There was no place for nervousness in Gareth’s relationship with his servants. Until these last few days, his interactions with White had been simple. The man dealt with the estate correspondence; Gareth paid his salary. Gareth liked simplicity. He liked not having to worry about what the man thought. He liked not wondering whether his latest ham-handed attempt at conversation would result in humiliation and unease.
He didn’t like feeling like an ass. And Madame Esmerelda’s dreadfully clear eyes—the ones that had seen Ned as something other than a childish irritant—had dismissed him. He’d told her to look at herself through his eyes, but if she had really done so, she would not have been ashamed. If she’d understood how bravado and bluster had transformed in his breast to hunger, she’d have laughed outright.
Who was he fooling? She had known it. She had spoken the truth that he’d hidden for so long behind a scowl and a cutting phrase. He had no way of conversing with others. He didn’t know how to make friends. He cringed, feeling awkward and ungainly every time he made the effort. And so long ago—more than twenty years before—he’d given up the task entirely.
But there came a time in a man’s life when he no longer wanted to cut down everyone around him. Gareth didn’t need to read tea leaves to see the future that lay ahead of him if he continued on this solitary path.
He was going to be lonely. And not just the little loneliness that he experienced now, the soft wistfulness for someone to talk with and touch, but a fierce longing, one that whispered that it could all have been different if only—if only—
If only he what?
Because of all the things she had said that night, the one that had cut the deepest—the one that had slashed through layers of muscle and subcutaneous fat, to score the artery—was that it was his choice to be who he was. For years he had told himself that he had no choice about the way he was. That coldness and calculation were natural to his personality. That he responded to threats by eviscerating them with his mind.
He’d believed he could not be the warm, loving brother his sister longed for; that he could not bring Ned under his wing as a friend instead of a subject, to be ordered about.
She had stripped his illusions away. He’d chosen this life, and what seemed bearable when it resulted from implacable fate became untenable as a matter of option. If he did not change in the years to come, the thought that he had chosen this path would nibble away at him, like a mouse at a sack of grain, until nothing was left.
If only he had the courage to make different choices.
If he was going to have that courage, he could not put the matter off. He could not wait for some far-off time or place in dreams and fairy tales. It was now she demanded. This moment. In his study.
He said the dreaded word. “White.”
At the sound of his name, his man of business looked up obligingly. “My lord?”
There was a cool draft in the room. It didn’t stop Gareth’s palms from moistening with a hint of cowardice. He fixed his gaze on the velvet curtains behind White. Conversation was easier if he didn’t have to look into the man’s eyes. The fabric rippled in the breeze, and Gareth found courage as best he could.
“It occurs to me that we have—” Gareth took a deep breath, and the rest of the words spilled out all in rush “—a number of things in common.”
“We do?”
From the corner of his eye, Gareth saw faint puzzled lines furrow White’s forehead.
Gareth clenched his hand and resisted the urge to punch his leg in frustration.
“Yes,” Gareth said. “We do.” And damn it, there he was again, using that quelling tone. One couldn’t have a conversation if one quelled the person one was attempting to converse with.
“Perhaps my lord would care to enumerate?”
Gareth didn’t care to enumerate, damn it. But he was going to have to try if he ever expected to get anywhere. Gareth shuffled through the dismally tiny selection of facts that he knew about the man.
“Well,” he suggested, “we are both men.”
White put his head to one side. The motion drew Gareth’s eyes from the drapes and forced him to look his employee in the face. Gareth swallowed.
“Yes,” said White. “We are.”
“And,” Gareth plunged forward, “we are of a similar age.”
“Indeed, my lord.”
Gareth tapped his closed fist against his hip. There the known similarities ended. Gareth felt like ten kinds of an idiot—as Madame Esmerelda had no doubt intended. White waited, that curious expression on his face. He reminded Gareth of a pigeon considering a crust of bread held in the hands of a small child. Apparently, he expected something additional. But what could Gareth say?
We are both literate.
We both have fewer than five children.
“And we both enjoy the company of women.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. He knew it was stupid as soon as the words left his mouth. There was an extremely befuddled pause from White’s side of the room. As if the child had lobbed the entire loaf of bread at the pigeon, and White didn’t know whether to fly away or tear at the bounty.
“Shocking similarities, my lord,” said White. That straight, unblinking gaze seemed subtly mocking in Gareth’s mind.
The tips of Gareth’s ears heated. He grabbed the edge of the desk and squeezed, as if to throttle that damned fortune-teller by proxy. There was a good reason Gareth didn’t attempt to make friends. He wasn’t any good at it. And he hated not being good at things.
He was making a scapegoat of her again.
If she ever found out about this, she’d mock him, and she would be right. He knew he used his social status as a shield to prevent this awkwardness. It had worked. It had worked ever since he was twelve.
It was only now that it failed. The import of that failure hit him directly in the chest. If he couldn’t even talk to a man who depended upon him for his livelihood, who would he ever connect with? He would be isolated all his life. Gareth fumbled for a topic of conversation.
“What’s it like, then? Marriage.”
White leaned back. Puzzled lines crinkled the corners of his eyes. “It’s a marvelous state.”
“But doesn’t Mrs. White ever lie to you?”
White was no fool. Those lines relaxed and smoothed away, as if he’d finally understood the reason for the inquiry. “All the time. The benefit of marriage is that it becomes so easy to recognize when one’s spouse lies.”
Gareth frowned. That state of hypocrisy seemed unbearable. It reinforced all his reasons for avoiding lengthy relationships. “What sort of lies does Mrs. White tell?”
White put his hands to the side of his head and batted his eyes in a manner Gareth supposed was intended to be femininely flirtatious. On the man’s sharp, masculine features, the expression was closer to frightening. “Oh, no, William. The shawl was quite inexpensive.”
The high falsetto proceeding from his normally baritone man of business made Gareth sit back in surprise.
“Of
course,” White added in his normal voice, “I lie to her, too.”
“Oh?”
“Just this morning, I told her, ‘Nonsense, my dear, you haven’t aged a day.’”
Gareth shoved at the papers on his desk morosely. He had no experience with this sort of interaction. It sounded mundane and comforting. How could it seem both foolish and enviable at the same time?
White laid a piece of blotting paper over the letter he had been working on. “This may be an impertinent question, my lord—but hypothetically speaking, is there a particular woman that you are thinking about?”
“Hypothetically speaking?” Gareth sighed. It was not as if he could possibly lower himself any further in White’s estimation at this point. “Yes.”
“And has this, uh, hypothetical woman perhaps told you lies?”
“Hypothetically, everything out of her mouth has been a lie,” Gareth complained, much aggrieved. “Everything except her kisses. She meant them.”
White nodded, as if he regularly dispensed advice on women to lovelorn lords. “Are you wondering if you can trust her? Hypothetically, of course.”
“Oh, I know I can’t do that. What I really want to know is…” Gareth’s thoughts slowed like sap. He really wanted to know if his near-obsession with a woman whose name he didn’t even know would end if he took her to bed. He wanted to know if he’d ever eradicate that cold, lonely emptiness in his heart, the one that still longed to have people about him he could not intimidate.
He wanted to know when his mind had split on the subject of Madame Esmerelda. One half demanded he take her in simple, sexual conquest. The other wanted to…to make her his friend. He swallowed.
That wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Not after the way he’d behaved.
He doubted he’d ever see her eyes cloud with lust again. Not when he’d shown her what an ass he really was. He glanced up at White, who watched him attentively. Envy at the man’s calm complacence flickered in Gareth’s breast. He’d wager White knew what to do in situations like this one.