Читать книгу The Regency Bestsellers Collection - Bronwyn Scott - Страница 36

In the office the next morning, Chase clutched his side and groaned.

Barrow gave him a sidelong glance. “Is it the bank accounts?”

“No, it’s the sham. Or maybe the tuna-ish.”

“I won’t ask.”

“Good. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Barrow stretched his arms overhead and yawned. “You know, I’ve noticed that doll of Daisy’s hasn’t taken ill in weeks.”

“I suppose my own bedridden state was entertainment enough.”

“Hm.” Barrow cast a pensive look out the window. “Speaking of beds . . . As far as I can tell, you haven’t shared one with a woman in weeks, either.”

“Oh, yes. I did finally manage a period of celibacy, didn’t I? And all I had to do was nearly die.” Chase narrowed his eyes at him. “What are you on about, then? Don’t tell me you’re going to badger me to keep the girls.”

“I mean to suggest you should marry Miss Mountbatten. And then keep the girls.”

What?

“That’s impossible.”

“Don’t you love her? I think you love her.”

Chase avoided answering that question, and he did so easily. He’d had a great deal of practice avoiding merely thinking about that question.

“It doesn’t matter how I feel about her,” he said. “I’m not marrying, ever. You know my reasons.”

“Yes, but your reasons aren’t good.”

“I’m responsible for my cousin’s death. I refuse to replace Anthony’s legacy with my own sorry bloodline. The title should have been his.” He hesitated, then decided to have out with it. “And if it couldn’t be his, it might as well have been yours. You’re the elder between us. We both have Reynaud blood.”

Barrow sat back in his chair, crossing his legs. “So. We’re going to talk about that now, are we?”

“We may as well.” Chase gestured at all the paperwork around them, and the immense wealth and lands it represented. “You’d make a much better duke than I will. Are you certain I can’t give this to you? At least half of it?”

“I’m afraid not. It’s all entailed.”

“Well, at least start embezzling or something.”

Barrow chuckled. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

“I’m serious.”

“Chase, you’re going to make a better nobleman than half the peers in England. At least you look after your dependents. You know, it hasn’t escaped my attention that since we took over all this, you’ve asked me to establish no fewer than six trusts and legacies for ‘devoted servants.’ I’ve seen your servants. They’re not devoted.”

Chase sighed. Difficult to argue that point.

“So I’m guessing I’m not the only bastard your father sired.” After a moment, Barrow asked quietly, “What about the girls?”

“I don’t know.” Chase covered his eyes. “It’s possible they’re his, but I can’t be certain. Doesn’t make a difference, though. I intend to provide for them. School, dowries, trusts.”

“So you can care for all your father’s bastards, but not a family of your own?”

“Bloody hell, Barrow. I don’t ‘care’ for all his bastards. It’s just money.”

Barrow’s face went hard. “Oh, really.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Chase cursed his thoughtlessness. “But this is a perfect illustration of the point. I am shite at caring. Friendship, maybe I can manage. But guardianship? Family? Absolutely not. After Anthony was killed, I took his body home to Belvoir. I’d sent an express in advance with the news, but somehow it hadn’t yet arrived. My uncle only learned of it upon seeing the body. Do you know what it looks like when a person’s heart breaks right in front of you?”

Barrow shook his head.

“Well, I do. And I never want to see it again.”

They were silent for a minute.

“Chase, when you love someone there’s always a chance you’ll hurt them. But if you let them go, hurting them isn’t a possibility—it’s a certainty. I watched that woman spend day and night by your bedside while you lingered near death.” He arched an eyebrow. “You pissed yourself, you know. Twice.”

“Yes, I heard that,” he said irritably. “Thank you for bringing it up. Again.”

“Alexandra’s in love with you. If you can’t find it within yourself to love her back, then you’d better make that very clear. Sooner rather than later.”

Chase nodded. As always, his annoyingly smug brother had the right of it. “I’ve promised them an outing to the British Museum tomorrow. I’ll speak with Alexandra at the first opportunity.”

After a mere two minutes in the Egyptian Room, Alexandra knew this outing was the most brilliant idea she’d had all summer.

“Look at them.” She nudged Chase’s arm. “Have you ever seen those girls so happy?”

“Of course they’re happy,” he replied, sounding markedly less enthusiastic about it. “Daisy is surrounded by death, mummies stacked three to a case, and even Rosamund couldn’t dream of this much plundered gold.”

“Just think of the educational benefits.”

Daisy pushed up her spectacles and bent over a label on the glass case of an intricately carved stone coffin. She sounded out the word, syllable by syllable. “Sar-co-pha-gus.”

“Come look at this.” Rosamund waved her sister over. “Before they wrapped the mummy, they took the organs out and stored them in golden jars.” She pointed. “This one’s for the brain. It says here they pulled it out through the mummy’s nose.”

“Ooooh.”

Alex turned to Chase. “You can’t deny that they’re learning.”

He only shook his head in response.

Secretly, Alex agreed with him somewhat. She, too, hoped the girls would develop other interests with time—or if not other interests, at least less morbid and criminal applications of them.

“May we go on to the South Seas curiosities?” Rosamund asked. “I want to see the maps and things from Captain James Cook.”

“You may go ahead of us,” Alex told her, “if you mind Daisy. We’ll join you in a moment. And no running.”

Once the girls had left the Egyptian Room, Alex maneuvered toward a quieter corner between galleries. “We should talk.”

“I’ve been thinking the same.”

“The summer’s drawing to an end.”

He nodded. “And so is our arrangement.”

“Yes.” She lowered her voice. “Promise me one thing, if you will. Wherever you send them to school, don’t make them stay there over school holidays. If you won’t have them at your house, send them to me. I stayed at school every holiday for years, and it was misery.”

“Surely you didn’t stay every holiday.”

“Where would I have gone? I’d no family. There was one year another schoolgirl invited me to summer with her family at their country home. But in the end, it didn’t come to pass.”

She didn’t tell him the rest of the story. That the schoolgirl—Violet Liddell—had spent weeks describing all the wonderful things they would do together that summer. Picnics and buying ribbons in the village and staying up all night, giggling. Alexandra had dreamed of it every night for months, imagining all the adventures she and Violet would have together. What she looked forward to most wasn’t adventurous at all. Family dinners.

When the term ended and Violet’s parents came to collect her, Alex was waiting outside with her trunk, dressed in her best frock and beside herself with excitement for the journey. She waited to be introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Liddell, but that introduction never came. Instead, Violet turned to her with a cruel smile and said, “I hope you have a fine summer, Alexandra.”

And she climbed into her family’s carriage and left.

Alex would never forget the shame of lugging her trunk back up to the attic dormitory one step at a time, while the other schoolgirls stood by laughing. They’d known what was coming. They’d all known.

“Just promise me,” she said. “Easter, Christmas, summers. Don’t leave them there. They need to feel that they have a home.”

“Blast,” Chase muttered, turning toward the wall.

“What is it?”

“I spied someone I know—and don’t particularly like.”

“Where?” Alex turned her head.

“Don’t look,” he hissed. “I’m hoping he didn’t notice me.”

She returned her gaze to what lay in front of her. “I’m hoping no one notices we’re staring at a blank wall.”

“Very well, have a look. But be casual about it. At the far end of the gallery. The shorter fellow compensating by means of an absurdly tall hat.”

Alex turned in place, trying her best to look aimless about it. Although she wasn’t certain it looked better to be aimlessly turning in circles than to be staring at a blank wall.

As she completed her circle, she caught sight of the man Chase had described. Her stomach churned.

“Tell me he’s not looking this way,” Chase mumbled.

“He’s looking this way.” Which meant Alex wanted to pick up her skirts and sprint in the opposite direction.

“Reynaud?” The voice carried from the other end of the gallery. “Chase Reynaud, is that you?”

Chase cursed under his breath. “No escaping it now.” He turned and raised his hand in a halfhearted greeting. “That’s Sir W—”

“Sir Winston Harvey.”

“You know him?”

“I set the clocks in his house for three years.”

“Then you know he’s insufferable.”

Her skin crawled. “Oh, yes.”

In the distance, Sir Winston began taking leave of his current conversational partner—the quicker, presumably, to make his way down the length of the gallery to them.

“I’ll go to the girls,” Alex said. “They’ve moved on to the Grecian marbles.”

“No, stay.” He tugged her to his side, drawing her hand through his arm. “If you’re here, he won’t regale me with tales of his sordid brothel adventures. He seems to think I’ll be impressed.”

“I’d rather go with the girls.”

“What did he do?” He must have caught the tense note in her voice. “Tell me.”

“It was mostly just leering,” she whispered. “A pinch or two. You know, the usual.”

“The usual?”

“The usual for him. Chase, it was years ago. He won’t even recognize me. Just let me go.”

But it was too late. The man was upon them now.

No escape.