Incognita (Fairchild Book 2) (19 page)

Papa’s right. He is a good man, she thought, creeping across the floor to right the tiny figure and slip her son’s hand back under the sheet. Returning to her corner, she laid her dress over the back of the rocking chair, winced as she yanked her stays from back to front so she could unpick the laces, and unrolled her stockings. Bare and shivering now, she dove into her heavy nightdress and jumped into the second bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. The sheets were cold but crisp, smelling of soap and lavender. Anna drew up her feet, hugging her knees because her toes were cold.
 

“Night, Henry,” she whispered, blowing him a kiss. A simple gesture, but it gave her a surge of warmth, knowing he was there, waiting for her kiss to waft across the room and land on his cheek.
 

She dozed, waking with a start when her arm fell off the side of the bed, which was smaller than she was used to. Edging closer to the wall, she shifted to her back, then her side. The mattress was thinner than she remembered.
 

After a few minutes she rolled onto her back again. It was too dark to see the ceiling. The lingering taste of cardamon in her mouth had to be her imagination. It made her think of Alistair, and kisses, where he might be now, and what his face would look like if he was sleeping. Did he pull himself into a small space, with the sheet drawn up under his chin, or did he sprawl across his bed with his arms flung out and his palms wide open? Did he sleep in a nightshirt or in his skin? And how pale was he where he wasn’t tanned? Her lips quirked. Hard to say. Once he left England, he’d probably end up sleeping in his uniform—perhaps even his boots. By all accounts, campaigning was harsh.
 

Of course, it wouldn’t be all bad for him. A week at sea, a short stop in Lisbon or Oporto—she should find out where he’d disembark—and then a trek through Portugal and into Spain, where he’d rejoin his battalion. If Wellington continued his advance, the army might be in Madrid by the time Alistair caught up with them. She hoped so. He’d get a decent billet there. Anna didn’t trust her own luck, but Alistair’s seemed better. Perhaps he’d arrive just in time to chase the French back where they belonged.
 

There would be ladies, if the army was in Madrid.
 

Idiot!
She punched her pillow and settled back down again.
It’s an army. There’ll be women about, in Madrid or no.
Alistair was a fine man. Women would want him.

She frowned into the dark, aware that she shouldn’t be pettish about it. She wasn’t marrying him, after all. He was just loaning himself temporarily. Pity. But then, she’d already had one handsome husband. She couldn’t expect to snare another. Anthony always knew how to cut a dash.

That’s what he’d done too. Sewed up her fortune in the marriage agreements, wed her in a quick ceremony at her parents’ church and bedded her, just as promptly. Not at the inn where they’d stopped on their journey to Warwickshire, though she’d lain awake half the night, hoping, wondering why he didn’t come to her. Anthony waited until they arrived at the family pile, then he took care of it. He couldn’t allow an annulment, after all, and he was the kind of man who attended to details, however unpleasant. She, poor fool, still had stars in her eyes when she’d tripped out of her bedroom to find him that morning, dressed and ready to return to London.
 

“You aren’t dressed!” he’d hissed at her, frightening her with severe eyes. He returned his attention to his coffee, but not before she saw his disgust. “My mother’s coming. She’ll teach you what’s what.”
 

“Can’t you?” She’d never met the other Mrs. Morris.
 

“I’m returning to London. No,” he said, stopping her with an upraised hand. “Please. No scenes at breakfast.” She waited silently, too shocked to sit down, while he finished his coffee. He left while she was still without words, frozen by the sideboard in bare feet and a night gown.
 

It took three whole months before she gave up hoping for letters. By then the other Mrs. Morris, a she-dragon fond of jewels and the town of Bath, had informed her of her purpose in the family—providing money. At first Anna cried, then she wrote her papa and discovered she was trapped. Trapped with a critical and keen-eyed rheumatic woman, caught up in the come-out of her own daughter. Abandoned in an isolated country house, with servants who laughed at her, neighbors who knew nothing about her, or were too aristocratic to care. When Anthony came home in the fall to shoot his birds, she screamed at him, but all he did was shoulder his gun and go outside.
 

He was content to wait until she was broken—after all, time was on his side. He thought.
 

Even before the sister got married, Anna was escaping to the village. It wasn’t long to walk. Wary at first, she did little else than poke her head into the shops, purchasing unnecessary ribbons and bottles of miracle cream. Then she let one of the shop boys walk her home and ended up kissing him in a haystack—a much more beguiling way to spend her afternoon than wandering from room to room in the Morris house. The she-dragon was busy redecorating.
 

Later, when Anna returned to her room—she preferred taking her meals there, on a tray—she stared into the mirror for a long time, practicing a bland face, convinced the kisses would show. The next day, when she chanced across her mother-in-law in the hall, she trembled, expecting her sin would be seen and that she would be promptly devoured.
 

The other Mrs. Morris saw nothing, telling her only to stay out of the upholsterers’ way, but it was still a week before Anna braved the village again.
 

No one noticed. Not the apothecary, the vicar, or the village gossips. Anna spoke with them all, and no one named her a scarlet woman or harried her out of town. The shop boy, David, winked at her, but that was all.
 

A week later Anthony returned, having some business with his steward. She grimly allowed him his rights, hoping it would get her a child at least. The attempt was unsuccessful, the only satisfying thing being that he enjoyed it as little as she did. Two weeks later, Anna went to the village assembly—the dragon had returned to Bath—and ended up in a carriage with Mr. Gormley. She’d met him a month earlier at church, after deciding to attend the local Methodist congregation, instead of the one frequented by the Morrises.
 

She learned two things from David and Mr. Gormley—one, that it was much more enjoyable receiving embraces from men other than her hateful husband, and two, that men liked embracing her. Anna might not have gotten a baby from that fateful carriage ride, but she did conceive an idea, a way to get her revenge. It was easier than she thought, getting men to tumble her: a medical student, studying with the local physician, who liked sharing his knowledge of anatomy; a tall gentleman she saw only the once, riding through the lanes, who stopped to help her carry yet another package of ribbons. He introduced himself as Clarence Fitzjohn, but the letter on his signet ring was an R. And James, the footman, who knew her mischief and the reasons for it, but was good enough to give her what she wanted and keep her secret. Anthony came and went, oblivious to it all.
 

But he wasn’t blind. When she was in her fifth month, he realized he’d made a mistake. He screamed then, forgetting he’d declared it vulgar. Anna fled and James showed her where to hide, behind the cold frames in the back of the gardener’s shed.
 

“Maybe you should go home,” he whispered, coming out later with a plate of supper. It was simple fare, so it had to be his own.
 

“I’m staying,” Anna said. “He’ll divorce me, and I’ll get back my money.”
 

“Don’t be so sure,” James said. “You should be careful.” He was right.
 

Anthony left the next morning, despite consuming three bottles of brandy through the night. By all accounts, three bottles was nothing for him in the months that followed. He drank, whored, fought three of his friends, and injured two horses, while the dragon watched Anna and frowned.
 

Henry was born, and Anna forgot her unhappiness for a little while. She wrote her mother, inviting her to see him christened. Her parents came, but prudently stayed in the local inn, missing Anthony’s arrival that evening, the drunken shouting, the shattered vase of flowers. The spilled water lay all night, ruining the new pianoforte.
 

The next morning, Anthony received her parents when they came to bid Anna and Henry farewell before journeying back to London. He waved them off politely from the door, then turned to his wife and told her never to send for them again. He was so still, so calm, and so cold that Anna began to tremble. She tiptoed around the house for two days, never leaving Henry’s side, sleeping in a cot in the nursery, but Anthony didn’t seek her out or speak to her again before dashing off to London.
 

She breathed easy again.
 

A month later, Anthony returned. “I’m taking the boy to London.”
 

“I won’t let you. Henry’s mine,” Anna said, clutching him closer, fighting off her sudden dizziness. In that instant, the room had lost its air.
 

“I don’t know whose son he is, or which ditch you laid in when you conceived him, but as he is to be my heir, I’ll see he’s raised properly.”
 

“You can’t—”
 

Anthony cut her off with a laugh. “Didn’t think of that, did you? You might have played me, but I’ve always held the trump card, Anna. Hand him over.”
 

Movement caught her eye; a plainly dressed woman standing in the hallway. And a footman—not James—with a wooden face and wide shoulders.
 

“Don’t make me take him. He’ll only get hurt,” Anthony warned.
 

She looked at his gloved hands, lean and sure, and felt her insides churn. There was no softness in his face, in his voice, in the grimly competent servant waiting to take charge of her son. She stuttered protests, incoherent pleas, but he lifted Henry away and deposited him in the arms of the wet nurse, who headed for the door. Anna’s legs broke like straws and she crumpled to the floor, throwing up a hand to catch Anthony’s coat.
 

“Please—”
 

One look was all she got. One look that made her shiver, that chilled her in her bed even now. Uprooting her sheets, Anna wrapped the bedcovers round her shoulders and hopped across the cold floor to Henry’s bed, exhaling a jagged breath at the sight of his tousled head. Afraid of waking him, she lowered herself carefully to the floor, her heartbeat slowing as she measured the pace of her son’s breath, a stir of air that curled around her face, warm as the steam from her morning tea.
 

I thought I’d never have you back.

That, of course, wasn’t strictly true. She had followed Anthony to town, quaking with rage and fright, haggard from lack of sleep. Was Henry feeding? Did they leave him to cry in his crib? Did they swaddle him with one hand free, so he could suck his fingers?
 

Anthony’s servants didn’t let her past the door. Anna’s father, white and wrathful, didn’t get in either. Nor did his lawyers, his influential friends. Every day, Anna walked by the house on Mount Street, peering at the upstairs windows, wondering where her son was, watching Anthony come and go, but mostly go. When he saw her in the street he nodded at her like an acquaintance or a passing stranger. Only now, years later, did she realize that in those last months he’d grown lines around his eyes, that his careful dress had turned slipshod—a cravat askew, his gloves crushed in his clasped hand, scuffs on his boots. Before Henry was a year old, Anthony died of a broken neck when his curricle overturned on a race to Brighton.
 

Ever mindful of appearances, the dragon invited Anna back to Warwickshire for the funeral. Anna went, forsaking pride since it meant seeing Henry. He wasn’t there. Frederick had left him in London. “No point bringing the child,” the other Mrs. Morris said. “Unhealthy.”
 

She and Anna both donned new blacks and sat in the drawing room, not speaking, as Frederick and Anthony’s friends stood witness while Anthony’s remains were consigned to the family crypt. “I’ve something to show you,” she said to Anna, when evening shadows finally shrank the room to a reasonable size, a small bright circle around the fireplace. “Come.”
 

Anna followed her mother-in law with a stuttering heart, upstairs and down the passage to Anthony’s chamber. She’d gone in only once—to smell the coats he left behind that first time, before her heart was broken. The room was desolate and clean, waiting for an occupant who would never return. The other Mrs. Morris walked straight to the bedside table and opened the drawer, lifting out a small packet wrapped in grey silk.
 

“Look on this,” she said.
 

Anna took it from her outstretched hand, pulling back the silk to reveal a miniature in a gilded frame. It was of a young lady—blonde, and not even very pretty. “Who’s this?” she demanded.
 

The other Mrs. Morris raised herself an inch. “This is the lady my son loved. They couldn’t marry. There just wasn’t enough money.”
 

Yes, money made people do hateful things. Sometimes Anna wondered how her life might have been, if she hadn’t had so much of it, once. She traced a circle on the sheet next to Henry’s shoulder.
 

It was wrong of you, Anthony, to marry me for mine. I wouldn’t have played you false, if you hadn’t done it first.
 

It was entirely possible that Lord Fairchild knew more horses than people, and unquestionable that he liked the horses more.
 

“We won’t go to Tatt’s,” Lord Fairchild said, setting out with Alistair in the early morning. “Friend of mine has one I think you’ll like. You can save yourself some blunt if we offer him direct.”