Page 24 of An Honorable Deception
A twitch of the lips was all Marigold granted her. “I broke into Ravenscleft last year, you know. Posed as an applicant for the position of French teacher so that I could get into your files.”
Lavinia’s mouth fell open. “Youwhat?” Miss Feuerstein’s office was impenetrable! And how would anyone, even Marigold, have the audacity to enter it without permission? Hadn’t she been afraid that lightning would flash down and consume her?
“It was how we learned that your mother and the headmistress were cousins. But that is neither here nor there.” Marigold waved a hand as if she could really dismiss that conversation so easily. “Let’s talk about Yates.”
Lavinia stared at her for a long moment, her mind surely not following Marigold’s. Because when one saidRavenscleftandYateswithin seconds of each other, all Lavinia could think about was the Christmas holiday when they wereseventeen. When she’d come home, filled to bursting with everything she’d been learning, the friends she was making and wanting to impress. Then she’d seen Yates for the first time in months. He’d sprouted up, was filling out, and she’d realized quite suddenly that any one of her friends would have been green with envy had they seen the way he looked at her.
There he was, a future earl, handsome and tall and strapping, and he gazed at her as if she alone held the keys to his happiness. For that one afternoon, she’d let the idea carry her away. She could claim him. She could be the future Lady Fairfax. She could live here, at her favorite place in the world, for the rest of her life.
That afternoon she’d done something she’d been careful not to do before. She accepted Yates’s invitation for a walk while Marigold and Gemma were distracted. She’d let him take her hand as they meandered to the seaside cliffs. She’d made no objection when he pulled her into his arms, hope shining bright in his eyes.
She’d let him kiss her, and she’d kissed him back, and dreams she hadn’t known she wanted to dream flooded her. They’d carried her back to the Tower, back to her own home, and her mother must have seen them on her face, because she’d wasted no time in popping them.
“That smile had better not be over Yates, Lavinia. He will disgrace his station and his name—he is no better than a vagabond himself, the way he fawns over those gypsies. He has no sense of responsibility or duty, and if his father doesn’t drive the Fairfax estate into the ground first, he’ll finish the job. I’ve consented to you spending time there in the hopes that you will have a positive influence over poor Marigold—heaven knows she needs a female of some breeding to guide her. But I will not countenance another hourin their company if I think for a moment that you’re pining for that worthless wastrel.”
A dozen defenses of Yates had sprung to her tongue—even before she’d entertained any notions, he’d been her friend—but one look from Mother had silenced them. Because she wasMother. No, at the time, she wasMama. The person Lavinia most wanted to please in the world. And far wiser than Lavinia, especially in matters of alliances.
She’d buttoned her lips to keep her mother from prolonging the scolding—she’d have done anything to keep the proud look in her mother’s eyes as she watched Lavinia’s progress at finishing school. And she’d not returned to Fairfax Tower that holiday. She’d burned the five letters Yates had written to her, and when she saw him again after graduation, she’d acted as though she didn’t even remember that winter afternoon by the sea.
Steeling herself against the pain in his eyes had required more strength, but the excitement of preparing for her presentation in London had helped her with that. And then Lord Fairfax died, and romance had been the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Then scarlet fever struck, and her world ended for five years anyway.
But that couldn’t be what Marigold was talking about, because Marigold had no idea Lavinia had ever kissed Yates. She’d never told her, and she knew Yates hadn’t either, because there was no way in the world that Marigold would have gone six years without mentioning it and raking Lavinia over the coals for her treatment of her brother if she’d known.
But that only meant that Lavinia couldn’t guesswhatwas coming. “What about Yates?”
Marigold’s delicate brows drew together. “You know howhe once cared for you, don’t you? You can’t have missed it, even back then.”
All her aching muscles went tight. Maybe Marigoldwastalking about the same thing that sprang to Lavinia’s mind. More or less. “A childhood infatuation. Why are you bringing it up now?”
Marigold winced and looked over her shoulder as if expecting her little brother to have somehow returned from London when they weren’t looking. “It was more than an infatuation. He was in love with you.”
The words made a strange, tarnished regret fill her throat. “I know he thought he was, but we were children.”
Marigold sent her a look far harsher than she usually directed Lavinia’s way. “You didn’t have to watch him while you nearly died of that fever, and he wasn’t even permitted in the house. You didn’t have to see the shadows that overtook him when he realized that we had nothing left with which to run our home, and that in your parents’ eyes he would have been dismissed as not good enough. He was crushed, Lavinia. Beaten down. In his eyes, he lost both Father and you in one fell swoop.”
Her throat was so tight she could scarcely whisper past it—but somehow Mother’s words found their way out. “He never had me to lose me.”
Lies. For one afternoon, he had.
Marigold’s face somehow went both hard and soft. All the one for Lavinia, all the other for the little brother she loved more than life. “He hadhope, until then. You know Yates—hope was all he ever needed to fuel him.”
And why did that make her eyes sting with tears? “This is a conversation that would have been relevant six years ago, Marigold, but—”
“Don’t destroy him again.” She took a step closer, hergolden-brown eyes drilling into Lavinia’s with the ferocity of a lion’s. “He’s picked up the pieces, he’s put himself back together, and he swears he’s well and truly over you—which I had doubted, but which I’ve come to believe he really did achieve. Don’t negate his hard work, Lavinia.”
She blinked, mounting frustration chasing away the tears, at least. “What exactly do you think I’m doing?”
Marigold waved a hand toward the house, her own frustration clear. “The two of you have been flirting with every other breath, and then he goes carrying you about the house like—”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Lavinia faced forward again and stomped toward the stables. “You are completely misreading the situation. When he cared for me, Yates didn’t flirt at all—perhaps too much was at stake, I don’t know. The fact that he is now means the very opposite of what you’re suggesting.”
“You’re not children anymore! You can’t behave as you’ve been doing—”
“Don’t you understand?” Lavinia spun to face Marigold again, her fingers curling into her palms. Never in a million years would she ever have thought that Marigold, of all the people in the world, would lecture her on decorum. “Thatiswhat we are in those moments—it’s the whole point! He isn’t trying to win my heart, he’s trying to make me laugh. To remember the days before I knew what Mother was.”
Marigold pursed her lips. “That may well be his intent. But if you’re finally acting like he once hoped you would, how can we be sure he won’t forget that he’s not in love with you anymore? And then when you walk away again, he’ll have another broken heart to contend with.”
