dear, that terrible, terrible ordeal, those headaches you suffered so stoically. But we noticed—how could we not? You returned to us hardly the same sweet boy we remembered, and it broke our hearts. And it only became more unbearable when you finally confided in Basil and me about the earl and his son. I didn’t tell you, but I was in London and found myself attending a rout in the son’s honor, where his father beamed and strutted about with his pouter pigeon chest puffed up, as if the silly award had been strung around his neck. Basil would have been so upset to see him. Entirely too full of himself, the earl, and always has been. Have you met him?”
Gabriel had certainly seen the man on his few short visits to London since his return from the war, but he’d never approached him. What was he supposed to do—call him out for the rotter he was, challenge a much older man to a duel? If there was a revenge to be gotten, a justice to be served, it wouldn’t be on the dueling field.
“No,” he said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, “I’ve never had the pleasure.”
“Pleasure has very little to do with Henry Neville. He was always quite mean to Basil, ever since their school days together, always finding reasons to poke fun at him. Not that he’s kind to anyone who isn’t of some purpose to him, but poor Basil has always been, I suppose, such a ready target. I recall when Broxley dubbed him Sinclair the Slowtop when my poor dear misnamed one of the sights we saw in Athens. He corrected him quite meanly, and then put forth the question that, if Basil could not even remember where he’d been, why did he keep going places? Your uncle has never set himself up as an expert, you understand. He was simply happy to share his memories of some of the interesting sights we’d seen.”
“You’ve never told me about any of this.”
The duchess dismissed Gabriel’s comment with a wave of her hand. “And what good would that have done any of us, other than to upset you? The Sinclair the Slowtop humiliation came shortly after the fourth duke died, by the way, and Basil was already showing signs of becoming fairly fragile. Fifty people must have heard the Earl of Broxley be so condescending and hurtful, so you can only imagine how quickly his words spread through the ton. Sinclair the Slowtop, Sinclair the Slowtop. Nasty—men are no more than taller nasty boys. There followed no end of jabs from others of his ilk—for weeks, Sunny, as men are so easily amused—constantly coming up to Basil to ask if he knew where he was. And remember, this was far from the first time he’d laid your uncle bare to ridicule of some sort. I was furious. There was no need for the earl to say what he did, now was there?”
“None whatsoever. The man’s clearly a rotter,” Gabriel said, his mind busy elsewhere, attempting to add Neville and Neville together to come up to some sort of coherent total. Dearest Vivien wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the tin, but she was, after all, a woman, and women’s minds could be quite dangerous once applied to investigating revenges.
The duchess sat forward on her seat.
Gabriel did the same. Clearly, they were about to get cozy and, hopefully, down to business.
Her voice lowered, she looked to her right, to her left, before whispering, “I believe I’ve hit upon a way to make us both happy.”
Good God, had they suddenly become coconspirators?
“I wasn’t aware I was unhappy,” he whispered back, holding up his hands as he ran a curious glance over his body. “Does it show?”
She sat back again, patting at her small mountain of silver curls. “Don’t attempt to fob me off with some notion that you aren’t as interested in revenge as I am, because it won’t fadge, Sunny. You or your friends, like that nice young man downstairs. You all had a dreadful time of it.”
“We might still have had a dreadful time of it if Myles had done what he was told to do. I’ve had enough time to realize that.” More than enough time, damn it all to hell. Enough time to face facts for what they are, and find sufficient room to shift some of the blame onto his own shoulders.
“Oh, piffle! That wet-behind-the-ears infant was never sent there to fight, as had been the case for you and your friends. He was there only because the war was as good as over—save for that ugliness at Waterloo—and then safely installed with the Russians, where the most egregious thing he could do would be not being able to hold his wine every night as he dined with the general. The moment he realized he could be in some danger, he ran like a rabbit back to the safety of the command, leaving you to fend for yourselves.”
“And all the troops, English and Russian, to be caught completely unprepared,” Gabriel added, beginning to relocate some of his old anger. “Go on.”
“Do bring me that shawl over there, Sunny, and drape it around my shoulders. I’m beginning to feel a chill.”
Again, Gabriel complied, probably with more haste than grace. His aunt did have a way of dragging things out until she was ready. He’d once been forced to travel a full hour of twisting verbal paths touching on a dozen topics before she got to the point of one of her stories (which was, sadly, “And then we went home.”).
She began this story with her first journey to America—lovely place, although not a patch on England—some of the sights they’d seen, including that insulting bell they call Liberty. She and Basil had stayed mostly to the coast, having heard dreadful things about the wild interior of the country (although it might have been jolly to see some of the Indians they’d heard so much about), beginning in Boston, making their way to New York—so many of their cities and towns borrowing names from us and then simply sticking the word new in front of them, as if that made them better or some such rot. Still, a lovely journey, peopled by some truly welcoming citizens, as they call themselves. Did he think that was in imitation of the French citoyen of their revolution?
“Aunt…?”
“Yes, Sunny?”
He’d made the fatal mistake, interrupting her train of thought. “Nothing. Carry on.”
“I believe I was doing that. You probably want me to talk about Virginia. That was our ultimate destination, my cousin’s humble home along the James River—so named in honor of our own James the First. There has to be no more than fifteen bedchambers, a paltry sum, but Basil and I did enjoy sitting outside of an evening, watching the river go by.”
Gabriel began counting to ten.
“And that’s where I was seated—I remember it most distinctly—when Mrs. Rutherford and her oldest daughter, Dorothea Neville, were first introduced to me. Still in the schoolroom, the child, and not very talkative. I didn’t pursue getting to know her. You know I’m not fond of cultivating children in any case, finding them singularly uninteresting and prone to be forced to recite insipid poems for their elders. But back to my visit.”
“Ah, progress.”
“Pardon me, dear?”
“She didn’t carry the same surname as her mother?” he amended quickly.
“How brilliant of you to pick up on that, Sunny. Although I must confess I didn’t pay the difference much mind until the evening Theodora and I—her mother’s name, also a unfortunate choice—had a chance for a lovely coze. Such a sad tale.”
“Miss Neville mentioned something about it over tea.”
“She did? Oh, yes, I remember. She talks much more now. How fortunate. Then I’ll make this brief.”
