Page 8 of Nice Earls Do

Despite the obvious teasing, he was offering her an avenue of escape, and she seized it. “I’m not really much use to you up here anyway.”

Oliver didn’t disagree. But when she stepped to the door, he called after her. “Mind you don’t tell him all Mrs. Goode’s secrets.”

Tell...him? Did Oliver imagine she was going to seek out Kit?

She spun back to face him, to chide him, to correct him. Silhouetted by the window behind him, Oliver’s posture was that of a confident young man. But in his voice, she’d heard the echoes of the unsure, misunderstood boy he had once been. Don’t tell...

She’d kept his secrets even from his father, her husband.

What could be more difficult than that?

She nodded solemnly. “You have my word.”

Certain that Kit would have returned to his study, she directed her steps in quite another direction, toward the floor they’d skipped entirely in their earlier tour of the house and on which she assumed, by process of elimination, she would find the guest chambers. She wasn’t tired—or carriage sick—but it was somewhere to go, somewhere she could be alone to think. Surely after she’d freshened up, she would feel more herself.

She’d expected to be guided by the bustle of servants. What she found was a corridor of closed doors, save one. All was dim, quiet. Perhaps she’d mistaken her way. Curious, she followed the light coming from the solitary open door.

What lay beyond it was not, as she’d expected, another corridor, or a stairwell, or even a bedchamber, but a large sitting room. Too large to be called cozy, despite the fire in the hearth. Its crackle was inviting, though its warmth stood little chance of penetrating the high-ceilinged room. Half a dozen tall windows ought to have made the space bright and airy, but whoever had decorated the room had framed them in draperies they’d probably called tobacco or chocolate or bronze. In Tabetha’s vocabulary, they were merely brown.

Kit was sprawled in a chair before the fireplace, holding a book but not reading it; with his other hand, he twirled a pair of spectacles by one earpiece, and his gaze was focused on the dancing flames.

She really should leave him to ruminate in peace.

Squaring her shoulders, she crossed the threshold.

At the sound of her steps, Kit scrambled to his feet, tossed the spectacles aside, and dropped the book onto the chair’s seat. “Beth! I didn’t expect—come in! Please, join me.” She followed his gaze to a tea tray on a nearby table. “Or perhaps you’ve already...?”

Tabetha shook her head.

“No, no—of course. When Mrs. Rushworth brought this, I asked her to send a tray to the nursery as well. But there hasn’t been time. Let me ring for another cup, then, or—or better yet, you take this one.” He picked up the lone saucer and held it out to her as she sat down on the chair across from his—a chair in which, she gathered by its unforgiving frame, no one had ever sprawled. “I haven’t touched it. You’ll want to add your lumps.”

Their fingertips could not help but brush as she accepted the cup of tea from him. “You—”

His eyes were searching hers.

“You still remember that I like my tea sweet?”

Something flashed across his face too quickly to name; a moment more and she would have been tempted to call it yearning. It was whisked away by a self-deprecating laugh. “Oh, I—wouldn’t that be odd if I did, after all this time?” He turned to reach for the sugar bowl, then proffered it to her. “But most people take sugar, don’t they?”

“I suppose so.” How silly of her to be disappointed by his explanation, or to fancy she’d glimpsed something significant in his expression. She took up the tongs and dropped in more lumps than was wise.

After returning the bowl to the tea tray, he sat down again. Then, grimacing, he fished beneath himself for the forgotten book.

She disguised her smile by taking a sip of tea, which was still surprisingly hot. “What were you reading?”

He turned the book this way and that in the firelight, as if searching for the answer to her question, before giving up and balancing the volume on one knee. His well-worn buckskin breeches revealed legs just as tautly muscled as she remembered. Evidently, he was still a horseman. “It’s a travelogue about Sicily. I was imagining the children playing in front of a cozy cottage, surrounded by blue: the perpetually sunny skies, the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean.” Again, the ghost of a wry smile turned up the corners of his mouth; his gaze was far away. “For all his failings, Edmund would’ve been the sort of father children adore, don’t you think?” The smile flattened, then gradually curved downward as he went on. “It’s a small sort of blessing, I suppose, that they’re so young. In time, the memories will fade.... They’ll forget their mother’s smile, Edmund’s laugh. They’ll forget the home they had to give up to come”—he glanced despairingly, disparagingly around the room before settling his pained gaze on her—“here.”

“Ferncliffe is magnificent,” she tried to reassure him.

He tossed the book onto the table beside the previously discarded spectacles. “It’s a mausoleum.”

Would Ferncliffe’s somber grandeur feel oppressive to two small children? Perhaps, she thought, looking about her again. Still, she was certain Kit had not been worrying himself over the appearance of the house. Rather, the seriousness of the charge of serving as a surrogate father to his niece and nephew had shaken his confidence. In all the years she had known him, he had never once shirked his responsibilities. But, of course, that did not mean he had always been eager or felt ready to bear them.

And then Kit said, “It’s my fault he’s gone.”

Words caught in her throat, and it was a moment before she managed to stutter out, “H-how can you say such a thing?”

“I drove him away. I had all I could do to support Mama as her health declined, and he’d been flitting from one thing to another for years, always with his hand out. The church was his first choice, he claimed, though I think we both knew it was incompatible with his character. And then he was sure he’d prefer the law, like his brother. Soon enough, he came to tell me that the law didn’t really suit him either, all that time locked away with dusty old books, and couldn’t I help him to something that let him see the sun from time to time? So I—” Kit’s fingers had been nestled together before him, his elbows resting on his knees. She watched his grip tighten, his knuckles whiten. “I agreed to purchase a commission for him—but that would be it, I vowed. I told him he was a grown man, and I washed my hands of responsibility for him.”