Captain Durant's Countess(45)

“He certainly thinks he is. Let’s hope his offspring make him worth the price I paid.”

Maris pointed to the curtained interior window at the end of the stalls. “Is that your office?”

Reyn nodded. He hadn’t planned on showing her the room. His organizational methods left a good deal to be desired. But he wasn’t quick enough to stop her from opening the door and peering inside.

It was the one place that wasn’t gleaming. Tradesmen’s bills were crumpled in a wooden trug, the pasteboard diaries on each horse strewn across the battered desk.

Maris picked one up in her black-gloved hand. Mother of God.

He watched her face as she turned the pages.

“Is this in some sort of code to confuse your competitors?”

She had given him the perfect out, but Reyn knew he couldn’t lie to her. Wouldn’t. He was a man of honor, despite his recent foray into various sins.

A possible marriage to Maris had been a beautiful, impossible dream while it lasted. It was time for him to wake up. Confess. What had he been thinking of to offer her a life with a man such as he? His proposal had been unplanned, reckless as usual. She was far above him and always would be no matter how well he established himself in his business.

“No, Maris, though I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.” He took a deep breath, wondering how he would sound as he admitted his greatest fault. “I cannot read well. I write worse. All the schoolmasters’ beatings in the world did not help. You see the result in your hands.”

Her brown eyes never left his. Give her credit for more bravery than he was feeling at the moment.

Even his voice cracked a little as it had in his youth. Reyn gave her a twisted smile. “I’ve managed to get by so far on my good looks and charm, but you have found me out at last. I can barely understand my own notations some days. Now you see how hopeless it was for your husband to hire me to catalog the contents of Kelby Hall.”

“He didn’t hire you for that,” she said softly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I? I thought it enough to tell you I’m no scholar. No one knows my limitations, not even Ginny. She thinks I’m just lazy. Sometimes when I concentrate I can make out the gist of what I’m reading. I’ve got a good memory, thank God. If I hear something, it gets filed away. But as a lad, I didn’t sit still long enough to listen to much of anything.”

Reyn had trouble standing still, waiting for Maris to give her excuses and leave before partaking of Ginny’s eagerly planned supper. He heard the pulse sing in his ears, felt his heart race, and fought against the urge to flee from his office. From his life. He had been a fool to think he could cobble together some kind of order to his existence. Find a measure of happiness. He wasn’t worthy. His tenuous familial link to the ton was far overshadowed by his bad blood.

What if the child took after him, had his deficiencies? He had sentenced Maris with a problem that could not be solved. Reyn should never, ever have agreed to the absurd proposition, but it was much too late for regret.

She held the open ledger, her trembling hand revealing the impact of his words. He wished he could think of something comforting to say, but the truth was he was doomed and any child of his might be as well.

“You should have said something. If not to Henry, then to me.”

“I know. I was a coward. And you were so lovely I did not want to leave. If the child is afflicted, I can take it and spare you my parents’ misery.”

“You will not!” Maris was fairly thunderous, her brows every bit as frightening as a Durant’s. “There will be no way of knowing for years if the child has difficulties. Was your father—”

“Normal? Oh yes. Even if he was a gamester. He didn’t lose because he couldn’t read the numbers on his cards, he was just damned unlucky and didn’t have the wit to stop. I have no trouble there myself. Numbers are a bit easier for me to manage than letters. And the printed page is much clearer than someone’s handwriting.”

Her eyes widened. “You didn’t read all those desperate letters I wrote because you couldn’t.”

Reyn felt himself flush, “Guilty as charged. I hoped you’d stop writing once your husband informed you I’d changed my mind. And I had. I didn’t want to abandon a child, especially one who might need my help, what little I can provide.”

Maris sank onto his wooden desk chair. “Oh.”

“I’ve done a terrible, unforgiveable thing to you. The next Earl of Kelby may be as stupid as I am.”

“You truly are stupid.”

“I’ve told you I am sorry—”

“Do shut up, Reyn! No one knows what the future may hold for any of us. I could go blind tomorrow and then what would my ability to read matter? You have other skills, qualities that have served you well enough. You’ve made the best of a bad situation. To think you were beaten for what was not your fault. It is horrifying. Look here. See this d? Clearly you mean for it to be a b.”

Reyn stared at the line to which she pointed. “Isn’t it?”

“Is that how you see it?”

Reyn squinted, feeling the beginning of a headache take root. “Aye, I suppose.”

“Reading for you must be like looking into a fun house mirror. Nothing is as it appears to the rest of us.” She dropped the book and seized his hands, forcing his thumbs up and squeezing his fingers into the palm of his hand. “Look there. My governess Miss Holley taught me this trick when I was just a little girl. Jane had problems just as you do when she first learned to write, but she grew out of them. Your left hand makes a lower-case b.” She traced the curve of one letter, then the next. “The right is a d. Do you see it?”

Reyn examined his hands. He did! “How peculiar.”

“Isn’t it? There must be any number of tricks you can learn to help you. Miss Holley is still at a cottage on Kelby Hall’s grounds, retired of course. I bet she would love to help you. I can invite her to come and stay with me. No one would think it odd that I long for my old governess at this time.”

“Teach me at my age? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s never too late to learn. I admire you for coping as well as you have, but surely there’s room for improvement.”

Reyn had been expecting rejection. Contempt. Pity. He had never imagined the Countess of Kelby would be looking up at him with such earnest encouragement when he had done nothing but lie to her. “I—”

“Don’t you dare say you can’t. Or you won’t. What have you got to lose, but an hour or two a day with a sweet old woman who would love to feel useful again? I might even be able to help you as well.”

Dear God. He still had some pride left, and would never want Maris to know his shame and frustration. He would go mad sitting in his seat poring over a pile of children’s primers. They didn’t take the first time. Why should it be any different now? He was nine and twenty, halfway to being thirty, far beyond anyone’s help. Reyn had an absurd image of himself crammed into a child’s desk, his knees splintering the wood. “I’ll think about it.” He just had, and it would not suit.

“You’ll do more than that if you know what’s good for you.”

He looked up from his clenched hands. Well, there was the Countess of Kelby he’d met so many months ago at the Reining Monarchs Society. It was too bad he could not summon the care-for-nothing man he’d been.

For he cared too much, and it might be his undoing.





Chapter 26


Reyn was stewing. There was no other word for his deportment as he scowled and growled across the table during Ginny’s elaborately correct meal. Once he’d crossed Merrywood’s threshold, he’d been elaborately correct himself, giving no indication that he was acquainted with Maris beyond their recent civilities. Certainly giving no indication that she knew his sad, dark secret.

But as the conversation continued amongst the women, his silence was a living thing, and the occasional grunts breaking it did nothing to make Maris more comfortable. He’d made no effort to exert his usual boyish charm, staring at his slab of roast beef as if it might rise up and bite him. Any questions Maris had posed to him about his hopes for his stud farm were met with brief syllables. Ginny was becoming increasingly embarrassed by her brother’s rudeness, and it was with relief that the ladies withdrew to the cheerful front parlor.

Poor Ginny. Her beau had been unable to come to dinner due to a parish emergency, and her brother was being a boor. She put on a smile and passed Maris a cup of India tea from a gleaming but dented silver tea service.

Maris accepted her cup of tea, wishing the tea leaves would tell her where she’d gone wrong with Reyn. She had shown no horror or disgust when he’d confessed his shortcomings, had truly not even thought what his problem might mean for their child. Now that he’d put the idea into her head, however, it tumbled around with ominous insistence. Could such a trait be passed on, like the family nose or a tendency to baldness?