Lyn Stone - The Arrangement

Jon nodded, remembering his mother’s chamber. He’d never been welcome there in the best of times. He hadn’t touched it, hadn’t even opened the door, since she died. Five years ago now? Yes, just before his twentieth birthday.

She patted his shoulder. “It’s all right, Pip. Let’s have a look at the other room.”

He dreaded facing memories he had wanted buried along with his mother, but Jon led her down the hallway to the very end. In front of the dusty oak panel, he stopped.

She brushed past him, opened the door and walked right in. “Oh, much better,” she said brightly, and promptly threw open the windows. “Needs to air out, but at least it looks clean.”

Her pert nose wrinkled when she approached him, and he knew very well why. He needed a long, soapy soak in a hot tub, but Jon knew he couldn’t stay awake for it. His lids drooped over what felt like a spoonful of sand in each eye. “So tired,” he exhaled on a sigh, and collapsed on top of the embroidered coverlet of his mother’s tester bed. Maybe if he feigned sleep, she would go away.

Jon felt her efficient little hands tuck something around him as he wriggled out a niche in the softness beneath him. A smile of sweet contentment stretched his lower face. He drifted toward sleep with the feel of her lips on his brow, thinking that at this moment, being Pip was better than being Jon.

Infinitely better.

Morning dawned gray and dreary at the Hare’s Foot Inn. Autumn had arrived overnight. Chill rain plinked on the roof above Kathryn’s head as she drowsed, reluctant to rise just yet.

A sharp staccato of knuckles against the flimsy door roused her fully. Annoyed, she crawled out of bed and dragged the tattered blanket around her like a robe.

“What is it, Thorn?” she answered as she padded to the door and swung it open.

“He’s gone and it’s your fault!” The massive figure of a black-clad Jonathan Chadwick filled the doorway.

“You!” Kathryn blinked sleepily and shrank back from his furious, heavily powdered countenance. “What? Who’s gone?”

“Pip, that’s who!” he thundered, twisting half away from her and then back again, in a frustrated movement that spoke of violence barely leashed. “You frightened him half to death! What makes you think you can prey on him just for the sake of a damned newspaper piece about me? It’s unconscionable, that’s what it is!” He slapped his gloves against a bare palm and pushed past her into the room.

Kathryn exploded, anger bringing her fully alert. “I? I preyed on him? Why, you ill-mannered thief! How dare you accuse me, when you keep the poor boy locked away in that crumbling excuse for a house and steal every note he writes!” She clenched both fists, releasing her grip on the blanket, but she didn’t care. “If I were a man, I’d...”

“But you’re certainly not that, now are you?” he said, leaning his head back and raking her with those piercing blue eyes of his. “Not by a very long chalk.”

“Don’t you try distracting me with your nasty leers,” Kathryn warned, well aware that she stood dreadfully exposed in her flimsy knee-length chemise. “If you think I’m going to let you get away with what you’re doing to your own brother, you are wrong! Dead wrong!”

Chadwick seemed to drop his anger as if it were a wet cloak. He slumped down on the rumpled bed, shaking his head as he looked up at her. “Pip’s not really my brother.”

Kathryn scoffed, crossing her arms across her half-bared bosom. “Of course he is. He looks so much like you, it’s unreal, except of course for the hair and...” Then it dawned on her what he meant. “Oh, I see. He’s your father’s bastard, then?”

The dark head inclined, and he stared at her, nodding slightly. “He’s a bastard, all right.”

Kathryn narrowed her eyes and gave him her sternest look. “You must know what you’re doing is wrong, Chadwick.”

He sighed soulfully. “Yes, I know.” His wonderful hands uncurled, and their long agile fingers lay open in supplication, bearing traces of the powder from his face.

“What would you have me do, Miss Wainwright? Stick him in some crofter’s hut to tend the sheep? Bury his music?” She watched him unfold his large body and pace the confines of the room with a catlike grace. He stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Or I could banish him to Bedlam, where he could while away his days in like company. You tell me what I should do.”

Kathryn felt confused, thrown by Chadwick’s admission of guilt and obvious distress over the dilemma. “At least he ought to receive some credit for his talent,” she suggested.

“Ha! Credit, of course. We surely ought to advertise his talents. I could parade him about London, maybe even Paris and Rome. Introduce him as the calf-witted composer, the nimble-fingered numbskull. How do you think he’ll do in polite society, Miss Wainwright? Will you applaud him as he drools on the ivories? Perhaps you could stand by with his bonbon rewards and wipe the spittle off his chin.”

“Oh, God,” Kathryn groaned, clenching her eyes shut as she turned away toward the window. The silence grew, broken only by Chadwick’s harsh breathing and the increasing patter of the rain.

“Has he always been...that way?” she asked gently.

“An unfortunate accident,” he explained, “and I’ve dealt with it the only way I know how. Look, I know you only want to help improve Pip’s circumstance, but Tim-beroak is his home. God knows I can’t afford to improve on the old place, but to sell it from under him would be unthinkable. Impossible.” His voice grew soft and imploring. “Believe me, Miss Wainwright, he’s usually quite content there. He needs his forest and the lake. They provide his inspiration, and what precious snatches of peace he can find.”

“Is that where he’s gone now, do you think? To his forest?” she asked, suddenly fearful that she might be the cause of Pip’s venturing too far from his haven and into danger.

“That’s where he usually goes when he’s troubled. When I returned this morning, he told me you planned to take him away today. He ran off to hide from you. He’ll probably come home before dark. I apologize for my temper, but you did upset him, and therefore me.”

Then Chadwick did the strangest thing. He rose and offered her his hands and a look of sad entreaty. “Will you please not expose us, Miss Wainwright? I ask this for Pip’s sake, as well as my own. We cannot let his music die, and a few words from you in print could slay it outright.”

Kathryn reached out to him in spite of herself, grasping the hands that brought such wonder to the world. Pip’s wonder. “What kind of monster do you take me for, Mr. Chadwick?”

“A benevolent one, I hope,” he answered, with a pale, dimpled smile. His eyes sparkled with light azure fire and wry humor. Her knees turned to pudding when he did that.

Kathryn forced a laugh and squeezed his fingers gently. “I’m no monster at all. And I no longer believe that you are, when you speak so eloquently on Pip’s behalf. I believe I’ve misjudged you, sir, at least this private side of yourself.”

“I do promise to take better care of Pip,” he offered sincerely. “Rest assured, I shall.”

His gaze grew even more heated as it wandered down the length of her, reminding Kathryn that she stood half-naked, unchaperoned, holding his hands, in the middle of a sleazy bedchamber. What must he think?

“Perhaps you’d better excuse me now, Mr. Chadwick.”

“Please call me Jon. I feel we’ve become friends in the space of our visit. May I call upon you when next I’m in town? Perhaps the interview was not such a bad idea after all.”

Kathryn pulled away from the handclasp and backed up a bit to put a decent distance between them. This beguiling charmer was almost as different from the Chadwick she knew as his brother Pip. “I’d be honored. No doubt I’ll see you again when I call on Pip. I’ll worry till I know he’s safe.”