Page 55 of The Ruin of a Rake
Julian had seen the dismayed sinking of Courtenay’s shoulders, had seen the darkening expression on Courtenay’s face, and known the man was hurt. He wanted to go after Courtenay, he wanted to follow him out into the hall and apologize for not having defended him to Eleanor. A better man, a braver man, would do precisely that.
Instead he buried his head in his hands. He hadn’t meant to insult Courtenay, hadn’t meant to tacitly accept Eleanor’s suggestion that being involved with Courtenay would be a terrible thing. But Julian hadn’t been thinking of how Courtenay must have felt to have been the subject of that ugly conversation. And Julian knew he ought to have done a better job considering the feelings of a man he cared for. It had only occurred to him what had gone wrong as Courtenay left the room.
Weeks ago, Courtenay had said that what Eleanor needed from Standish was proof of devotion, a display of feeling. Julian hadn’t understood then. Now he did, and he also knew that he wasn’t able to give that to Courtenay or anyone else. Julian wasn’t capable of gushing sentiment. He was hardly capable of any sentiment at all, he was quite certain. And if he had any feelings he certainly didn’t acknowledge them, even to himself. If he did he might have to think about how desperately he already missed Courtenay, how happy he had been each time he opened his eyes and saw Courtenay by his sickbed, how right and good it felt to be in the same room as Courtenay and how awful it felt not to be now. He felt like one of those sea creatures whose soft undersides were protected by spikes.
He rang for Briggs to send for his carriage and pack his bags immediately. The morning’s post had brought an invitation to spend a week in Richmond with Lady Montbray. It would be a small house party, entirely suitable for a lady in her last weeks of mourning, she assured him with what he had to assume was a degree of irony. He didn’t care very much about propriety at the moment. What he needed was to get away from here. Convalescing in the country with pleasant company seemed about as ideal a situation as he could possibly come up with.
“You’re in no state to travel, sir,” Briggs ventured tentatively.
“I cannot stay here, and have no interest in holing up at my lodgings.” Without company, he would have time to appreciate how truly alone he was. He had ruined things with Eleanor through first his judgment and then his secrecy. Which, now that he thought about it, was precisely how he had ruined things with Courtenay. At least he was consistent.
With as much haste as Briggs’s dignity and Julian’s weakness would allow, Julian dressed and was bundled into the carriage. Only then did he realize he was somehow still clutching the bag of buns Courtenay had brought, and now the carriage was filled with the scent of butter and cinnamon and incongruous spices, and the memory of the joy and hope he had experienced the last time he had eaten one.
He couldn’t bring himself to eat one now. When they arrived at Lady Montbray’s house in Richmond, Courtenay handed the crumpled, grubby bag to Miss Sutherland, the companion. “They’re very good,” he managed. A quarter of an hour later he was asleep in the spare room, still wearing his boots, still thinking of all the things he ought to have said to Courtenay if he were better, braver, and truer.
Courtenay had once told Julian that he was terrible at entrusting his heart to people who would take care of it. It seemed that nothing had changed, because he knew that he loved Julian and he was fairly confident that Julian felt nothing of the sort in return. And still, Courtenay was going to go out of his damned way to protect Julian and shield him from whatever scandal might arise as a result of servants’ gossip. He was going to grossly inconvenience himself, and he was going to do it because he couldn’t stand any harm coming to a person he cared about. He never could.
Having met with Standish and set their conspiracy in motion, Courtenay now had nowhere to sleep. Staying with Eleanor and Standish was out of the question now that their plan was afoot. He had given up his old lodgings on Flitcroft Street. There was the Albemarle Street townhouse, but he didn’t know if it was still unoccupied. There were, he recalled, other properties scattered across the kingdom, none of which he had any intention of visiting. He could sleep on Norton’s sofa or he could take a room at one of London’s cheaper hotels.
Or he could sleep at his own damned house.
Carrington Hall was his, and had been the principle seat of his family for more generations than anybody could be expected to remember. It was his and he had every right to sleep there.
He packed his belongings, including that blasted trunk filled with papers, and hired a post chaise heading west.
This time, as the carriage approached the village, he saw what Julian had noticed right away: cottages in need of new roofs, a bridge in need of repair. The road was badly rutted and would likely mire carts in any amount of rain. All these little things were signs of insufficiency. Julian had recognized them as evidence of bad management; Courtenay alone could fix that. Not only was this his house, it was his responsibility. It didn’t matter who he let live here—his mother for free or Radnor for rent. This land, this village, the people living here—all depended on him at least to not bollocks it up.
In the weeks since his last visit, spring had settled into the landscape in a way that Courtenay only thought possible in this corner of the English countryside. He had seen every season in a dozen or more countries, but was confident he could identify Carrington in May with his eyes closed. The breeze rustling through trees that were heavy with leaves, the faint sound of the trout stream in the distance, the air fresh with the scent of hollyhocks and pinks. He had a rush of whatever sensation was the opposite of homesickness—homecoming, perhaps—but then it was swept away by the realization that this too was evidence of bad management: money had been poured into the grounds and garden when it ought to have been put into roads and roofs.
It was as if he had Julian by his side, clucking over the stupidity of it all. When he walked into Carrington Hall, he tried to imagine Julian there, wrinkling his nose at the butler’s discomfiture. Julian, coming to his defense as he had during their past visit. As Courtenay remembered that day—supper at the inn and then their night in Julian’s bed—he thought that Julian couldn’t possibly have believed Courtenay beneath reproach. He had to have seen some mote of goodness in Courtenay.
But then Courtenay realized it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter in the least what Julian thought of him, it didn’t matter what anyone else thought of him, all that mattered was what Courtenay thought of himself. He now understood that one of the reasons that he had always been indifferent to general public opinion was that he thought all the foul things said about him were basically true: he was a villain. And this past year without Isabella and Simon—the two people who loved him and to whom he meant anything at all—had done a number on his ability to think of himself as anything worthwhile. Without the people who thought the best of him, he had forgotten how to think the best of himself. Shame had seeped bone deep.
Time with Julian had done something to help that, but he couldn’t let his pride rest entirely with one person. Well, he would just have to get himself in the habit of doing things he was proud of, and he would start with Carrington.
It took Julian about a week to realize that Lady Montbray was very carefully sheltering him from any gossip she thought he might find distressing. There were conversations that broke up as soon as Julian entered the room, letters hastily thrown into the fire. He was too preoccupied with his own matters to care.
Julian hadn’t told anybody where he was going, so he assumed his own correspondence was collecting dust in London. He wrote to Eleanor, informing her that he was well on the road to recovery and that he wished he had never her questioned her judgment about her choices nor failed to trust her when he ought to have. He didn’t mention where he was staying. It was a wholly inadequate letter, and he knew it as he sealed it and gave it to Lady Montbray’s footman to post. But there was no adequate letter he could have written, and not sending a letter would have been cruel.
There was no letter at all he could have written Courtenay, at least not without exposing them both to criminal prosecution. If he could, he’d tell Courtenay that the time they had spent together had meant more to him than anything else that had happened in his life, that his greatest regrets were not only writing that book but also ever thinking that Courtenay was anything other than what he was—a thoughtful friend, a generous lover, a man Julian cared for more than he had thought he was capable of.
During his week at Lady Montbray’s house, it dawned on him that he had been in love with Courtenay. Or, rather, that he still was and likely would continue on in that state for quite a while. He had spent so long telling himself that he wasn’t capable of love that he had started to believe it. But Courtenay had been with him when he was sick and not only had Julian not minded his presence, he had actually wanted it. He wanted Courtenay with him always, even if that meant letting him in past Julian’s defenses.
He got into the habit of sleeping late, of walking in the gardens and not doing much of anything. This was a proper convalescence, of the sort Eleanor had always tried to insist on, and which Julian had always rejected as needlessly indulgent. He had always wanted to be doing things, solving problems, being useful. Now he drifted, he meandered, he took up space without feeling like he needed anything to show for his days.
Children were exceedingly good for using up time, and Lady Montbray had no scruples about pressing her houseguest into service as a childminder. Julian didn’t protest. Playing knights of the round table with the young Lord Montbray was no less amusing than many tea parties he attended, and he didn’t know if this was because this child was particularly droll or because Julian perhaps had never enjoyed tea parties so very much in the first place. Perhaps he had never really enjoyed anything until he had met Courtenay. Perhaps he had never tried to.
He was in the summer house, attempting to whittle an elephant for young William—it had to be an elephant, the child was quite clear on this matter—despite never having whittled anything before in his life, when Lady Montbray approached, waving a piece of paper. Her white muslin dress floated around her like the petals of a flower.
“Quite a to-do over your friend Lord Courtenay,” she said carefully.
“Oh?” Julian replied, pretending to interest himself in the misshapen knob of wood he held in his hands. “What’s he been up to now?” An affair, presumably. A countess. A diplomat. Could be anyone, he supposed. Julian determinedly did not care.
“Apparently, your brother-in-law called him out.”
Julian dropped the knife. “For what?”
“For interfering with Lady Standish’s honor.”
