A Lady Awakened (42 page)

Well, no, she shouldn’t have. Her condition would keep her from going out in society for some time.

Theo stretched restlessly in his chair as the fool of a soprano launched into an aria grieving the loss of her faithless husband’s love. Five days he’d been in town, and at odd moments the knowledge would come in like a swift uppercut: he’d abandoned a woman pregnant with his child.

By her choice, of course. By the original agreement. Indeed
abandon
was hardly the right word, when a gentleman asked for a lady’s hand and was refused.

Still. Here he was in London, and if a time ever came when his child, or child’s mother, was in danger or dire need, he would have no way of knowing. No way, ever, to be of service to the two. Love and family aside, there remained the question of duty, didn’t there? Singular notion to have brought back from Sussex, but brought it he had.

Other duties pricked at his conscience as well. Other people. Granville, who’d been so encouraging in regard to the dairy operation and now was left to manage all the details of someone else’s scheme. The laborers. Oh, he’d told them he would eventually go back to London, but they must have expected he would at least stay long enough to see the cows purchased.

And in truth he’d looked forward to that. To going along and paying Mr. Barrow or some other worthy man the tribute of his absorbed attention, and to learning just how to tell a good cow from a lackluster specimen. Really, why shouldn’t that be every bit as interesting as judging horseflesh at Tattersall’s?

“Mirkwood.” The voice had an impatient edge, as though its owner had been trying to get his attention for some time. “Where the deuce are you tonight? I thought you’d liven up our box, but I’d have done better to invite my own grandmother.” His friend regarded him through dark eyes, his brow lowered in an attempt at severity.

Ha.
I’ve seen dark-eyed severity practiced by a master. You, sir, don’t come close
.

“I mean you might as well have stayed in Sussex for all the good you’ve been. What topic so engrosses your thoughts?”

And there it was in plain words. What the devil was he doing here? He ought to have stayed. He’d thought his attachment to Sussex had only to do with his attachment to Mrs. Russell, and he’d left when that tale had come to its end. But was he no more than the sum of his sentiments? Damn it all, he had things to learn and projects to carry out. He wasn’t the sort of man to walk away from the dairy thing when it was only half begun.

“Cows,” he said, while the orchestra threw up a swelling chord as if to underscore his coalescing resolve. “Cows engross me.” Yes. He knew what he must do. “Or kine, I think, may be the proper term when one refers to a lot of them.”

“Oh, I say.” The brows bounced skyward; the eyes went wide with distaste.

“Summerson.” He stood, unthinking, as though the music itself had heaved him to his feet. “Do you know any prayers?”

“Prayers?” Summerson gaped up at him. “Well, I did win a prize in grammar school for learning Bible verses, but—”

“Splendid.” His pulse was pounding. He straightened his coat and made for the back of the box. “Pick out a few good ones and say them for me.”

“What do you mean? Good God. Mirkwood, where are you going?”

One hand on the doorknob, he turned to look back. “Tonight, home, to get what sleep I can. Tomorrow—” The briefest pause as the aria reached its apex and swirled all round him like wild ocean waves—“Tomorrow, I go to beard the lion in his den.”

*  *  *

M
ARTHA SHIFTED
from foot to foot, arms wrapped tight about her middle, as the closed carriage came swaying up her drive. Four horses, and these the last of several changes, no doubt. Northumberland was a long way off.

With the toes of her right foot she felt for the edge of the step. Three steps. She would descend them briskly, face bright with a sisterly smile. She would be the first to put out her hand. “How was your trip?” she would say, and from there proceed to all the pleasantries that were expected in such a meeting. What didn’t come naturally could be mastered with practice, and she might as well begin practicing now.

The carriage halted and a footman jumped down to open the door.
Now
. He set the steps.
Go now. Smile
.

She forced herself forward, down the first step, as a poised, dark-haired figure emerged from the carriage. And all at once the actions came as naturally as could be. She pelted down the remaining steps and across the drive, into a pair of ready warm arms. Kitty, as always, smelled like jasmine.

“Goodness, Martha.” Such an elegant voice, and so sweetly familiar. “Are you feeling quite yourself?”

“Oh, yes. I’m just so happy to see you.” It was true.

“I set out the day I got your letter.” She turned her head to nod back at the carriage. “Came by way of London, and see what I brought you.”

“Nick!” Martha slipped out of one embrace to run into another as her brother sprang down from the steps. “I had no idea of your coming along.”

“Good Lord.” This voice, too, so richly redolent of childhood and home, as he spoke over her head to Kitty. “Who is this creature, and where do you suppose she’s hidden our sister?”

Almost certainly she looked a fool, adopting girlish habits of affection at such a late age. So be it. Her heart had had its fill of moderation, and nothing—almost nothing—could please her more than the gentle teasing rapport of these people to whom she belonged.

“Truthfully, I’m relieved to see you so. I confess I worried for you after the funeral.” Nick let her go and turned once more to her sister. “You ought to have seen her. So pale and drawn and hardly speaking at all.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come. Poor Martha, no one to comfort her but a pair of clumsy brothers.”

“Never mind about it.” The few servants had climbed down from the carriage, and Martha stepped away to relieve a nursemaid of her tiny bundle. “You had the best excuse in the world.”

“Sweetheart, I didn’t even have the best excuse in the family. Does either of you hear anything from Will?”

Nick had the most recent letter among them, and reported that the Thirtieth Regiment of Foot was still stationed at Antwerp.

“What can they be thinking?” was Kitty’s reply to this intelligence. “I could understand if they’d posted him on Elba, to personally keep watch of Napoleon, but surely the war is over now, and English soldiers belong at home.”

Nick had some dissent to make, and the two of them wrangled over the issue all the way into the house while Martha followed, head bent low to breathe in the scent of her newest nephew. Little Charles would have a littler cousin within the year, Heaven and her own constitution willing. In the far reaches of north England, from where no reports of the child were likely to reach Sussex and overturn her bargain with Mr. James Russell.

And some time between now and then—some time between now and when her condition became unmistakable—she would work out what exactly to tell Kitty and her husband. For the moment, she hadn’t the least idea what that could be.

T
HIS WON’T
be the first time you’ve disappointed him. Likely it won’t even be the last.
Theo set his shoulders and mounted the stairs of the family’s London home. He’d sent a card, of course, upon his arrival in town, but not until now had he got round to presenting himself. And with such tidings.

Ahead of him a silent footman led the way, as if he needed to be shown. Left at the second floor landing, and right toward the back of the house. Sir Frederick would be in the drawing room, with assorted family members no doubt present to compound the degree of his disgrace.

So be it. His father’s good opinion would be worth little, after all, if it were based on falsehoods or even strategic omissions. And if he lost Sir Frederick’s regard, well, he’d got by well enough without it for most of his life.

At the sitting-room door the footman thankfully stopped short of announcing him, and took himself off with a bow. Theo went in.

In spite of his errand a sense of well-being washed over him as he crossed the threshold. So many pleasant hours he’d spent in this room, losing pocket-money to whatever sibling cared to play him at draughts, or simply idling while his sisters worked at their embroidery frames and one of his bookish younger brothers read aloud.

No brother was present this afternoon, but Sophia, his eldest sister, set aside her needlework and rose from the sofa to express her delight that they should both happen to be in town. Mother was likewise present, and likewise delighted. Father gave a possibly cordial nod from the desk in the corner where he must always situate himself, surrounded by important-looking papers and other tokens of consequence.

Now for it. He excused himself from the feminine pleasantries, and crossed the room to take a seat before the baronet’s desk, hat in his lap.

What a fine brooding specimen Father was, even in riper years. The same grim profile and hooded eyes that marked all the portraits hanging in the gallery at Broughton Hall. Pity he’d fallen for a Nordic princess of a woman and seen the Mirkwood features shouldered out by blond brawn in most of his issue.

“Yes?” Sir Frederick angled his head to indicate half-grudging attention, his pen still poised above a paper.
I’ve made up my mind to be fond of him and he hasn’t succeeded in dissuading me yet
. Fondness was in his nature. It couldn’t be helped.

“I’ve come to tell you I’m going to settle at Pencarragh. I’ve given up my lodgings in town and I plan to stay in Sussex through next summer, at least. I thought you should know.”

Father took up the pen-wiper and cleaned his quill with meticulous attention, but his mouth was threatening every second to draw into a genuine smile. “It gets into your blood, doesn’t it?” he said finally, arranging the pen in a channel the desk provided for that purpose. “Working with land. I had a suspicion things might turn out so.”

Such ill-contained pride and pleasure were like a rack on which to stretch a guilty man’s conscience. He cleared his throat. “Granville wrote to you, I think, of our dairy undertaking. There’s a deal of work to be accomplished in order to get the thing going, and I find I should like to see it through.”

He could stop there. These weren’t falsified reasons for his return, but sincere ones. Yet he was weary, after six and twenty years, of always avoiding unpleasantness. He wanted, lately, to be a man who shrank from nothing. The sort of man a child’s father ought to be.

“But there’s another reason as well. Another obligation.” He turned his hat round, one full revolution, and tightened his fingers on the brim. “The fact is I’ve gotten a lady into difficulty.” A clatter reached him from the far side of the room; Sophia had dropped her scissors. They were listening, then. Splendid.

The pride and pleasure drained right out of Sir Frederick’s face. He stared down at the desktop, as though he could not bring himself to lay eyes on his son. His mouth tightened. He rolled the pen a quarter-turn in its channel. Abruptly he looked up. “Not the widowed neighbor.”

Theo felt his own face fall. “How do you know?”

“I asked Granville to keep an eye out for such entanglements. He assured me he hadn’t seen you to spend time with any lady excepting the widow on the next estate. But he was certain of her virtue.”

“He was right to be.” He watched his hands rotating the hat again. “I’ve never had such trouble seducing anyone in my life.”

“Regardless your private habits, you will at least feign some decorum in your mother’s presence.” Like a thunderous pronouncement from on high, the reprimand. The baronet was in his element now. “What does she demand? Money? Marriage?”

“Nothing of the kind. Nothing at all, in fact.” Here came the worst bit. “Her widowhood is recent enough that the child could be accepted as her late husband’s, and the resulting inheritance will provide quite well for her.”

“Good Lord. What kind of woman is this?” Father’s voice suggested he already had that worked out.

“An honest, upstanding one who was overset by her loss and susceptible to the wiles of a practiced adventurer.” Practiced, indeed. He’d practiced before his mirror these lines that would put all blame on his shoulders. He bowed his head in an attitude of contrition, studiously avoiding his mother’s and sister’s eyes.

“Where is the obligation, then?” Sir Frederick sat back in his chair, palms flat on the desktop. “Certainly there’s shame enough in the business, but if she can call the child her husband’s, where is the difficulty to which you referred?”

He’d practiced this, too.
Duty demands I find a way to be of service to that child. Whether you recognize it or no—whether she recognizes it or no—I have a responsibility in this case, and I will not run from it
.

He flipped his hat upside down, and right side up, and raised his eyes to his father’s. “The difficulty is I’m in love with her. I don’t want to be away from her.” Oh, Lord, what was he about now? Across the room he heard a sharp intake of breath. Sophia. Maybe even Mother.

“The devil you are.” A muscle jumped in Father’s cheek. “If you think for a moment I’ll countenance your maintaining any sort of relation with a woman whose want of moral character apparently exceeds even your own—”

“I’m not seeking your permission, sir.” He spoke softly, and folded his hands atop his hat. “And I urge you, for your own sake, not to make any further remarks upon her character.”

“Do you threaten me?” He looked capable, even at his age, of leaping over the desk and thrashing any man who did.

“Not at all. But when you’ve come to know her as a daughter, and love her accordingly, you won’t want your affection tainted by the memory of such unbecoming sentiments as you might express today.” From where did these words originate? He’d walked into this room sure of what to say:
duty compels me back to Sussex
. How had it turned into declarations and skyscraping ambitions?

“Theo.” Finally Mother must speak. “How can you have any hope of marrying her if she means to claim the child is her husband’s?”