And yet.
She was oddly touched.
He greeted each of the guests, lingering for a moment, she noticed, over Constance’s introduction to Miss Bastian. When the conversation drifted back to the topic of the ball, he asked in a low voice: “How are we today, Miss Cavendish?”
We, he said. How are we?
The question was so harmless that anyone overhearing it would naturally assume he was inquiring on the state of her ankle, or her disposition, or her progress in the ballroom. Yet unspoken in his tone was every intimate thing that had passed between them the night before.
“Much improved, Your Grace,” she answered softly. It was just a whisper of a bland response. But she hoped he understood that it meant I remember.
He didn’t respond, and when she glanced at him, his eyes were no longer on her, and he had lost all color. She followed the line of his gaze to the corridor, where a little boy with a shock of white hair was toddling toward the adults inside, his shaky steps trailed by a nurse.
The boy staggered into the room with a joyous gurgle. Poppy could not but laugh at the sight of him. He was perhaps the most adorable creature she had ever seen.
Constance jumped to her feet, delighted. “Georgie!” she cried. “Look who is walking on his own two clever feet! Come here, you sly fellow!” She crouched down to hug the child, who smiled shyly and darted away to bury his face in Lady Rosecroft’s dress.
“Don’t hide from Lady Constance, darling,” his mother said. “She isn’t entirely wicked.”
The boy peeked out, weighing the likelihood of the threat. His eyes fell on Poppy. She gave him a little wave. He beamed up at her before hiding his face once again in his mother’s skirts.
Constance shot an adoring glance at her brother, as if to say, Isn’t he wonderful? But Westmead had stood and turned to leave the room.
Constance crossed her arms. “Are you withdrawing so soon, Your Grace?”
“Excuse me,” he said blandly. “I am late to meet with my solicitor.”
His sister fixed him in an uncharacteristically icy gaze. “Surely your solicitor can spare you for an hour while you become reacquainted with your godson. ’Tis been a year since you last saw him.” She brightened her voice and turned to Georgie. “Perhaps an adventure to the attic is in order. There’s nothing like a romp through the attic on a rainy day.”
The boy peered up at his godfather, hopeful.
“Not today, I’m afraid,” Westmead muttered, already halfway out the door.
Lady Hilary and Constance exchanged a weighted look.
“Well, I should like to play with Georgie Boy,” Constance pronounced, standing and taking the boy’s hand. “Lead the way, good soldier.”
The group dispersed, with Lady Hilary following Constance and the men retiring to dress before dinner. Only Miss Bastian lingered.
“Wasn’t that an odd exchange?” she murmured.
“It was, rather,” Poppy agreed—relieved that the discomfort in the air had not been her imagination.
Miss Bastian leaned in and dropped her voice. “I’m told Westmead acts very strangely around the boy—the whole family is disturbed by it. Mr. Flannery believes it’s because he is in love with Lady Rosecroft and can’t bear the idea that he lost her to another man.” She giggled into her hand.
Poppy felt an instant stabbing of dislike, and not just because the idea of Westmead in love made her irritable.
“One finds there is often little truth to gossip,” she said.
Miss Bastian gave her a coy smile.
“You can always count on Mr. Flannery to concoct the most scandalous explanation to any mystery—it is, after all, his profession. But every so often he is right about something.”
Archer was drenched, bone-chilled, and exhausted.
When the rain stopped, he had ridden out with the land agent to tour improvements on the estate. Wiltshire not being known for the constancy of its weather, they had promptly been caught in a storm. When it passed, he’d lingered on the misty downs until he was certain he’d miss supper, and the excruciating task of making idle conversation with his sister and cousin while their eyes silently reproached him for the scene that had passed in the library.
He knew that Hilary could perceive his aversion to her son. His own godson. But by God, he had not yet seen the boy when he agreed to stand at his christening.
When he did, his hands had shaken through the baptism. It had taken him days to recover.
It was the hair. That otherworldly de Galascon hair—a relic from his mother’s ancient Viking forebears that still graced each generation, the way other families were prone to myopia, or twins. Hair as startling as freshly poured cream in childhood that faded to a silvery blond with age. Given the chance.
The valet—a man employed at the insistence of his sister and who mostly served to annoy him—was hovering in his bedchamber, fussing with a pile of cravats.
“Would you like a tray sent up from the kitchen, Your Grace?” the man asked.
“No, thank you, Winston.” He had no appetite.
“Shall I help you out of your wet—”
“No. I have no need of anything further. Good night.” The man bowed and withdrew.
Archer waited until he heard the door shut before he peeled off his icy clothes. He did not keep a valet in London. He did not allow servants to see his naked flesh. The marks along his back and shoulders were not easily explained, and he had no wish to make himself the subject of gossip.
Gossip had been the province of his father.
He inspected himself in the looking glass. His otherwise hale body still bore the marks of the years when he had spent most nights on Charlotte Street. He rubbed one silver trail of raised skin along his shoulder. He had been so careless at the start, forbidding Elena to stop until he bled. There had been little pleasure in it then—only pain he craved like opium, for it pushed the sickly fog back down into his gut.
Exorcised the memory of how he’d failed them.
Allowed him to bloody well get on with the endless miserable business of being still, interminably, alive.
The joy, the rapture—that had come later. The more he shaped himself into a man who would not fail again, the more vital the release became. He no longer craved the pain itself so much as the abandonment, the feeling of her power over him, the floor beneath his fingers. What had begun as penance had become a sacrament. He was grateful for it. It had saved him. It had taught him who he was.
But he still regretted the scars.
Outside the haven of Charlotte Street, where tastes such as his were understood, the scars marked him as the sordid son of a sordid father. The latest depraved Westmead in the long and brutish line of them, their taste for violence passed down with the seed.
That he did not hurt anyone would not excuse his tastes in the eyes of those who would judge him. It would only make him doubly damned: weak, in addition to debased.
He tried to imagine Miss Bastian taking in the sight of him on her wedding night. She’d run out screaming, no doubt. Well, easy enough to perform the act clothed. And no need to repeat it once he was sure of conception.
Assuming, of course, that he was still able to muster the enthusiasm to perform the act at all. He’d sealed off that part of himself so many years ago that, until he’d found himself kissing Poppy Cavendish, he’d forgotten what it felt like to even want it.