The Duke's Bridle Path Read online

  “No, it’s The Gentleman’s Periodical.”

  “Mr. Goddard, I couldn’t bear to enrich a publication that profited off my brother’s death. I promised your brother I’d write the pieces myself, and so I will. I didn’t promise where I’d send them.”

  A grin spread over Samuel’s angular face. “You are sly, my lady.”

  “I think I will like writing them. I can make certain there isn’t anything in them I don’t want there to be.”

  “The power of the written word.” He smiled. It was a sweet smile, making him look very young. “I ought to have thanked you before for giving my brother the sack of candies. He shared them with me. They were excellent.”

  The caramel candies. She had almost forgotten about them. “I don’t deserve much credit. I did it on impulse.”

  “A generous impulse. Would that the world were full of them.”

  “I can’t argue with that.” She smiled back, then collected the papers in her lap. “Here, you must have these. You and your brother can sell them where you see fit.”

  Samuel took the papers from Ada with a hand that clenched and unclenched, almost scattering them. He seemed hardly to notice. “Lady Ada. I wonder if it’s occurred to you that everything Colin said in front of the other guests was true. About hoping for your heart and all that.”

  She gaped.

  Samuel hunched his shoulders. “He told me about it. He said you didn’t receive it well.”

  “I didn’t, because he sounded as if he were mocking me. He made a fool of me before…” She trailed off.

  “Did anyone else think he was mocking you?”

  “No, I don’t suppose they did.” Lord and Lady Wrotham hadn’t looked amused. They’d looked uncomfortable at the unexpected display of emotion.

  Ada had to think about this for a while. If Colin had not been mocking her—if he had been perfectly sincere in everything he’d said—

  Dear God.

  “But he didn’t read my note,” she said. “He couldn’t have cared that much for what I felt about him. He didn’t even bother to read it.”

  Samuel’s eyes, as blue as his brother’s, had clouded.

  And she realized, all at once. The book of poetry— it’s not in English, is it? The little cards on the tea treats, dismissed. The reading he was asked to do night after night, which he’d refused time and again.

  The note he had left untouched.

  “He cannot read,” she realized.

  Slowly, Samuel shook his head. “He can, but not well. It takes him a long time. He says the letters wiggle and change when he looks at them.”

  Ada had never heard of such a thing. But she had never heard of a man having Samuel’s condition of twitches either, and here he sat, large as life and friendly as anything.

  “How can he be a writer,” she asked, “if he can’t read?”

  “He remembers everything,” Samuel said. “He tells me who he talks to and what he learns, and I write it down. It’s been a good partnership for years.”

  “Has it? It allows neither of you to have all the credit you deserve.”

  “What’s credit worth? You can’t spend it.” Again, that sweet smile. “We’ve got by, and that’s all we could have asked.”

  No, she thought. They could have asked for more. They could have asked for admiration or love or an editorship or…why, anything.

  But that was her upbringing talking. Dukes’ daughters and sisters weren’t shy about asking for what they wanted. Unless it was the heart of a stubborn, wily, kind, exasperating man.

  “He told me he wasn’t real. That he was dishonorable. Did he mean that too?”

  “How would I know? I’m only his brother. He doesn’t confide everything in me. Especially not when he’s heartsore and discouraged and trying to convince himself he did the right thing by leaving Berkshire.”

  “He thought up the questions, didn’t he? About my brother’s death, for the on-demandes?”

  Samuel swayed, nodded. “He always thought up the questions.”

  She looked at him, perched uneasily in her chair, and smiled. “I thought so. I think I’ve known it since the first time he apologized.”

  He’d looked so troubled, so sincere as they sat in her study. His were lies of omission, but he’d never lied in how he felt. She thought he regretted what he’d done, truly.

  At this distance in time, she didn’t. Colin’s questions, tossed off for coin and scandal, had pushed her life onto a road entirely new. It had brought her home from London, led her to constrain herself. But she’d kept traveling, and after all this time, the road had brought her to a place she quite liked.

  “He didn’t know you then,” Samuel excused. “When he wrote the questions.”

  “It’s all right,” Ada reassured him. “I am beginning to think I didn’t know myself.” She searched the face of the young man across from her, looking for further hints. “Did you encourage him to leave Rushworth Green?”

  Samuel looked insulted. “Of course I didn’t. He was wrong to leave. But I didn’t say that. All I said was that I was tired and would take a mail coach and return by night. I’m usually awake at night.”

  “Not today.”

  “No. Not today. And maybe not more days from now on. I want to venture out more.”

  Ada regarded him. Yes, he twitched. He had also carried his brother for years, just as Colin carried him. “I think it a good plan. How can you get the credit you deserve otherwise?”

  He laughed.

  “What will you do, Mr. Goddard? You didn’t want to go with him?”

  “Samuel, please. No, he and I disagreed on the timing. I thought he had unfinished business here.”

  Ada waved this off. “I had forced his hand enough. If he wanted to go, I’m glad he left.”

  Samuel looked skeptical at this. “Maybe so. Anyway, I’ll be leaving too, by the next stage. Colin and I have rented rooms. I have a few friends. It’s not a bad life at all.” He shook the papers in his fist. “I’ll be Vir Virilem yet. And I’ll make sure there isn’t anything in here you don’t want there to be. Though I don’t think there is.” He leaned forward, confiding, “Colin was yours at once. He probably wouldn’t like me telling you his secrets like that, but he’s not here, is he?”

  Now she had to laugh, even as she flushed. “Right you are. And you’ll like that, you think? Going about in London?”

  “Taking up a bit more of the life Colin and I’ve shared? I think so. I’ve been hiding.”

  “Yes,” she said faintly. “I have too. But writing is one way around that, isn’t it?”

  “If it feels like it, then it is.”

  “You’re a wise man, Samuel. And what will he do?”

  There was only one possible he. Samuel did not misunderstand. “That depends on you.”

  She squinted. “I can’t see up close,” she murmured. “I don’t have my spectacles with me. Samuel, will you wait for a few minutes while I return to the study? And when you return to London, will you take a parcel along?”

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  If this advice brings you success in marriage, why—

  One half of her is yours, the other half yours,

  Her own, she would say; but if hers, then yours,

  And so all yours.

  Vir Virilem (with apologies to William Shakespeare), Ways to Wed for Wealth

  You are real.

  That was all the note said. It was easy for Colin to read; Ada had printed the letters square and big. She had also wrapped the note around a packet of caramel candies, though only two had made it all the way to London. Samuel refused to say how many had originally been in the package.

  “The note is what matters,” he said, pacing the sitting room of their lodging.

  “She knows, then,” Colin said. “About the wiggling letters. And the questions I wrote?”

  Samuel nodded. “She sorted it all out. And she sent you this note. I think she would say much more if
she saw you in person.”

  Relief lifted boulders he’d not even realized he’d been carrying. Relief, and the queasy awareness that he’d been granted unwarranted forgiveness. You are real, she had told him on the duke’s bridle path, seeing him as no one ever had before. Seeing his well-meaning ways, his careless selfishness, his ambition, his worry, his joviality, his heart. Was it any wonder he had fallen for her? Who could resist being seen and known and accepted all the same?

  You are real, said the note, after she knew it all. He’d not rung false in his feeling for her. Thank God, she knew that part of it too.

  Colin held the paper. Stared at it. Stared some more at this missive from Ada, until Samuel grew tired of waiting and said he was going to order a meal from the charwoman.

  “I’ll do it in a minute,” Colin said. He always ordered the meals, or spoke to the charwoman about whatever cleaning they needed done.

  “No need.” Samuel bobbed his head. “Mrs. Cobb was married to a surgeon. She’s seen much worse than a man with twitches.”

  This finally tugged Colin’s attention away from the note in his hand. “Samuel. Really? You don’t mind it?”

  Samuel shrugged. “Traveled by myself from Rushworth Green, you know. It wasn’t so bad. If anyone backed away from me, I got more room in the carriage.” He put a good face on it, though Colin could tell he wasn’t unbothered. Still, he’d done it. A first for him.

  “Well done. I didn’t feel right about leaving you, but I see you’re fine on your own.”

  “I’m not the one you should feel wrong about leaving. But that’s up to you. I’m getting some food, then I’m for Bright’s.”

  Colin rubbed his fingers against the soft paper of Ada’s note. “Why?”

  “The Vir Virilem articles. I offered them to Lady Ada. She gave them back.”

  “I told Bright I wouldn’t sell them to him. Nor would I write a special piece about Lady Ada Ellis, though he offered me a spot as co-editor on the strength of that piece alone.” The refusal had been instant, unthinking. There was no way he’d sell Ada’s name. Not now that she’d made him understand the harm words could cause.

  Now that he knew her, cared about her, he would hurt himself before he’d allow her to be injured again.

  “I think Bright and I are done with each other,” Colin added.

  “All right for you. I didn’t tell Bright anything of the sort.” Samuel looked devilish, telling Colin of Ada’s plan. Her offer to the editors of The Gentleman’s Magazine to write a series of rival pieces. “She said she’d promised you she’d write the pieces herself, but didn’t say where she’d send them.”

  Colin laughed. “Heart of a reporter, she has. What a woman.”

  “So you see, she’s going to profit from our time in Berkshire, and she gave us her blessing to do so too.”

  “She doesn’t need to profit,” Colin replied, but he thought he understood. She was taking control of her story; she would tell it herself, in the way she chose.

  “If she writes about marrying for wealth, will it seem too much like copying?” Samuel drummed his fingers on the well-used desk at which he’d written many a piece.

  Colin scoffed. “Given the same topic to write on, no two people would ever think up the same result. Besides, if Bright can get Vir Virilem’s work into the next issue, the Magazine will seem to be copying the Periodical for once.”

  Samuel gathered up the sheaf of papers they’d written together, then hesitated. “You don’t mind? If I sell all of this to Bright?”

  “Don’t sell it.” At Samuel’s crestfallen face, Colin explained, “Trade it to him for the position of co-editor and a regular salary, just as he promised me. You can do the work as well as I, Samuel.”

  “But you’ve always been our eyes and ears.”

  True, and how good it had felt to make use of his abilities. But there would be other ways. “You have excellent eyes and ears too. You can do this.” Colin grinned. “Maybe you can even think up something better than the questions page. Drag the Periodical toward respectability a bit.”

  “You might ask too much there.” Samuel paused. “You’re sure you don’t want it yourself?”

  “Very sure that I don’t. I couldn’t take the post, or even go to Bright’s printing house again. I have a journey to take.”

  Samuel beamed. “To Berkshire?”

  “Where else is there?”

  * * *

  I have decided that I am not the sort to avoid scenes or topics that might give rise to awkwardness. Therefore, let me be frank.

  My name in Latin is Nobilem.

  I was jilted after my eldest brother died.

  I have returned to London first in my words, soon, in my person.

  I have a talent with numbers, but I prefer words.

  I have fallen deeply in love with a man who won’t have me.

  And I have never been happier.

  One of those statements, but only one, is false. Which one?

  Ada laid down her quill, stretched her fingers, then arose to walk around the blue parlor. It was sunny and bright, drawing her mood upward. She was pleased with the tone of the piece she’d begun.

  The Gentleman’s Magazine had sent a reply at once: They would take whatever pieces she chose to write at five pounds each, provided that she allowed her name to leak out at some point in future.

  The money was rather nice; it was the first she’d earned herself. It was nothing to the interest on her dowry, but it would still buy a great many caramel candies. Or cover a portion of the cost of a special license to wed, should there be an opportunity.

  That was for Colin to decide. She’d said all she dared in that note of three words. She thought he would remember how much more had passed between them, or guess how much more those two words represented.You are real. A sentence not often bandied about by the ton.

  They were the only words that mattered to her now—other than, perhaps, I love you madly, or I can’t live without you another day, or—

  “Mr. Goddard is here to see you, my lady.”

  Or those.

  Ada blinked at Chalmers through her spectacles, hardly daring to believe what he’d just said. “Ah—would that be Mr. Colin Goddard?”

  “Indeed, my lady. Shall I show him in here, or will you meet him in the study?”

  The study was more usual for her. But she felt like being a bit unusual. “Here will do. Thank you, Chalmers.”

  When the butler disappeared to fetch the visitor, Ada went into a frenzy of motion. Removing spectacles, rubbing at ink stains on fingers, wiping them on a handkerchief, then shaking out her skirts and smoothing her hair.

  “You look lovely.”

  He’d caught her unawares as she picked at her appearance. From the doorway, he smiled at her: golden and tall and travel-rumpled and, by God, real.

  “Colin,” she said, standing at a safe distance. “Come in, then, and tell me why you’ve come back.”

  “Simple enough.” He loped into the room, all easy grace and charm. “Once I knew you knew everything—that you didn’t hate me—it was impossible for me to be anywhere else.”

  “Hate you? No, I never could. I’m not saying I’m fond of The Gentleman’s Periodical, and yet”—she closed the distance between them—“it brought us to this point, didn’t it? So maybe I’m a little fond of it.”

  “A little?”

  “A very little.” She caught his coat lapels in her fingers, tugged. “But that’s not how I feel about you.”

  “It would be ungentlemanly for me to ask for further details, wouldn’t it?”

  “Not as ungentlemanly as what you’re doing with your hands—oh! Not that I am complaining.”

  Scoundrel that he was, he stilled his wandering hands and took hers in them. “Ada. My dear. I admire you and adore you. You make me want to do better, to be better, and to make more of myself.”

  “I have to sit down,” she said. “My knees aren’t quite working right.”

/>   “Ha! I knew you liked what I was doing with my hands.” He guided her to a settee, then said, “I know it’s fast, and it’s sudden, so if you like, I’ll take a room at the White Hare and moon after you for months until you trust in my feelings for you. But I think—I think I’ve been yours ever since we first struck that bargain.”

  She shut her eyes, collecting his every word within her. It was everything she’d hoped, everything she wanted. It was real.

  When she opened her eyes, his face filled her sight. He was so handsome and roguish and familiar and…and just now, his heart was in his eyes and she had him at her feet.

  “None of us have been happy without you,” she said demurely. “When I saw him in the village earlier, Squire Martin said no one understands the troubles he has with elegant dress so well as you. The vicar says no one recites as well as you. Equinox looks past me each time I enter the stable, as if hoping to see you entering after me.”

  He pulled a face. “You could go on listing, and I would be impressed. But what of you?”

  “You could be a gentleman if you wished,” she said. “I’ve told you so before. And a gentleman would reveal his true feelings before asking a lady about hers.”

  A smile spread over his features, slow and mischievous. “Is that so? I’ll reveal my feelings for you, all right.”

  And he did.

  Ada loved words, and she had a talent for numbers. But at this moment, she found she needed none of those things, and all that mattered was a kiss from the man to whom she’d given her heart.

  * * *

  By the turn of the year a few months later, Vir Virilem’s satirical articles in The Gentleman’s Periodical had become the talk of London. The dreadful rag, as Ada always referred to it, had garnered a steady level of sales as a result, even without the on-demandes that had first drawn notice to it. As the founding editor had never achieved such success, Ada and Colin gave credit to the new co-editor. Not that credit was worth anything to that gentleman, but they gave it all the same.