her many times, with only that little sketch and his memory to guide him. Anna happy, pensive, haunted. And from his dreams, Anna shy, desirous, with a tremulous smile just for him, her hair loose about her bare shoulders.
Shame on me, when nearly all the time I’ve known her she’s been carrying my brother’s child. This is the mysterious circumstance referred to in her letters. Merciful heaven, no wonder she was desperate to keep me from visiting in Bristol.
Lewis clutched his hair, relishing the pain. So minor compared to Anna’s plight. He could not stop imagining it.
He saw her in a grimy room or two in the back streets of Leeds, living on cheap brown bread and milk, dressed in cast-offs from the poorhouse. Then he scoffed at the scene; the Spains had the means to support her in comfort if they wished. But Lewis knew Anna’s mother, and the little Anna had said about her father did not encourage the notion that he would treat his daughter with consideration under such circumstances.
He saw her with a dark-haired babe in her arms, both unwelcome inhabitants in her parents’ house, spending their days on the roof as she had done this summer past. Or Anna put to work, a drudge in her own home. When he blinked, he could envision other possibilities, but none that showed clear in his mind.
Most unwanted of all, he saw her with Gideon last spring in London. A variety of places and poses, by choice and by force, her expression in each circumstance. Where the devil had Gideon found the freedom to take her? Mrs. Spain’s unchaperoned parlor? Among the trees in Vauxhall Gardens, ensuring her silence with a hand over her mouth? Had he gained access to her bedchamber? Sneaked her into his rooms?
Though the thought of it ripped him apart, he almost hoped she’d been willing. At least she might have taken pleasure in the act itself. Yet how much more shocking Gideon’s defection when it came, and how much more desperate her grief. It all makes sense now. I should have seen it six months ago.
Oh yes, he knew exactly what Anna looked like pale and drawn, and that vision he could trust.
Sir John said there was nothing to be done. Lewis hoped he was wrong about that, because if it was true, he saw many more sleepless nights in his future.
He went to the writing table, pulled out his pencils and drawing paper. Those sleepless nights could produce innumerable sketches of Anna. Enough to fill a wall, a gallery, an entire museum. And they would accomplish nothing.