At the top of the stairs, Livia sighed with relief. Soundlessly. She moved close enough to the footman to murmur softly in his ear. “Does my husband have the boy?”
Loomis gestured to a room with open doors and shook his head. “Not yet,” he mouthed back.
Livia heard Adrian’s voice.
“I knew you wanted to—hurt the boy. But now there’s a witness. Me.”
“Drop your pistol. Both of them.” That was Jeffrey. “Do as you’re told, or the boy dies.”
The child cried out again and Livia had to stop herself rushing forward to claim him. Adrian didn’t care for his own safety, she knew that, but he would not harm a child. She knew that too.
She crept forward, Mickey by her side.
Two thumps told her Adrian had done as Jeffrey had bidden him. “And how do I know you won’t kill me as well, then claim that I killed the boy?” Adrian was speaking rather loudly now.
Livia knew why. Loomis would bear witness if the worst happened.
The worst would not happen.
Gun in hand, she stepped through the door.
Adrian, standing with his back to the door, whipped around, too far away from her to do anything but stare.
Livia took in the situation at a glance. When she stared into Jeffrey’s eyes she saw nothing but death. This man, the one who had used and
manipulated her, had nothing else in his eyes. Only the light reflected from the fire in the grate gave them any kind of life.
Without hesitation, she lifted her pistol and fired at the man holding a gun against her son’s head.
Chapter 20
“Two blasted days,” Adrian growled, pacing around the small room.
The small bed in the equally small inn parlor held the clothes they had worn that day to dazzle the magistrate. The man had arrived, full of pomposity and barely concealed excitement at the inn to declare they could go.
After Livia had shot Jeffrey, Loomis had raced forward and picked up the boy, pressing the lad’s face against his waistcoat and taking him from the room. Adrian had rushed to Livia and found her calmly lowering the weapon to the floor and putting another back in her pocket. She’d looked at him then, her eyes clear, heavenly blue, and said, “Well, somebody had to stop him.”
After that she hadn’t said much. Adrian cared for her, found a room at the village inn she could have to herself if she wanted it. He brought food to her, fed her himself, coaxing her into taking a few bites.
Then he understood what she really needed. He ordered port and brandy. Vicious stuff, harsh enough to burn, but he gave her that, and she took it. Drank herself into oblivion and then she slept.
The next day she had a searing hangover, but she had recovered from the initial shock. “I might be a good shot,” she said as she lay in bed, a damp cloth over her eyes, “but I have never shot a person before.” She paused. “I nearly did. The person who refused to give Dru her manuscript.”
He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about until he recalled her sister, now the Duchess of Mountsorrel, was an authoress. A scandalous one. Aided and abetted by her husband, she published the second in her series recently, and her husband, already a dyed-in-the-wool villain from the first book, grew even worse. If it weren’t for the evident love between the two, one would imagine she hated him.
Drusilla hated the duke as much as he hated Livia. Which was to say, not at all.
“Where did you learn to shoot?” He kept his voice low, because the last time he’d spoke, to ask her if she needed anything, she’d winced and demanded that he keep quiet. He understood, having been in that situation more than once himself.
“When we were small. My brothers helped, because they practiced. I hated dolls and baby houses, so I went out with them.”
“In breeches?” he asked, fascinated.
“Lord, no. Papa would have locked me up if I’d done that. I’m not insane.”
He winced, glad she couldn’t see it, and changed the subject. “When you’re ready to leave, I’ll take you to Northumberland. We should be there in a day or two.”
“I thought you didn’t like your house there?”
He paused before speaking. “I want you to meet my mother. Just once, I swear. But I swore we would have no secrets. You’ve entrusted me with your most precious confidence, and I will not let you down. I have one more and then we’re done with the past.”
She sighed. “How is he? My son?”
She had not seen a smile like the one on her face now. Simple, sweet and joyful. A child’s smile.
“He’s quiet, but eating the innkeeper out of house and home. Mickey is with him constantly.”
“Good.”
Although he waited for her to speak again, her slight snore gave the game away. Smiling, he went to the basin to wring out a fresh cloth in cold water and went downstairs to meet the constable, who had called.
They had made their way to the inn and ordered food, shelter and the local constable. For two nights he’d held his distressed wife, lying together on a lumpy, but blessedly clean mattress in the inn, waiting for the local magistrate to come to his ponderous conclusion.
Finally he’d returned, together with his officials, all dressed in their camphor-stinking best, and asked to see the duke and duchess.
“It’s a clear case of self-defense, your grace, and that’s a fact.”
Adrian had given him a gracious nod and the promise to visit the village again when he was passing. He would take great care to pass as quickly as possible, but he would send them a generous donation for—something.
Livia sat in the only comfortable chair in the whole inn, her hands neatly folded together in her lap. The two boys sat in a corner of the room, Mickey proving a useful asset as far as John was concerned.
The magistrate nodded affably to her. “And your wife is not to blame for missing her aim. In that situation, I’m surprised she hit anything at all.”
Adrian swallowed his words. When her sister had gaily informed him that Livia was an excellent shot, he had brushed it away with a mild disclaimer. But hell, if she wasn’t right. That had been the coolest shot he’d ever witnessed. She’d blown Sir Jeffrey’s head clean off.
Good God, what a prize he had in her!
With Adrian’s guineas greasing his palm, the constable had reacted remarkably quickly, for the country. Not quickly enough for Adrian.
“Two blasted days,” Adrian growled, pacing around the small room.
The small bed in the equally small inn parlor held the clothes they had worn that day to dazzle the magistrate but now they were packing, ready to leave.
* * * *
Loomis had procured two decent riding horses, and four carriage horses, but they would only have to take them as far as the next coaching-inn on the main road. Adrian carried her down to the coach and tucked her tenderly into a corner of it, with a blanket and a hot box, promising her they would arrive soon.
Livia didn’t care very much. Fortunately she traveled well. Even better, so did the two boys sitting opposite her. She spent most of the first day staring at him and trying not to, pretending to be asleep.
John was quiet, and he could not read. Later, when he’d accustomed himself to her presence, she asked him, “Where have you been until now, John?” Because he could not have lived in that house.
“With Aunt Fanny and Uncle Bill,” the boy said, as if that was something everyone knew.
The names meant nothing to Livia. “Were they kind to you?”
“Hush!” That came from Mickey. “He’s been going on about them. Crying his little heart out.”
Ah, so he wanted to go back to them. That was promising, showing he had been shown care and affection. Livia vowed to find those people and reward them. If she could find them. “Who did you see there? Did anyone come to visit you?”
Livia shook her head. She felt quite confident in doing so. Jeffrey had kept his distance from this boy. How would John take to her as his mother? Would he believe her? Probably not, because in his young eyes, where had she been?
Seeing the child was so different to dreaming and wondering about him. Although thin, her son had the bloom of health, and although not chatty, he talked readily enough. But he couldn’t read, Mickey said. These days almost everyone could read to some extent. That was why journals and novels were selling in such large numbers.
Her son. Watching and dreaming, Livia passed her day. That night, in a far more comfortable inn, she slept, but not until she’d asked Adrian about Jeffrey. “Am I a murderess?” Already in her night rail and with a nightcap firmly tied under her chin, she watched him undress. Almost like an old couple. His body gleamed in the firelight, the glow licking his bronzed skin lovingly.
“No, you are not.” Tossing his nightshirt over his head, he thrust his hands through the sleeves and came over to her, sitting on the side of the bed. It creaked under his weight. No doubt ropes held it together under the feather mattress.
She threw back the covers. “Get in. You’re too big to put all your weight on one part of this bed.”
With a laugh, he obeyed her, and tugged her into his arms. She sighed and placed her palm on his chest. They still had a way to go, but they were getting there. To the place her siblings had found with their spouses—and she counted Darius in that number.
He tucked his free arm under his head and gazed at her. “You look good there,” he said gruffly. “You will stay?”
“Of course I will. I have to,” she added, reminding him of the legal contract between them.
“You don’t have to sleep in my arms every night. But I want you to.”
“I can’t imagine not wanting to.” She smiled, and the look they exchanged was as intimate as anything she’d shared with him. A different kind of intimacy, but one that would last. He kissed the top of her head.
“If my family hear of the details, they’ll know I shot to kill.” She paused, then met his gaze once more. “Why don’t I feel sorry? Why am I not full of shame and regret?”
He made a purring, smoothing sound at the back of his throat. “Because you knew he would have killed John. You made the right choice. That was the only way to stop him. He meant to kill the boy, to clear his way to high political office.”
“The people in power aren’t exactly pure.” Scandal dogged the most brilliant, the most effective ministers they had.
“But they have something to build on. Sir Jeffrey was coming up from nothing, and that made him vulnerable, until he could build his own foundation. He had to enter the governing circle with an impeccable reputation.” He tugged up the soft blanket that Finch had the perspicacity to pack, tucking it around her. Thanks to the fire in the grate, this room was warm enough, but the fire wouldn’t last all night. “Power is largely a game of who-knows-what. If they had discovered his youthful indiscretion, they would have made him pay for it with favors. He had to get to the boy and rid himself of him. At least, he did in his own eyes.”
She pressed her hand against his rib cage, feeling his heart beat, strong and steady. “John might not believe I am his mother.”
Smoothly, he went up on one elbow, leaning over her, framing her face with his hands. “I have a proposal for you. Will you listen?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been thinking about this, and I have the answer, but only if you will accept it. If society knows he is your son, you will be excoriated.”
“I know.” She would gladly face the opprobrium for the sake of John.
“What if we say he is my son? My by-blow? If you accepted him as mine, you would be the saintly one, the wife who graciously overlooked her husband’s previous discretions? In that case, we could keep him with us. You would not be the first wife to accept that.”
She gasped. “I had planned something more complicated. Would you do that?”
“You would not object?”
She loved that her reaction mattered so much to him, that he thought of her first, and society afterward. So many men would have been the other way about. “If it meant I could keep him close, then no I would not. But why should you do it?”
His mouth twisted. “You know why. Nobody will think any the worse of me.”
Another difficulty occurred to her. “What about his hair?”
“It’s darker than yours. It will probably darken more over the years. If we cut it short and give him a wig to wear on formal occasions, that will help even more.”
Exhilaration filled her. Yes, they could do that. And she’d learned that anything the Emperors of London declared to be the truth, became so.
Very few people knew that her cousin, Alexander, had met his wife in a brothel, where she’d been abducted. If they had, they would have been appalled. Even more that Alex had shared her bed before they married. Just as she, Livia had with the man she adored. The family even held the key to a secret that would truly rock society and probably the rest of the world, to the core if they discovered it.
Next to that, hiding the identity of her son was a small matter. “Yes,” she said, letting the word go in one long breath.
“Besides,” he said, lowering himself to lie on his back once more. “At last I get to put my appalling reputation to good use. A reputation, I might add, that I intend to leave well and truly behind me.”
Livia could have everything she wanted. It hardly seemed real.
Chapter 21
This house was not the one she had expected. When she’d imagined the North of England, Livia had thought of rough seas, towering cliffs and gloomy, old houses.
Not this veritable palace. A mansion in the style of the last century sat in the lee of a rolling hill that would be lushly green in the summer. The gardens surrounding it were, it was true, old-fashioned, formal and neat rather than wild and natural. Snow had come last night, but not much, so the green lawns were sprinkled with white. The light was already fading, at four in the afternoon. They had reached the house in time to prevent a slow, tortuous journey through falling snow in the dark. The coach was equipped with carriage lights of course, but with snow falling they would not be able to see holes in the road.
“This is lovely,” she said. Why was this house not part of the circuit that the fashionable used every year? Adrian said he preferred to live in Oxfordshire. She had never visited that house, either, but since Adrian had been a bachelor, that was not remarkable.
His mother lived here. Perhaps they were so deeply estranged that he considered giving her this house was for the best. Perhaps she was so deeply disfigured by her illness that he could not bear to look at her, or maybe her behavior had disgusted him. Livia would not argue with that. She had left him a poisoned legacy to bear, because of her thoughtlessness.
She waited until Adrian had dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to a waiting groom. The man bowed and led the horse away. Adrian came to the coach and opened the door. She shivered. “Come, sweetheart, you will be warmer inside.”
He led her away, giving instructions for the boys to be taken to a parlor, and a room to be made ready for them. “John will not care to spend the night apart from Mickey,” he said, smiling.
He appeared more relaxed than Livia was, but on closer inspection, the lines at the corners of his mouth had tightened. He wasn’t relaxed at all.
“Is this home?”
He led her through a pair of double doors, nodding to a footman. “Not my home, though it once was. I will take you to my home when we are done here.” He glanced back, at the white sky beyond. “Or when the weather allows.�
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They had entered into a hall decorated traditionally, with displays of swords and shields, armor made into art, but ready at a moment’s notice to fight off the fearsome Scots. For this was Border country. For centuries the English and Scots had fought here, over sheep and cattle rather than countries. They didn’t care who the monarch was, but they would fight to the death if a fence was moved a couple of feet the wrong way.
“I expected a fortress at the very least,” she remarked.
Adrian gave a short laugh. “Indeed, one once stood here. Remnants of the original house remain, but my great-grandfather rebuilt it. He used to entertain here on a grand scale. So did my grandparents.”
So Livia’s grandparents, dead many years now, would have likely come here in their time. That made her feel better, not as lost.
A maid appeared, and bobbed a curtsy, then another, until a staff of about twenty appeared. Not as much as a house like this would need, were it fully occupied, but more than enough to care for one woman. Then a plump woman glided out of a door at the back of the hall. She was dressed better than the others, her hoop wider, her gown satin rather than practical wool.
She could not be Adrian’s mother. This lady was not a beauty, and would never have been one. Her gray-threaded brown hair was pulled back into a tight knot at the back of her head and her lace cap was adorned with but a modest frill of lace. The ruffle framed a face that was more comfortable than beautiful, round, with a button nose, shrewd brown eyes and a thin, unsmiling mouth. She folded her hands before her and waited.
“Ah, Miss Conway.” Adrian led Livia forward, and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. “This is my wife, the Duchess of Preston. We will be staying here for a few days.”
Footsteps echoed in the space as two small boys scampered forward. “And this,” he said, indicating the boys, “is my son. The duchess has agreed to help me care for him. The other boy is his companion.” He didn’t bother indicating which boy was which. “I would like them fed and they need a change of clothes. A bath would not come amiss.”
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