The Christmas Carrolls (22 page)

Bartholomew cleared his throat, then he cleared the room of himself and the two footmen carrying trays to the sideboard.

Bess couldn’t claim exhaustion or a busy schedule, so she tried a diversion. “What a lovely display you put on for the servants, my lord.”

“I do not care one whit about the servants’ opinions. I want to know if you still love me.”

Very much on her uppers, the countess replied, “Of course I do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think you are a fool.”

“Fine,” he countered. “I love you, too, albeit I think you are as stubborn as a jackass.”

“Good, we’re agreed on something.” She sipped her tea.

The earl stood and gestured at the long stretch of mahogany between them. “Will you meet me halfway, Bess? Please, my dear?”

Since the countess had been as wretched as her lord, she nodded, knowing he didn’t merely mean the table. Carrying her cup and plate to where he was now standing midpoint, the countess took the chair opposite the earl’s.

He waited until she was seated. “The Barlowes are leaving for America before summer.”

“Since I neither know anyone named Barlowe nor have any interest in them, I’m sure I wish them good luck and good riddance.”

“The Barlowes are the people who have been taking care of the boy.” The earl knew he didn’t have to mention which boy. “They have two sons and a girl of their own they want to see make their way in the New World. I can’t let the boy go.”

“You let your daughters go.”

“That was different, Bess. The girls were ready and I knew someone would look after them as well as I would. The boy has nobody.”

“Bradford, we’ve been through all this. I cannot accept your natural son in my home. Send him off to school if you can’t bear the idea of his finding a new life for himself, too.”

“He’s already in school, Bess. But what about long vacations and holidays? Is he to have no home, nowhere to go, no one to care for him at all?”

Bess’s heart melted a little at the thought of some poor waif left behind when the other boys went home for the summer. But he wasn’t
her
responsibility. “Do not try to enlist my sympathy, Bradford, for it will not work. He is another woman’s child. Let her take him in.”

Lord Carroll reached over the table and took her hand, feeling better for the simple contact. “She’s dead, my dear, from an influenza epidemic at the school where she taught. I don’t know if she ever saw the boy after his birth. I doubt it. I do swear on my life that I never saw the woman again. Agents handled everything, her lease, her expenses.”

Lady Carroll nodded her acceptance of the earl’s avowal. He’d not lie about a thing like that. He hadn’t even lied about the first time, when she’d wished he had. “What kind of unnatural mother— No, that is none of my affair. Besides, a woman like that, no better than she ought to be, why, you cannot even be certain the child is yours.”

The earl let go of her hand and sipped at his coffee, a smile on his face. “Do you remember Merry as a tot, how we used to tease that she was an Irish leprechaun switched in the crib for our own blue-eyed, blond-haired infant?”

The countess’s features softened, too. “She was all red curls and big green eyes and freckles. You used to say the fairies left her on our doorstep for good luck. And she was as bright and shining as a lucky ha’penny, wasn’t she?”

“Aye, and always smiling, even when she had no teeth. I swear she was my favorite of all the girls.”

“You never had a favorite in your life, Bradford Carroll. You had enough love for every one of your children.”

“And for one more, Bess. For one more.” He took a miniature out of his pocket and handed it across the table.

Bess studied the portrait of a grinning boy, with those same red curls and green eyes. “I’d forgotten Meredyth had those oversized ears of yours, too, Bradford.” To this day, the earl wore his silver hair cut long over his ears, hair that had been the same vibrant auburn when she first met him. “I swear I thought she would never grow into them, and I was never so relieved as when short curls became all the crack.”

“That’s not my portrait, Bess. It’s the boy’s.”

The countess sat back in her chair. There was no question of the child’s paternity, then. Speaking of butter-stamps, the boy could have had the family’s coat of arms tattooed on his forehead and been less conspicuously a Carroll.

“You see?” the earl asked. “People will accept him as my brother Jack’s grandson.”

“They will
never
accept him, Bradford. Stop dreaming.”

“They will if you do. If we give him our name, take him into our home, how can anyone question us? The Duke of Carlisle will sponsor him. Damn, I’ll get Rendell to whisper in Prinny’s ear. We can make it work, Bess. And he’s a fine boy, bright and well mannered. You’ll like him.”

“What, you’ve seen him?” The countess felt betrayed all over again. The child was no longer a faceless entity existing in limbo; now he was a real boy, stealing her husband’s affection from her own children, from her.

“I had to, to make sure he was healthy and not in need of anything.”

“And what if I need you to leave this be, to let him go to America with a decent family, one he knows?”

“Don’t make me choose, Bess, I beg of you.”

“I am your wife, Bradford. Your legal wife who has borne you three beautiful children who bear your name. There should be no choice.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Nothing was settled, yet both the earl and his countess were resolved to stop the conflict. Pain for one meant pain for the other, that was how they’d lived the last twenty-one years, and that was how they intended to keep living. The love they shared just had to be enough to see them through this muddle, too. Lord Carroll wouldn’t press Bess about taking the boy into their home, and Lady Carroll wouldn’t deny Bradford his son outside it. He hadn’t given up, and she hadn’t backed down.

Nothing more was said, but that night they clung together like young lovers reunited after a separation, holding tightly to each other after the lovemaking, as if to keep the world from intruding between them. It would in the morning, of course, but they could pretend.

The household was relieved that the master and mistress seemed to have reconciled their differences. Bartholemew just shook his head, seeing a temporary truce instead of a negotiated peace. He hoped the diplomats in Vienna were having better luck.

In March Lady Carroll went to London to welcome Joia and her husband home. Lord Carroll went along, reluctant but resigned, until he realized Comfort was escort enough for the ladies, and the viscount actually enjoyed the social rounds. The elegant aristocrat had to be the finest son-in-law a man could have, the earl decided.

Merry and Max joined them at Carroll House in Grosvenor Square just before Comfort and Joia left for Ireland. With everything in hand at their cottage and Max’s leg nearly healed, the countess insisted that Meredyth have her proper come-out. Having been denied the grand weddings of her dreams, Bess was determined to see her youngest daughter’s presentation done in style, with hooped skirts, tiara, and fancy balls, all the ruffles and rigmarole of a debutante Season.

Merry made her bows at the queen’s drawing room in April, but as Lady Grey, not Lady Meredyth Carroll, which, her fond parents agreed, was a fine thing for the family reputation since the irrepressible chit grinned through the whole affair, winked at Max, and had dog hair on her gloves. During the weeks of fittings and furbishings and feminine folderol, Max proved to be a solid bastion of male companionship for the earl, who was pleased to introduce the young hero around at his clubs. Max was a good listener, but more important, he was a conscientious property owner who wanted to get home to his piece of land. With Merry’s hearty approval, her Season lasted all of two weeks. Bless the lad. Lord Carroll thought Max had to be the world’s best son-in-law.

In June, though, Lord and Lady Carroll received a letter from Holly, saying that she was expecting a blessed event in the New Year. Mr. Rendell instantly became the earl’s favorite son-in-law.

Also in June, Lord Carroll took on a new groom, one of those fashionable new tigers. All the swells had boys riding behind their seats, the earl casually explained to his wife, to jump down and hold the horses. The boy was a relative of Jem Coachman, he said, and would only be at Winterpark for the summer, sleeping over the stable with the other grooms.

But the boy was too small and frail to hold Carroll’s high-strung cattle. He wasn’t dressed in livery, either, just an ill-fitting assortment of pants and shirts, with a knit cap pulled over his ears. And he didn’t have to cling to any precarious perch, Bess noted from her bedroom window that overlooked the carriage drive. He sat on the bench next to her harebrained, ham-handed husband.

How could Bradford think she wouldn’t know? Everyone knew, she was sure, from the housekeeper’s pursed lips to her abigail’s sympathetic looks. Bartholemew avoided her altogether, a sure sign of divided loyalties. Well, let them pity her, Bess decided. Her husband was happy with his new plaything, like Meredyth with her mongrel pup, and Bradford’s mongrel was going to stay in the stable where he belonged.

Bess’s conscience declared war on her righteous indignation. He was just a child, her eyes and her heart told her, an innocent child hardly more than a babe. He was a motherless boy with the stigma of bastardy—who’d done absolutely nothing to deserve his fate. Life was hard, Bess forced herself to reply. Better he learn that lesson now.

What he was learning was the layout of Winterpark, as the earl took the boy with him on his visits to the tenant farmers and their families. He was learning to ride as well. Bess watched from her window as Bradford’s little shadow followed him on a sleek and shiny pony. The girls had outgrown their ponies by their tenth birthdays; there hadn’t been one in the stables in years. Perhaps life wasn’t going to be so hard for the earl’s natural son. Many men took responsibility for their by-blows, Lady Carroll acknowledged. They raised them and saw them settled in positions of respect. They just didn’t make them their heirs.
Send him away,
Bess silently pleaded.
An’ you love me, Bradford, send him away.

The boy did leave in August, but the countess would not ask where. To school, another family, it mattered not, there was no constant, nagging reminder of the family’s shame. He left in the earl’s own carriage, his pony tied behind, like no stableboy Bess had ever seen. She didn’t care. Her husband’s bastard son was gone.

So was some of Bradford’s happiness, though. He seemed to age overnight, requiring naps in the afternoon, complaining of his swollen joints and aching foot. At night now, it was the earl who claimed exhaustion when Bess would have shared his bed. By day, he spent less time with his beloved horses and more time with the estate books, shouting at the servants, complaining Cook’s food was making him ill, telling Bartholemew he was not at home to callers, friends and neighbors alike.

“What about the hunt ball?” Bess wanted to know. “Are you too blue-deviled to hold the annual party? Will it be too much of a strain for you, all that company and entertaining?”

“Do what you will, madam. You always do.”

The countess worried in truth now, for if Bradford was willing to forgo his cherished hunt and the huge house party that always went with it, he was ailing indeed, if only sore at heart. She wrote to Meredyth and Joia, asking them to come early for the visit and to stay longer. Hollice and Rendell were expected back before Christmas so their child could be born at Rendell Hall, but no date of arrival had been mentioned in their letters. Still, two out of three daughters ought to brighten Carroll’s spirits, his wife firmly believed.

He was gladdened by the girls’ acceptances, but more so, Bess was angry to realize, by the boy’s return. She wouldn’t have known he was back except that she saw the pony in one of the paddocks when she drove past on her way to visit a tenant family. That and Bradford’s suddenly recovered interest in his horses, for he seldom left the barns anymore, the cad.

The child ought to be in school instead of dawdling around a stable yard, the countess told herself, where he’d be noticed immediately on her daughters’ arrivals. They might be married now and know such things existed, but they did not need to know their own father’s indiscretion in a knit cap.

She wouldn’t ask, of course. Silent indifference and feigned ignorance seemed to be part of their unspoken pact. Nor would she lower herself to gossiping with the servants. Bartholemew, however, did not count.

“The young groom, Lord Carroll’s tiger, is surely of an age to be at school, don’t you think?” she asked the butler one afternoon, as though idly wondering why the child wasn’t at classes in the village.

Looking past her shoulder, Bartholomew answered, “Quite, but there was a measles outbreak at the academy where he was enrolled.” As if stable brats frequently attended boarding school. “They sent the boys home. The little chap is fine, though. Jake Groom is taking good care of him.”

“I thought he was Jem Coachman’s grandson, Bartholomew.”

“Indeed, my lady. But Jake has, ah, more experience with boys.”

Since neither Jem nor Jake had ever been married to her certain knowledge, Bess shook her head. “Get your stories straight, old man,” she said, turning her back on Bartholomew’s fumbling, annoyed that she couldn’t demand the child’s removal now. She’d thought of sending him to one of the cottagers— everyone must already know of his existence, the way Carroll trotted the boy around the countryside all summer—and to the village school, but she couldn’t, not if the boy was ill or if he’d spread the disease to the local children.

The doctor was not sent for, so the boy must not be very sick, Bess told herself, angry that she was concerned despite her firmest intentions, irritated that she kept looking to see if the pony was out being ridden. She would
not
fret over Bradford’s by-blow. He was another woman’s son, not hers. Never hers.

Then Lord Carroll was called away. There had been heavy rain and floods in the north that autumn, and the earl’s Yorkshire sheep farm was heavily damaged. Worse, his bailiff had caught an inflammation of the lungs out trying to save the flocks, so there was no one to order repairs or hire more workers. The earl had to go, and Bess had to stay, with the house party nearly upon them. The girls could arrive any time, along with the other hunt party guests, including Comfort’s father, whom she’d been obliged to invite. The duchess had accepted an invitation for Christmas, to no one’s gratification.