Slightly Scandalous (33 page)

"I take it," she said, "that you were one of the people who did the persuading. And that Isaac Perrie was another?"

He chuckled and took her elbow.

"There is someone I want you to meet," he said.

He took her to a pretty whitewashed cottage close to the harbor and knocked on the door. It was the home of Richard Allwright, the elderly carpenter who had trained and employed Joshua. He and his wife invited them in and insisted upon their drinking another cup of tea before Mrs. Allwright proudly displayed a small, beautifully carved wooden table that Joshua had made under her husband's tutelage and given her when he finished his apprenticeship.

"It is one of my treasures," she told Freyja.

"You had real talent, Josh," Freyja said, running her hand over the smooth surface of the wood and trying to picture him as he must have been in those days.

"Have, ma'am, not had," Mr. Allwright assured her. "Carpentry is a talent that does not die even when it is not practiced. And so now, lad, you are going to waste your time being a marquess instead of earning an honest living, are you?" But he laughed heartily and dug Joshua in the ribs with his elbow. "It is good to see you home. I never could understand why you felt you had to leave. You will like it here, ma'am."

"I believe I will," Freyja said, feeling, strangely, that she spoke the truth. Or that it would be the truth if she had any intention of staying. She had not expected to like Cornwall, but there was something about this particular part of it that grabbed at her heart.

"There is someone I want you to meet," Joshua said after they had left the carpenter's house.

"Again?" Freyja said.

He looked at her and grinned.

"This is not quite your idea of an exciting morning, I suppose," he said.

He was like a boy, exuberant with happiness. She tipped her head to one side and regarded him through eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun.

"Josh," she said, "why did you leave here?"

Some of the light went out of his eyes as they stood outside the door facing each other.

"Albert was dead and I was the heir," he said. "My aunt and uncle were devastated by grief and inclined to blame me, though murder was never mentioned. I blamed myself. I rowed beside him until he was within his depth, but I did not watch him all the way to shore. He got leg cramps and went under, I suppose. I could not stay here after that."

It did not sound sufficient reason to her. Surely his uncle would have wanted him to stay, to learn his future responsibilities. But it was none of her business.

"Whom did you want me to meet this time?" she asked.

He brightened, offered his arm, and climbed a steep hill with her until they reached another picturesque cottage with rosebushes climbing all over the front wall and a view down over the rooftops to the harbor. He knocked on the door.

The woman who opened it was young and personable. Her eyes lit up as soon as they looked on Joshua.

"Joshua!" she exclaimed, reaching out two slim hands to him. "Is it really you? Oh, it is. What a wonderful surprise."

Freyja guessed in some shock as Joshua presented her to Anne Jewell that this must be the governess who had borne his child. She was introduced as Miss Anne Jewell, yet she had a child, a little boy about five years old, who was blond and blue-eyed, with all the potential of being a lady-killer when he grew up. His mother had him make his bow to the Marquess of Hallmere and Lady Freyja Bedwyn before he ducked out of sight behind her skirts.

They did not go inside even though they were invited to do so. They all stood on the threshold for a few minutes, talking. Freyja fought outrage. It was true that she was not really betrothed to Joshua. Nevertheless, it showed poor taste on his part to bring her here.

"Now what have I done, sweetheart?" he asked as they made their way back down the hill in the direction of the harbor. She had not responded to any of his conversational overtures.

"Done?" she said in her frostiest, most quelling tones.

"You were not jealous, were you?" he asked, chuckling. "She is not nearly as gorgeous as you, Free."

She was truly angry then and wrenched her arm free of his.

"You might show more loyalty," she said. "She does, after all, mean more to you than I do. As she ought."

He stood still on the pavement and looked quizzically at her.

"Uh-oh," he said. "I perceive my aunt's malice at play here. And you fell for it, Free? Do you not know me better? She always did believe I was Anne Jewell's seducer and father of her son. I let her believe it. I have never cared for her good opinion."

Freyja felt horribly mortified then. For of course she had heard it from the marchioness and had not thought of questioning the essential truth of the accusation. How very foolish of her.

"You are not the boy's father?" she asked. "But he looks like you."

"And also like his mother," he said. "Did you notice that she has fair hair and blue eyes?"

"Do you support her and the child?" she asked. "That is what your aunt told me."

"Not entirely any longer." He smiled at her. "She takes in one or two pupils now, Free, and refuses to take any more from me than she absolutely needs, but the time was when she was not at all well accepted here. These people are kind but not always as tolerant as they might be. They are humans, not saints. She was destitute and had no family to go to."

Freyja drew in a slow breath and turned to walk on, her hands clasped behind her back. But he was beginning to look something like a saint, and she did not like it one bit. If she was to have any chance against him, she had to have something to despise.

"Let me guess," she said, wondering why the truth had not whacked her over the head long before now. "Albert?"

"Yes, Albert," he said. "And it was not with Anne's consent. She has altogether better taste than that."

They had reached the bottom of the hill and turned to stroll along the street that ran parallel to the beach. Becky and Davy were cavorting along the sands with a few other children while Eve and Aidan looked on. They all seemed to be shrieking and making merry. Prue was sitting up on the side of one of the beached fishing boats, swinging her legs and looking excited and happy while Chastity talked with an older woman and a young man hovered close to Prue as if to catch her should she fall. Constance and the Reverend Calvin Moore were at the far end of the street.

"Why did you not simply tell your uncle?" Freyja asked. "Ought he not to have known?"

"What would Bewcastle do," he asked her, "if he discovered that one of your brothers had impregnated your governess or Morgan's?"

"He would thrash the offender within an inch of his life," she said with conviction.

He laughed softly. "Ah, yes," he said, "I believe Bewcastle would. I also believe none of your brothers would put him in such a position. I cannot know how my uncle would have reacted, but I can guess. He would have gone to my aunt, and she would not only have dismissed the governess, but would also have driven her out of the neighborhood. Anne would have found herself destitute and with child and a vagrant to boot. She would have ended up in prison somewhere. Her son would have been fortunate to survive."

"And so you allowed the blame to be put upon you," she said.

"I have broad shoulders," he said, shrugging.

And probably very little money for the past five years-until he inherited the title, she thought. And yet through most of those years he had supported a child who was not his own.

"I find you rather stupid," she said scornfully. "Remarkably stupid, in fact. I am enormously relieved that we will never be married."

And she stuck her nose in the air and went striding off toward Eve and Aidan, trying to convince herself that she had just spoken the truest words she had ever uttered.

She hated him.

She really did.

How dare he be so foolishly noble!

How ridiculous all this was.

She wished fervently that she had not so impulsively decided to come here with him. She wished she were back at Lindsey Hall. She wished she had never gone to Bath. She wished she had never met the Marquess of Hallmere.

No, she did not.

"Sweetheart." He was coming along beside her, she realized. "You are doubly gorgeous when your temper is up. No, make that triply gorgeous."

She almost shamed herself by laughing. She lofted her nose into the air instead.

CHAPTER XVIII

Constance and Chastity sat down with Joshua during the afternoon and helped him draw up a list of guests to invite to the ball. Despite the splendor of the ballroom at Penhallow, he could not remember its ever being used. As his aunt had pointed out at breakfast, there were not enough families close by of sufficiently high social status to merit an invitation.

"We will invite everyone," he explained. "I suppose the inhabitants have not changed a great deal in five years, but you must help me make sure I have forgotten no one."

"A real ball," Chastity said, her eyes shining, "in the splendid Penhallow ballroom. I am so glad you did not allow Mama to talk you out of it, Joshua." She flushed, apparently at her own disloyalty. "And I am glad you did not allow her to force you into marrying Constance."

Constance flushed pink too.

"Perhaps," he said, his eyes twinkling, "Constance likes Cousin Calvin better." He had been right in his guess this morning, of course. His aunt was doing her best to promote a match between them.

"Oh, no, Joshua," Constance said gravely.

"Constance likes Mr. Saunders better," Chastity said.

"And you, Chass?" he asked. "Do you like Hugh Garnett?"

He had meant it as a teasing question, one over which they would all laugh. But she stared at him with stricken eyes, her face paling.

"I would not give my consent anyway," he told her hastily. "I am your guardian, remember?"

She smiled, her lips as pale as her face.

"You are Prue's guardian as well," she said. "Will you allow her to be cooped up in the nursery for the rest of her life, Joshua? Or sent to an asylum?"

"An asylum?" he said, frowning. "That has not been mentioned again, has it?"

When it had first became obvious that Prue was not as other children were, her mother had wanted her sent to an asylum for the insane. Fortunately it was one of the few matters over which Joshua's uncle had asserted his will, and Prue had stayed. Chastity had devoted most of her girlhood to being a companion to her sister. Joshua had helped, as had Constance to a lesser degree.

"If you come here to live and we have to remove to the dower house, Mama says she will have no choice but to send her away," Chastity said. "Her nerves would not be able to bear having Prue within her sight every day."

Joshua sighed. He had appointed a good and competent steward to look after his estate and had considered his duty to his new position done. But he was Chastity's guardian and Prue's too. Perhaps after all it was neglectful of him to have stayed away-and to be planning to leave again as soon as this business with Garnett had been cleared up. It was an admission he did not want to make.

"Prue will have a home at Penhallow as long as I am alive and marquess here," he said. "And the whole of the house will be hers to use as well as the nursery. Is Miss Palmer good for her?"

"Mama calls her an improper governess," Chastity said, "because she does not even try teaching Prue most of the things governesses usually teach. But she has taught Prue all sorts of things nevertheless, and she takes her outdoors, where Prue loves to be. Prue can tend the sorriest-looking plants and make them grow into a lovely garden. She is not insane, Joshua. She is just . . . different."

"You are preaching to the converted," he said, smiling at her. "You and she were with Mrs. Turner and Ben Turner down at the harbor this morning?"

"Mrs. Turner adores Prue," Chastity said. She hesitated. "And I believe Ben does too. Mama would have an apoplexy."

Joshua drew a slow breath. Devil take it, it looked as if he was going to have to stay awhile. His aunt was the mother of these girls, of course, and therefore their rightful guardian even if not their legal one. But he could see nothing but unhappiness all around him. Here were two young ladies-both in their twenties-who had not yet been given any chance of a life of their own. And Prue was now grown up-she was eighteen. They could no longer continue to think of her as a child, though he gathered that his aunt preferred not to think of her at all. She seemed incapable of thinking of anyone's happiness but her own.

He wished then that he had not come back after all.

Would the problems vanish, then, if he were not here to see them?

Could he so selfishly ignore his responsibilities?

"I'll speak with Miss Palmer," he said. "And we will talk another time of what is best for Prue. But now, to our list. We have ten names on it so far. I believe we need a few more if we are to outnumber the members of the orchestra."

Constance laughed.