The Trouble with Love (Distinguished Rogues Book 8) Read online

  Taverham’s men were quick and efficient, until only bare garden beds surrounded them. “Perhaps after this is gone, Miranda will feel inclined to venture here at last.”

  Everett frowned. “Why wouldn’t she come to this part of the garden?”

  Taverham turned on him. “This is the place my new wife saw Emily in my arms the night we married. This is where Emily kissed me.”

  “What?!”

  “Your sister was intoxicated, and I carried her home to Warstone rather than let her embarrass herself before the wedding guests. Because of that kindness on my part, Miranda was led to believe I was unfaithful to her, and always would be. I cannot care about Emily if I wish to keep my wife happy.”

  He gasped, shocked completely. Taverham hadn’t ever given him a full explanation of why Miranda had gone away, only that Emily had played a part. He had thought her actions toward the boy were bad enough, but this too…

  He raked a hand through his hair. “I had no notion of any of that.”

  “Now you know everything,” Taverham insisted. “Emily deliberately set out to wreck my marriage, sowing the seeds of doubt and mistrust in Miranda’s mind early on, and later attempting to poison my memory and faith in her return, so I would declare her dead and marry Emily once I was free. All so she could take Miranda’s rightful place as my wife. Emily is dead to me already.”

  Everett gulped. He couldn’t expect sympathy for Emily. Not after this too. Taverham was well within his rights to be furious, but Emily was Everett’s only family. He couldn’t throw her out to fend for herself. She might return to Twilit Hill and cause even more trouble. “She is not long for this world.”

  Taverham scowled. “I don’t give a damn.”

  Everett nodded. In truth, he understood this reaction from Taverham better now. “If the idea of her death gives you pleasure, so be it. If you had anything left you want to say to her, you know where to find her. The gardener there will only open the gate to you, and no other.”

  “I wouldn’t waste my breath,” Taverham said. “Leave as soon as it’s polite to do so, and do not breathe word of this near my wife, son, or anyone at Twilit Hill. I will not have Christopher afraid of her shadow ever again.”

  He winced at the dismissal, and bowed formally. Whitney knew about Emily, of course, but he suspected she would say nothing, now he’d spoken to Taverham. “Of course, my lord. I do beg your pardon for the intrusion.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nights at Twilit Hill were long and normally quiet. At least they had been before Lord and Lady Carrington had arrived with their exuberant children. It was growing late, but the older imps showed no signs of being weary or ready for bed. Lady Carrington was hesitant to leave them and return downstairs to her waiting husband.

  “You can leave them to me tonight, my lady,” Whitney assured her.

  “Are you sure?”

  The woman remained dubious, even after Whitney promising twenty times at least that she would be fine with them. “Absolutely. I’ve been looking forward to this all afternoon. I’ll keep the maid company until the last one is deeply asleep.”

  Lady Carrington beamed. “Has anyone ever told you that you are remarkably kind?”

  Whitney thought about that a moment. “That’s not the usual compliment I receive, but I’m happy you think so…and to help you. I’d only be awake and sketching alone in my room anyway.”

  Lady Carrington hugged her quickly. “You are my savior. I cannot thank you enough for giving up your time and the peace you had.”

  Whitney looked around the nursery and grinned as the children smiled up at her. They were only still because they were waiting for Lady Carrington to go so they could play again. “It’s my pleasure.” Whitney nodded. “Enjoy your moonlit stroll with your husband, my lady.”

  Whitney was certain they’d be doing more than strolling in the dark, and the delicate blush climbing Lady Carrington’s cheeks confirmed it. “I will. Thank you again.”

  Lady Carrington took one last peek at her sleeping youngest child, and then slipped out the door, shutting it very quietly behind her.

  All of the children leaped up to kneel upon their beds immediately.

  “You may get up, but absolutely no running about will be allowed.”

  “Yes, Miss Crewe,” they murmured as they slipped off the beds to play with Christopher’s many toys.

  Little Mabel came across the room and lifted up her arms for a hug instead.

  Whitney indulged the girl a moment before carrying her to a distant corner of the room, where the light was brightest, and depositing her on a cushion on the floor. She sat, too, pulling a drawer she’d borrowed from the housekeeper closer to her side. It was full now with paper and charcoals, and topped with thin pieces of timber, about the size of a large book, to place paper upon while they sketched.

  “I should have enough for everyone,” Whitney said as she began to pass them around.

  The slower children rushed over and collected theirs. They jostled each other in their bid to sit as close to Christopher as possible, and Whitney had to hide a smile at their antics. Christopher’s fears he’d be forgotten had been for nothing. They had definitely missed him.

  She glanced out the nursery window, noting the darkness outside, and sighed as her thoughts quickly turned in another direction.

  Night was the perfect time for a seduction. She rubbed her hand around her neck and then shook her head to herself. Tonight, Alice would seduce Lord Acton and ensure the wedding went off without a hitch. She could not imagine him resisting Alice. What man would deny a seduction, especially if he was about to wed the woman seducing him?

  Acton was a lusty man, although he hid that side of his nature quite well.

  She scolded herself for feeling uncomfortable about suggesting to Alice that she should seduce him. Whitney believed in love and marriage, and particularly in faithfulness and desire. Alice apparently did not share those opinions, to have suggested Whitney participate in her devious little test on Acton.

  It was another difference between them, and something that troubled Whitney a lot. She had always thought Alice was a good person through and through. She hoped it was just pre-wedding nerves getting the better of her good sense. Alice had nothing to worry about when it came to Lord Acton. He was a man of experience and very passionate.

  She collected her papers and started to pass one sheet to each child, determined to put that whole conversation from her mind.

  “What should I draw?” Mabel asked immediately.

  “Draw whatever you want. Something that you like.”

  “I like everything,” she promised, and received nods of agreement from the other orphans.

  “Let me see,” she murmured, wondering if the children were afraid of disappointing her with their choices. She’d never met a group of children more eager to please than Carrington’s orphans. Little did they know she had been an orphan once, too. She had turned herself inside out to please each aunt and uncle she’d lived with. To be what they wanted so they wouldn’t send her away again. It was a terrible way to live and to think. She was very glad she’d acquired the courage to be herself at last. “We could all draw Christopher—if he can stay still long enough, that is,” she suggested.

  They all giggled at that.

  “I’m going to draw his nose,” Mabel proclaimed, staring across at the boy.

  “I’m going to draw his ear,” another, sitting right beside Christopher, exclaimed.

  “His feet,” a boy to Whitney’s right decided.

  “His eyes,” Whitney murmured. Sketching them now as practice would help her complete the family portrait she was painting.

  “His hands.”

  “His big fat tummy,” another teased.

  “I am so going to get everyone for this,” Christopher threatened in a menacing tone.

  Everyone laughed.

  “Actually, this is a good idea and could be an interesting exercise.” Whitney decided,
ignoring Christopher’s bright blush. “If everyone draws one piece of Christopher, we can put the pieces together tomorrow and we will see how he looks.”

  Christopher rolled his eyes. “I’m going to draw you instead, Miss Crewe,” he warned before rolling onto his tummy and beginning his sketch.

  Whitney reclined against the wall, watching the children at work and trying again not to think about the activities Lord Acton might be engaging in at that very moment with Alice.

  She began lightly sketching the outline of Christopher’s brows, and then the shape of his eyes, but her mind soon returned to what other people were doing elsewhere. She paused sketching as she scolded herself silently.

  She shouldn’t feel upset under the circumstances, but the truth was she felt more than a little envious.

  It was not as if she wanted Lord Acton for herself, but she remembered too well now how it felt to be with him today. He was interesting, and constantly surprised her, although not always in a good way. The thought of him making love to Alice made her stomach unsettled.

  She forced her attention to the page again and added new lines. Across from her, Christopher was trying to draw her and hide his efforts at the same time.

  “I’m done,” Mabel exclaimed before jumping to her feet to show Whitney her sketch.

  The nose she’d drawn was huge and not at all like his. But from the perspective of a smaller child, perhaps it would seem that way. Whitney quickly hid it from the other children so there could be no discussion tonight. “That is lovely, now off to bed with you.”

  Mabel kissed her cheek and then slipped into her bed, but peered at the others as they continued working.

  One by one, the children brought her their drawings and went to bed, until it was just Whitney and Christopher sitting on the floor all alone, with the yawning maid for company. She smiled at the boy and whispered, “Are you about done?”

  “Almost.” He made a few more marks but then rolled up his paper up before Whitney could see his work.

  “Are you not going to show me like the others have?”

  “Oh no, I’ll show you tomorrow, after everyone else has embarrassed me,” he said with a grin.

  “All right, if you must.” She stood and went to check on everyone. Christopher did the same, pulling up blankets, tucking toys in more securely around the Carrington children.

  She stood back and watched him fuss over them. “Did you always tuck them in at night?”

  “Aggie and I did it together most nights, but that was before I left to live with father and be his son. There was no one but me to tuck in there.”

  Whitney’s eyes misted with tears, but she brushed them aside. “I’m sure Lady Carrington misses your help very much.”

  “They’re all asleep now.” He got into his bed, the one placed closest to the door, with one final glance over his shoulder. “Whitney, can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “Why are you sad tonight?”

  “I’m not sad,” she promised.

  He sat up, his frown deepening. “Mother used to wear that same expression at night when I was young. She always said it was nothing, too.”

  The boy was too clever by far. She went to him, kissed him on top of his head, and tucked him firmly into his bed. “Your mother was probably thinking of your father, so far away. But if I am sad, it is because my time here is almost over, and that is because I want it to be.”

  Christopher caught her hand before she could escape. “I had fun today. With Lord Acton, I mean. I didn’t think he’d like to play with us.”

  “Neither did I.” Today, Acton had revealed a great deal more than the boy had noticed. He still desired her, even though they had no future or plans for one. He was going to marry someone else. He was probably being seduced at this very moment. Whitney’s stomach churned anew. “He was a good sport about it and came to protect you. Remember that in the future.”

  She collected a chair to sit upon.

  “You don’t have to stay until I fall asleep,” Christopher suggested.

  “I promised I would.”

  “You promised Aggie to stay until her children were asleep.”

  “I naturally included you along with them,” she said softly. “But if you don’t want me to stay, I’ll wish you a good night’s sleep, young man. Pleasant dreams.”

  “Until tomorrow,” he said, and then yawned widely.

  Whitney nodded to the maid, slipped from the room, and only took a few paces into the hall before she sagged.

  By rights she should seek out her hosts, if only to say good night, but she knew she couldn’t bear to spend another minute pretending she was happy.

  She was sad, and she wouldn’t be good company for anyone.

  As she undressed without the assistance of a Twilit Hill maid, she glanced about her bedchamber at the traveling trunks waiting for her adventure to start, and thought of the few mementos from her life she had tucked away in them.

  Only once in her life had she had a room of her own, a home she could call her own. It had been so long ago now that she could barely remember the wallpaper pattern in her parents’ house, much less the color of it.

  What she did remember best was the doorway to her parents’ bedchamber. There’d been a gouge in the doorframe from when the door had become stuck and her father, anxious to reach her trapped mother, had taken up an ax to break it down. His desperate destruction of the barrier between them, the kiss when they were together again, had been so very romantic.

  That was real love.

  Love was what Whitney had craved all her life, but never dared count on.

  Whitney curled up on her bed, but sleep wouldn’t come as she remembered all the little gestures between her adoring parents. After an hour of tossing, she lit her lamp, drew her sketchbook onto her lap and began drawing a scene that came from the deepest recesses of her heart.

  The woodland she drew featured heavily in her imagination quite often, although she’d never set foot in such a beautiful place. To Whitney, the setting felt magical, charged with possibilities and hopes and dreams. She’d been drawing this scene for many years, though she was unsure when exactly she’d first started sketching it. Most likely the place existed only in her imagination, but it felt so very real to her tonight.

  A gentle bubbling stream wound through trees and rocks, narrow enough to step across in certain parts. There were great towering trees overhead that blotted out all but the odd shaft of sunlight. The woods were warm, inviting, filled with sounds that soothed Whitney in her loneliest moments.

  Only tonight, there was a gentleman in the scene. Lord Acton’s face peeked at her from between the trees.

  She blinked back tears and held her work at arm’s length. Each time she drew the scene, it seemed a little different. Alive in a way most sketches could not mimic, but it had always been hers alone. Having drawn Acton there changed it and made her wish things might yet be different. That he could have been anyone else.

  An impossible wish, perhaps.

  She quickly tore up the sheet into little pieces, slipped from bed to consign the image to her cold hearth. Tomorrow morning she’d burn them, and she vowed never to draw him again.

  She turned down the lamp and climbed back into her rumpled bed. But as so often happened, her thoughts turned to the events of the day, and tonight she remembered Acton, sunlight surrounding him, too handsome when he smiled with drips of water running down his handsome cheeks.

  Almost too endearingly sweet to turn him back toward his future bride for the affection he sought. But she’d done it for the sake of his marriage. He should be faithful to Alice, not luring her to fall in love with him.

  She hugged her pillow, trying valiantly to forget how easy it had become to be around him. They had more in common than she’d ever suspected. He was amusing when he stopped worrying what others thought of him.

  He’d been gallant, too, in his own way. He’d caught her as she’d fallen today,
and she feared it might already be too late to forget him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Oh, you cheated,” Emily complained as she threw her cards away to fall to the floor of her little bedchamber.

  “I’ll have you know, I did not,” Everett warned her as he bent to scoop them up. “My honor wouldn’t allow me to be so dishonest.”

  She pouted a few minutes and then narrowed her eyes on him. “Why do you not visit me more often in the daytime?”

  He collected all the cards and sorted them out. “I have an estate to run, and sitting at your bedside gossiping will not ensure the work is done properly.”

  “You don’t gossip with me anymore, either,” she complained.

  He shuffled the cards. “I’ve nothing new to share.”

  She pulled her shawl tighter about her chest. “Have you had no letters from him?”

  “Nothing,” he promised. Kit hated writing anyone, and probably wouldn’t ever speak to him again, either. “Cousin Howard wrote and invited me to spend Christmas at his estate though.”

  “You always spend Christmas here with me,” she protested. “You cannot abandon me.”

  No, he would not accept the invitation, but would Emily even be here at Christmas to spend it with him? Her doctors had warned him she might not last that long. Her swift decline continued to alarm them all. “I know, which is why I declined immediately.”

  Emily fussed with her blankets. “Has Lady Taverham asked after me?”

  “The dowager?” He looked down at the cards. “She’s still in London.”

  “And Taverham? Is he very unhappy, do you think?”

  It may be unkind, but he would not give his sister false hope where Taverham was concerned. The man loved his wife very much. “He’s happy, I’m sure. He always loved Miranda. He was always faithful, wasn’t he?”

  Emily had once hinted to him that she and Taverham had been secret lovers, which had been quite untrue. He’d been shocked discover how far back in time her scheming had begun. Emily had not the power to claim the marquess’ heart, only the desperation to make others think she had.