Meet Myself There by Brenda W. Clough

Author:Brenda W. Clough [Clough, Brenda W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Time Travel, Asian Heroine, Victorian
ISBN: 9781611387698
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2019-01-22T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Jack was physically sick with shame, so queasy that he longed to shut himself in the bathroom for a while. Only the fearful thought that delay might endanger Lady Wragsland drove him forward. A passing servant told him that his lordship was in his study.

Jack walked straight in before his courage could fail. It was a soaring dark space, not a lab but a place for paperwork, the lair since time immemorial of the master of the house. Wainscoting with raised panels and elaborate moldings adorned all the walls that weren’t filled with bookcases, and mahogany tables held stacks of papers held down neatly with paperweights. A thick Persian carpet gave the room a hushed dignity.

At the far end near a wide formal fireplace his lordship sat behind an enormous mahogany desk. The papers here were less organized, heaped or simply shoveled aside to leave a small central working space with an inkwell and a pen stand. Lord Wragsland was not reading but seemed to be studying his own bone-white hands folded on the desk top. His pince-nez were laid to one side, and in the sidelong light his face looked papery, the little scar on his left cheekbone clear to see.

Jack walked steadily up to the desk, a distance across the expanse of carpet that felt like a mile. When he was close enough he took a deep breath. “I apologize,” he said. “It will never happen again.”

His lordship’s voice was blessedly calm. “It will not, because you will soon be gone — I hope, never to return. Please, sit down.”

Jack collapsed into one of the mahogany chairs. “You must believe me when I say that the fault was all my own. She had nothing to do with it.”

“I do indeed believe you.” The blue gaze met his own. “How should I not? I know my own failings and faults all too well.”

“I am selfish,” Jack admitted. “I have fallen beneath the standards I have set for myself.”

“Deucedly slippery.”

“An immense liar. Self-justification a specialty of the house.”

“Careless. Especially of others and their feelings.”

“I cannot imagine how Marilee puts up with me. I have wronged her.”

“She must be a wee angel of patience.”

“No, Ben says she thinks of divorcing me.”

“Indeed? You quite deserve it. And impulsive, we mustn’t omit that.”

“Truly. I am in perpetual need of someone to come after, repairing the errors that I neglected to notice in my hurry.”

“My wife vowed she would not pick up after me, in vain.”

“And I’m bitterly ashamed of my cowardice.”

His lordship winced at ugly memories. “Alas. Not perhaps with merely physical perils — your fortitude with pain and injury is exemplary — but morally. You and I, we are unwilling to bear the consequences of our folly.” The expression on his lordship’s face was immediately familiar. Jack said nothing; the other man saw his recognition, he saw the realization — the entire hall-of-mirrors of mutual awareness passed in an instant. Lord Wragsland broke it off by looking at his folded hands on the mahogany desk top as if there were something new and unique about the slender fingers.

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