Excerpt of Mostly Mayhem by Lisa Manuel

Little Blair’s tantrum that morning played back in Tess’s mind. Beyond doubt, she’d spoiled that child. But how could she not have done, with those tremendous eyes so like her mama’s, and that imperious tone the child took when she wanted her way — so contrary to her tiny stature it drew laughter from Tess when she should have been cross. So like Alicia when she was small....

Tess’s eyes misted. She tried blinking the tears away but too late — a great big one rolled down her cheek. Oh, it had been far too long a day. She should have stayed home. Should have stayed in the country with Blair.

And how mortifying that someone might discover her weeping, here in Vauxhall’s pleasure gardens. The walkway blurred as she quickened her step to evade the glow of the lanterns suspended from the elms.

“Oh!” Loose gravel rolled beneath her shoe. Her ankle turned with a slice of pain. “Ouch. Oh...hang it.”

Limping, she groped for a tree trunk, a statue, anything to catch her balance. Her fingers made contact with sleek cloth that covered something quite solid beneath.

“Madam, are you hurt?” A male voice rumbled beneath her fingertips. She pulled back with a start. “Do you require assistance?”

Recognition, astonishing and inconceivable, closed a debilitating fist around her. She gasped and might have staggered off the path had the gentleman not placed a steadying hand beneath her elbow. Her startled gaze met cool gray eyes and the strong angles of chiseled features, features with the power to trip the beat of her heart. Her reply drowned in sheer incredulity.

“May I...” Then he, too, gaped. “Good heavens. That is to say...”

“Good evening, Charles.” Her voice fluttered, as thin and trembly as a moth’s wings.

He released her elbow. His hand hovered in the air uncertainly before raking through his hair. “How...how are you, Tess?”

“I’m — ah — quite well.”

“Are you sure? You seemed, I don’t know, distressed just now.” He leaned closer, searching her face in the shadows. “Still do, in fact.”

Good heavens, could he still read her so easily? Something far too familiar — the starch of his shirt, his shaving soap — curled beneath her nose and released a tumble of conflicting sensations: warmth, affection, happiness...heartache, loneliness.

Regret.

“I-I’ve twisted my ankle.” A faltering step backward put space between them “It’s nothing really, already feeling better. I should be on my way. My party will be wondering where I am. Delightful to see you again.”

“Nonsense. You’re injured.” A firm hand girded the small of her back, guiding her whether she will or no toward an iron bench beside the walkway.

Within the crook of his arm, she marveled at how large he seemed, how much more muscular than she remembered. She felt impossibly small in comparison, as small and uncertain as the day he left her, all those years ago.

Left her? Had he? Or had she been the one, ultimately, to send him away with words that shattered both their hearts, their dreams, their future?

“Sit a moment,” he said, “I insist. It’s been a long time, Tess. You look...”

Older? Weary? Was he comparing her to the girl she’d been? As they settled side by side his gaze caressed her. “You look lovely.”

Ah. Suitable. Polite. But what more could she expect — or deserve — than cold, common civility?

“And let me offer my belated congratulations. My mother mentioned you’d married in one of her letters.”

“Did she?” And had the news wounded him to his very soul?

He nodded with a nonchalance that pinched her throat. Did that nonchalance mean that...he, too, had married?

“Have you? Married, that is?” Her hands wrapped tight around her reticule until something inside — her comb? — snapped.

“Me? Good heavens, no.”

An irrelevant sense of relief swept through her. “I married Walter Hardington,” she said, “but I was widowed just over a year ago.”

“Oh, I...” His aplomb slipped a fraction. For the briefest instant the boy she’d known peered out from the man’s face. “I’m indeed sorry to hear it, Tess.”

“Thank you. I’ve only recently emerged from mourning. Walter and I were wildly happy together.”

Good heavens, what on earth had made her add that? True, she’d developed a warm affection for Walter, had been infinitely grateful to him for offering a sense of haven from a less than hospitable world when Alicia died. But why pretend there’d been more?

Perhaps because her life might have been so very, very much more, not with Walter but with Charles.

“He was a good man, this Walter Hardington?” “Oh, the best of men. Solid and steady and true...” Charles’s face went taut and she could have bitten her tongue. She’d once accused him — wrongly — of lacking those very qualities.

Ah, but there had been so much neither of them understood at the time. Swallowing a sudden urge to sob, she forced herself to view his handsome features and see only the man he was now, nearly a stranger.

But even in this she failed. The torchlight brought a copper glow to his auburn hair, sparking a recollection. She used to tease him about its being fiery red in the sun, a charge he adamantly denied each time.

“Ah, but your ankle.” A roguish twinkle entered his eye, a look she remembered of old. It set her on her guard, albeit irrationally. Surely he wasn’t about to tickle her. He slapped his thigh. “We must attend to it. Put it here.”

“Goodness, Charles, no. Really, there’s no need...”

“Come now. I’ve proved a fair medic when necessity dictated.” To her utter chagrin he lifted the injured appendage, bringing it to rest across his thighs. This caused her bottom to rotate on the seat until she half reclined in the most undignified manner against the arm of the bench. “Now then. Does it hurt when I touch it here?”

Hurt? His fingertips, steady and firm, spread a quivery sensation through her leg and sent a hot rush of embarrassment to her cheeks. She shook her head mutely. Couples strolling past turned their heads to gawk at her questionable position. Charles acknowledged them with a stern nod. “Sprained ankle here. Proceed with caution.”

Looking chastised for having been caught staring, the group hurried along. Charles turned his attention back to her injury. “How about when I turn it this way?”

She winced, though less from pain than because her skirts slid upward to reveal her calf. He showed no signs of noticing either her compromised state or her discomfiture.

“So I, er, understand you’re Captain Emerson now,” she said in a weak attempt to make conversation, to pretend his touch meant no more than a physician’s would.

“Past tense.” His palm slid up and down her inner ankle, raising shivers no physician’s hands ever could and sending her pulse for a tumble. “I’ve resigned my commission.”

“Resigned?” She tried to appear unconcerned as her skirts slipped another inch. Through her stocking and his trouser, she felt the hardness of muscle honed from years in the saddle. “Wasn’t military life wonderfully adventurous?”

“I suppose.”

“You...er...served in India, yes? What was it like there?” She hoped the question would distract him while she slid her leg free.

He didn’t give her the chance. Inclining his head, he cupped both hands round her ankle as if to trap it there. “India is a place of contrasts,” he said, “enticingly exotic in places, predictably tragic in others. Its people know great opulence but even greater poverty, with few if any bridges between. As soon as the chance arose I left, ended up in the West Indies and finally Australia.”

His face turned serious, a little sad. “The world is a fascinating place to a young man’s eyes, Tess, but of late I found myself pining for the ordinary, the familiar.”

So then, he’d come home for England, for the comforts of home. Her gaze drifted to the flowerbed across the Walk. As if his affairs were of little consequence, she asked, “Have you been back long?”

“A week today, though I’ve yet to see my family. I thought to surprise them with my homecoming but the surprise was on me. They’re all scattered about the country just now.”

“How disappointing.”

He didn’t comment. His eyes strayed to her mouth, lingering until her lips tingled with the remembered heat of his kisses. His hand brushed absently along her shin, fingertips all but disappearing beneath her hems.

This was all too much. Pulling upright, she swung her leg from his lap and placed her foot safely on the ground. “Much better now, thank you.”

She fully intended to stand and bid him good evening when he said, “My father and brother established an architectural firm a few years back. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

Her mouth fell open for the briefest instant. “Emerson & Son? Good heavens, I’ve always thought the name a coincidence.”

Everyone had heard of Emerson & Son, whose talents were revered only slightly less than those of the famous John Nash. Why, with new streets and squares being developed in London with astonishing speed, Richard Emerson’s star must surely be soaring.

“I plan to join them,” he said. “I only hope they haven’t grown too set in their ways to accept my intrusion into the business.”

“Intrusion? They’re hardly likely to consider it that.”

Why would they? For so many years she’d have welcomed his intrusion back into her life. She’d hoped for it, pined for it so keenly she’d have accepted him under any circumstances. Now...now it was too late. Her life had changed in too many ways and besides, he hadn’t come home for her, had he?

“Your family must have missed you terribly these ten years.” She flexed her injured ankle, trying to wiggle away the pain that lingered despite her assertion to the contrary. “Such a long time to stay away.”

“I’ve been home occasionally, though never for long. There wasn’t much to keep me here in London.” His hand went to his chin, chafing lightly against his evening growth of beard.

A shudder passed through her, a rippling awareness of how his strong hands had once held her, caressed her, slipped briefly between linen and lace to forbidden places, places she had only ever intended to share with him.

His words suddenly struck her. He’d been home, and had never once made inquiries into her welfare — she would have learned of it if he had, someone in even her small circle would have informed her. Under the circumstances she supposed she shouldn’t have expected otherwise — he’d left England to forget her — but even so the knowledge stung.

“If you had little to come home to,” she blurted before considering the wisdom — or lack — of her words, “perhaps it was because you’d tossed your prospects away.”

“Did I?” he asked, low and even and maddeningly unperturbed, “or was I the one tossed away?”

The question aroused years’-old guilt, and with it, defensiveness. “It wasn’t me that ended our engagement. You know it was my uncle’s doing.”

“Ah, yes.” His sardonic chuckle made her regret dredging up the past. “Because an Emerson would never be good enough to marry a James. Tell me, how is dear old Uncle Howard?”

Tess felt the old shame rising in waves to scorch her face. Charles’s father had been a merchant then, a middle class commoner just beginning to invest in real estate. Tess was the daughter of a gentleman and the great granddaughter of an earl. The James family boasted a pedigree encompassing nine generations. The Emersons were upstarts who didn’t know their place. Or so Uncle Howard, her guardian at the time, had argued.

“I never agreed with him. I didn’t care a fig about pedigrees or trade or...“ Her throat closed around the rest. After a decade, how could she look Charles Emerson in the eye and claim their love had been all that mattered, or renew the assertion that once she had come of age she would have defied Uncle Howard and his lofty notions. She had pleaded as much then, and he’d scoffed.

He had wanted her to run away with him, to forsake her fortune, family and the life she knew. Oh, she might have done without the money, and certainly without Uncle Howard. But Alicia, still a child at the time, had needed her. Surely Charles should have understood.

But no, her refusal sent him marching off across the world with the king’s army. So like a man. They hadn’t the faintest notion what it meant for a woman to disregard convention and court scandal.

Ah, but we do, don’t we, Alicia?

Beside her, he sat stiffly, brow etched and brooding.

“Oh, Charles, surely after all these years, the past should no longer have the power to hurt us.” It took an effort to inject a ring of truth into the words.

His features smoothed. “No, and I certainly didn’t return to England for the sole purpose of upsetting you.” He offered his hand and, after an instant’s hesitation, she took it. “Forgive me for being a cad.”

“You’ve been nothing of the sort.” Her fingers instinctively tightened around his reassuring strength, until she realized she was squeezing and released him. “The important thing is that we’re both content with the choices we’ve made.”

“Of course. How young and rash we were then.” He shook his head as if at a distinct memory, though Tess couldn’t remember a single rash moment beyond his urging her to elope. “Too young to know what we wanted in life.”

“Indeed.” Sadness seeped like an ague through her. There’d been no question in her mind, all those years ago, of what she wanted. She looked away down the Grand Walk at happy, chatting couples. She should have been among them, one of them, but at some point she had swerved off the proper path and ended up all alone, or nearly so. If only she’d had some hint of the consequences, might she have avoided that misstep?

“I’m sorry, but I must be on my way.” She stood, ready to be off. Regret burned a painful rift through her heart; she inhaled deeply and hoped the pain left her when she left him.

“Give your sister my regards.”

She froze, her mouth hanging conspicuously open. Charles merely stared back, unaware that he’d said anything amiss, one eyebrow cocked in a quizzical way.

“Don’t you know about Alicia?” she finally managed in a whisper. “Did no one send you word, not even your mother?”

“No, she never mentioned your sister.” Misgivings shadowed his handsome face. “Alicia hasn’t been ill, I hope?”

“Alicia has lain in her grave these five years. She died of lung fever.”

Charles paled. “Good God, Tess. I’m so sorry.”

Remorse nudged at her conscience for the abrupt way she’d announced the news. Still, she longed to be away. She should not have ventured to Vauxhall tonight. She should have stayed home, alone, safe from the painful memories. Only the shocked dismay on Charles’s face prevented her pivoting on her good heel and fleeing.

“Forgive me for saying it as I did.” She placed a hand on one straight, solid shoulder, meaning to console but arousing another palpable memory instead. How well her cheek had once known the strength of that shoulder, how often she’d sought shelter there. “I know you were fond of my sister. I remember how you used to let her cheat at bridge.” This recollection almost made her smile. Tears pulsated behind her eyes. “I really must go.”

“Tess, wait, I...”

His voice faded, lost beneath the hum of the crowd and the airy notes of Handel. The harmonies of violin, harp and pianoforte clashed with the uneven crunch of gravel beneath her favored ankle.