Someone to Trust Read online

  He very much feared it would.

  He could do something even more decisive, something he had already been considering. He could take a wife and set up his nursery and establish a family of his own. He could work at shaping it into the entity he dreamed of, something more like the Westcott family than his own had been. All the rest would be far easier to accomplish if he were a married man.

  Or so he imagined. Perhaps the opposite would be true.

  But did he really want to live at Roxingley? He was happy here. Did he want to be a married man? He liked being single.

  Why were duty and inclination so often at odds?

  He sent a note to Brambledean, inviting Wren and Alexander to come for tea two days after New Year. He included Mrs. Westcott and Elizabeth in the invitation, on the assumption that they were still there. He had ambivalent feelings about Elizabeth’s coming, though. On the one hand he liked and admired her and even sometimes feared that he was a bit in love with her when it really was not that at all. He just loved her, as though she were his sister. Though whenever his mind reasoned that way he knew that was not it either. He yearned for her friendship, her approval, her smiles, her jokes, her exuberance, her serenity. For her. He felt totally at ease in her company. He could talk with her upon any subject that came into his head—or hers. He had missed her since coming home.

  On the other hand he had blundered horribly with her—twice. As if the kiss after sledding were not enough, he had offended her, made her uncomfortable, even perhaps hurt her with his teasing at the Boxing Day party when he had suggested that she marry him. Though, to be perfectly honest with himself, he had been feeling a bit wistful too after that joyful waltz and almost wished it were possible to be serious. But she was a lady he respected more than any other, and he had embarrassed her, curse him. But she liked joking and laughing. Dash it all, life could be very complicated at times.

  He half hoped that she had already returned home to Kent. The other half of him hoped she had not.

  Yes, very complicated indeed.

  * * *

  • • •

  Elizabeth went to Withington since she and her mother had stayed on at Brambledean after the New Year. She looked forward to seeing Colin again despite some leftover embarrassment at how she had allowed her genuine liking for him to stray into forbidden territory. Fortunately no one seemed to have noticed any sign of indiscretion. She was, of course, an expert at pushing feelings deep and smiling upon the world.

  He was at the open door of the house to greet them on the appointed afternoon, despite the blustery chill of a January day. He hugged and kissed Wren. He hugged Elizabeth and her mother and shook Alex’s hand.

  “I would say welcome to my home if it were not in fact Roe’s—Wren’s,” he said, laughing as he helped Elizabeth’s mother off with her heavy cloak. “But welcome anyway. My cook has been excelling herself if the smells wafting upstairs all day are any indication. I intend to send you home too stuffed to eat any dinner tonight. Come into the drawing room and warm yourselves. I have just had more coal put on the fire.”

  The room looked cozy and a bit masculine. There was a pile of cushions on a chair in the corner. They had once been arranged decoratively over the rest of the furniture in the room. The small table beside the chair next to the hearth was covered with a stack of books, which looked as though it might topple over at any moment, an untidy pile of papers, and even an ink bottle and a quill pen balanced precariously close to the edge on one side. The rest of the room was tidy.

  Elizabeth examined Colin and her feelings on this first meeting since Christmas. He looked relaxed and cheerful. He had hugged her without any apparent self-consciousness. He had not avoided her eyes. He had forgotten both the kiss and the awkwardness at the party, then. That was a relief.

  “Do sit down,” he directed them all. “Mrs. Westcott, come and sit by the fire. Here, let me move this stuff. I intended to do it before you arrived and forgot.” And he swooped books and papers, pen and ink off the side table and deposited them, after a look around, on the floor in the corner beside the cushion-piled chair. “Now where did I put the doily that belongs on that table?”

  Tea was brought in soon after. It was a veritable feast of sandwiches and jellies and cakes, though they did not go to the dining room to partake of it.

  “I hope you do not mind,” he said by way of explanation. “It is far cozier in here, especially on such a gloomy day.”

  “I am quite happy to have tea by the fire here, Lord Hodges,” Elizabeth’s mother said. “I am sure we all are.”

  Wren poured the tea while Colin served the food and insisted that they sample some of everything. “My cook will be offended if we send back anything more than a few crumbs,” he said. “She is a tyrant. Is she not, Roe?”

  “And an excellent cook,” she said, “whether of savories or sweets “

  “Why is it that a cold winter day seems less cold when the sun shines?” Elizabeth’s mother complained later. “Alas, that rarely seems to happen in January or February. Certainly not today.”

  “But there are the spring flowers and the budding trees to look forward to in March,” Wren said. “Sometimes even sooner for the snowdrops and primroses.”

  “You showed me the daffodils the second time I came when you were living here, Wren,” Alexander said. “You called them yellow trumpets of hope.”

  “You will never let me live down that particular flight of fancy, will you?” she said, wincing.

  “I have not yet seen the daffodils,” Colin said, “but I look forward to it. That corner of the park is lovely, though, even without them. There are the woods and the stream and bridge and then the long slope down to the fence at the outer border of the park.”

  “Aunt Megan preferred her rose garden,” Wren said. “But I always loved the daffodils more than anything else.”

  “Would you like to take a walk there?” Colin asked, setting down his empty cup and saucer on top of his plate and getting to his feet.

  Alexander groaned. “Another day, perhaps?” he suggested. “When the daffodils are in bloom and there is some warmth in the sun?”

  “The wind makes today a particularly raw day,” Wren said. “And you have just had the fire built up again, Colin. Why waste it?”

  “Cowards,” he said, grinning.

  “Guilty,” Alexander said.

  “I must confess that I am enjoying this cozy corner you have given me,” his mother said. “The journey home in the carriage will be chilly enough.”

  “Elizabeth?” Colin turned to her with laughing eyes. “Are you a coward too?”

  The question could have more than one meaning. She had no wish whatsoever to go tramping about the park in this weather merely to look at a daffodil patch without daffodils. And she had no real wish to be alone with Colin. Not yet. Not this close to the Christmas blunders. She had merely to repeat what everyone else had said. He doubtless would not even be offended or disappointed. He surely could not really want to go out walking. But . . . she had missed him and their private conversations.

  “I am not,” she said. “Lead the way.”

  “You will catch your death, Lizzie,” her mother protested.

  “No, she will not,” Alexander said. “She has always liked to tramp about in the outdoors in all weathers, Mama, and she has always remained stubbornly healthy.”

  “I raised a monster,” she said. “A healthy monster.”

  “I hope I am not going to be held responsible for your death by icicles,” Colin said a few minutes later while Elizabeth was fastening her cloak in the hall and tying the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin and winding the heavy wool muffler he had lent her about her neck—the bright red one she had given him for Christmas. “How would I live down the shame?”

  “Perhaps you will share my fate,” she said, “and neither of us will ha
ve to feel shame or anything else.”

  “A distinct possibility,” he agreed, opening the front door while she drew on her kid gloves and then slid her hands into her warm muff.

  The presence of her muff prevented her from taking his arm. They walked side by side across the lawn to the west, past the house and the trellises beside it that were part of the rose garden in the summer, past the stables and carriage house and onward in the direction of the trees. It was not a large park, though it definitely earned its title. It was bigger than a garden.

  “This is a pretty property,” she said. “I am glad Wren did not sell it when she married Alex.”

  “I believe it holds many happy memories for her,” he said. “She lived here with our aunt and uncle, who gave her all the love and security and sense of family she lacked during her first ten years. I wish I had known them. I did see Aunt Megan when she came to take Wren away, but I cannot remember either her face or her voice. And I never met my uncle. She married him after she left with Wren.”

  “I think part of the appeal of Withington,” she said, “is that it has a happy feel to it.”

  She did not know a great deal of Wren’s story. Neither Wren nor Alex had been forthcoming about it. But she knew enough to make her unutterably sad for a child who had lived through her early childhood without the close family ties Elizabeth herself had taken for granted.

  “It does.” He smiled at her. “And I agree with my sister that this is the loveliest part of the park. I spend quite a lot of time here. There is a sense of peace. I do not know if it is nature itself that creates it, or if Wren had some part in it by being happy and secure and consoled here.”

  They were walking among the trees, bare now for winter. Soon they were through them and standing on the bank of the stream, which was still flowing, though there was the rime of ice on the outer edges. There was a single-arched stone bridge spanning it to their left.

  “Are you horribly cold?” he asked as she withdrew one hand from her muff in order to lift the muffler over her mouth and earlobes.

  “The muffler helps,” she said. “No, not horribly cold.” Just freezing.

  “Just freezing,” he said in unison with her thought.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “Because I am too,” he said, and they both laughed.

  “Since we have come this far,” he said, “shall we at least cross the bridge and look at the daffodil bank so that you can imagine it later even if you are not at Brambledean when they bloom?”

  “Lead on,” she said, sliding her hand back into the warmth of her muff.

  “We do not have to go down,” he said when they stood at the top of the grassy slope.

  “Having come so far?” She slipped a hand free of her muff again in order to hold up the hems of her dress and cloak and ran down to the bottom, gaining speed as she went. She was laughing when the fence stopped her momentum, and turned to watch him come down after her.

  Oh, why did a man in a caped greatcoat and shining top boots and tall hat pulled low on his brow always look so virile? Well, perhaps not all men did, or even most. But Colin Handrich, Lord Hodges, certainly did.

  “You see?” he said, gesturing toward the hill. “It is very bare of anything but weary-looking grass.”

  “Ah,” she said, “but I have an imagination.” And she could picture it carpeted with nodding daffodils, the trees coming into bud at the top of the bank, the sky blue overhead. “We need winter if only that we can have spring.”

  “That sounds like a philosophy for life,” he said, coming to stand next to her at the fence. “Have you known winter, Elizabeth? Ah, but that was an insensitive question. Of course you have. You lost your husband. Were you very much in love with him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Very much indeed when I married him.”

  “But not later?” He chuckled.

  “You did not know I was living apart from him when he died?” she asked. She was surprised he had not heard it from Alex or Wren, but they were not tattlers, those two.

  His smile disappeared. He leaned back against the fence and crossed his arms over his chest. “I am sorry,” he said. “No, I did not.”

  “I loved the man he was at heart,” she said. “I still do. I am convinced he had a sickness that was incurable, though not many people share my view. Why is it, Colin, that ninety-nine men—or women, I suppose—out of a hundred can drink to their heart’s content and even to excess on occasion without their very character being affected? Why can they take the liquor or leave it depending upon the occasion? Why does it not destroy their lives and those of their loved ones? And why is it that the remaining one out of a hundred is consumed by the very liquor he thinks he is consuming? Why must he drink it against his better judgment and even against his own will? Why does it possess him like a demon and sometimes banish the person he was and ought to be? Why does it make him vicious, particularly with the very person he loves most on the dwindling occasions when he is sober?”

  His head was turned toward her. She had the feeling he was looking intently at her, though she did not turn her own head to look.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked after a lengthy pause.

  “Oh, I am so very sorry,” she said, stricken. “I do not know where all that came from. I never talk about such things, even with my family any longer. At least, I must make that almost never. Forgive me, please. This is a wretched way to thank you for inviting me for tea.”

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked again.

  She sighed. “Usually I could hide the scrapes and bruises,” she said. “Occasionally I invented head colds or headaches that kept me at home if a bruise or cut was visible. Twice I fled home to Riddings Park. My father sent me back the first time, when Desmond came for me, and I did not argue. He was sober and abjectly penitent and swore most convincingly that no such thing would ever happen again. It was easy to believe him even though I had heard it before. For the thing was that he really meant it, and I still loved him. Or, rather, I loved the man he was when he was not drinking. The second time was after my father died, and Alex refused to send me back even though Desmond came once alone and then with a magistrate. Alex hit him—Desmond, that was, not the magistrate. It was the only time I have known him be violent. I had a broken arm and one very black and bloodshot eye among other things. I have lived at Riddings ever since. Desmond died the year after—in a tavern fight.”

  Colin had moved, she realized. He was standing directly in front of her. “I am so sorry for the terrible pain you had to suffer,” he said. “And I do not mean just the broken arm or the eye. But how do you do it, Elizabeth? How do you show . . . springtime in your demeanor? Almost constantly. Contentment, serenity, maturity, good sense, kindness—I could go on. How do you do it when you have lived through such a nightmare?”

  Was that the appearance she gave? If so, she was glad. She had taken a long time cultivating it. And it had been worse even than he knew.

  “Is it just an outer armor?” he asked. “Do you still suffer inside?”

  She withdrew her gloved hands from her muff and set them against his chest, slipping them beneath the capes of his greatcoat. It was probably unwise, but she needed the human contact and sensed that perhaps he did too. It could not have been a comfortable story to listen to, and it was wrong—and uncharacteristic—of her to have inflicted it upon him.

  “We all suffer, Colin,” she said. “It is the human condition. No one escapes, even those who may appear to others to live charmed lives. But we all have the choice of whether to be defined by the negatives in our lives or to make of our present and future and our very selves what we want them to be. Although I am convinced Desmond was in the grip of a terrible sickness, I also believe that he succumbed to it without trying hard enough to fight back. Perhaps I do him an injustice. Perhaps there was no way out for him. I do not judge him and, y
es, I did mourn him and still do, though I doubt my family is aware of that. I loved him, you see. But I refused to get sucked into the dark whirlpool of his descent into darkness. Oh, it was touch and go for a few years, for I blamed myself when his rages came upon him and did all in my power to change myself. I became a cringing creature who tried desperately not to provoke him. But after I left him, I chose to be my own person, the one I wanted to be. It took a while. A long while. I had vowed to love him in sickness and health, yet I had abandoned him. Guilt is a powerful force. But ultimately my will proved stronger.” She thought so, anyway. Perhaps it was just that her will had not been tested. She shivered.

  His gloved hands were covering hers against his chest and he took a half step nearer to her. She could feel the warmth of his hands and the comforting strength of them. She could feel his closeness.

  “I wish I had your firmness of character,” he said, his face very close to her own, and she had the fanciful thought that there was pain in the very heartbeat she could feel faintly with her right hand.

  “Have you known winter, then?” she asked, raising her eyes to his.

  He closed his own briefly and dropped his chin.

  “There was Roe—Wren,” he said. “She had that great unsightly strawberry birthmark covering the side of her face. No one could bear to look at her. Certainly no one could bear the thought of anyone else—anyone from outside the house—seeing her, and there were always visitors. She spent most of her childhood in her room, often locked in lest she wander. She was not even allowed into the schoolroom because . . . no one could bear to look at her. I suppose servants took her food and other necessities, but I was the only one who spent time with her in her room. I loved her and enjoyed taking my toys to her and playing with her. I used to read to her after I learned how. I thought she was sick. I used to kiss the strawberry mark better every time I left her. But the strangeness of her situation, the horrible injustice and cruelty of it, did not occur to me at the time. It was just the way things were. If Aunt Megan had not come . . . But she did come, and Roe’s winter was over, or at least it began to turn toward spring.”