The Duke's Bridle Path Page 20

  What she saw there was pain. Did it come from him, or was she seeing her own heart?

  “What do you want from me, Colin Goddard?”

  He looked away, made a slashing motion with his hand. “Nothing at all. You’re right, we should cancel the bargain. I won’t even state that I won, because then you’d have to write the articles for me.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You are hot and cold at once. What are you hiding from me?”

  “Nothing at all,” he said again.

  “Impossible.”

  He smiled, though it wasn’t the confident grin she was accustomed to seeing. This one rang false. “I promised to lie to you. You promised to catch me out. That was the deal from the beginning.”

  For the first time since he’d sat across from her in the study a week ago, she had the creeping feeling that they could easily become adversaries.

  “Didn’t we move beyond that? All our time together, and the kisses, and…” She pressed her lips together. She would not beg. A heart could not be moved unless it wanted to be.

  “What am I hiding from you?” He sighed. “Let me reveal all, then. I am hiding my envy. Not at your position, but at the fact that you live near a village where you can buy caramel candies from a confectioner who’s known you your whole life. At the fact that you have the confidence to seat a man on a horse and trust that you’ll be able to talk him—and the horse—safely through. Or even at your resourcefulness, to turn one who could have been a foe into an ally with a single proposed bargain.”

  The words were admiring, but the tone was not. He sounded angry, the laughter that so often edged his voice turned jagged and raw.

  “Well.” He made a fist, bumped it against the wall. “I guess I’m not hiding any of that anymore.”

  “I’m glad you were honest with me.” Sort of. She still felt unsettled. A figurative sword hung overhead; she could feel it swinging, the movement of air making her skin prickle.

  “No. No, I’m not. I’m many things, Lady Ada, but honest isn’t one of them. I’m not the sort of man you want. It would be dishonorable of me to pretend I am.”

  In these words, there was the ring of truth. Honest though he claimed he was not, there was everything genuine in these parting words.

  So there was nothing more to say. And she let him go.

  When the great front door closed behind him, she braced herself against the wall with a flat palm. The bones of Theale Hall held her up. They always would. She was no worse off now than before she had met Colin Goddard, with his glib tongue and his frank eyes and his Londonish energy. She was no worse off than she’d been before she talked with him, laughed with him, kissed him. Told him truths she had hardly dared admit to herself.

  All of this was over, and she had been fine before, and she would be fine again.

  She would paste the bits of her heart together, a heart she’d never meant to lend. Somehow, she’d said the word besotted enough that it had sunk in, and she’d thought it was to apply to her.

  She really ought to have confined herself to numbers rather than words.

  Slowly, trailing her fingers along the wall, she walked back to the drawing room. Outside of the doorway, she took a deep breath. Let her hands fall to her sides. Raised her chin.

  “My apologies for the interruption,” she told Lord and Lady Wrotham. Her guests sat still and tentative. Uncertain. She smiled her reassurance. “All is well. Shall I ring for a fresh pot of tea?”

  Chapter Six

  * * *

  Sometimes the best advice fails. In that event, be bold, be ingenious.

  However, sometimes that fails too.

  Vir Virilem, Ways to Wed for Wealth

  Just a few hours by mail coach, Colin had once told Ada. From Berkshire to London was an easy journey.

  But he’d been wrong. The journey from Rushworth Green to the London printing house of Botolphus Bright included some of the most difficult hours Colin had ever passed.

  He’d left the White Hare as soon as he could pack his things. A groggy Samuel, confused and startled, had taken in Colin’s explanation and said he’d follow in a day or two.

  So. Ada had won their bargain, and Colin had left. Not because he couldn’t play the part she asked of him anymore, but because he had to return to writing whatever would pay, even if it skated through lies.

  Damn the woman. She’d made him care about her, and she’d made him care what he’d made of himself. She had defeated him soundly, not by asking him to be someone else, but by being herself. He couldn’t face her anymore. It was hard enough to look in the mirror.

  By evening, Colin was in their rented rooms in London, his belongings stowed and his brain in a muddle. What would he do next? He wished he could turn time back a fortnight, so he’d never gone to Rushworth Green, or met Ada, or had a half-baked idea about making his own fortune, and Samuel’s, through a skill he did not possess.

  Well… no, he didn’t wish that. Not entirely. He didn’t want to forget Ada, magnificent in her suspicion and throwing caramel candies about. Ada, soft and moonlit and yearning to be kissed.

  Ada, asking for more, not knowing how much she did not know about Colin.

  He’d returned to London before Bright expected him, so he didn’t go into the printing house the following morning. Instead, Colin spent the day at home. First, he took Ada’s letter out of his coat pocket and made his winding way through the lines she’d written.

  Sweet lines. Hopeful lines. Ignorant lines, unknowing of the truth.

  When he’d read it, he wished he hadn’t. The very sight of words written in her hand was a shameful reminder, a precious remembrance.

  He tossed it into the fire.

  Then he raided Samuel’s desk for paper, ink, quills, a bit of pencil. Enough of this ridiculousness about wavering letters and switching positions. Letters didn’t move once they were down on the page. They were written, and they stayed, and he would make them stay and read them and understand them and then be able to write the sort of piece Ada deserved. Or a letter of apology to her.

  Or, as the hours went on and the words he scrawled refused to remain still and obedient, maybe a note.

  Or a line or two.

  As afternoon faded dim and gray, he looked around him at all the ruined papers, and he put his head into his hands and wished the world away.

  In the morning, he was determined anew. He was in London again, he was himself, and his life would go on as it always had. Samuel would be back in London sometime today, he’d promised, and they’d continue on.

  So Colin turned his steps toward Botolphus Bright’s printing house, which was located near St. John’s Gate. Bright copied the prestigious, established Gentleman’s Magazine in as many ways as possible, including locating his headquarters near that of the magazine’s. The magazine’s editors operated from a large office and maintained a fast newfangled press for their popular journal. The rents being costly, Bright squeezed his combined business and printing offices for The Gentleman’s Periodical into less space than one might imagine.

  Colin pushed open the door to the cramped space, greeted as always by the sharp scents of ink and machine oil and the sulfurous smell of heated rag paper. It wasn’t printing week, fortunately, or he’d also have encountered a clatter from the press that was fit to burst his eardrums, and he’d have wound his way between papers hanging to dry on lines like squared-off laundry across the room.

  As it was, Bright was laying type, his fingers stubby but nimble as they whipped between type cases and page forme. About the age Colin’s father would have been had the elder Goddard lived, he was a garrulous man of average weight, but with a double chin that softened his look. One could tell nothing of his rapacious ambition from his appearance.

  “Goddard!” Bright hurried around the table where he’d been working, hand outstretched to shake. Eyeing the ink all over his fingers, he thought better of it, then motioned Colin into the space and retook his place by the type case. “G
ood to see you, good to see you. I’m working on the questions for the next issue. You don’t mind if I continue, do you? You’re back earlier than I expected. Must be good news, hmm?”

  In the time that he talked, he’d already pulled a few dozen sorts from the type case and fit them into place. “This is going to be the best issue yet. I think we’ll split your pieces, tease them out as long as possible. The page of questions can connect, anything to do with society gossip. We’ll make it fit. We always do, hmm? Brought your pieces in person, did you?”

  He finally looked up, Colin’s silence sinking in. Which meant that now Colin had to determine what to say.

  “Samuel has all our notes,” he began. “I expect him here within the next day.”

  “Fine, fine. What’ve you got for me before then? What can you add to the questions page?” He tapped an inky finger on his chin, leaving a blackish smudge behind. “Something to do with Lavelle, I think, to tie into your new series. What have we run before on Their Graces? It’ll have to be something new. ‘Did the Duchess of Lavelle seduce the duke into marriage?’ No, not enough punch. ‘Was the duchess with child when they wed?’ Better, better. We’ll get there, hmm?”

  “I don’t have any questions,” Colin said slowly.

  “Ah, you already know everything.” Bright winked broadly. “Confidence of the young! What a gift. But of course you can think up questions. The questions page is your baby, much as this press is mine. Hmm?”

  “I don’t want to give you any questions for the new issue,” Colin said, his voice firmer this time. “I don’t—it doesn’t seem right.”

  Birdlike and quick, Bright darted back around to Colin. Looked him over, prodded his face until Colin swatted away the inky fingers and wiped at his cheek.

  “It’s you, right enough,” Bright said. “But it doesn’t sound like you. What the devil happened to you in Berkshire? Lost your nerve?”

  Colin set his jaw. The less said around Bright, the better.

  But silence was clue enough. Bright whistled. “Lost your heart, hmm? Well, well. Well, well, well. Who’s the lady?”

  Colin gritted his teeth.

  Bright burst into laughter, easing back around his worktable. “The duke’s sister? Oh, this is rich. Too rich, hmm?”

  “I didn’t say it was the duke’s sister. Or anyone at all. Maybe I came to this conclusion all on my own.”

  “You don’t have to say a word. Your expression says it all. Want to flay me alive, hmm? Oh, Goddard, you’ve got it bad for her. I can get a dozen questions out of this. ‘Did Lady Ada Ellis fall in love with a writer of scandal?’ Or maybe more salacious. ‘Was the duke’s sister seduced by a rogue traveling under false pretenses?’”

  “The duke’s sister,” Colin ground out, “was not. You won’t put her in the questions, will you?”

  “’Course I will. There’s no harm in a question or two, and they do bring in the coin most marvelously.” Bright stabbed the page forme with a forefinger. “There’s good work here, Goddard, and it’ll get better yet once you give me your pieces. Vir Virilem, wasn’t that the name you decided on?”

  He’d thought it so comical when he came up with the name. Now it seemed foolish. Presumptuous. An apt enough description of the whole trip to Rushworth Green.

  “I don’t plan to write that series after all,” he told Bright. “Sorry. It just doesn’t interest me.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether it interests you or not. It’ll interest the Periodical’s readers right enough.” Bright looked at him shrewdly with eyes like shiny black currants. “You don’t want the lady’s name in it, do you? You needn’t mention any name. Or you could make up ridiculous ones, like in that novel Glenarvon. We’ll have all of London guessing who Lady Ella Adis is, hmm? Maybe that’s too close to the real name. You can come up with something better.”

  The smell of ink and the closeness of the office were making Colin’s head pound. “I can’t keep you from writing it yourself, but put it under your own name. I want no association with it.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want to be paid?”

  Colin pressed at his temples. “I have to be paid, sir. I can’t live on air and hope. But I don’t want to be connected with lies.”

  Bright eyed him closely, then softened. “She really did get to you, didn’t she?”

  He let his hands fall to his sides again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Do you want to write about it?” Colin must have looked murderous, for Bright lifted his hands. “All right, all right. But consider this a firm offer. If you’ll write for the Periodical about your love affair with Lady Ada Ellis, I won’t have to put in the page of questions.”

  “A bribe?”

  “A business proposition.” Bright winked. “If you do it right, you’ll have that editorship. Just one piece, Colin, and you and your brother won’t ever have to worry about money again.”

  * * *

  Chalmers, who knew everything, as good butlers always did, told Ada that Colin Goddard had departed the White Hare the afternoon before.

  She had suspected as much, but thanked him for the information. Then she went to the study. Put on her spectacles. Prepared to work.

  After writing a brief letter of inquiry and having it posted.

  There, that was done. She didn’t need Colin Goddard to be a part of her life. She’d miss him, but so what? She missed her parents, she missed her brother Jonas. Colin was one more person to miss. She would set that feeling aside, along with the Lavelle ledgers—once she’d finished her day’s work with them.

  For the work needn’t consume her. She realized she’d let it; she’d tied herself to it too closely. But a day’s work on the estate’s accounts could be finished, and finished well, and then set aside. And if that wasn’t enough for Philippe once he and Harriet returned from their wedding trip—well, then, it wouldn’t be enough, and they would sort that out between themselves. Maybe he’d hire a steward.

  She paused, quill in hand, before she’d made a single entry in the current ledger. A steward. Now, that was an idea. Maybe Philippe should have hired a steward years ago. Maybe she should have demanded that for herself, instead of clinging to every scrap of the familiar.

  But she’d done what she thought was right. What she’d needed. And Philippe, being a good brother, had gone along with it.

  For now, she had work to fill her time. And she was in her study, surrounded by books. The little volume of German poetry that always sat on the desk bore the remembrance of Colin’s touch on its binding. She bore the same on her hands, her lips, her throat, her face, and the promise of more on her breasts and thighs, spoken in secret words by moonlight.

  She shut her eyes, remembering.

  And then she opened them, found a fresh ledger intended for the next quarter, and dipped her quill again.

  Bother the accounts—just for now. She was of a mood to write, and she would write as she hadn’t allowed herself to for some time. Oh, there was a great deal to write about now. A heart split and confused, a fortune in emotion gambled and lost. All the truths and worries she’d carried within.

  The lines she wrote were dark and clear. She was angry. She hadn’t even known how angry until the feeling spilled forth in harsh, sharp words.

  Not at The Gentleman’s Periodical, for all its tactless feasting on grief and scandal. Not at Wrotham, for dropping her hand as soon as it lost its marble perfection.

  Only one person had kept her from London for the four years since. Only one person had trapped her with ledgers in this study, resigning her to a solitary life.

  She, Lady Ada Constantia Ellis, had done all of that to herself. And the wound she’d inflicted was deep. Even now, she did not know how deep. But she would get to the bottom of it.

  She had covered two pages, front and back, in a neat and regimented hand, by the time Chalmers announced a Mr. Goddard to see her.

  Her head snapped up.

  “Mr. Samuel Goddard,�
� added the butler. She thought she heard pity in his voice.

  She squared her shoulders. “Show him in, Chalmers.”

  As she waited, she removed her spectacles and wiped the quill she’d been using.

  When Samuel appeared in the doorway, a young man of slight build and dark coloring, she stood up on impulse. “Mr. Goddard. Let’s go somewhere brighter to speak, shall we? Let’s go to the blue parlor. Or the pink one. Ah—do you have a preference?”

  He nodded several times. “I’m partial to stripes, myself.”

  “The blue one, then.” She smiled, then led him from the study—God, she had almost been living in there, hadn’t she?—to a smallish parlor, sunny and pleasant with its striped blue paper and velvety chaise longue.

  “Tea for you?” she asked Samuel as she seated herself. He swayed, then dropped into a chair opposite hers.

  “No, thank you. I came to give you something, that’s all.” Samuel held out a thick packet of papers. “He hasn’t been sending them to London.”

  Ada took the papers from Samuel. “Who hasn’t…what… oh.” She flipped through them, page after page written in a clear hand, and realized. Colin. The articles he’d described to her, the ones that would win him the coveted editorship. This was everything he’d drafted since arriving in Rushworth Green, left behind, handed over to her.

  When she looked up at Samuel, wondering, he ducked his head. “Surprised me too. Seems he wants something more than money or that editorship.”

  Ada looked at the sheaf of papers in her hands. “Which is?”

  “Honor. You.” He chuckled. “He lost, according to the terms of the bargain you made. He didn’t convince you he was in love with you.”

  Ada let the papers fall to her lap, caught Samuel’s eye. “He didn’t have to convince me. Our bargain was for the sake of others.”

  “Who better to convince than you?”

  She shook her head. “I lost the bargain. I called it off, forfeited it. I’d promised your brother if I lost, I’d write all the pieces myself. In fact, I’ve written a letter to the editors of The Gentleman’s Magazine, promising them just such a series.”