Captivated By Her Convenient Husband. Bronwyn Scott

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СКАЧАТЬ too. If I could ask you a few questions?’

      ‘I’m not sure I like being a specimen under a microscope or an object of study.’ He did not want to answer any questions. He felt ridiculously vulnerable standing here in the garden with Ferris, his brother’s assertions stripping him bare.

      ‘Not an object, Fortis. A man. I don’t want to study you. I want to help you, if you need it and if you’ll allow it. Cam’s report suggested...’

      ‘Damn Cam’s report. Thanks to that blasted paper, you’ve already decided I do need help. You’re all convinced I’m on the verge of craziness.’ Fortis gestured towards the house, anger acting as his best defence. ‘That’s what all of you were thinking in there, too afraid to ask your questions because of what I might say. It’s far safer to not ask, isn’t it? Then everyone can pretend I’m all right.’ A dark thought welled up from deep inside him. Perhaps he was the one pretending he was all right when a part of him knew he hadn’t been all right, not for a long time, not for months, well before he’d walked out of the forest. It was something he wanted to keep to himself like his confusion. But his brother had seen his failings so easily. Did the rest of them? Did Avaline?

      ‘I am asking now.’ Ferris folded his arms across his chest, the quiet steel in his voice issuing his challenge. His brother was daring him to tell the truth. ‘Do you have dreams? Nightmares? Trouble sleeping? Periods where you lose track of time, where your mind wanders or where you juxtapose reality with a remembrance and your mind thinks you’re there, reliving it, instead of in the present?’

      ‘I might have dreams on occasion.’ Fortis shook his head. Ferris looked as if he wanted to press for more detail, his physician’s mind hungry for information, but this was all he was willing to offer today. He didn’t want to confess to dreams that left him waking in a sweat, wrapped in a sense of foreboding with nothing to cling to but vague images he could not call into focus, dreams in which he watched himself from other points of view, or wasn’t even himself but some other nameless person. Perhaps he’d admit to those dreams if he could remember them. Perhaps it was best he didn’t remember them. Maybe he should be thankful he couldn’t. Maybe his mind was protecting him.

      Ferris nodded, something in his brother’s face easing. There would be no more interrogation today. Ferris clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Well, if you do have such dreams or experiences, I want you to know not to fear them or feel you have to hide them, not from me. They’re normal for men who’ve been in your position. They’re nothing to be ashamed of. You can come to me, Fortis. I can help and I can listen.’ Ferris paused, searching for the right words. ‘Sometimes there are things a man may not want to tell his wife, but he can always tell his brother.’

      ‘Married less than a year and already you have secrets from Anne?’ Fortis teased. It was easier than being serious, easier than having Ferris examine his soul.

      Ferris smiled wryly and said frankly, ‘No, I am afraid Anne knows all my transgressions to date. She’s seen me at my worst, in the dark of night after I’ve lost a young patient for no good reason except poor living conditions society chose not to rectify.’ Bitterness flashed in Ferris’s eyes for just a moment.

      ‘Then we are both soldiers of a sort,’ Fortis offered in sombre comfort. ‘I appreciate you telling me that.’

      Ferris nodded. ‘That’s what brothers are for.’ He gestured towards the French doors. ‘We should go back in. Helena will want to be getting home to the boys.’

      Inside, everyone was calling for coats and carriages, the flurry of activity making the drawing room into a scene of warm, familial chaos, a scene that was almost normal as husbands helped wives into autumn wraps until the Duke looked about the room, his eyes landing on Fortis with enough fatherly force to silence the chatter. ‘You three...’ He gestured to his grown sons and something inside of Fortis froze. ‘Stand together over there in front of the fireplace.’

      The three of them did as they were told, never mind Frederick was thirty-eight and a father of five, or that Ferris was thirty-five and a physician, or that he was thirty-two and a soldier who’d returned from the grave. Apparently, a man was never too old to obey his father. His father. Something warm and unlooked for blossomed in Fortis’s stomach, melting away the ice. He’d not thought of his father for a long time. Father. The concept made his eyes sting.

      The tall, white-haired Duke of Cowden stared hard at the sight before him, perhaps seeing the physical differences in him that Ferris had noted. Perhaps his father saw not only the length of his hair in contrast to Frederick’s and Ferris’s shorter lengths, but the hue of it, too. His was a walnut brown while theirs was a dark chestnut. Still nuts, though, Fortis thought to himself. Perhaps he saw, too, that Fortis was more muscled in build than the lean handsomeness of his brothers, another consequence of war and constant activity. Did his father see the brokenness inside as well? Fortis found himself standing taller as if such an action could hide whatever deficiencies he possessed inside.

      Whatever the Duke saw or didn’t see in his sons, there was mist in his eyes, too, as his gaze lingered on each of his tall, handsome, dark-haired sons in turn. ‘I never thought to have all three of my sons under the same roof again. What a blessing this is. I shall never take the sight of it for granted.’ He gestured to the ladies. ‘Wives, join your husbands, I want to see my family altogether.’ He smiled. ‘If only the boys were here, Helena.’

      Helena laughed as the women came to stand with them. ‘Then we’d all be herding cats. They’d never stand still.’

      Avaline stood beside him, but he noticed how careful she was to leave a little space between them, not like Anne and Helena who had taken their husbands’ hands. Except for carrying her into the supper room last night, Fortis had not touched her. He had sensed a reticence, an uncertainty in her. It was to be expected. They hardly knew each other. Was she wondering even now how one should behave with a husband one hadn’t seen in seven years? And yet a part of him yearned for her to slip her hand into his as Helena had done with Frederick, to look on him with the warmth Anne looked upon Ferris when he’d re-entered the room after only being gone a few minutes. He needed to be patient with Avaline as Ferris and his family was being patient with him. What was it Frederick had said earlier? They were all changed?

      There were hugs and farewells in the hall, the women exchanging plans to meet for sewing together the following week. Frederick embraced him. ‘We’ll talk about the estate soon, eh? Once you’ve got your boots on the ground here.’ With a last surge of noise and well wishes, his family departed.

      Avaline closed the door behind them and turned to face him. She smiled too brightly as she stood in the wide, now-empty entrance hall of Blandford Hall. Their home. Just the two of them, a fact emphasised by the overwhelming silence surrounding them. They were alone for the first time that counted. They’d been alone last night, but there’d been the excuse of the late hour, the need to sleep and the promise of talking tomorrow to smooth over the immediate awkwardness of surprise and shock. Now tomorrow was here and there was no more family to hide behind. Here they were, Lord and Lady Fortis Tresham. Husband and wife. In broad daylight, a seven-year chasm gaping between them. ‘That went well,’ Avaline said.

      ‘I thought the last bit was odd.’ And touching.

      Avaline’s bright smile softened, making her even more beautiful. ‘The loss of you aged your father greatly. You cannot imagine what having you back means to your parents, especially His Grace. I think one reaches a certain age where one comes to grips with their own mortality, but never the mortality of a child. To lose you was for your father to lose part of his immortality.’ She blushed and looked away. ‘You’re staring.’

      Damn СКАЧАТЬ