‘My son died, Magnus. No, don’t try to tell me I am mistaken or feverish or out of my mind. Your father threatened me with all those alternatives if I dared speak up so often I cannot bear to hear them on your lips. My baby did not thrive and the Earl sent him to the country to be wet-nursed in good, clean air, but another child came back in his place, supposedly fully restored to health and thriving like a small miracle. I hoped against hope your father was right and my pale and tiny baby boy would grow strong at Haile Carr and I was too weak from the birth to argue. I was quite willing to take a risk and go with him, but the Earl found all sorts of reasons why I must remain in London while our baby breathed fresh country air and grew strong.’
‘Gres has always been as strong as an ox, so it must have worked,’ Magnus said stubbornly, but Hetta supposed this secret was a revolution for him, so she could understand his determination not to remake his life again without a fight.
‘He is not my Gresley. Why do you think I cannot bring myself to call him by that name, Magnus? I felt so guilty when he came back and I felt nothing for him. Hetta—you will understand how I felt as a mother. You know every hurt they feel hurts us, too, every slight sting stings so sharply, but I felt as cold as ice about the boy Carrowe said was ours. For a while I thought I really was mad not to feel the bond I formed with him the instant he was laid in my arms rekindle the moment he was back.’
Hetta nodded, but Magnus wasn’t ready to believe his ears yet. ‘I have been told a difficult birth can make a mother feel oddly towards her child.’
‘I told myself so for months, but then your sister Mary was born healthy and crying at the top of her voice most of the time, Magnus, and I loved her so much, yet still I could not make that bond with my eldest child. I tried to believe it was because my marriage soured after he was born and I was putting my unhappiness on to the baby because he looked so very much like his father.’
‘What changed your mind?’
‘His mother. She came to me when I was expecting you, Magnus, and explained that her son had been taken away from her and put in my Gresley’s place. Now the Earl was refusing to pay her bills and her parents would not have her back under their roof even without her bastard child, so she came to Carrowe House when she knew your father was in the country. He had insisted the journey was too much for me in my condition and I learned later that he had got yet another mistress with child and might have been thinking of trying the same trick again, but she birthed a stillborn daughter and you were strong and healthy from first yell, so at least he had one legitimate heir.’
‘Were you really so rudely healthy, my love?’ Hetta said lightly, taking Magnus’s strong hand in both of hers to lend him some of her heat and certainty, since she had felt him wince at the truth in his mother’s voice and accept it at last. ‘I shall be sure to remember when I am enceinte and will know to expect a prize-fighter to emerge shouting at the top of his voice.’
‘As long as you are both safe he can yell until he’s hoarse, as far as I am concerned,’ he said rather hoarsely and squeezed her hand as if having his own boy one day might make the pains of the past seem as nothing in time.
‘I had to tell you both the truth before you embark on marriage and a family.’ His mother ploughed on with her story after so many years of uneasy secrecy. ‘You are the rightful Earl of Carrowe, Magnus. Your elder brother is your half-brother by one of your father’s mistresses, and a wide-eyed innocent she must have been to fall for his lies. Apparently, he wove a tale of his arranged marriage when he had to beg me to wed him. Why, he even threatened to shoot himself if I wouldn’t give in and agree to marry him at the third of fourth time of asking.’
‘Best not to try to understand how the old Earl’s mind worked, love. Now he’s dead, you need never listen to his lies again.’
‘I know I should not agree the ending of any life is a blessing, but that poor girl was driven too far and so was I. My husband was so eaten up by selfish wants he forgot to be the human being God probably meant him to be when he was born with talent and good looks as well as fine prospects and he wasted it all.’
‘We could say the same about the King, but at least he can be kind as well as selfish and spoilt. Nothing can change history, Mama, and I could hardly prove I am the true Earl of Carrowe all these years later even if I wanted to,’ Magnus said and Hetta let out a quiet sigh of relief. ‘Gresley’s wife’s fortune is all that keeps Haile Carr and the rest of us afloat. Even if I wanted to be Earl of Carrowe, I would end up with an empty title, since the land and houses would all have to go to pay off the old man’s debts, entail or no. What about you, Hetta? If you want to be a countess, I suppose I could try to supplant him.’
‘I would rather live on the moon,’ Hetta replied.
‘We could be a bit cold, love,’ he said with a look that said how much he loved her and how much he wanted to forget this in her arms as soon as they could carve out the privacy to be lovers at long last.
‘Why did he do it, Lady Carrowe?’ Hetta asked as Magnus didn’t seem to want to.
‘My father-in-law made a condition in his will my husband could not inherit the bulk of the Haile fortune until his own heir was six months old. No wonder Frederick laid siege to me and was very hot to beget an heir when I finally gave in and married him, but my poor little Gresley did not survive six weeks, let alone six months. By then your father owed thousands in debts of so-called honour and goodness knows what to the tradesmen, so he was desperate to get the rest of his father’s fortune. When I challenged him with what he had done a few months after you were born, he finally admitted the truth as if he had not done wrong. The Earl of Carrowe should not have to wait for me to produce a healthy son when he had one so obviously a Haile ready and waiting to slip into his cradle when mine died. He even admitted he buried my baby in unhallowed ground so nobody would know the boy I got back was not mine. Except I knew he was the wrong child, and now the Earl is dead, I shall never find my Gresley and give him a proper burial. I hate to say your younger brother and sisters were born of hatred, but they were certainly not conceived in love. They had a hard start in life, but grew into admirable people, like you, my son,’ she told Magnus, and it was true—her sons and daughters were all fine people.
Lady Carrowe was trying not to say her late husband’s eldest surviving son followed his sire more truly than the rest of his children and never mind a physical likeness. Easy to think she would have snatched Mary and Magnus away and left the man after he revealed his wicked deception and downright fraud herself, Hetta decided. Difficult to actually do so when no court in the land would have granted her custody of her children, even if she managed to procure a legal separation from their father and prove she was a wronged woman. The silence lengthened as they thought through her ladyship’s sad tale and impossible choices. There were no words to make a mother feel better about such a grievous loss and terrible betrayal, so Hetta did not offer them up.
‘Well, I have to love Gres for standing between me and the title and saving me from having to make any of his choices, Mama,’ Magnus said at last, with a wry shrug to tell her he really meant it. ‘I don’t want to be my lord or own a great barn of a house I lack funds to keep up. I certainly don’t want a lifetime of duty and living in public with a wife who hates me.’
‘I pity the current Lady Carrowe brazening out what she thought was a fine marriage to a man she now knows she cannot trust, although I don’t think she quite hates him,’ Hetta said. She even spared a pang for the Lady Drace she met that day at Dover before Magnus appeared. That lady seemed uncertain and a bit vulnerable, but Hetta recalled how Lady Drace had refused to let Magnus play even a walk-on part in his child’s life and then tried to shoot him and quickly changed her mind.
‘Aye, poor Connie, she made a bad bargain,’ Magnus said.
‘Marriage should never be about rank, money or financial gain,’ the Dowager Countess said
and shook her head sadly, as if she should have been able to stop that one even if Gresley was not her son. ‘I am so glad you children have a chance to wed people who love and respect you.’
‘But why did the Earl accuse you of being unfaithful when Wulf was born?’ he asked his mother as if it was the mystery that had vexed him most about the late Lord Carrowe’s unsatisfactory life.
‘To make sure nobody would listen if I told them what he had done. I had sworn testimonies from the midwife who delivered his bastard son and the girl herself, you see? She gave them to me when I sold my diamond necklace so she could have enough money to leave the country and begin a new life. He was a fool not to keep paying her bills. If he had left her living quietly, knowing her child had a life she could not give him in her wildest dreams, she would never have told me.’
‘Brave of you to confront him,’ Magnus said grimly.
‘Wulf paid dearly for it. The Earl used my baby’s Develin looks to discredit us both and keep me quiet lest he did as he threatened to and take my baby and leave him somewhere I would never find him.’
‘He bastardised his own son to stop you telling the truth?’
‘Yes, and I still cannot bring myself to tell Wulf. I am such a coward.’
‘Not you and what good would it do? Hard enough for me to meet Gres and pretend everything is as it always was without Wulf having to as well.’
‘If I had only learned to love Gresley and never mind who really birthed him, he might not have been so easy to bend to his father’s will, or Delphine Drace’s, for that matter,’ Dowager Lady Carrowe said with a pensive look. ‘Being born in the wrong bed was not his fault, was it?’
They sat in silence and thought about the past for a few moments.
‘Perhaps a little bit,’ Magnus said with a grin at last. ‘He should never have accrued his own debts and made love to a schoolgirl without marrying her. Even Brandon Champion didn’t do that.’
Hetta hit his arm as he probably meant her to and the atmosphere in the Dowager Lady Carrowe’s cosy sitting room seemed to warm and lighten as they forgot old sins for the joy of a very imminent wedding and Angela woke up anyway, so nobody could think about the past with that vital little mite determined to explore the rest of the world before bedtime.
Chapter Twenty
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Hetta gasped after being scurried along in the dark as if they had to win a race.
‘Making sure you don’t have to marry a lunatic.’
‘I seem to be marrying one of those anyway,’ she said and stood fast when he tried to tug her out of Lady Carrowe’s shrubbery and on to the Heath, all silvered and tempting in the moonlight. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To Wulf’s house,’ he said as if the effort of getting even that many words out was so huge he had run out of them.
‘Why?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘Oh, won’t they be shocked if we turn up at their front door, then gallop off upstairs without so much as a by your leave?’
‘No, they’re not there.’
‘And they are not coming back tonight?’ she found enough breath to ask as he scurried her down the path the family had worn between Lady Carrowe’s house and Wulf and Isabella’s remoter one since her ladyship came home.
‘No, they are busy being tactful in town with her sister.’
‘Which one?’
‘I don’t care,’ he said as if all that mattered was they were gone and he had waited far too long to be her lover. Which he had, of course, and so had she.
‘Nor me,’ she managed to say past the excitement scorching through her at the thought of a whole night together. ‘What about Toby and Angela?’ she asked, suddenly feeling guilty about sneaking off into the night and leaving the children behind.
‘My mother and Peg are used to dealing with small and demanding girls and their big brothers, and Aline is there as well as the twins, if they wear out everyone else between the two of them. I think they can manage without us for one night, don’t you?’
‘They will know what we are up to?’
‘I doubt it. Even Toby isn’t quite that advanced and Angela loves all the attention too much to worry what her parents are up to.’
He had paused in the clear moonlight to stare down at her as if desperate for her to agree. He stood brooding about something and she guessed it was her maternal bond with her son and how far she was prepared to let it stretch as her boy grew into a man. Toby was nearly eight years old and growing like a weed and she had to allow him freedom to fall on his face now and again without hovering over him like a mother hen. It was going to be hard, but she had to do it.
‘And now they have puppies, neither of them care very much where we are,’ he added as if they had been his master stroke.
‘Yes, and while we’re on the subject of puppies, I almost hope he ends up sleeping in the stables with them tonight. I hate to think how many puddles there will be in his room by morning if he decides to smuggle them upstairs again because he thinks they might be lonely without him.’
‘A boy needs a dog.’
‘Maybe, but not two.’
‘A girl needs one, then.’
‘She is barely a year old, Magnus. She hardly needs a toy one, let alone one that is likely to end up bigger than she is.’
‘They will be company for one another when he’s at school,’ Magnus said in a manly defensive sort of voice that said he wanted two pups of very mixed ancestry getting under their feet all the time almost as much as her son.
‘Boy,’ she accused him softly, the light of the full moon allowing her to see his one crooked eyebrow as he silently challenged her to think him anything of the sort. They were within touching distance of proving how much of a man he really was and she could hardly wait.
‘I missed you so much,’ she told him breathily.
‘Then for goodness’ sake get moving, woman, unless you want to be ravished out here, of course.’
‘No, thank you. It might be a little chilly right now. Maybe next year, if your brother and sister-in-law happen to leave their love nest in the summer and we happen to be nearby to take advantage of it.’
‘I shall have to make sure they do, then,’ he said, and Hetta was so intent on not stumbling in her haste to match him hurry for hurry she didn’t even pick out spots ideal for loving outside on brief summer nights. Time, she decided with a delicious little sigh, she could spare some from scurrying back from Wulf’s hideaway in the morning to worry about that.
‘We have time, Magnus,’ she said as if he ought to understand exactly what she meant from the joy in her voice.
‘Then let’s not waste any more of it. Ah, here we are at last. I hope Jem left the key in the right place because I’m probably not in the right frame of mind for picking locks tonight.’
‘I’m marrying a criminal.’
‘Wulf taught me and I expect Jem Caudle taught him. It is best not to enquire. Here, hold this,’ he demanded as he reached for the tinder box and dark lantern the obliging Jem had left handy for them.
‘Can’t we feel our way?’ she asked as he struck the flint a couple of times and she was moved by the way his hands shook so much he had to keep doing it to the accompaniment of a good many muttered curses she wasn’t supposed to hear.
‘Quicker if I find the lock and key first go,’ he said between gritted teeth and at last the spark struck and was strong enough for the tinder to smoulder, then burn so he could light a taper, then the candle inside the lamp. She could hardly hold still for trying not to laugh.
‘If we could see ourselves,’ she said on another suppressed giggle as she trembled on the threshold of her future brother and sister-in-law’s home and felt all the joy and nerves and longing building a wave inside her that might sweep them both away if they were not a lot more careful.
‘I can see you and that’s all that matters.’
‘Stop talking. Get me upstairs,’ she demanded.
‘Who said anything about stairs?’
‘Quick,’ she urged as he fumbled getting the key from its hiding place, then into the lock, which seemed to challenge his suddenly clumsy fingers even more. ‘Hurry,’ she urged as she shivered with need and the chill of the frosty night.
‘I’m going as fast as I can, woman.’
‘My name is Hetta.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ he asked as he finally turned the key and pushed her inside and had just enough presence of mind to remember to bring the key in with him and lock the door behind them. ‘At last,’ he murmured as he leaned back against the mighty oak planks of it as if he couldn’t walk another step.
‘I love you, Magnus Haile,’ she said so breathily she wondered if he would hear her past the thunder of blood in his veins if the noise it was making was anything like her racing heartbeat.
‘And I love you, Hetta Champion. I must do to have waited so long for you to make your mind up and take a risk on me. Now be quiet and let me show you.’
‘Oh, yes, please,’ she still managed to murmur before she was in his arms at last and everything made complete sense.
Hetta knew how it felt to be wanted and to want her dashing lover back with a happy little hum deep inside to welcome his sensuous attentions after all those months at sea. Bran had been a passionate lover, so she expected to be petted and praised before Magnus took his pleasure and maybe she would even manage to join him, since she had spent so long wanting him and pretending she didn’t. But she had no idea so much heat and pleasure and love could take the breath out of her lungs and the thoughts out of her brain until she felt only Magnus with every one of her senses and had nothing left to spare for the rest of the world. It was urgent and primitive and hot, and she gloried in the feel of his hands running almost reverently down her back, then settling on her buttocks as if he did this every night in his wildest fantasies, so he knew exactly where to praise and urge and need her until the blaze was well and truly out of control.
A Rake to the Rescue Page 21