No promises, she’d reminded herself again and again, until her heart stopped aching. They had made no promises to each other. They had spent one heady month, hand in hand as they walked. Kissed once, tentatively, under the ash boughs. Or rather, Alice amended now, she had been shy and tentative. Gareth had been much as he ever was: strong, assertive, that current of impatience roiling just beneath his surface.
Now Alice stopped halfway between the window and her bed. She tilted the dressing-table mirror until she could see herself, a bit shadowed in the firelight, but clear enough. She reached out one hand, traced the reflection of her cheek with a fingertip. She wondered if he thought her very changed. Of course he did. She was changed. My lovely elf, he’d called her as he’d kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, her lips. Then, more gruffly, Run home now, elf. This is no place for the likes of you. Or, Alice thought might have been unspoken, for the likes of him.
Perhaps while he was holding her he’d already really been gone, his insatiable mind out in the world. Perhaps there had been no future in his kiss after all, only a goodbye.
And now it didn’t matter. Tipping the mirror away again, Alice slipped out of her dressing gown and into bed. She needed to sleep. There was so much to do to prepare for Christmas, for the baby. Gareth would stay until the birth, until he knew whether he would be the Earl of Kilcullen or remain the Honorable Gareth Blackwell. Either way, he would probably be gone again within a sennight.
Remember, find charity in your heart, cailín.
Forgive me, Alice.
Our characters are formed long before we have the will or ability to forge them.
Well, that was it, then. She was the pliant, reliable Alice Ashe; he was the wild, roving Gareth Blackwell. He had come home and she was going to be as welcoming as she could be. Even if she went mad in the process.
3
It was past ten when Gareth wandered downstairs the following morning. He remembered Alice’s stern announcement regarding breakfast, but was hopeful nonetheless. Damned if he knew why, but Ireland made him hungry. He wanted something to eat. Then he intended to find Alice.
The sunny east parlor where his mother had always breakfasted was empty. So was the small family dining room. As he wandered through the downstairs rooms, Gareth tried to conjure up happy memories. He must have run through the portrait hall, clattering a stick along the panels, ridden a hobby-horse through the drawing room’s sliding doors and into the music room. Odd. All he could recall was leaving the house: skidding along the marble foyer floor before launching himself down the front stairs, rattling the glass panes in the library’s French door in his impatience to get to the lawns that sloped away from the house. Climbing the ivy outside his window. Up to the roof to see the stars. Down to the gardens to meet Alice.
The sun had been shining the day he left, a summer sun in the middle of autumn, sparking quartz lights in the drive’s gravel. He’d spurred his horse into a canter, a full gallop as they passed under the canopy of ancient elms lining the exit from the estate. He’d had London in mind. He hadn’t looked back.
From the drawing room, Gareth stalked into the foyer. The front door was open; a stream of servants bustled in and out, carrying holly and pine boughs. Gareth breathed in the scent of Christmas and crisp December air. Footmen bowed and swept out of his way as he approached the door. He stopped on the stone steps. He had arrived in the dark. Now, in the morning, the gravel drive stretched out before him, a wide, bright ribbon arcing away toward Kilcullen village. Dublin would be beyond that, London beyond that. One step would take him out the door, a few more to turn east . . .
He took another deep breath, then returned to the house. Maybe he would find something to eat in the formal dining room. Arthur had always been a formal creature, had taken absurd pleasure in sitting in their father’s massive carved chair at the table. It would have been just like him to have all his meals served on the twenty-foot expanse. Even as a boy, Arthur had taken his future as lord of the manor very seriously. Gareth found himself smiling at the memory of the two of them seated at opposite ends, only their eyes showing above the snowy cloth. It was one of his few childhood memories where he’d been sitting still. He had even fewer memories of playing with his brother.
Arthur, as the heir, had rarely been home. Ironic, really. It had been Gareth, the spare, not considered important enough to send away to school, who had known the estate best. He’d certainly covered every inch of it on foot or on horseback. He had been desperate for adventure. Ultimately he’d created it: imaginary pirates in the waters of the big pond, highwaymen on the dirt roads, dragons among the old stone circle in the meadow.