Fifteen

“Tuck him in,” David suggested, nodding at Danny where he drowsed on Banks’s shoulder. “Then join me in the library, if you don’t mind?”

Banks’s hand absently rubbed the boy’s back as he carried him up the stairs, the child clearly a familiar and treasured burden. Danny roused enough to lift a hand and offer a sleepy grin to David in parting. David winked at the child and left father and son—uncle and nephew—to their bedtime ritual while he enjoyed a few minutes of solitude in the library.

He built up the fire then took a perch on the sofa, his thoughts running riot in the quiet and shadows.

Douglas had been right: Letty had been protecting a son, a brother, and David himself, and the threat Daniel’s wife wielded was still real. While David could easily provide for Letty and the child, the scandal of the situation for a man of the cloth was something to be reckoned with.

His musings were interrupted by Banks’s arrival to the library.

“Danny is asleep?”

“Out like a candle,” Banks said. “He’s such a good child, and this—”

“This will mean complications for him. Might I offer you a drink while we consider the situation?”

“You may, though these are hardly your problems to consider.”

The vicar did not lack for tenacity or courage, and he was protective of his sister. David filled two glasses with brandy. “This will take any lingering chill off,” he said, handing Banks a drink. “And in my household, we don’t particularly stand on ceremony, so you’ll pardon me if I take my boots off and put my feet up.”

Banks shrugged and did likewise, sitting some distance away from David on the couch.

“My lawfully wedded wife,” Banks mused, “would scold me vociferously for putting my feet up on the furniture, setting a bad example for Danny, allowing disrespectful informality to sneak into a godly household. To realize I have married a worse incarnation of my own father is a… lowering development.”

“What would you like to do about her?” David had a few suggestions, which when implemented, would break at least one signal commandment.

“What I would like to do would require penance until my dying day—and it might even hasten that.”

Agreement in principle, then.

“You might be able to send her to jail. In whose name was the bank account kept?”

“Mine. The banker was a member of the congregation, Olivia had handled the church money for years, and to all appearances, I’m sure my signature will be found on any relevant documents.”

Well, damn. “What are your other options?”

“Why do you care?” The question was curious rather than rude, or perhaps exhausted rather than rude.

“You are the victim of several serious deceptions,” David said, “and out of a simple instinct for justice, this rankles. You are also Letty’s brother, she loves you, and you made a good faith attempt to help her when her own father would not have been so kind. But for you, Letty could have died of the pox in the gutters of London before her son was two years old—and he along with her.”

“Do you really own a brothel?” Banks asked, apropos of nothing, except perhaps a rural vicar’s curiosity.

“I inherited one, and Letty was the manager there for a few months. She had no duties above stairs, if you take my meaning. If you have further questions on this topic, they’re for you and her to discuss.”

Banks took his first sip of the liquor, closed his eyes, and leaned his head against the back of the couch. “We haven’t spirits such as this in Little Weldon.”

The observation bore some significance David could not grasp. “My brother-in-law owns a distillery or two in Scotland, and some vineyards in Germany and Portugal—or possibly France. Demon drink is quite profitable.”

“How many titles does your family hold?” Banks asked without opening his eyes, though David had purposely not mentioned Heathgate’s title.

“I am but a viscount,” David said. “One sister married a marquess; the other married his brother, the Earl of Greymoor. Their cousin married a brother of my younger sister’s first husband, Viscount Amery. That makes four, including mine.”

And Rose’s grandfather was the much-respected Duke of Moreland, though no blood relation to David himself.

“Only four.” Banks took another small sip of his drink, eyes still closed. “We can go three years in Little Weldon without seeing anything more impressive than the local squires in their hunting pinks. How did you and Letty meet?”

David had not anticipated these questions, though a vicar would be adept at coaxing confessions from those who clutched their sins tightly. The fire sent shadows flickering against the cupids above, while David debated whose story this was to tell.

Perhaps the tale was easier to hear from someone besides Letty.

“Letty was mistress to the present Viscount Amery’s older brother, Herbert, who was married to my younger sister. I called upon Letty to ask her about Herbert’s finances upon his death.”

“Why would she know anything about that?”

Abruptly, David felt not merely tired and bemused, but aged as a function of experiencing too much wickedness.

“Mistresses hear all sorts of things that wives do not. Herbert’s estate was left in significant disarray as a result of his bad management. He was, however, generous with Letty, even giving her some of the estate jewelry. She returned it to the man’s surviving brother when she realized what had transpired.”

“She would. Did you know this man, this late Viscount Amery?”

Not well enough, considering the bastard had made David’s younger sister miserable. “He was my brother-in-law for the last two years of his life.”

“He was not kind to your sister, not in the ways that count,” Banks concluded with what was probably clerical instinct. “A woman should not have to tell her brother some things, but my wife, and indirectly I myself, forced Letty into these circumstances. I would rather know how much I have to atone for.”

The entire discussion had taken place in a room illuminated by little more than the fire in the hearth, and yet there was light enough for David to see that Banks had tears on his damned handsome cheeks.

“I have sisters,” David said as he handed Banks his handkerchief.

“And yet you own a brothel. Do you tell yourself those women secretly enjoy what they do?”

“I am ending my association with the brothel and ensuring any of the women employed there have the means to do the same if they so choose.” If the notion had been tentative, it was plain fact now. He and Bridget were in negotiations. “And for your information, Vicar, a few of them do enjoy what they do, though not as many as the patrons would like to think.”

Or did they learn to appear to enjoy what they did, because the alternative was hurling a knife across the kitchen at their employer?

Rather than endure more of Banks’s questioning, David went on the offensive. “You’ve yet to decide what you will do about your wife.”

“God help me.” Banks lifted his glass in a mock salute. “Didn’t see that one coming, Lord Fairly. Well done.”

“Letty will want to know, and I don’t think she’ll allow Olivia anywhere near Danny, even if you might consider it.” David had the influence and determination to ensure Letty’s wishes were respected, too.

“I would not consider it. In fact, Olivia shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near me.”

Letty’s brother was not so very hard to like after all. “Olivia has much to answer for.”

“My father was not in favor of the match. He refused to attend the ceremony, and was quite vocal on the matter. I’ve never known quite why, but I suppose he’s vindicated on this count too.”

“What do you mean, on this count too?”

“He didn’t want me going into the church. Thought I was too stubborn to accept the hierarchy, and now, I can see that was probably something he struggled with.”

A log burned through on the hearth, sending a shower of sparks upward, leaving less illumination than before. “Odd, isn’t it, how we come to understand our fathers only after they’re no longer about to hear our apologies?”

“They know. Somehow, I think they do know. Our mamas too.”

“As we will one day.”

“You, perhaps.” Banks swirled his drink, holding the glass under his perfectly proportioned nose. “I doubt I will ever have children of my own.”

“Because you are not in charity with your wife, or because she is barren?”

“Neither,” Banks replied, heaving to his feet and fetching the decanter. “I am the one who… I don’t even know what the word is for a man who is barren.”

“Sterile.” A terrifying word to most men. “What makes you think it’s you?”

“Measles. A serious case, shortly before I married. The physician told me my wife might have difficulty conceiving. It doesn’t make any difference now,” Banks said, lowering himself back to the couch. “I wouldn’t touch the woman again if she begged me.”

And abruptly, the conversation had reached truly difficult ground. “So you will live apart from her, raising Danny on your own?”

“I don’t know,” Banks said softly. “I love that child, and because I love him, this continued deception of him sits ill with me.”

As it did with David, for as a child, David had understood much that no adult had ever explained to him—all of it painful.

“You think Danny knows you are not his papa? He seems to love you, and to regard Letty as his aunt.” And how hard was it for Letty, to be only an aunt?

“When I explained to him that Olivia had to go away for a long visit, he offered one word in reaction: ‘Good.’”

Brilliant child. “So he doesn’t like his supposed mother, but Olivia doesn’t sound very likable in general.”

“Now she isn’t, but ten years ago, she was a different woman.”

“Was she?” David mused. “Or were you more easily deceived? I married young, and my bride turned out to be a very different person as a wife than she was as a fiancée. Her death spared us both a lifetime of making each other miserable.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, and sorry your experience of marriage was so trying.”

The saintly bastard offered the most genuine condolences David had received, and maybe the most timely, too. “I assume you will send Olivia packing to her family?” Though even the north country was not as far as the woman deserved to be banished.

“I don’t know. Olivia deserves punishment for this—her actions affected Letty, who was still very much an innocent at the time. They affected me and Danny, both of whom she ought to have loved. They affected my standing with my congregation, or so I was informed even before all of this business came to light. My very profession is jeopardized, too.”

For all his fatigue, and for all the developments of the day, Banks was still thinking with brutal clarity.

“In what regard? You meant well.”

“Those words—I meant well—they pave the road to hell, at least in the eyes of the church. My bishop is a good sort, and he will not personally condemn me for trying to raise my sister’s child as my own. He will, however, have no patience with this whole Ladies’ Charitable Guild fund, or the fact that I refuse to live with my wife hereafter.”

“Don’t be too hasty. If the account was only in your name, and the only deposits came from Letty, the church has no involvement in it.”

“You’re shrewd.” A compliment, not an accusation. “Do you engage in trade?”

“I wallow in it.” Or tried to lose himself in it. Lately, Jennings’s reports had been sadly neglected. “I’m also wallowing in filthy lucre as a result. You should be aware that because Letty saved my life, I was able to impose a substantial financial settlement on her before we parted.”

Not substantial enough, though. Not nearly substantial enough for a mother and her child.

“I am confused.” Banks uncrossed his feet and crossed them the other way. “I was under the impression that she… that you and she… Oh, bother, just what went on between you two?”

The answer to that would take all night. “You came to London in the midst of a deluge to call me out, Banks. Do I see equivocation here?”

“Fleeting humility. Enjoy it while it lasts, and answer the question. I could still call you out. Will you marry my sister?”

And the good vicar was not bluffing or teasing, despite the fact that the difference in their stations should have meant dueling was not an option. “I am still not confident Letty will have me, though you give me reason to hope.”

Banks undid his sleeve buttons and turned the cuffs back. “Hope. Explain yourself.”

If Banks had used that tone of voice to ask for a recitation of the Ten Commandments, David would have dredged them up from memory, and in the correct order.

“Letty can leave the boy to you,” David said, “in which case he is the son of a defrocked vicar, or she can raise him on her own, the problems there being self-evident. In the alternative, she can raise him with me, giving the child the benefits of wealth, title, and a large and influential family. For Danny’s sake alone, Letty will at least consider my suit.”

Now, she would consider it—provided the vicar agreed with David’s reasoning.

While David debated pressing his guest on the issue, Banks took another parsimonious sip of his drink. “Your reasoning is… ruthless. I like it, because Danny is what matters here. I will give my sister the benefit of my thoughts on the matter.”

Hope germinated, a small, glowing warmth in David’s heart. While he hurt for the vicar, he rejoiced for Letty and for her son, though the boy faced a significant adjustment.

David rose, a lightness suffusing his fatigue. “The hour isn’t so late, but I have an important appointment in the morning, and you rode in this weather from Upper West Bogtrot to hell and back. Will you return there, by the way?”

“I will,” Banks said, yawning. “If only to make my good-byes and tidy up for my successor. There’s no question I will be leaving the church.”

This would be a significant loss to the church, and to the sinners of Upper West Bogtrot and other parts. “You can’t be a curate somewhere?”

“I am not suited to leading a flock, and I’m not being humble. Some responsibilities I manage very well, others I loathe. And if one’s marriage is in shambles, perhaps that situation should take precedence. I was content in the church, Fairly, but I went into it in part because my father said not to, and in part because I didn’t know what else to do with myself.”

“So what will you do now?” This would matter to Letty, but it also mattered to David. “Particularly when you’ve a small boy to consider into the bargain.”

“I will sleep on it.” Banks rose and took his glass to the sideboard. “I am resolved that I will leave my post and separate from my wife, which is a vast difference from the resolutions I had when I knocked on your door. Let’s see what the good Lord provides for me tomorrow.”

Such… self-possession was worthy of a duke. “Shall I send my valet to you?”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with him.” He tucked his boots under his arm, likely his only pair. “If you could untie this?” He lifted his chin, indicating the knot David had put in his neckcloth.

“I know why Letty loves you,” Banks said quietly, as if to himself while David worked at the knot. “You are genuinely decent. You are startlingly, quite unexpectedly, astonishingly honorable.”

“And you”—David smacked Banks gently across the cheeks with the ends of the neckcloth—“are halfway to being foxed. Force yourself to drink water before retiring tonight, and to sip water throughout the night. Your head will thank you in the morning. I want you to consider a question.”

“I’m not that foxed. What’s your question?”

“If you could divorce Olivia or have your marriage annulled, would you?”

Banks did not deliberate as a proper saintly bastard ought to when faced with such a question.

“Yes, I would divorce her, though Olivia is the last woman who’d commit adultery and divorce is something I’d not know how to pursue.”

And yet, Banks had lit out hotfoot in the direction of divorce, mentally. If Banks were under one-and-twenty at the time of the marriage, and his father had not approved the match, then annulment was indeed a possibility.

“Pursue a good night’s sleep for now,” David suggested, lighting a branch of candles. “I’ll see you to your room.”

Banks followed, saying nothing until they reached the door of the guest room.

“I wanted to hate you, you know. Not very vicarly of me.” More saintliness, suggesting it was a bad habit that would take some time to break.

“Letty is not your congregation. She’s your sister, and your feelings were brotherly.” About which, David knew a great deal.

Banks leaned his forehead against the doorjamb. “My feelings were murderous, which is part of why I brought Danny. I would not initiate violence while I was responsible for him.”

“The strategy was effective. What’s the rest of the reason?” Because there was more. David already knew Letty’s brother well enough to know there was more.

“I could not leave him in Little Weldon without knowing when Olivia would return. If she got her hands on him, I have no doubt she’d use him against Letty, and against me.”

“You’ll meet with my solicitors about an annulment,” David said. “You’ve said your bishop is the sympathetic kind, and he’d hear the case. Either that, or you’ll have to leave the country, and Letty and Danny will both need you.”

“We could all three go away,” Banks said, head lifting like a hound catching a fresh scent. “In fact, I think that’s an excellent suggestion.”

“It’s an awful suggestion.” David opened the door to the guest room. “Get the hell into bed, Vicar, and do not think of taking Letty and Danny out of the country. Don’t forget to drink plenty of water.”

“Right.” The vicar bowed a little carefully. “Plenty of water, do not leave the country, but do leave the church and annul my marriage. From your lips to God’s ears.”

When David closed the bedroom door, his last glimpse was of Daniel Banks staring down into the face of the child he loved like a son, his expression stark with devotion and loss.

***

“I had a long and interesting discussion last night with your viscount.”

He’s not my viscount, Letty wanted to retort, but Daniel hadn’t been trying to bait her.

“He’s an interesting man. What did you discuss?”

“We discussed how you’ve managed to avoid dying in the gutter these past several years,” Daniel said.

“You are angry with me.” Because the day was—finally—showing the promise of sunshine, they were in the front parlor. The teapot sat between them, but Letty had yet to pour.

“Angry,” Daniel repeated, as if tasting an exotic dish.

“Disappointed, then. Profoundly disappointed, again.”

“Again?”

She could not read him, as if he’d shifted internally from being her brother to being a vicar on his way to a bishop’s see, a man mortally good at hearing confessions and handing out exquisite penances. “I disappointed everyone from God on down when I was sixteen.” This was why her name upon arriving to London, had shifted from Elizabeth to Letitia, because the creature she’d become did not deserve her mother’s name.

“You became such a disappointment by not agreeing to marry Uriah Smith?”

That too, of course. “By allowing him the liberties that resulted in the need for marriage.”

Daniel rose to pace the room, while the tea grew cold in the pot. “You were not to blame. You were fifteen when that man got his hands on you, sixteen when you tried to bring a halt to it, only to find he’d raised the stakes. He was nearly twice your age, Letty. Did you think I wanted to see you wed to him?”

They were going to rehash this now? “You never said one way or another, and Father certainly made his wishes clear. If you disagreed with him, you kept it to yourself.”

Daniel had come home from a comfortable post as curate in the Midlands as tight-lipped and unsmiling as she’d ever seen him.

“Honor thy father and mother,” Daniel bit out. “I’m sorry, Letty. Very, very sorry. I did not want you to marry that beast, and I will be forever glad you did not.”

“Thank you for telling me.” The words should have comforted; their timing left her with a hard ache in her throat. “Tea, Daniel?”

He leaned back against the mantel to study her, which struck Letty as a not very vicarly posture. “He loves you, you know. Really loves you.”

Letty busied herself pouring, though she might have put six lumps of sugar into the same cup. “Lord Fairly?”

“Who else?” Daniel ambled across the room to drop into a rocking chair. “I understand your former… associate is deceased.”

The cup and saucer nearly slipped from Letty’s grasp, so unexpected was Daniel’s angle of inquiry, for his inquisition of her had only started.

“If we’re going to fight, Brother, then have at it. His lordship was good enough to give us some privacy to do so, and I have the sense you’d like to tear my head off.”

He picked up the teacup but didn’t take a sip. “A part of me would like to rip up at you, but it’s nothing, Letty, nothing at all, compared to the anger I feel toward Olivia, and toward myself.”

“Yourself?” The teacup in Daniel’s hand trembled minutely—with temper? With some other emotion? Perhaps Daniel shared Letty’s compulsion to pitch the entire service against the wall. “Olivia and I lied to you, and you are angry at yourself?”

“I understand why you did what you did, Letty. You saw no alternatives, and as young and inexperienced as you were, as pretty as you are, Olivia didn’t want you to see alternatives. Things could have gone much, much worse for you here in London than they did. I can only conclude that the good angels kept you under constant watch. You’ve suffered at the hands of at least one man who makes me ashamed of my gender, but your suffering seems to be at an end.”

There was suffering, and then there was suffering. If Letty could help it, she still didn’t go into the bedroom where she’d lain with Herbert Amery. But then there was the pain of having parted from David, and that suffering might not ever end.

“So explain to me,” she said, pouring herself a cup of tea she did not want, “why you direct your anger at yourself.”

“Because I have been blind,” Daniel said. “Absolutely stone, stubborn blind. A few days ago, one of the members of my congregation tried to tell me Olivia was a backstabbing, ungrateful, godless bitch, but I didn’t want to believe it. All around me, I had evidence that Olivia was at the very least a hypocrite. Oh, I knew she was unhappy with me, and I made allowances, but this… Whatever Olivia told me, I believed. The evidence of my own heart, the evidence before my eyes, I did not.”

And then, there was suffering. That Letty should hear her brother’s confession seemed only fair. “Evidence such as?”

“Your dresses.” Daniel waved a hand at her. “When you came to visit, you were always so tidily turned out, and in finery even a frugal housekeeper would not be found in. The presents you brought for Danny were beyond what a housekeeper should have been able to afford. Your attachment to Danny never faded to that of an aunt who was merely visiting. You look at him now the same way you looked at him when he was one week old, like he’s the answer to all of your prayers. You aren’t merely fond of him, Letty, you love that boy as fiercely as any mother loves her son.”

“I do.” Even those words—a little refrain from the wedding ceremony—were hard to get out around the lump in her throat.

“And that, my dear,” he said gently, “is why you’re going to take pity on Fairly and accept his suit.”

He was still her older brother after all, and battle had finally been joined.

“Daniel, you don’t understand. David is a good man, and he has a title, and he was above my touch before I met Uriah Smith. He will love his children to distraction, and when they are not accepted socially, it will be my fault, and there will be nothing I can do to make it right.”

Daniel rose and closed the parlor doors. When he turned back to face Letty, his expression was incongruously relaxed and untroubled.

“Letty, it is for Fairly to say whom he loves to distraction, and for me to protect Danny from the disgrace association with me will visit upon him. It is for you, my dearest sister, to recall the simplest tenet of faith: with love, anything is possible.”

He was a man facing ruin and the loss of all he held dear, and yet he was smiling. Letty pitched into her brother’s arms and started to cry.