A Kiss for Midwinter (The Brothers Sinister) Read online

  It felt as if he’d just poked a raw, weeping wound—and she refused to be hurt. It wouldn’t hurt. It wouldn’t.

  She gritted her teeth and swung her empty basket and thought of good things—of ginger cake baking in the kitchen, filling her home with the scent of spice and sugar, of boughs cut and laid on the hearth. She filled her mind with all the best of the holiday season, pushing away those old memories that flickered at the edge of remembrance—that one Christmas where there’d been no good cheer at all.

  Just cramps and lies and…and hydrogen cyanide. She flinched from the thought.

  “On the first day of Christmas,” she sang, “my true love gave to me…”

  He didn’t join in. But as she sang to cut off all further discussion, all need for her to think on what he’d said, she could hear him laughing at her. Not literally, of course. But he knew.

  He knew that she was pushing him away, silencing every conversation they might have had. He knew that she was slamming the shutters on her own dark storm of pain. He knew, and she didn’t like it.

  It was a long song, and she sang it slowly.

  He only interrupted when she’d come near the end.

  “Who wants lords a-leaping?” he asked. “If my true love brings me any number of lords shambling about in their cups on Christmas, I’ll have words for her. Someone’s going to break a bottle and cut his hand, leaping about like that, and then guess who’s going to be roused from his warm home on the holidays to stitch him up? ‘Oh, Doctor Grantham, you’d best come quickly!’” He made a rude noise.

  Lydia simply looked at him. But she was grateful for that hint of levity, that retreat from the intensity that had come before. When she continued on with the song, her true love brought her lords a-leaping on the eleventh and twelfth days of Christmas, too.

  When they arrived at her house, a boy stood from the step. He looked about six years of age—far too young to be out in the cold—but he seemed to vibrate with an urgency that emphasized the tear tracks on his face.

  “Peter Westing,” Doctor Grantham said. “What are you doing here?”

  “It’s about my brother.”

  “Good God. Has something happened to Henry?”

  “The boiler collapsed,” the young boy said, “and there was a slide of rubbish at the house.”

  Lydia could not visualize what it meant for a boiler to collapse—how on earth could metal collapse?—or for there to be a slide of rubbish inside a house. Grantham however, apparently could, because he grimaced at those words.

  “He can’t walk, Doctor, and he might get sacked.” The little boy burst into tears on the last phrase, as if being sacked was a more dire consequence than the loss of mobility.

  Doctor Grantham stood in place, staring straight in front of him. He shut his eyes. “Ah, God. Is he bleeding?”

  “No.”

  “Can he move his toes? His arms?”

  “Uh—yes, I think. But his leg is crooked, and he’s in terrible pain.”

  “Thank God that is all that happened, then.” He turned to Lydia. “Assuming Henry consents, Miss Charingford, I’ll take you to see him tomorrow. You’re going to see a twelve-year-old child who has broken his leg because his employer cannot clean his house.” There was a note of bitterness in his voice. “And when he has been incapacitated, apparently his employer feels no compunction in letting him ago. After all, he had the temerity to trigger slides of rubbish. I dare you to find something good in that.”

  He set his bag on the stoop, undid the clasp, and peered inside. “Peter, I’ll have to stop at home to get a few things if I’m going to be setting a fracture, but we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  But instead of setting off immediately, he paused. “Miss Charingford.” The words seemed unwillingly wrested from his chest.

  “Yes?”

  “You are only the eleventh prettiest woman in all of Leicester until you open your mouth.”

  Her mouth dropped open. To insult her, atop all the other horrible, awful, impolite, unacceptable things that he’d said? “Thank you so much for those kind words, Grantham,” she snapped out. “I’m glad to know that my mannerisms so sink me.”

  But this time, he didn’t smile at her; his eyes didn’t sparkle with that familiar mischief. “Once you speak,” he said, “you have no equal.”

  He turned away while her eyes were still widening in surprise. She found herself frozen in place.

  Her body seemed unfamiliar to her, filled with aches and pains on the one hand, and on the other… A spark. One that sizzled through her. Lydia swallowed and shook her head, but she couldn’t drive that feeling away.

  He hefted his bag, flexed his free hand—he wasn’t wearing gloves, which made absolutely no sense, as it was bitterly cold—and walked off, young Peter Westing trotting at his side. He walked quickly, and when he got to the corner, he didn’t look back.

  He didn’t need to. She was still standing in place watching him go.

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS ALMOST SEVEN IN THE EVENING by the time Jonas found himself at his father’s house. His arms ached—setting bones was tiring work, and Henry’s break had been particularly tricky. But that was nothing in comparison with the weariness he felt in his soul.

  No servant answered the door, of course; Henry had been the only one his father had allowed. These upcoming nights were the longest ones of the year. The sun set early. At this point, the house was pitch black. Jonas couldn’t even see the gap in the rubbish as the door squeaked open. He found his way through the wreckage by feel. Toward the back of the room, he actually had to scramble over the piled-up detritus.

  All this would have to be put in some semblance of order. But…not tonight. Not without daylight.

  Jonas shook his head and found a candle on the hob and managed to light it. That scant wash of light—shifting over a wasteland of discarded metal—only made him shake his head in dismay. Nothing to do but wash his hands and prepare his father’s dinner.

  He still hadn’t figured out what to say—what to do—by the time he ascended the stairs. He’d had a dozen conversations with his father in his mind already, and none had ended particularly well. But even those didn’t prepare him for what he saw coming up the staircase. His father was seated on his bed, his arms crossed, and he glared in Jonas’s direction.

  “You’re late,” was what he said.

  “Forgive me.” The words came out sarcastic and hard. “I was unavoidably detained, treating the injury caused by your carelessness.”

  “My carelessness! If Henry had not been so clumsy—”

  Jonas set the tray down in front of his father. “Do not talk of Henry to me at this moment. What am I to do with you? I can’t ask anyone else to come into this house to look after you. It is downright hazardous.”

  “Hazardous? To those who are unable to walk in a straight line, perhaps, but—”

  “I would call it a pigsty, but the greatest danger a sty presents is the possibility of mud. This place is a death trap, and I should have done something about it sooner. The only way you could make it more of a menace is if you installed spring-guns and man-traps.”

  Lucas Grantham squared his shoulders as best he could. “You should have done something?” he echoed, his voice arctic. “It is my home, my responsibility. Did I raise you to talk to me in that tone of voice? Tell me, did I?”

  Jonas set a bowl of soup and a piece of bread in front of his father. “You didn’t raise me to mince words in the face of stupidity.”

  “I raised you to respect your elders,” his father spat. “To respect their wisdom and experience. To treat them with the courtesy that they deserve.”

  He had. His father had taught him to respect the old. If Jonas did that, though, he’d be prescribing prussic acid and traipsing merrily from autopsy to examination of infants. The elderly were as much a repository of hoary myths as they were keepers of wisdom. They’d just learned to voice their supe
rstitions with greater authority.

  And what did respect for his father even mean under these circumstances? Did it mean doing as he was told, keeping his mouth shut and his hands behind his back, no matter what the consequences?

  “You also taught me to do what I believe to be right.” He laid out a spoon. “I’m having a crew in tomorrow,” he bit out. “And they are going to clean this place out.”

  His father almost choked. “I’ll—I’ll have the constable in again, I will. Thief—that’s what you are, no better than a thief!” His face turned florid and blotchy, and he raised a fist in the air, shaking it. “You just want me to be dependent on you, to have nothing of my own. What kind of son are you?”

  “Calm yourself.” Jonas took hold of his father’s wrist in some alarm. The pulse was hard and irregular, racing at a worrisome rate. He’d had one heart attack once, and that had left him in his current weakened condition. Another one…

  “Calm myself! How can I calm myself when my only son is threatening to remove my livelihood?”

  Once, Lucas Grantham would have shouted those words. Now, he could scarcely draw breath to speak them loudly. But his face reflected his fury, red and mottled.

  He reacted this way any time Jonas suggested taking anything away. It was beyond rational explanation. He’d simply become fixed upon his scrap metal. The person he had been in his life was still there, but he’d hardened and solidified around this irrational core. Even if Jonas did hire a work crew—even if the constables allowed it to happen—he suspected that his father would work himself into an injury just watching. How could he do that to him?

  But the alternatives—to let it go undone, or worse, to rob his father of all his dignity and to actually etherize him, as if cleaning his house were an act of mental surgery—were equally unpalatable. There was no good way out of this situation.

  “No, no,” he said soothingly. “You misunderstand me. I won’t be removing anything from the premises.” It wasn’t lying, what he said. Just a change of mind, a change of tactics. “I just…”

  He sighed, and thought of Lydia. He wasn’t sure how his project was going. She’d talked to him today. He didn’t think he’d shocked her too badly.

  “There is a young lady I would like to bring to see you,” he finally said. “Her name is Miss Lydia Charingford, and she is very dear to me.”

  His father lowered his fist. His breathing slowed. “A young lady?” he echoed. “That’s good, Jonas. Is she pretty?”

  “Very pretty.”

  Pretty didn’t even begin to describe Lydia.

  “I want you to meet her. All I want is to have some people in, to…rearrange things.” He winced at the thought. “To put some of the loose items up in boxes. You know ladies these days, Father, with their wide skirts. After Henry’s accident, I’d hate for anything to happen to her if she should brush up against the wrong pile.”

  “Just rearranging?” his father said in a querulous voice. “Not…not getting rid of anything, are they?”

  “Just rearranging. I promise. Perhaps some of the boxes might be put out back, to make a little room. And then we can find someone to come in and do for you until Henry is on his feet again.”

  His father’s pulse had returned to normal. His skin was no longer so dangerously flushed. For now, the crisis had been averted. He picked up his spoon and took a bite of soup. “That’s good,” he said. “So tell me about your Miss Charingford. How did you meet?”

  LYDIA SPENT THAT NIGHT IN A DAZE. She scarcely heard her father and mother speak over dinner. She returned her mother’s queries as to Mrs. Hall’s health with a minimum number of words—there were children; Lydia had given them oranges—and tried not to think about all the things that Doctor Grantham had said.

  She was not successful. Men and women couldn’t talk of intercourse like that. If they could, it meant that all the pain she’d suffered out of ignorance had been heartbreakingly preventable. She couldn’t think that.

  And angry at him about what had happened? She wasn’t angry at him. What a ridiculous idea. She didn’t care about him, not one iota.

  She thought that as she sat with her mother after dinner, embroidering. She often sat with her mother of an evening; on nights when he had nothing else to do, her father would join them. Tonight, however, it was just her and her mother, sitting together in companionable silence.

  She didn’t care about Grantham. Maybe, every time she saw him, he made her want to look away. But it had nothing to do with what Tom Paggett had done to her all those years ago. It was simply that she disliked his insincere smile, his knowing eyes. His gaze followed her across the room and she could feel it against her skin. He made her belly feel uncertain and fluttery, and she hated that mix of fear and anticipation, that moment where she couldn’t tell if she wanted him to look at her more or never look again.

  He made her feel naïve—like she had been back in that horrible time when Tom had made a fool of her.

  No, she wasn’t angry at him.

  But you should be.

  No. She couldn’t think of what he’d said next, or she’d think of all the other things he’d told her.

  Prussic acid is also known as hydrogen cyanide, and it is one of the deadliest poisons known to man.

  She refused to accept that. She had to believe that horrible Christmas Eve was happenstance. She stabbed her needle blindly into the tablecloth she was embroidering. The alternative was too awful to contemplate. She’d been so confused, scarcely able to breathe. Halfway through December, the babe had stopped moving. She’d begun to worry. And then those cramps had come.

  She stood and put her hands over her abdomen. “Mother,” she said, “I’m not feeling well. If you’ll let me retire early.”

  “Of course.” Her mother frowned in worry. “Do you want me to send anything up for you?”

  Lydia shook her head and climbed the stairs to her room.

  It couldn’t be true. None of it could be true. This was some sort of scheme on Grantham’s part. She wasn’t angry. She couldn’t be. Why, she didn’t feel a thing. Not one single thing. And what he’d said there at the end—

  Once you speak, you have no equal.

  It had made her breath catch and her pulse race, reminding her of the worst days with Tom. Back then, she’d hung on his every word, pretending to perfect propriety while others were around. She’d been eager to have him alone again so that he would say those things again and again. He’d made her feel as if he put the sun and the moon in the skies for her sake alone.

  Lydia, darling, he’d moaned as he took her, Lydia darling, I can’t wait to make you mine.

  Lies. All lies. Doctor Grantham would know the medical term for the foolishness that made a woman want to believe a man when all evidence pointed to his insincerity, but Lydia knew what it felt like. It felt like stupidity. It felt like cramps. It was the absolute worst feeling in the world, the feeling of absolute betrayal as you sat at table in shocked silence. She knew what it felt like, and it was never, ever going to happen to her again.

  Once you speak, you have no equal. She could hear his words in her head. She must have imagined that look in his eyes, that quiet strength in his voice. There must have been a hint of sarcastic inflection in his voice, a roll of his eyes that she had missed. He meant it sarcastically.

  He had to have meant it that way, or those sparks that built up in her belly would burst into flame, and she was never burning again. Not for any man, no matter what he said.

  She got into bed and pulled her pillow over her head.

  No. She didn’t think anything at all about Jonas Grantham. And she was absolutely not angry at him.

  Chapter Seven

  SHE WAS DEFINITELY ANGRY AT HIM, Jonas thought, as Lydia Charingford trooped beside him on the way to see Henry. She had thrust her fists into a muff and refused to meet his eyes. His attempts at conversation had been met with sniffs and a cold rebuff. They’d traveled halfway down Fosse Road, and she’d
scarcely said a word.

  By the time the park came into view, he was beginning to lose patience. He tried again. “Miss Charingford, might I carry your basket?”

  “Was that a social grace on your part?” She stared straight ahead of her. “Doctor Grantham, I am positively amazed. Eventually, you may become fit to be let out in proper company.”

  “Only selfishness, my dear Miss Charingford.” He let out an inward sigh. “When you swing it that way, you keep hitting the back of my leg.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t say anything else, but she did stop swinging the basket.

  Henry did not live far from his father’s house. One had only to cut across the park and walk down a few streets. But that brought Jonas down the dirt path toward the stage on which stood that massive edifice of a tree. It hadn’t been decorated yet, and its branches gleamed like green poison in the midday sun.

  Somehow, he’d thought this would be…well, definitely not easy. But he’d hoped it would be at least possible. He’d imagined that he would spend time in Lydia’s company. She was always beyond fair-minded with everyone other than him.

  A friend had once told him that he was like bitter coffee—positively habit-forming, once one acquired a taste for the beverage, but off-putting on the first few sips. So he’d harbored no illusions that she would love him instantly. But she might have moved from hatred to approbation, and from there, he’d hoped that she wouldn’t grimace too much at the thought of him.

  Now, anything other than the dislike she heaped on his head seemed inconceivable.

  “So,” he tried again as they approached the tree, “your father read me another lecture today when I came by for you. If he thinks so ill of me, I’m surprised that he lets you out at all.”

  Little spots of pink blossomed on her cheek. “Don’t you talk about my father,” she said in a low voice. “And how dare you imply that about me? There’s nothing objectionable in walking in public with a man, even if he insists that he’s a doctor and not a gentleman.”