Once Upon a Marquess

  “Salt makes everything better,” she had said then. “Here. Try it now.”

  Amazingly, Theresa had eaten it. Ever since, it had been a household favorite. Which just went to show that children were disgusting.

  But it didn’t matter. If she could make Benedict’s life better with turnip sandwiches, she’d spoon out all the salt in the world.

  “You don’t have to lecture me,” he said, cramming a full quarter of the sandwich into his mouth and talking around it.

  She hadn’t lectured him, so she just waited.

  “I know how important my role is. I’m to go to Eton. I’m to make friends and pave our way into society and take my place as earl one day, and…and…” He faltered. “I don’t want to let you down, Judith. Nor Theresa, nor Camilla. But I can’t go back. I can’t.”

  “Here,” Judith said as he bolted down the last bit of crusty bread. “Have another sandwich.”

  He took it.

  “I know,” he said through a mouthful of food. “I’m a Worth. Worths do impossible things.”

  She had told him that a thousand times.

  He contemplated the toasted bread. “I tried. Really, I did. I tried being friendly, and they pummeled me. I tried being meek, and they pummeled me. I tried asserting myself, and they pummeled me. I offered them the ginger-ginger biscuits that you sent the first week as a peace offering. They took them. Then they pummeled me, and thereafter, they just stole them out of hand.”

  Her stomach hurt listening to this bare recital. Her fingers clenched around the sandwich plate. “Who are they?” Judith asked innocently.

  Not innocently enough. He looked over at her. “I didn’t try being a snitch, Judith,” he said scornfully. “It’s beneath me, and besides, it wouldn’t work. They’d just pummel me again.”

  “You wouldn’t be snitching,” Judith said matter-of-factly. “Just disclosing a fact to your dear sister in confidence.”

  “Oh, well, in that case.” Benedict shook his head. “Did you know I was born yesterday?”

  Judith remained diplomatically silent.

  “I know you, Judith,” Benedict said. “You’re imagining talking to them. You’re thinking of how you can fix things, figuring out some way that you can make V—” He coughed. “Make them into my friends. But you can’t fix this. You can’t.”

  He did know her. He knew the precise direction of her thoughts, questing forward. She just wanted everything good for him.

  But even before he’d been pummeled, as he put it, Benedict had always acted older than his physical age. He looked up at her with eyes that said he understood how things worked now, that he knew better than to try.

  It broke her heart that he should think so. He’d been hurt, and he’d decided there was nothing to be done about it.

  This isn’t going to happen. Not this way. Not to my little brother, she promised him. I will fix it. I will fix everything.

  She smoothed back the hair on his forehead. He looked up at her with wide, unblinking eyes, eyes that seemed like little oil lamps illuminating her.

  Judith set her hand on his shoulder. “All right,” she whispered to him. “We’ll figure out something later. Sleep well.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek.

  “Did you have a sandwich?” he asked her. “You need to eat, too.”

  He was too young to be so old.

  She crossed the hall to her next charge. Theresa, unlike Benedict, was sitting up in the bed that she shared with Judith. Her nightrail, a thick blue flannel, fanned out around her feet.

  She was idly rubbing the cloth in her fingers. She was going to wear it out prematurely. She always did.

  “Good night, Theresa.” Judith might have scolded her for the cloth, but she’d scolded her enough as it was today. Any more, and she’d always be screaming at her sister. “Do you need anything?” she asked instead.

  Theresa nodded. “I want you to tell me a bedtime story.”

  On another night, perhaps Judith might have obliged. Tonight, she wanted to go back to her desk. To look over her current project upstairs. She wanted to think of Anthony’s journals—she had no idea why Christian really wanted them.

  But when he had said they would be a comfort…

  Up until that moment, he had looked precisely as she had expected Christian to look: confident, charismatic, and far too attractive. For a moment, though, he’d looked…weary. Bereft.

  He should be bereft. He’d practically killed her brother.

  She wanted to be able to feel all the things she hadn’t let herself feel during the day, and she couldn’t do it around her sister. She felt achy inside.

  The novel from the lending library on Theresa’s nightstand—something set in the time of Arthur—was the last thing she wanted to look at. Who wanted to read about courtly doings and brave deeds on a night like this?

  She gave her sister a smile instead. “Theresa, I have so much to do. Do you really need me to read to you as if you were a child again?”

  “Oh, no,” Theresa said with a puzzled frown. “Of course not. I don’t want you to read me a story. I want you to tell me a story.”

  Judith sighed. “Tee, none of the stories in my head are suitable for bedtime.”

  “I want you to tell me a story about Anthony.”

  The smile Judith had been keeping on her face froze.

  Oh, God. She should never have told those stories in the first place. Years ago, when she’d believed Anthony was still alive, she’d brought out his journals to read to her siblings at night. But dry lists of men he’d encountered when he’d accompanied her father on that ill-fated ambassadorial trip to China, along with descriptions of the trade deals they’d made, had not made for good bedtime reading.

  Judith had improvised. Instead of sitting in tents and reading reports, Anthony had fought off pirates. He’d caught sharks. He’d bargained for exotic trinkets and fought with swords.

  Theresa knew that the stories had been stories. She had, after all, accompanied Anthony on that exceedingly boring trip. She had still adored Judith’s tales, demanding they be told again and again.

  “I scarcely remember him,” her sister was saying. “I keep trying to hold onto the things I know. I know he loved me.” She ticked these off on her fingers. “I know he called me ‘Teaspoon.’ I know when I used to fly into one of my rages that he was the only one who could calm me. I know he gave me the best hugs, like he was wrapping me up and squeezing me. He told me he would always be there for me when I needed him. I’m forgetting everything else.” Theresa looked up at her sister. “I know I spent those two years on the ship with him and Father. I should remember him better than anyone. What if I don’t remember him when he returns?”

  Oh, God. The evening had wanted only this. Judith sat on the edge of her sister’s bed and tried to stay calm and collected. “Theresa. Sweetheart. My memories can never be a substitute for yours.”

  Her memories were spiked, sharp things. She had watched her brother’s trial. He’d not said a word in his defense. She’d watched his conviction, too. She’d ached as he sat in the dock, his face not changing as the evidence against him mounted. Speak, she had wanted to scream. Speak.

  Anthony hadn’t spoken. She wasn’t sure who he had been protecting. Maybe her father, if she was being honest; when the evidence against her father had come out, the House of Lords had not yet convened. Anthony had stood trial first. He hadn’t spoken at all. She’d watched him take his sentence of seven years’ transportation without a hint of emotion. She’d traveled to Plymouth to watch him board the prison ship that was supposed to take him to Fremantle.

  Judith had been the one to first read the newspaper report: His ship had encountered fierce weather. It had been blown off course, had landed not in Australia, as planned, but on the coast of Sumatra, of all places. When the population of prisoners was accounted for, Anthony had not been present.

  “But at least you have real memories,” Theresa said. “I don’t trust mine. I r
emember—” She cut herself off with a sidelong glance at Judith. “I don’t even remember what he looks like.”

  Judith had waited and waited to hear anything about her brother after that ship had sailed. A year had passed, then two. She had hoped and hoped. Back then, she’d had nothing but hope.

  “Theresa,” Judith said softly. “I want you to consider the very real possibility that…”

  That our brother is dead.

  “That I might lose all my memories?”

  “No.” Judith shook her head. “You won’t. You’re fourteen, now. You won’t lose memories that easily. But it’s not the memories that matter, darling. It’s the feelings you have. What are the feelings you have for Anthony?”

  Theresa looked upward. “I used to think that the world could not spin correctly on its axis if he were not present.”

  “I’m sure you’ve learned otherwise.”

  “Oh, no.” Theresa shook her head. “I’ve just learned to walk off-center.”

  The world is never returning to center. He’s not coming back.

  She had never said those words to her sister.

  She hadn’t held anything back—she had told her sister the truth the day she learned it. Christian had her brother’s whereabouts investigated; Anthony was nowhere to be found. Theresa knew that the prisoners on that ship had been decimated by disease and poor feeding by the time they arrived. The surgeon on board the ship had listed Anthony as ill. There were records of twenty-three men who had perished, and twelve more who were simply gone. During the worst of the storm, record-keeping had not been a priority on board. Anthony was one of those who had disappeared, and it was all too obvious what had happened to him. One of these days, Theresa would accept that her brother had been one of the dead, too.

  But before Judith had known for sure, after they’d depleted the false tales from the journals, she’d invented stories about what might have happened on that ship. Anthony among the pirates. Anthony on a desert island. Anthony and the friendly dolphins. They’d been comforting tales of adventure, told to assuage the ache in her heart. They’d been comforting then.

  They were soul-destroying now.

  Anthony was dead. Their father was dead. Camilla was… Well, Camilla was not speaking to any of them. It was just the three of them, she and Theresa and Benedict, and it was Judith’s responsibility to make sure that they were well. The earth hadn’t spun correctly since she’d been placed so precariously in charge, but she’d kept it upright.

  So she swallowed the lump in her throat and smiled at her sister. “You’ll know,” Judith said. “If you ever see him again, you’ll know it’s him because the world will right itself. If you don’t want to lose your memories now, you might consider taking a moment every evening to go over the ones you have. Think of them every day, and you’ll never forget.”

  Theresa nodded solemnly. “And one day,” she said, “I’ll be able to ask Anthony for the ones I’ve lost.”

  Tonight was not the night she would be able to make Theresa face the truth. That day would come, Judith was sure—but it wouldn’t be tonight.

  She fled before she broke down.

  Up in her workroom, she surveyed the carnage. Bits and pieces of wire, coiled springs, and molded gears greeted her on the bench to the side. A sheaf of papers—her notes—sat on the table.

  She was close, so close, to victory. Everyone had told her that her sisters would never have any real money of their own. That Benedict would never attend school. She should have run out of funds four years ago.

  She’d managed it. It was the thing she told herself night after night when things got difficult, when all the worries she’d squelched during the day came back to revisit her. She’d managed.

  By all the birds that had ever flown, she’d won.

  Victory felt rather hollow tonight.

  Her elder brother was dead. Her younger brother was being tormented. Theresa refused to face reality. And Camilla hadn’t spoken to her in almost eight years. Judith had been proud, so proud of every evening she’d spent with her head bent over clockwork designs, every minute she’d wrangled through contracts with the man she worked with in Scotland. She’d planned it all so that Camilla would get a little money a few months before she came out.

  It wasn’t the sort of inheritance they’d been raised to expect, but four hundred pounds was freedom. The freedom to marry for love—or to not marry at all.

  Maybe she’d hoped that her next-youngest sister would know that it was from her. That it was her way of apologizing for that long-ago argument. I’m sorry, Camilla. I love you. I want you back.

  She put her head in her hands, but she didn’t let herself weep. Weeping was what one did when one ran out of options, and Judith wasn’t finished. She was a Worth. She wasn’t going to give up. Not now. Not ever.

  When she was done not weeping, she raised her head and went back to fitting gears together in her mind. Dancing couples or gliding swans weren’t going to be enough this time around. She needed a clockwork design that was simple, something that everyone would see and want.

  She’d won before. She would just have to win again.

  And if she had to bear Christian’s presence to make sure that Camilla received that money before she debuted?

  Well. She would do it. She would do anything to keep her family safe.

  In his dream, Christian was on a ship—not a steamship with smokestacks burning coal, but one of the older ships with big, billowing canvas sails. It was the kind of ship that a boy might receive as a toy on his birthday.

  The ship felt a little like a toy, as if he were both standing on deck and holding it in his hand all at once. A storm raged around him. Dark clouds loomed overhead, and spikes of lightning stabbed out over him. Around him, waves rose like dark canyons and then crashed into valleys.

  The deck of the ship had no rail. It was a dream so familiar that even in his sleep, he knew everything to be false. Nobody was on board except Christian—Christian, and the man he glimpsed across the deck, a dark figure obscured by sheeting rain. The man stood near the edge, near those dangerous waves.

  Christian couldn’t see the man’s face, but he knew who it was. He’d had this dream before.

  “Anthony,” he called.

  There was no answer.

  “Anthony!” he shouted, but the wind whipped the words from his mouth, drowning them in the shrieks of the storm.

  He made his way across the unsteady deck, groping, nearly losing his balance.

  “Anthony,” he said as he drew closer. “Anthony, get the hell inside. You’re going to—”

  As he spoke, a great wave of salt water crashed into Christian, rolling him, catching him up, filling his mouth so he couldn’t scream. He grabbed wildly as he slid across rough wood. His hands found a rope; he held fast, choking, until the water passed over his head.

  When he opened his eyes, Anthony was gone.

  Christian scrambled to the edge of the careening ship. He was cold; his fingers seemed numb. There, he saw that familiar figure again, shrouded in the shifting shadows off the edge of the ship. Anthony was scarcely holding onto the side. His fingers slipped, grasping for purchase.

  “Anthony.”

  The man’s head tilted up.

  Christian leaned down. “Take my hand.” He reached down, stretching.

  Christian had never managed to reach Anthony in any of his dreams yet, but still he kept trying. He had to.

  The other man adjusted his precarious grip and reached up. His hand met Christian’s with a solid shock. Their fingers slipped wetly, but Christian made himself keep hold of his friend’s wrist. He held fast, even though the tossing of the boat threatened to yank his friend away.

  “I have you,” he said. “I have you. Hold on, damn you.”

  He braced himself to pull. This time, he’d save him. This time…

  The man looked up. It wasn’t Anthony. Christian had one shocked moment to look into his own eyes—light brown
instead of blue. He had one moment to feel his own hand holding himself up in a weird, doubled dreaming way. Then he gave a great shout and let go in surprise.

  The last thing he experienced was his stomach dropping as he fell into a great valley of water. He simultaneously watched himself slip from his own grasp.

  “Shh,” said a voice. A hand pressed against his forehead. A familiar taste, herbs and honey, bloomed on his tongue.

  He woke gasping. Someone was holding his head up, tilting his chin so he could swallow.

  Christian reacted without thinking, knocking the mug away, spitting the disgusting mess in his mouth out before he could think better of it.

  “There, there,” said a gentle voice. “You’re only dreaming. I have more if you want it.”

  His mother. His gods-be-damned ever-loving mother. Christian inhaled, catching his breath. Waiting for his heart to stop racing.

  “You were dreaming,” she repeated. “It was just another night terror, Christian. I made you a little posset.”

  He could taste milk and spices and honey on his tongue. He could taste the laudanum, too. Bitter, ugly, and yet after all these years, it still curled around him, whispering that he could have peace. It would be the peace of utter surrender.

  “No,” he said hoarsely. “No possets.”

  “I heard you shouting three rooms over. You’re not sleeping well, Christian. You’re my son. I only want to take care of you, and I’m worried.” She brushed her hand across his forehead.

  His mother loved him. Christian had always known it. He owed her far more than he could say.

  He had always had vivid dreams. They had been particularly bad when he was a child, and she hadn’t fobbed him off on any nurses. She’d woken with him, soothing him, telling him it was all right. She’d saved him and damned him, all at the same time.

  Just once wouldn’t hurt. Just this once.

  Laudanum lied. In the darkness, he could not see the bowl on the table to the side of his bed. He sat up and found it in the dark. There were a handful of beads in it, round little balls of all sizes jumbled together. His fingertips rolled over them in the dark.