“Land they must farm by the sweat of their brow. One bad season and they go hungry.” Very few knew about Gray’s stash of grain deep in the cellars of Dartmouth Castle. There were about eleven tons of it, collected over the years and brought in secretly with only himself and Harper accepting the sacks and having them transported to the cellars.
“Son.”
Gray grinned, but it was something more macabre than warm. He’d never been a son to this man. Not a true son who could go to his father when the world, and his own young mind, beat him up. He’d never been a son who was chastised out of love. The duke never cared enough to get involved in Gray’s life.
“Anyway,” he said before the duke spoke further, “they’re my men, and that’s where I want them.”
He didn’t move from the chair but waited a moment, then two.
“Very well, do as you like,” the duke acquiesced. “But Grayson,” he said as his son stood from his chair, “if you would continue to have your way while I live, I want you to try to get along with your brother.”
The fire felt as if it were blazing in his belly, searing and scorching as it rose to his chest. “No.”
“Son—”
“He’s not my brother. He’s a worm and you know it. How could you ask me to get along with one of the boys who used to kick me while I lay curled up in a corner? Who made my life hell with Harry Gable and the others?” He paused and let the smoke leave him with a deep exhalation.
“All those things happened long ago, Son. You must forget them. You were boys. Boys fight.”
Gray let out a short laugh and then left the study. He shut the door behind him and ground his jaw. He stopped the first servant who passed him in the hall and bid her to find Harper and send her and her violin to his dance hall. No one stopped him while he made his way to the private hall he’d built above the cliffs on the side of the castle.
Boys fight.
He hadn’t fought. He’d lost. But what did his father know? The duke spewed his orders from afar, and Gray had been expected to follow them. One of his orders was that Gray leave ballet. It would stop the boys from mocking him, his father had said without an ounce of empathy in his voice. “And besides,” the duke had continued while his new wife sat watching him, smiling, “a boy should be learning academics and weaponry. Not art.”
Gray hadn’t agreed but had no choice. None of his dance instructors would teach him a single step. They were the worst years of Gray’s life. He’d vowed he’d never follow another order in his life. Even when he joined the Royal Army, he’d gone in to die. Following orders was last on his list. He still wasn’t sure how he’d survived. But he had, and not only that, he survived with a hero’s honor among his men. As for the duke, Gray would never obey him again.
Stepping into the hall, he removed his waistcoat and unraveled the lace and loosened it around his neck. He paced while he waited for Harper. He felt taut, all wound up. He rubbed the back of his neck and ran his hand through his hair. He listened to the click of his boots against the floor and walked faster, picking up the tempo he was hearing in his head. He walked to the center of the floor, swaying and bending his legs outward while he went.
By the time Harper arrived, he was engrossed in his dance, dancing to music only he could hear.
Without disturbing him, Harper took her seat in a small chair in the corner. She watched him for a moment, taking in the speed of his movements. She placed her violin under her chin and, still watching him, began to play.
Gray heard the music of her violin and smiled as the sound filled his bones. He spun and twirled in two pirouettes and a grand-jeté and landed running and leaping, arching his back and letting his arms fall at his sides. He looked to be running out of stamina, but Harper kept playing, knowing better that it took much more strenuous, longer routines to tire him to the point where he couldn’t continue.
All the years of him being forced to study the sciences and almost everything under God’s blue skies when all he thought about was dancing. Now, no one would stop him. Here. This was what he wanted, dreamed about since he was six, moving with rhythm to music, soaring in leaps and spins, being free and unhindered by the tethers of life.
He danced and practiced a new dance for the ball. He knew most of the stately, stuffy nobles attended to get a look at him so they would have something to talk about at their dull tables. He didn’t care. Let them talk. He’d wasted enough years trying to please others.
He wished he hadn’t uninvited Miss Darling. Damnation, hers was a sweet name. But he knew his family and he knew he’d done the right thing. The Cavendishes would ask her endless questions about her family line until they discovered if she was rich or poor. If she was poor, she’d be promptly abandoned and never addressed again. How was he supposed to dance and take pleasure in his family’s disgrace of him if he was worrying about her?
He wondered which, if any, dances Miss Darling knew? She believed she came from the future. What would dancing be like in the twenty-first century?
The things she had told him chipped at the thick shell he’d created around himself. His heart wasn’t the only thing repeatedly broken as a child. His body had been broken on so many occasions he’d stopped counting. Though he’d remained outwardly aloof and detached toward Harper, he was grateful for the times she stitched him up and put him back together. The bullying eased up a bit after the Gable incident. Gray guessed the boys were afraid he’d get the animals after them. Gray laughed. Yes, he was a ‘special child’ who could speak to animals and his dead mother. The whispers made him feel removed from society. When he first danced his marionette piece he’d simply called ‘Broken’, Harper wept and sobbed watching.
It was because of her that the boys left him alone once and for all. He wasn’t sure what she’d said or done to them, but they were afraid of her, and they left Gray alone. He never planned revenge on them for all they’d done. He thought Harry Gable almost losing his face and losing his father was enough. He tried to bury his hatred toward Cavendish.
Most of the hatred.
Dancing gave him relief about it all. Nothing was bad enough that it stayed on his mind while he danced. It was his shield, able to deflect the worst arrows shot at him.
He liked to dance with stiff white hair. What Harper liked to call hismad scientistlook. He’d even used lavender or red powder on a few occasions, and fragranced it with rosewood oil and nutmeg or orange. The powder, made with dried white clay and a bit of lard worked perfectly to give his hair a spiny, jagged look. He’d refused to wear a wig, powered or not. He had his own hair, black as it was. If he was feeling particularly gloomy, he lightly powdered it, stopping when it was gray. If the ball was tonight, he would attend with ice blue powdered hair. Thanks to his father earlier, he felt particularly detached and merciless.
When he finished practicing, he barely spoke to Harper, except to thank her for playing her violin for him.
“What has set your expression to stone, little brother?” she asked, following him out of the dancing hall.
“My father requested that I try to get along with Cavendish, who only moments before I spoke with the duke, threatened my seat and title.” He wasn’t finished. What he just told her was only a small bit of what he was feeling. But he was ready to admit that the roiling turmoil within him was because of Miss Aria Darling, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He hated it. He hated feeling anything. It was too dangerous. Oh, too dangerous.