Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(97)

Her blessings were many indeed. Someone from Harry’s battalion had needed to come back to England for a month or so to select recruits from the second battalion and train them rigorously for battle before taking them out to the Peninsula to bring the first battalion up to full strength again. He had volunteered for the unpopular task so he could attend his mother’s wedding. The letter in which she had informed him that there was to be no wedding after all had not reached him before he sailed for England. The armies moved about a great deal within Portugal and Spain. Often the mailbags were redirected several times over before they were delivered into the correct hands.

Viola was very glad that letter had not arrived. Harry looked healthier and more robust than he had looked several months ago when he had insisted upon going back earlier than he ought after recovering from his injuries. He was also leaner than he had been and . . . harder. There was something about his eyes, the set of his jaw, his very upright military bearing . . . It was impossible to put it quite into words. He had matured, her son, from the carefree, rather wild young man he had been at the age of twenty before his world collapsed along with hers and Camille’s and Abigail’s. He was a man now, still energetic and cheerful and full of laughter—with that suggestion of hardness lurking beneath it all.

But he was here, and she felt it would be impossible to be happier than she was right now. After Christmas, when she went back home, she would carry this feeling with her. She would make her happiness out of her family, though they would be dispersed over much of England. Not too far for letters, however, and she liked writing letters.

“Now who can be coming?” Matilda asked, and they all stopped what they were doing to listen. There were the unmistakable sounds of horses and a carriage drawing up outside the front doors. “Are you expecting anyone else, Wren?”

“No,” Wren said. “Perhaps one of the neighbors?”

But it would be a strange time for a neighbor to come calling uninvited.

“I shall go down and see,” Alexander said.

He was gone for several minutes. When he returned, they all looked at him inquiringly. There was no one with him.

“Harry,” he said. “Can I trouble you for a moment?”

“Me?” Harry jumped to his feet and strode toward the door. Alexander ushered him through it and closed it from the other side. The rest of them were left none the wiser about the identity or errand of the caller.

“If there is something I cannot abide,” Louise, Dowager Duchess of Netherby, said when neither man had reappeared after a few minutes, “it is a mystery. Can it be army business? Whatever can Harry do to help?”

At least ten more minutes passed before the door opened again. It was Harry this time, looking every inch the hardened military officer.

“Mama?” he said, and beckoned her.

“Well,” Mildred was saying as Viola left the room. “Is this some new sort of party game? Are we all to be summoned, one at a time?”

Viola stepped outside and Harry closed the door.

“The Marquess of Dorchester wishes to speak with you in the library,” he said. “If you wish to speak to him, that is. If you do not, I shall go and tell him so. I have made it quite clear to him that I will not allow you to be harassed.”

She stared at him in the flickering candlelight of one of the wall sconces.

“Marcel?” she said. “He is here?”

“But not for much longer if you do not want to see him,” he said. “I shall show him the door, and if he is reluctant to move through it, I will help him on his way.”

“He is here?” she said again.

He frowned. “You are not about to faint, are you, Mama?” he asked. “Do you want to see him?”

The reality of it was just striking her. He was here, at Brambledean. In the library.

“Yes,” she said. “Perhaps I ought.”

He was still frowning. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I will not have you upset, Mama. Not at Christmas. Not at any time, actually.”

“He is here,” she said. She did not phrase it as a question this time.

“Good God,” he said, “do you care for him, Mama? He looks like the very devil.”

“I want to see him, Harry,” she said.

He was here. He had come.

But why?

She went downstairs on her son’s arm and waited while a footman opened the library door. She slipped her arm from Harry’s and stepped inside.

And, oh, she could see what Harry had meant when he told her he looked like the very devil. His face was surely thinner than it had been, and harsher. He was wearing his many-caped greatcoat—she never had counted the capes—and looked large and menacing with the light of the fire behind him, his hands at his back. His eyes, dark and hooded, met hers.

“Marcel,” she said.

“Viola.” He made her a stiff half bow.



* * *



? ? ?

Marcel had been feeling savage—a not unfamiliar feeling whenever Viola was concerned. This was not something he ought to be doing. It was not something he wanted to be doing. He had never enjoyed making an ass of himself, and to do it deliberately, as he was doing now, was insanity.

Good God, that puppy had treated him as though he were a worm he would squash beneath his foot at the slightest encouragement. And Riverdale had stood just inside the door, as he was still doing now, hard faced and silent, like a damned jailer.