Sherry Thomas - His At Night

Whatever it was Aunt Rachel was not telling her, Elissande did not want to know.

One of the first things Vere did when he came of age was to break entail on the marquessate’s country seat. He had caused a minor scandal when he’d put the manor up for sale. But the world was changing. A grand house in the country, with land more and more ineffectual as a generator of wealth, had become an albatross around the necks of too many.

It was not the life he wanted, his destiny and choices chained to a pile of stones, however glorious and historical. Nor was it the life he wanted for Freddie and Freddie’s heirs, since there was a good chance Vere would remain unwed and the title someday pass to Freddie.

But he did have a house in the country. Most of his long walks had been along the coast of the Bristol Channel. In the spring of ’ninety-four, however, he had hiked for two weeks around Lyme Bay. On the last day of his excursion, coming back from an inland jaunt to visit the ruins of the Berry Pomeroy Castle, he had stumbled upon the modest house and its immodestly gorgeous rose garden.

PIERCE HOUSE, the plaque on the low gate had said. He had gazed at it with a covetousness he did not know he could feel for a mere piece of property: the house, with its white walls and red trim; the garden, as fragrant and lovely as a long-lost memory. When he returned to London, he had instructed his solicitors to find out whether the house was for sale. It had been and he’d bought it.

On the day he brought his wife to Pierce House, she stood a long time before it, before the garden that still bloomed indefatigably, even though the peak months for roses had already come and gone.

“It’s a wonderful place,” she said. “So peaceful and…”

“And what?” he asked.

“Ordinary.” She glanced up at him. “And I mean it as the highest compliment.”

He understood her; of course he did. It was why the house and the garden had so enraptured him, why his heart always ached as he gazed upon it: the embodiment of all the sweet normalcy of which he had been robbed.

But he didn’t want to understand her. He didn’t want to find common ground.

He knew how to manage the life he had chosen. He had the perfect companion: one who would never hurt, anger, or disappoint him. He did not know how to cope with the pitfalls—or the possibilities—of a different life.

“Well, enjoy it,” he said. “It’s your home.”

For now.

* * *

Elissande found Devonshire beautiful, its climate warmer and sunnier than anything she’d ever known. And the sea, which had always fascinated her in her landlocked imprisonment, enchanted her utterly, even though she did not gaze upon it from the high, rocky cliffs of Capri, but only from the hills surrounding that stretch of coast known as the English Riviera.

But she would have found a barren rock in the middle of a desert beautiful, for it was freedom itself that truly intoxicated. Sometimes she had herself driven to the nearest village for no reason at all, simply because she could. Sometimes she rose early and walked until she reached the coast, and brought back a shell or a piece of driftwood for Aunt Rachel. Sometimes she took thirty books to her room, knowing that no one would take them away from her.

After the brief stutter of fear the day of Edmund Douglas’s arrest, Aunt Rachel flourished too. Her consumption of laudanum had decreased by a quarter. Her appetite, still birdlike, was nevertheless ferocious for her. And when Elissande surprised her with a drive to Dartmouth, she had taken in everything with childlike amazement, as if discovering a world she never knew existed.

In short, they were as happy as they had ever been in Elissande’s life.

If only she could be sure her husband shared their contentment.

He appeared much as he always had: cheerful, long-winded, and dense. She’d come to marvel at his ability to furnish lecture-length dissertations that were fantastically, almost deliciously misinformed, which he did every night at dinner, with just the two of them at the table. She tried it herself a few times and found that such speechifying required a surprisingly deep and wide knowledge of what was right and a remarkable nimbleness of mind to turn most everything on its head, with just enough content that was not wrong to drive a listener batty.

On her third attempt, she chose for her subject the art and science of jam making, on which she’d read extensively just that afternoon as it was the season for bottling the produce of the garden—and Pierce House had a walled garden with fruit trees espaliered all along the interior. She must have done rather well in mimicking his intricately unenlightening monologues, because at the end of her discourse, she caught him turning his face aside to hide a smile.

Her heart had lurched wildly.

But beyond that one instance, he never deviated from his role. And except for dinner, he was rarely to be found. Every time she would ask a servant for his whereabouts, the answer was invariably, “His lordship is out walking.”

It seemed to be the norm. According to Mrs. Dilwyn, it was not unusual for his lordship to walk fifteen, twenty miles a day in the country.

Twenty miles of solitude.

For some reason, all Elissande could think of was the loneliness in his eyes when they’d last made love.

* * *

She did not expect to run into him on her walk.

Her walks were much shorter than his. From the house, she went two miles northwest, to the ridge of the Dart Valley, where she usually needed a good long rest before trudging back.

She’d once thought nothing of a seven-mile trek. But her stamina had diminished during her years of near house arrest, and it would take months of regular exercise before she’d be strong enough to walk with him in the decidedly undulating countryside surrounding Pierce House.

That was what she wanted: to walk with him. They didn’t need to speak much, but she would enjoy the pleasure of his nearness. And perhaps given time, he too might find something to like in her company.

She reached the top of the valley, breathing hard from her climb. And then her heart was racing from more than just the exercise. Halfway down the green slope toward the River Dart, he stood with one hand in his pocket, the other holding his hat, his height and breadth unmistakable.

As if she were stalking a wild Arabian that might bolt any moment, she stepped quietly and carefully. Still he turned around and saw her much too soon, when she was a good sixty feet away. She stopped. He gazed at her a moment, looked away briefly toward the hills, glanced at her again, and then turned back to the river.

No acknowledgment. But then again, no pretenses either.

She went to him, her heart full of a strange tenderness.

“Long walk?” she asked, when she stood next to him.

“Hmm,” he said.

The sun went behind a cloud. The air stirred. A breeze ruffled his hair, the tips of which had become a great deal blonder from his long hours outdoors.

“You don’t become fatigued?”

“I’m used to it.”

“You always walk alone.”

His response was a half grimace. She suddenly realized how tired he looked—not a purely physical exhaustion, but a weariness for which a good night’s sleep would do nothing.

“Do you…do you ever wish for some company?”

“No,” he said.

“No, of course,” she mumbled, chastised.

They were silent for some time, he seemingly absorbed by the panorama of the gentle, verdant river valley, she wholly engrossed in the leather patches at the elbows of his brown country tweeds. She had a rather strong desire to touch those patches, to rest her hand where she could feel both the coarse warmth of the wool and the smooth coolness of the leather.

“I’ll be off now,” he said abruptly.

She gave in to her fascination for the leather patches and laid one hand on his sleeve. “Don’t be too long. It might rain.”

He stared at her, his look harsh, and then his gaze dropped to where she touched him.

She withdrew her hand hastily. “I just wanted to feel the patch.”

He placed his hat on his head, nodded at her, and left without another word.

* * *

It did not rain, but he did take too long: For the first time since their arrival in Devon, he did not appear at dinner.

Much later that night, she became aware that he’d returned to his room. She’d been listening, but she had heard nothing—for such a big man, when he wanted to, he moved with the silence of a ghost. She deduced his presence only by the light that had not been there before, under the connecting door between their rooms.

When she opened the door he was in his shirtsleeves, the tails of his shirt already pulled loose from his trousers.

He tossed aside his collar. “My lady.”

She remained on her side of the door. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“I stopped by a pub.”

“I missed you at dinner,” she said softly.

She had. It hadn’t been the same at all.

He glanced sharply at her but said nothing, instead picking up his already discarded tweed jacket and checking its pockets.

“Why do you do this?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“I smiled because my uncle demanded it. Why do you act in a way calculated for people not to take you seriously?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said flatly.

She hadn’t thought he would address her question, but still his outright refusal disappointed her. “When Needham came to see my aunt at your town house, I asked him what he knew of your accident. He said he’d been your aunt’s guest at the time of your fall and knew everything about it.”

“There you go. It’s not just my own word.”

But Needham had also been the one he specifically named when he hadn’t wanted news of his bullet wound to spread. Even to this day, none of the servants had any idea he had been injured. The bandaging had either been burned or smuggled out of the house.

“How’s your arm, by the way?”

The last time he allowed her to change his dressing had been the night before her uncle’s arrest.

“My arm is fine, thank you.”

He crossed the room, opened the window, and lit a cigarette.

“My uncle never smoked,” she murmured. “We had a smoking room but he never smoked.”

He took a long drag. “Maybe he should have.”

“You never say anything about your family.”

And she had not felt comfortable asking Mrs. Dilwyn. She didn’t want the housekeeper to wonder why she knew so little of her own husband, and yet she knew next to nothing besides the fact that he was no idiot.

“Freddie is my only family; you’ve met him already.”

The cool air from the window was pungent with the smell of cigarette fume. “What about your parents?”

He blew out a thin stream of smoke. “They both died a long time ago.”

“You said you came into your title at sixteen, so I suppose that was when your father passed away. What about your mother?”

“She died when I was eight.” He took another long pull on his cigarette. “Any other question I can answer for you? It’s late. I need to go to London early in the morning.”

Her hand closed around the doorjamb. She did have another question, she supposed.

“Can you take me to bed?”

He went very still. “No, sorry. I’m too tired.”

“Last time you had a river of rum in you and a bullet wound.”

“Men do stupid things when they’ve had that much to drink.”

He threw the remainder of his cigarette outside, walked to the connecting door, and closed it, gently but firmly, in her face.

* * *

Angelica had to read Freddie’s note three times.

He was inviting her to see the finished portrait. The finished portrait. Freddie was a slow and meticulous painter. She’d expected that he needed at least another four to six weeks.

When she arrived at his house, he clasped her hands briefly and greeted her with his usual warm smile. But she could tell he was nervous. Or were those her own nerves making themselves felt?

“How are you, Angelica?” he asked as they climbed up toward the studio.

They hadn’t seen each other since he took the nude photographs to help with his painting: He hadn’t called and she had been determined not to contact him until she’d heard something.