The Wallflower's Mistletoe Wedding. Amanda McCabe
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the switches would come out.’ The switches so often came out with their father, especially after their mother died. ‘But it was always worth it to visit Barton Park.’
‘Wasn’t it, though? Like a different world.’
Harry nodded. A different world. He thought of Miss Parker’s tales of searching for lost Royalist treasures there at Barton and wondered why they had never crossed paths as children. What would it have been like if they had?
‘La belle Helen was in fine looks tonight,’ Charles said. ‘If only we had a thousand ships that needed to be launched...’
Harry frowned at the reminder of Helen and her elegant face flashed in his mind, erasing Miss Parker’s gentle smile. The weight of expectation, the weight of what had been and what was expected in the future, fell once again. ‘Helen has always been lovely.’
‘Did Miss Lily Parker’s sweet little engagement not inspire you, Harry? No ring for Helen’s pretty finger yet?’
Harry wasn’t sure he liked something in Charles’s tone, something dark and hard beneath his smile. ‘Helen knows this is no time for an engagement. I am to re-join my regiment soon and I would not tie her down to someone like myself.’
‘You may think that, but does she? The betting books in the London clubs were full of speculation about when she would snap you into the parson’s mousetrap. Everyone’s expected it since we were children.’
Harry frowned as he stared out the window, at the summer moon shining on the silent hedgerows. ‘You have picked up some ridiculous slang in those clubs of yours, Charlie.’
‘Well, a man has to find distractions, you know. Hilltop Grange is not exactly a haven of merriment. And everyone says you and Helen were made for each other. Any man would give his right arm to be in your position.’
Something in his brother’s voice caught Harry’s strict attention, something sharp and jagged that was quite unlike Charles. He swung around to face him, but Charles’s face was hidden in the shadows.
‘Made for each other?’ Harry said. Perhaps it was so—they had been friends for so long, bound by the long ties of their families, by their mothers’ wishes. He had thought of her when he was gone, dreamed of her, carried her miniature with him to inspire him. She was like a dream, just as all that green English quiet had been a reason to come home.
And by Jove but she was beautiful. The most beautiful lady in London, just as all those silly, betting-book dandies declared. For some reason, though, she seemed to prefer Harry to all those other men, at least for now.
But would Helen ever like that farm life he so envisioned? The quiet evenings, the small community? He was not at all sure. Perhaps that was what really held him back now.
Again he saw Miss Parker’s sweet smile, felt her gentle touch on his hand, but he pushed such thoughts away.
‘She agrees we should wait until I can resign my commission and we can see what happens next,’ he said.
Charles shook his head, frowning. ‘You should be careful, then, Harry. While you are gone on your adventures, someone else could easily pluck up such a prize. They do say that the Duke of Hamley, now that his time of mourning is at an end, seeks a new duchess.’
Harry laughed. Duchess—now there was a role that would suit Helen well. ‘No one would make a better duchess than Helen.’
Charles was silent for a long, tense moment. ‘I would never have taken you for a fool, Harry.’
Before Harry could answer, their carriage turned through the gates of Hilltop Grange and jolted up the winding old drive, past the overgrown forest that had once been a manicured garden under the careful eye of their mother.
Now, Hilltop looked nothing like the golden welcome of Barton Park, which had seemed to float above the night like a cloud of light. Hilltop had no light at all, save the glow of one lamp in the window of the library. Harry knew that once daylight came, the overgrown ivy on the grey stone walls, the crumbling chimneys, the covered windows, would all be too apparent. He felt again that deep pang of sadness, of guilt for following a different duty.
But that one light meant their father was still awake, or more likely fallen asleep next to his empty brandy bottle. He seldom left the library now.
‘Our great inheritance,’ Charles said, his tone quiet and bitter.
Harry gave a grim nod. ‘I am sorry, Charles. I should have been here all along.’
Charles glanced at him, his expression startled. ‘Oh, no, Harry, never. You are doing what you have to—your duty to King and Country as you are called to do. No one has been more dutiful than you, ever since we were children.’
He thought again of what their home had once been, what it was now. ‘I don’t know about that.’
‘Well, I do. Whatever I face here with Father is as nothing compared to whatever you have faced all these years. Besides, I’m seldom here at Hilltop at all these days.’ He grinned and that strange, solemn, thoughtful Charles vanished. The rakish, fun-loving young man everyone knew was back. ‘London is much more diverting. Why would a man ever live anywhere else?’
‘Diverting—and expensive,’ Harry muttered, but he couldn’t help laughing at Charles’s devil-may-care smile. It was always thus with his younger brother, their mother’s golden boy. While Charles was the fun one, Harry had indeed always been the responsible one. The quiet one.
Charles shrugged. ‘What else can one do? I would be wretched in the army, worse than useless. The church would never have me.’
‘What of your painting?’ he asked, remembering the rare talent Charles once possessed with a brush, the way he could capture the mood of a landscape in a few deft strokes of paint.
Charles laughed. ‘A boy’s diversion. Not fit for a grown man, y’know.’
‘According to who? Our father?’ Harry asked quietly.
Rather than answer, Charles pushed open the carriage door as soon as they came to a full halt and jumped down. Harry followed him up the shallow stone steps into the echoing hall of Hilltop Grange. In the shadows, the portraits of their ancestors, including their golden-haired mother, watched them in silence. In the rooms beyond, the furniture was shrouded in canvas covers, like ghosts. Their mother’s cherished pianoforte was silent.
For just an instant, Harry had such a different vision of the house, light gleaming on polished wood. The warmth of the fire, the scent of flowers from the gardens, the rush of small feet down the stairs, music. But the lady who turned from the keyboard to welcome him with a smile—her eyes were the sweet, soft hazel of Rose Parker.
‘Father, wake up!’ Charles shouted, banging on the library door with his fist. The dream was shattered, like the dust of Hilltop itself.
Winter, three years later
‘Jouissons dans nos asiles, jouissons de biens tranquilles! Ah, peut-on être heureux, quand on forme d’autres vouex?’
‘That’s quite enough!’ Aunt Sylvia shouted from her armchair near the fire, where she was swathed in shawls and a fur blanket. Her three lapdogs shifted and barked. ‘What a wretched song by that horrid Rameau. Why would you play such a thing?’
Rose sighed and rested her wrists on the edge of the keyboard as the last notes died away in the overheated drawing room of Aunt Sylvia’s vast house. She would have laughed if she wasn’t quite so tired. She removed her spectacles and rubbed at her eyes. In her years of working as Aunt Sylvia’s companion, she had come to learn no moment was predictable. A favourite food one day, which had to be ordered from London and fetched from the village shop, a two-mile walk, by Rose every day, would not be wanted once it arrived. An expensive pelisse would be dismissed