“I’m the one who has to sit next to them.”
The coachman’s scowl deepened. “Unless ye wish to get out and stay at the Crow—or take a seat on the roof.”
“Have her sit on the outside if she needs to travel.”
The Weasel and Humphrey began to grumble as well. The matter was clearly getting out of hand.
Caro spoke up when Muriel didn’t. “A child can’t sit on the roof.”
The man of the cloth—and the balky bowels—shrugged.
The young woman didn’t waste her time with the clergyman. She addressed the coachman again. “Please, sir. We need to get to Marbridge afore Christmas, and yers might be the last coach to get through.”
The coachman looked at her a moment longer and then let out a long breath. “Very well. But the boy will have to sit on yer lap. No crowding the reverend.”
The woman nodded and handed the coachman her satchel as the boy scrambled in. Then she followed awkwardly. Her right arm must be injured. It was hidden under her cloak as if in a sling, a lump that she made no attempt to use.
Caro expected the reverend to inch over toward the Weasel; there wasn’t much room, but the boy was as thin as a reed. Instead, the fellow gave the woman a sidelong glare and opened his Bible, not budging a hair’s breadth.
The atmosphere in the coach dropped to rival the temperature outside—well, that wasn’t so surprising as the coachman was still holding the door open, waiting for things to sort themselves out. But it wasn’t just the frigid air causing the chill. It was also the icy stares Humphrey and the Weasel gave the newcomers. Muriel sniffed and made a show of pulling her skirts back, not that she was close enough to risk being touched by either of them.
Caro looked back at the woman. The other people in the coach weren’t members of the ton—far from it. Their clothing wasn’t any grander, though the woman’s and the boy’s were visibly threadbare. But what emboldened her companions to treat the poor mother with disdain must be the air of defeat and desperation that clung to her.
It was the same air that clung to so many women when they first arrived at the Benevolent Home.
The boy pressed against his mother and, once she’d managed to sit, climbed onto her left leg, careful not to jostle her injured arm. She gave him a small smile that did nothing to dispel the dark shadows under her eyes or the tightness of her expression and hugged him close.
Much to Caro’s surprise, she felt a flood of compassion.
She frowned. Jo was the tenderhearted one, not her. Caro was the Home’s clear-eyed, practical businesswoman. A tender heart could be a liability when striving to make a tidy profit.
The coachman heaved a relieved sigh. “All right, then. We’ll be on our way.” He started to close the door.
“Wait!”
This time it was two loud, boisterous young men, swathed in multi-caped greatcoats, who pounded across the innyard, skidding to a stop just before they knocked the coachman over. One had to use the coach to break his forward progress, setting the vehicle to rocking.
“Are you going to Marbridge?” the one not leaning on the coach asked, his words slurring slightly.
“Aye.” The edge was back in the coachman’s voice.
“Splendid,” the other man said. “That’s where we’re going.” He reached for the door.
Surely the coachman wasn’t going to evict one of them—well, two of them? The mother threw Caro a panicked look. The woman guessed, likely correctly, that she would be the first one thrown out. Caro was afraid she’d be the second.
Just let them try.
Fortunately, Caro didn’t have to defend her seat. The coachman stood his ground—and held onto the door, keeping it from opening any farther.
“As ye can see, I’m full inside. If ye want to leave today, ye’ll have to ride atop.”
The men shrugged.
“All right. We’ve got coats”—the first man lifted a bottle—“and brandy to keep us warm.”
Muriel gasped. “Humphrey, say something,” she hissed as the coachman finally closed the door. “It can’t be safe to have those drunken bucks riding with us.”
“Likely they’re the ones at risk,” the Weasel offered. The coach swayed as the men hauled themselves up to their seats. “Though if they’re drunk enough, they won’t feel it when they fall off and hit the ground.”
Muriel stared at the Weasel, and then elbowed her husband. “Say something,” she hissed again.
It was too late. The coach had lurched into motion.
And the young mother’s cloak started wailing.
The reverend jerked his eyes off his Bible, a mixture of alarm and disbelief in his expression, and scowled down at her. “Good Lord, woman, what have you got there?”
“That’s my sister, Grace,” the boy said, as his mother uncovered a very small, very young infant. “She’s a baby.”
The clergyman snorted all too expressively—he obviously thought “Grace” a vastly inappropriate name—and transferred his scowl to the boy, who bravely raised his chin and held his ground unflinching.
Meanwhile, the mother was trying to soothe the baby in the limited space she had. “Shh.” She jiggled the infant. “Shh.”
“Grace is only four weeks old.” The boy’s young, clear voice dropped each word like a pebble into a still pond, sending ripples of consternation through the coach’s other occupants.
The mother, clearly all too aware of the disapproval building in the confined space, leaned closer to whisper to her son. “Hush, Edward. Don’t bother the people.” Then she shifted her arm with the infant closer to the stagecoach wall, trying to make more room for her son on her lap.
The poor woman. It was bad enough she was traveling in a snowstorm, on the public stagecoach, with a young boy and a baby only a month after giving birth. She didn’t need to feel alone and judged by everyone around her.
“Here, let me hold the baby for you,” Caro said.
The woman hesitated, clearly nervous about entrusting her precious child to a stranger.
“Don’t worry. I’ve lots of experience.”
Caro was the fifth of eleven children and the only daughter. Her poor, beleaguered mother had put her to work tending her siblings as soon as she was old enough to rock a cradle. And then when she was seventeen, she’d gone to London to work as a nursemaid—
No. She shoved those memories back into the box she’d made for them and slammed down the lid.
Baby Grace let out a thin wail, and her mother gave in.
“Thank you,” she said softly. She leaned forward, and Caro scooped the small bundle out of the crook of her arm. “Careful with her head.”
Caro nodded, wondering again what would force a new mother out into the snow just before Christmas.
Ah. The moment she felt the baby’s warm weight—the mite couldn’t be even as heavy as a tankard of ale—Caro’s hands remembered how to hold such a young child. She settled the baby against her shoulder, patting her and humming, feeling a surprising calm flow through her as she soothed little Grace back to sleep.
Women needed to band together to support one another. That’s what they did—most of the time—at the Home. Caro looked at Grace’s mother. Did she need the Home’s refuge? Caro could—
No, unfortunately she wouldn’t. Space at the Home was very limited. There wasn’t room for two separate dormitories for boys and girls. Jo had made the decision early on that they couldn’t take in mothers with sons past babyhood.
If there were only Grace, the Home’s doors would be wide open. But there was also Edward.
An uneasy silence had settled over the coach—no one wanted to be trapped in a small space with a howling infant—but once it became clear Grace was going back to sleep, everyone seemed to relax. The clergyman went back to his Bible; the Weasel and Muriel looked out the window on their side of the coach. Humphrey—perhaps afraid he’d jostle the baby awake—slid his bulk away from Caro as best he could. The young mother and her son f
ell into what must have been an exhausted sleep.
Caro shifted the baby slightly, patting her bottom when she whimpered. The snow was still coming down, but so far, the coach was moving along, thank God. Perhaps she would reach Marbridge in time to catch the one coach that would take her on to Little Puddledon.
And then Grace started making little snuffling, hungry noises.
Oh, blast. How could Grace’s mother nurse a baby in this cramped carriage of disapproving men? But there was no arguing with a hungry infant. Grace was going to start screaming soon unless . . .
Perhaps a trick Caro had learned tending her siblings could buy them some time.
She gave Grace the knuckle of her pinkie to suck on.
Ah. She’d forgotten how surprisingly strong and rhythmic an infant’s sucking was. The sensation made her feel . . . odd. Almost as if she wished she had a baby herself.
Nonsense! What she really wished for was a miracle, that she could keep Grace content until they got to Marb—
“Tallyho!”
The coach suddenly picked up speed amid a storm of shouting and cursing from the roof.
Oh, hell. The drunken bucks must have taken the coachman’s reins.
Caro tightened her hold on the baby.
“Humphrey!” Muriel screamed. “Make them stop.”
“Good God, woman, how am I supposed to do that? I’m stuck in here with you.”
The Weasel was swearing quite creatively, and even the reverend addressed the Lord in less than polite terms as they careened down the road.
“Wh-what’s happening, Mama?”
The young mother hugged her son. “I think the men riding on top have taken over driving the c-coach, Edward.” She tried to speak calmly, but Caro heard the slight quaver in her voice.
Muriel didn’t even try to mask her alarm. She grabbed her husband’s arm and screeched, “Lord help us, we are going to end in a ditch!”
“H-hold on to me, Edward.” The mother’s eyes, tight with desperation and entreaty, went to Caro.
“I’ve got Grace.” Caro gripped the baby as securely as she could and braced herself against the coach wall. She was not much for praying—she’d found relying on herself rather than a distant and inscrutable Deity usually served her best—but nevertheless she sent a quick, sincere entreaty to the Almighty in case He was listening.
She’d no sooner formed a mental “amen” than the coach started to slide. Everyone except Caro and, blessedly, the baby screamed. Caro was too busy trying to curl her body around Grace’s. If the coach landed on its side, it was going to be very hard to keep the baby safe.
The slide seemed to go on forever, and then finally there was a jolt, a shudder, and the coach stopped, still upright.
And then the floor dropped a foot, eliciting more screams and curses.
“What was that, Humphrey?” Muriel squeaked.
The Weasel answered instead. “Feels like the axel broke. Looks like we ain’t getting to Marbridge today.” He glanced at the clergyman and nodded at his Bible. “But at least we needn’t be afeard since the Lord is traveling with us, eh, Reverend?”
The clergyman scowled. “You are offensive, sirrah!”
“I’m cold and hungry, and now I’m stranded in the snow who knows where.” The Weasel shrugged. “I’ll probably freeze to death, so I suppose I can lodge a complaint with yer God all too soon.”
Muriel shrieked.
“Hold yer tongue,” Humphrey told the Weasel sharply.
Yes, indeed. Didn’t any of these idiots give a thought to the boy? He was looking up at his mother, eyes wide, face pale. “We’ll be all right, won’t we, Mama?”
His mother forced a tense smile and smoothed back his hair. “Aye, Edward. As long as we’re together, we’ll be all r-right.”
That was all very well, but the truth was they had to get out of this cold, particularly poor little Grace. Sitting around moaning and arguing wasn’t going to accomplish that goal. Someone needed to have a word with the coachman.
Obviously, that someone was Caro.
Caro pushed the carriage door open and looked out. The axel had indeed broken; the ground was well within reach. “I’ll be right back,” she told Grace’s mother. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep Grace warm.”
The mother, holding her son tightly and looking wan and defeated, nodded weakly.
Caro climbed out, pulled her cloak snugly around the baby, and approached the coachman, who was trying, along with the two bucks, to unhitch the horses. They were not having a great deal of success.
“Sir, I need a word with you, if you please.”
The coachman glanced at her and then went back to his work. “Get back inside the coach, madam. One of these men”—he glared at the miscreants who had put them in this position—“is going to ride on to the next stop and bring back help as soon as we can get a horse free.”
She eyed the blackguards. At least the accident seemed to have sobered them up. “And how long will that take?”
The coachman scowled at her. “Likely an hour or more.”
She shook her head. “Too long. It’s far too cold for the children to wait here. The baby, especially, needs to get inside by a fire immediately.”
The coachman’s brows shot up. “Baby?! Where the bloody—that is, pardon me language, madam, but . . . a baby?”
“She was under her mother’s cloak when they got on at the Crow. She’s only a few weeks old and needs to be warm by a fire immediately.”
The coachman looked annoyed—and desperate and helpless, too. “How are ye going to manage that, may I ask? These idiots can’t sprout wings and fly, ye know.”
“I know that.” What was she going to do?
She looked around at the snow-covered landscape, the fat flakes falling thickly around her. There was a break in the stone wall nearby and what appeared to be a snow-covered drive leading to a faint glow. . . .
“What’s that light over there?”
The coachman looked in the direction she was pointing. “Oh, Lord Devil must be at home. Ye don’t want to go anywhere near him.”
Lord Devil?
An odd jolt of nervous excitement shot through her, a mix of dread and eagerness akin to what she felt when she was getting ready to meet a tavern keeper for the first time in the hopes of selling him some Widow’s Brew. That must be Nick. . . .
No! What was the matter with her? She’d thought herself cured of any sort of romantic foolishness. She’d not seen Nick—if this was indeed Nick—for . . . She did a rapid calculation.
For seventeen years. She’d been thirteen, a naïve child, the last time he’d come home from school with her brother Henry. Her feelings for Nick then had been puppy love. He’d been the only one of her brothers’ friends who hadn’t ignored or teased her.
That was all this odd feeling was—a faint echo of her old hero worship.
“You mean the new Lord Oakland?”
“Aye.”
She wasn’t afraid of Nick. “Well, if he has a warm fire, I most certainly do wish to go near him. Even a devil wouldn’t turn away a tiny baby.” And certainly not the Nick she’d known.
It’s been seventeen years. People change.
Yes, they did. But Nick couldn’t have changed that much.
“I wouldn’t be so certain,” the coachman said, but she’d already turned away. There was no time to waste.
She stuck her head back into the coach briefly to address Grace’s mother. “There’s a house nearby. I’m taking Grace there and will send back help.”
The woman frowned but must have concluded that the sooner Grace got inside, the better, because she nodded. “All right. Do hurry.”
“And close the blasted door,” the clergyman snapped. “Do you want us all to freeze?”
Muriel moaned, Humphrey glared at her, and even the Weasel’s look was annoyed rather than amorous.
“Right.” Caro pushed the door closed and started through the snow toward the house.
&
nbsp; Chapter Two
Nicholas St. John, Viscount Oakland, or, as some called him, Lord Devil, averted his gaze from the Honorable Felix Simpson, sprawled in the red upholstered chair by the fire with Polly kneeling between his legs. Fortunately, Polly’s body blocked Nick’s view of precisely what she was doing, but from the way her head moved and the quality of Felix’s moans, Nick could venture an educated guess.
Sadly, there wasn’t a safer spot in his sitting room to rest his eyes. Bertram Collins, occupying the settee with Fanny, looked to have his tongue so far down the girl’s throat he could sample the luncheon she’d consumed several hours earlier.
“Oh,” Felix gasped. “That’s it, luv. Faster now. Fast—ah. Ah. Yess.”
Blast. Sticking his fingers in his ears and humming would be too obvious. Nick would have to endure the noises of sexual passion as best he could without cringing.
Cringing?! What the bloody hell is wrong with me?
He should turn to clever Livy, patiently stroking his arm—his still jacket-covered arm—and get busy with some carnal fun of his own.
His most carnal organ shrunk—literally and figuratively—at the thought.
It’s Oakland. The damn place casts a pall over everything.
He took another sip of brandy, hoping the alcohol would blunt his discomfort and make him numb enough to engage in the amorous activity Livy clearly expected.
Why the hell did I think hosting a Christmas orgy at Oakland was a good idea?
He hated Christmas and Oakland. Usually he stayed in Town for the holiday, where the noise and dirt and the wide offering of activities—polite and extremely impolite—helped take the edge off the revoltingly merry season. But two nights ago, he’d made the mistake of hosting a party at his townhouse.
Well, the party hadn’t been a mistake. The mistake had arrived with his neighbor, Myles Gray. Myles had been walking Rufus, his large dog of questionable pedigree, when he’d heard the revelry and decided to have a look-in. Myles should have tied Rufus to the gate first, but he hadn’t thought of that.
Once the butler opened the door, it was too late. As bad luck would have it, a footman had been passing through the foyer at that precise moment, carrying a tray piled high with plates of ham, sausage, bread, and cheese.
The Merry Viscount Page 2