Chapter Eleven

The Depths of Hope

Ewan climbed down from his borrowed gig and stowed it in the carriage house at Grandbole. The morning sky had cleared, but the ground and air still smelled of yesterday’s heavy rain. He stretched his stiff limbs, being dumped in the middle of the docks had left everything sore, including his heart.

With a shake of his head, he unhitched his horse and handed him over to the groom. The young boy looked as if he still had sleep in his eyes. “Thank you.”

He headed to the door but stopped and examined the place, the heavy oak planks forming the walls. The old building might be the oldest on the family property. The loft was piled high with bundles and gear, but maybe there was still room up there for two.

He took another breath, gazing at the opening above and the hooks decorating the walls with harnesses, reins, and wheels, but he turned to the ladder leading to the loft, the quietest place to read and dream. Six years ago, he and Theo had waited out a storm up there. They had talked gibberish of what they would do when they married. Then they’d purposed to elope and they had decided, no, it was better to wait out the storm in the carriage house.

Touching the knurled ladder, he remembered the shy girl, the one so overcome by his telling her of his love, that she had allowed him every liberty. He hadn’t coerced her. They’d been in love. Had Theo forgotten that?

Fisting his hands about the pole, he almost climbed the ladder but his legs weren’t steady. Up all night, walking off a lifetime of anger, and even beating up a welcome footpad would make anyone unsteady.

His knuckles were raw, but he’d been thankful, ever so grateful, for something to thrash. Pounding his own skull wasn’t the best option. No, Theo had done that enough.

One minute loving, alluring, responding to his touch. The next, tricking him out of her carriage. Accusing him of misleading her, of using her fear to take advantage of her.

She thought him a bounder.

But it was worse listening to her admit that she’d harlotted herself to Cecil. She hadn’t grieved Ewan’s alleged death not even a month before taking up with the rich man.

His father had been right. She’d become the Circe of his play, Theo the Harlot.

Yet. It still didn’t feel quite right. How could the shy girl he’d once loved go on to another man so soon?

Jasper strolled through the door, his arms filled with cut flowers. “So this is where you spent the night. You look awful. Must not have gone well at the theater. Sorry, Ewan. I thought the play—”

“No. Mr. Brown wants to buy my play. I need to bring him the final copy. He’s excited for it.”

Nodding, a clear-eyed Jasper sniffed at the big bouquet in his arms. “Well, you look like you’ve had a rotten night.”

The groom walked past them, yawning, and left. That left the brothers alone in the carriage house. This was bad, for Jasper had the questioning look upon his face with his happy, lopsided smile, his bright eyes searching for the right matches to set the Ewan tinderbox ablaze.

“Did you get caught in that wicked thunderstorm last night and take shelter here? Is it more comfortable here for successful playwrights? Not too drafty.”

“No.”

“Did the widow meet you here? I hear she came back late, very late. I was at the tavern this morning and heard some odd things.”

“Tell your drunk friends she went to the theater, then returned.”

“Seems one of her chatty footman talked of a lover’s spat. Very unusual, since the woman has been cloistered in black and gray for months. She’s been a monk, as far as they know.” His brother’s amused gaze disappeared. His pupils narrowed and fixed upon Ewan’s hands. “You haven’t been out carousing, as Father puts it. You’ve been in a fight, Brother. What happened last night? Did you have to defend the Blackamoor beauty from a bounder?

“No. Can we stop this conversation, Jasper?”

“Did you have to stop someone from attacking her, angry at her race? I’d assume with the Abolitionist movement starting, a buffoon might have the wrong idea. I hear they call slave mistresses fancies in the Americas.”

Hot, blind rage crossed Ewan’s eyes. Pulling his bruised hands to his back, Ewan spread his feet apart and prepared to strike his own brother. “Don’t call her that around me. There’s an unlucky footpad who stumbled upon me looking for money. He caught the bad end of my fists. I am unharmed.”

Jasper’s grin disappeared. “Sorry. You look mostly unruffled on the outside, but that’s the outside.”

Foolscap, on reams of paper, that was where Ewan wrote of his black insides. Not accustomed to talking things out with anyone anymore, he shrugged. “You look like you’re getting ready to go court someone. Have you given up on your letter-writing widow? Going to try it the old-fashioned way? A matchmaking mama or my matchmaking mother taking the reins?”

“No. And no. I can wait to see what the widow answers. These blooms are for Father. He’s going into Town to see your mother. He said it was your suggestion.”

With a shake of his head, Ewan tried to dismiss an image of the old fool showing off his scowl to his poor mother, the gentle, sweet woman. Yet, Theo had lumped the lady into her list of complaints. Why? He rubbed his brow. “So the old earl is going to see her. Maybe there’s hope of someone reconciling.”

“Maybe he’ll bring her back to help with the girls, but they’ve kind of scared her out of that grandmotherly role.” Jasper moved from his post at the door, his head swiveling and studying, as if he’d never come to the carriage house before. “So this was where you secreted away, you and your flower seller before you were caught.”

Ewan glanced at the loft and thoughts of Theo rushed his soul. He could still hear her laughter, her shattered breaths from his kisses.

So much like last night. He hadn’t expected to rekindle things, but he hadn’t expected to have her in his arms. Or that she’d dump him on the road, as if he were a blackguard. He swallowed the awful lump of gall filling his dry mouth. “Jasper, you have flowers to deliver. Don’t let me keep you.”

His brother came closer. Not a hint of brandy was in his breath. “We used to be able to talk. We used to see things the same.”

Ewan touched the flowers, swirling the reds and pinks. “That was before you left for your grand tour, before you married, and before I took up with someone of another race. A Blackamoor. I loved her, Jasper. Maybe as much as you loved Maria.”

The pronouncement startled him as much as Jasper, but it was true.

“Father said he caught you two here. He said he called her every evil name he could conjure up but you stood up to him, even more so than what you did with me. She had to be special.”

“Aye. But then I did the unthinkable. I agreed to the earl’s demands. He said he’d give his permission for us to wed if I served a year in the militia. I served, and I lost her. But the earl was right about her not being faithful. That she’d be ruinous to me. She admitted last night to seducing Cecil and becoming his mistress. I wasn’t cold in the ground a month.”

Jasper lips thinned. The big man swirled a long rose as if it was one of his swords. “Interesting. Why would Cecil marry his mistress? With a mistress, you get the benefits of the milk and cheese for which you’ve paid. One doesn’t have to own the cow and put your name to it.”

“The widow is not a cow.”

“Ewan, I think there are answers you need to figure out.”

“Why?” Ewan looked at the ladder, which led to loft. He climbed the first rung but stopped. She hated him, such awfulness had flowed from those wondrous lips. “What good would it be to hear the reasons? It wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. But maybe she needs to hear why you agreed to the earl’s demands. You loved her. You said she loved you. The two of you were set to elope, but then you agreed to the old man’s demands. Why?”

The old reasons of wanting his father’s approval had cost him. Ewan rubbed at his neck. “I wanted the old man to not hate me for loving her. I didn’t want him savaging another play like he’d done with my first. But it doesn’t matter anymore. I couldn’t have made Theo happy. She once mentioned wanting to own a flower store. She has the money for several, but she’s purchased none. Her dreams have changed. She’s changed. It doesn’t matter now.”

His brother strode over to him and hefted the floral arrangement into his hands. “Maybe you can use these more than Father.”

Ewan squinted at the big hulk of a man. “I don’t understand.”

“You’ve beat someone senseless over her. You’ve used your muse to write a play about her. Until last night, not a hint of scandal about Cecil’s widow. I suggest you go to Tradenwood, apologize for everything, and tell her you want another chance.”

Every bit of the frustration from last night still boiled his blood. It pumped and burned and stung every organ. Head down on the ladder, Ewan dropped the flowers, then jumped down upon them. “She called herself a harlot for loving me. She condemned herself and me for giving into passion.”

He kicked the pile and sent more petals flying. “She is done with me. Maybe you should go to her. You both are widows. She seems to like neighbors.”

Jasper bent and picked up a few of the undamaged buds. “Maybe I should go court one of the young women your mother has foisted upon me at her parties. Seems newspaper advertisement number four hasn’t written back.”

“Good. You don’t need anyone who can’t admit regrets.”

“But what of you, Ewan? You’re besotted with Cecil’s widow but won’t go down to Tradenwood because you don’t want to admit your own regrets.”

“You mean go down there and say anything to have her sign away the rights to the waterway? Maybe you’re more like the earl; her money now makes the neighbor acceptable.”

Breaking stems in his hands, Jasper made a bigger scatter of red bits on the dirt floor. “I won’t lie. I want our land protected, but I also want you happy. I know what love feels like. I know it. And I’ve watched it die. If I had a chance to regain that feeling I would, but you have to be brave to do that.”

“I went to war. I am brave.”

“On the outside, Ewan. Admit to her why you accepted Father’s offer. You were set to elope, but then you changed your mind. Why?”

A sober Jasper meant all his acumen came full bore. His aim was deadly accurate. His brother shook his head. “Admit the regret, the one that made you turn from the woman you obviously loved.”

“I didn’t think I could support us against the earl’s wrath. He’d threatened to make sure all my plays would never sell. How would I bring bread to the table? How would I be enough for her?”

Jasper lifted Ewan’s hand and shook the scabbed thing. “With these. You’ve stood up to me with every slight I’ve thrown. You beat someone to a pulp last night, because of her. You should fight for her as you told Father to do for your mother.”

Ewan blinked and he was on his sick bed reading the earl’s gloating letter about Theo running off with another man. Dormant fury erupted. Knuckles stinging, he drew back his hand. “It doesn’t matter now. That was a long time ago. She doesn’t want me and I’m not so sure I want my cousin’s mistress turned wife.”

Jasper’s face blanked. The man never showed any other emotion than humor, except when that long fuse tempering his anger was spent. He looked as if he’d explode, too. “It does matter. We all have pasts, but what about a future? What about being made new each day, because we are given a new day?”

“The elder brother holds the land not the role of a vicar. You’re more loveable when you are less ministerial.”

“I’m stating the obvious. Neither of you have resolved your feelings. You’re both stuck in yesterday. I doubt if either of you know how to forgive.”

“I forgave her when I thought she was a victim.”

Jasper folded his arms, looking every inch the older, wiser brother. “Maybe it was easier to forgive your duplicity in deflowering her, thinking you died. The score sounds pretty even, in a tit-for-tat kind of way.” His lips thinned to a line. “And if you don’t get the widow’s agreement before Father returns, he will coerce her. And you know how he is. It won’t be pretty. Get the widow to see the light, before it is too late.”

Hadn’t the earl’s dealings set Ewan and Theo onto this hopeless path? Ewan dropped his still fisted hands to his sides. “What did he threaten this time?”

With a shrug of his shoulders, Jasper turned. “Nothing specific, but I don’t want to find out. Fix this, Ewan.” Head hanging low, his brother walked out of the carriage house.

Alone again, Ewan felt a knot tighten in his gut. Theo was about to face the earl’s vengeance a second time.

A sober Jasper, a fearless Jasper, not wanting to see the earl’s schemes, meant the old man prepared for war.

How could Ewan get Theo to compromise when it seemed being compromised was the root of her anger at him? What Jasper had said, to tell Theo why he had changed their plans six years ago felt valid. Maybe things would be different if he’d told her then. Maybe things would be different now.

He bent and scooped up a single rosebud. Snipping off a bruised petal revealed a perfect flower. Maybe under their scars, the same could be said of the playwright and the widow.

Yes, there was a woman down the hill who needed to give him one last audience.

…

Theodosia stared out the balcony of her bedchamber at the sunny sky. The sun was high, casting short shadows over the rail. The morning had fled. It had to be past noon, maybe two or three o’clock, and she’d only written two words, Dear Sir.

She’d tried to prove Ewan wrong, that she could admit to the R words, but she’d failed. It was too hard to admit her greatest regrets.

A knock sounded on the door.

Theodosia pushed up from the writing chair, the one she’d taken from Mathew’s adjoining room, and smoothed a drooping curl back behind her ear. “A moment.”

Listless, she pulled back the flowing cream curtain around her bed. Her shawl lay there and she’d need its comfort. She was still drained from arguing in the rain with Ewan.

What if Pickens needed her to go to outside to the fields to check decorations for the festival? Her heart lunged forward then slapped back into her chest. Ewan would be there. She felt it. Pickens said he’d stopped by three times yesterday. Oh, let this not require going outdoors. She couldn’t face him again. Not now, and never alone.

Another knock.

Resigned, she slogged forward, but before her fingers turned the doorknob, in popped Frederica. “Mrs. Cecil? Are you well? The butler said you haven’t budged from this room except to check on Philip.”

Pickens followed and his frown could’ve touched the floor. “I tried to stop her, ma’am, but I was busy dissuading Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

Oh no. Ewan had come again. Why wouldn’t he give up? “It’s fine. Have Miss Burghley’s room ready. She’s here early.”

Still frowning, Pickens left, closing the door with a gentle thud.

Frederica leaned against the threshold connecting the bedchambers. “What has occurred?”

Theodosia pulled at her shawl and shrugged. “I’m not in the best spirits, and you’ve arrived early. You were to come tomorrow morning. Is everything well with you?”

With her hazel eyes squinting, her friend slipped off her dark blue gloves. “I had a feeling you might need me.” Frederica sashayed to the balcony and back. Her sleek indigo carriage gown looked like a uniform, with military fobbing and buttons about her sleeves. Was she coming to battle?

“Well, you are alone in here. There goes one of my ideas.” A giggle fell from her lips, then her tone sobered. “So what happened with your cousin?”

Shaking her head, Theodosia backed up to the post of her canopy bed. “Nothing.”

“The way the man stormed away from Tradenwood, something happened. Why is he desperate and why won’t you see him?”

“How mad was Mr. Fitzwilliam?

“He looked like he’d breathe flames. Confess. What is going on with him, with you?”

Theodosia glanced down and folded her arms about her middle. She couldn’t run from the truth. Now she didn’t want to. “I deserved his wrath,” she said. “I angered him.”

“No one can be angered by you, dear Theodosia. You care too much for others.”

“Oh yes, they can be. And Ewan Fitzwilliam has the right to be mad. I led him on, then dumped him without a care onto the side of the road. I knew it was wrong, but did it, anyway.”

Frederica’s mouth fell open and not in a snack-on-a-bonbon kind of way, but in a wide gape. “But you…you jest. I saw him at the door, here, applying to enter Tradenwood. Where did you leave him? At the gate? The edge of the fields perhaps?”

“I left him outside my mother’s old brothel, the one I was born at near the docks. A most dangerous part of London.”

Silence.

Frederica’s eyes grew bigger.

Shame, almost as bad as the day she had been turned away from Grandbole six years ago, rocked Theodosia. She had gone there to seek help and had been reminded that she was no better than her mother. The angry taunts rang in her head. She was filled with shame. Shame at her mother’s profession. Shame at begging for a crust of bread to save her unborn child. “I wanted him to feel desperate and tawdry, like I had.”

“Why would you?” Frederica’s fair cheeks were ashen. “We never talk about the brothels…your mother’s or mine. We don’t.”

For a moment, Theodosia closed her eyes, hoping to forget the hurt stirring in Frederica’s irises. “This is why I hate talking of regrets. They are horrid and they remind people of their worst pain. I won’t say it again.”

“It’s us. The lucky by-blows. The ones who escaped that life.”

Theodosia rushed to her friend and lifted her chin. “I needed Ewan Fitzwilliam to see what happens to the unlucky ones. They have to go to brothels and sell their souls when men leave them unprotected.”

With a nod, Frederica moved away, opened the balcony doors, and pulled back the gauzy curtains. “So you and this Fitzwilliam? He was a beau?”

“Yes. Then he went to war and died. I was left to figure out how to survive, me and my baby.”

Frederica spun to her like a top. “Philip?”

“Only Mathew knew the secret, and he told me never to tell. My husband adored my son and loved him as if he was his own.”

“I always thought Cecil was too old, but with Philip being so sickly—”

“Philip is sickly because I starved while I carried him—all because of the Fitzwilliams. They never approved of me and made things worse when they thought my beau, their son, had died in Spain.”

Shock didn’t look good on Frederica. Her features were made for lightness, nothing heavy or foreboding.

But Theodosia had to tell someone. As if to keep herself intact, she wrapped herself deeper in her shawl, the light cream wool bandaging over her gray widow’s garb. “I regret believing my lover’s lies, but not Philip.”

Eyes growing larger, Frederica came near. “Fitzwilliam doesn’t look dead now. He obviously still likes you. Maybe he could be the husband we need.”

Turning her head like a mad woman, Theodosia said, “No. No. No. I can’t trust him. He won’t fight for Philip, not against his family.”

“But you, and especially Philip, are his family, too. You should give him the opportunity to choose. The Peninsula War ended some time ago. He may have changed, and I saw how he looked at you when he assisted you from my father’s box.”

Refusing to agree, Theodosia shook her head faster. “That was lust. It will pass.”

“But I saw your face and how you clung to his arm.” Frederica paced from the bed to the desk and back, with her arms pinned behind her back, the picture of a barrister. She stopped at the desk and fingered the letter from the newspaper advertisement baron, then Theodosia’s measly attempt at a reply. “Admit you still like Fitzwilliam. He’s more interesting than the squire. Hopefully, he’s as clever with words as this baron. Can’t you see it in your heart to forgive your cousin?”

Theodosia took the notes from Frederica’s fingers. “Forgive and forget? I don’t know anymore. I idolized him. I made our love seem so perfect and tragic. That was a farce, like that shrew play we watched. And poor Mathew. It took him too long to get through to my heart, because I kept comparing my dreamer to practical Mathew. I’m a fool. I had a perfect man who loved a child that wasn’t his, while I wrongfully held on to lies.”

“But Cecil won your heart. I saw you two. You loved him, and he knew it.”

“Yes, but how many months, years, did I deprive him of my heart?”

Frederica wrapped her arms about Theodosia and held on tight. “You loved him, and he loved you. Don’t you forget that. He chose you. He gave that boy a name, but Cecil wanted you happy.”

“Mathew would want me to protect Philip. Maybe Philip and I need to leave here. I could take Philip and the means I could quickly garner and go. Do you think the waters of Bath will help him?”

Frederica tightened her embrace. “You can’t leave. You haven’t left because of Lester’s threats, but this Fitzwilliam makes you so scared you want to flee? He can’t hurt you. Philip was born during your marriage. He’s Cecil’s because he claimed him.”

That was true but it didn’t stop the fear of the Fitzwilliams figuring out ways to use the secret to hurt Philip or to steal him away as Lester had threatened. Biting her lip, she straightened and pried out of Frederica’s hug. “I can’t let them put out nasty rumors about my son. If I don’t run, I must marry. The sooner I marry, the safer Philip will be.”

She put her hands onto Frederica’s shoulders, spun her around, then steered her to the door. “You go settle into the guest room Pickens has for you. I promise to clean up and dine with you tonight. And we can talk about any nonsense you want, any other nonsense.”

“Will there be bonbons?”

“Of course, so many we can forget what I’ve said.”

Frederica stopped dragging her low-cut boots, but paused at the door. “Cecil had a look in his eyes that told me how much he loved you. His cousin has that look, too.”

She opened the door and gave Frederica a light shove. “Bonbons. Now go on.”

Her friend smiled and headed down the hall.

Closing the door, Theodosia took a long breath. Alone again, she felt lighter, maybe even motivated. She’d told her regrets and the world didn’t crumble. She returned to her desk and picked up the cut of foolscap she’d started with Dear Sir. Her fingers tapped the smooth surface of the small pine desk. This was the ideal setting, tucked in the corner of her bedchamber, different from her business desk in the parlor. Through the billowy curtain covering the balcony, she could enjoy the sweet air rising from the fields, her fields.

Regrets didn’t smell so fine. How did they look on paper?

Another knock sounded.

Frederica again? Did she think of another question to ask?

Two knocks sounded. The second echoed as it came from the lower part of the door.

Philip?

Pulse throbbing in terror, she rushed to the door and flung it open.

Her heart started to beat again as she saw her son standing in his blue pinafore next to Pickens. Then it stopped again. He was holding his ear. His pretty eyes were sad, filling with tears.

“Ma—ma.”

Not caring about her dignity or station in front of her butler, she dropped to her knees and grabbed the boy. She massaged his head, the way that brought smiles once the pain went away. “It will be all right. I’ll make it better, Son. How long has he been hurting?”

Pickens bent and picked up the boy and took her arm, helping her to stand. “Only a few minutes. The governess came to me.”

The woman should’ve come to her directly. Philip’s well-being was the most important thing. She scooped up her son and took him fully into her arms. “Can you have some hot tea sent? And send for the doctor.”

The man’s lips thinned. “Mrs. Cecil, the doctor will be here tomorrow at the festival. He won’t do any better than what you do for Master Philip.”

Why did Pickens have to be right? Why couldn’t the answer be different for once? Couldn’t any of the doctors do something to save her son? She spun from the butler, taking Philip with her, sailing almost half into the room before she faced the man again. “You say that as if there is no hope. Is that what you want to hear?”

Her butler stood in the threshold. His face was unreadable.

She clutched her son more tightly to her bosom hoping that the feel of her, the smell of her lavender would let him know that she was close, that she’d never stop hoping, never stop loving him.

Philip let go of his ear and hugged her neck. “Make—go away.”

“Get the laudanum, Pickens. It will help him sleep until this passes. That’s what all the doctors have done.”

The butler nodded. “Master Cecil used to say hope was everlasting. That it lifted his head as he walked in the fields. He never feared, ma’am. Hope was on his side.”

She looked down at the boy her husband had claimed for his legacy and snuggled her face against his shiny black mop. She’d never give up on trying to make her son whole.

As she rubbed his temples, she watched him breathe. He was small for his age and looked so delicate, but love overwhelmed her. He was the best part of her.

The need to gain the best advocate for Philip renewed. She’d wait for the medicine to take hold as he slept in her bed, then she’d return to her desk and answer the baron.

She wouldn’t be afraid anymore. Her son needed her to be strong. She’d found a champion once, a kindly gentleman farmer, Mathew Cecil. Maybe she’d be that lucky again. Hope still existed for her and Philip. It had to.