He’d heard that there were seven levels of Hell, and he believed he’d visited each and every one of them since he’d bungled his answer to Alana’s quite reasonable question. Except that it hadn’t been reasonable, because she wasn’t a parson’s daughter. But she could have been. She could have been the rat catcher’s daughter, damn it. And he still would have loved her with all his heart, forever.
But there was still his mother, his sisters: Mary, the eldest, was already a full year overdue to make her Come Out. The hundreds of workers on the estate. He had a responsibility to all of them. There was love, and there was duty. Alana had asked him a reasonable yet impossible question. But he should have had an answer.
“How could I have not answered her?” he asked the room at large now. “I knew what she wanted to hear. That I’d have tossed aside my mother, my sisters, the estate—everything—for love of her. That’s what I should have said, that’s what she needed to hear.”
“So why didn’t you say it?” Valentine asked from his bed of pain (which wasn’t half so painful today, not that he’d tell anyone, or they wouldn’t continue being so nice to him). “It certainly was simple enough. ‘Yes, Alana, my dearest darling girl—I still would have married you cap over the windmill if you were poorer than a church mouse, and we would have lived together in abject yet glorious poverty as the estate crumbled all around us. Unless, of course, I’m clapped up in the Fleet for my inherited debts, at which time I would only ask that I could lower my basket down the outside wall each morning and you would fill it with whatever crusts of stale bread you might find in our humble larder.’ See? That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
“I could smother him with one of his pillows, if you’d like,” Max offered, not all that helpfully. “Tell me again, why is the woman still here? Not to mention the mother, and nobody in his right mind would wish to mention that nasty piece of work.”
“Gideon arrives late tonight from Dover,” Bailey explained, “before heading off again tomorrow morning to gather up your grandmother for the nuptials, remember? It would have seemed too much as if we—I—was afraid to have Sylvia and Alana under the same roof if we were to boost her out of here before then. At least that’s what Kate said.”
“Ah, yes, our lovable old Tartar of a grandmother,” Max said, wincing. “And we’re all certain she wants to leave London in the midst of the Season? Surely she hasn’t managed to insult everyone in the ton already.”
“Gideon’s the only one who can handle her. I didn’t even bother stopping off to say hello during the few days I was there. She asks such embarrassing questions of a person, you know,” Valentine told Bailey. “In any event, if Gideon can handle Trixie, he won’t have any trouble escorting the ladies back to Mayfair. Kate thinks like a general, you know. Very good at strategy. Maybe you should apply to her for help now, Bailey? Clearly we’re not of much use to you.”
“Not if lying to Alana is your only suggestion, no,” Max said, looking at Bailey. “Could you at least try not to look so maudlin, old fellow? You could put a man off his drink.”
“I’m sorry,” Bailey said, getting to his feet. “You’re right. I should talk to Kate. As confidants, you two are pretty worthless, you know.”
“Not as if we didn’t tell you that,” Valentine pointed out happily. “Women are by nature more devious, and much better suited to whatever it is you’re going to have to do, whatever that turns out to be. But if you fancy a hand of whist later, we’ll be here.”
Bailey thanked the brothers and went off in search of Lady Katherine, running her down in the music room, where she was attacking a tune on the pianoforte with much more enthusiasm than expertise.
“Oh, good, a reason to cut my practice short,” she said, rising from the bench at the same time she gestured toward a pair of chairs near the fireplace, inviting him to sit down. “Although I did manage to roust Miss Wise and her mother with my joyful noise, as Trixie would term it, so we shouldn’t term the thing a total loss. Where’s Alana? I had assumed you t
wo were hiding together somewhere.”
Five minutes later, Kate’s smile had completely disappeared, and her posture had stiffened somewhat, as if she might be girding her loins for battle, if Valentine’s description of his sister was to be believed. Lady Katherine was a striking woman, her tall, dark beauty quite singular in a world filled mostly by petite blonde misses of pale skin and blue eyes. But the late countess had been Spanish, and all four Redgrave offspring had been influenced in looks and spirit by that woman’s heated Iberian blood.
Not that Alana’s looks were ordinary. She might possess the coloring (and, compared with Lady Katherine, at least, the petite stature of most Englishwomen), but her sweet, loving nature shone from her like a beacon, making her more than merely beautiful.
His mind retreated from the music room, traveling back to that quite ordinary Tuesday that had somehow turned into the most glorious day of his life.
He’d gone into the book repository because it was the closest open door when London’s always precarious weather had turned wet. He’d been idly inspecting the spines of books in the Modern History section, backing his way down the narrow aisle, when he’d inadvertently stepped on the hem of someone’s gown, turned about sharply to apologize, and nearly knocked Alana off her feet.
He’d immediately dropped the book in his hands and took hold of her shoulders to steady her, prepared to apologize. But he couldn’t find the words. All he could do was look at her. She was the sun on a rainy day. She was an angel somehow come to earth.
He should have let her go. Immediately. He should have apologized, bowed and asked if he could present his compliments to her mother or whoever had accompanied her to the book repository, so that they could be formally introduced. He should have done any number of things.
Instead, still holding on to her shoulders, looking down into her huge blue eyes with his heart shining in his own, he’d said, “I’m Bailey.”
“I’m Alana,” she’d answered, demurely lowering her eyelids, but then looking up at him again through her dark lashes, at which time Bailey had felt fairly sure his legs were going numb.
It had been Fate. That’s what it had been. The rain, the book repository, all of it. Nothing planned, nothing premeditated, for God’s sake. Love wasn’t like that…and this was love. He’d known it from that first instant…and thought Alana had as well.
Bailey shook himself from his thoughts, allowed time to grow thanks to Kate’s unnerving silence, when she at last spoke.
“Well? Have you come up with an answer, because I believe I’d like to hear it as well? Would you be about to marry my good and dear friend this coming Sunday if she were to come to you without a groat to her name?”
He thought about repeating what he’d said to Alana, but one look at General Kate, and he decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. “I don’t know,” he said at last, hating himself. Truly loathing himself.
“All right,” Kate said consideringly. “At least you’re being honest now. You have been raised to do your duty, haven’t you? Not by your spendthrift father, I’m assured, but by your mother, who has drummed it into your head that you and you alone are responsible for your sisters and, indeed, everything and everyone connected with the Armstrong name and the title of Earl of Sandling that will one day be yours. Hopefully soon, before your father can ruin you all beyond salvation.”
“Knowing that I was seriously pursing Sylvia Wise is answer enough to that question, isn’t it?”
“God, yes. That doesn’t simply smack of desperation—it all but shouts it from the rooftops.” She looked at him sorrowfully. “You poor thing.”
“Max says honor’s a bastard,” Bailey said, beginning to believe he was on the verge of sliding into a sad decline, which was not at all like him. Or at least he had never considered himself the melodramatic sort.