by Mary Balogh
Anna was feeling happy, quite lightheartedly happy. Luke had been away for six days and should be home tomorrow or the day after. There was a little sick lurching of the stomach when she thought of all she must tell him on his return. But only a little. He knew her well enough by now, surely, to believe that she was neither a thief nor a murderer, and to understand why she had become involved in some shady dealings. And he would understand about that other ugly deed too, though the thought of telling him the details of that made her shudder. It seemed almost better to let him go on believing that she had had a lover. But she would tell him. She wanted everything off her mind and her conscience. Everything.
Surely Luke would believe her story. And surely he would be able to protect her from anything Sir Lovatt tried to do to her. Looking back now, she could not understand why she had not told him everything at the start, on that first dreadful morning when he had suggested that openness between them was essential to a workable marriage. Surely even then he would have helped her.
But it was hard now to look back on Luke as he had been then, and on herself as she had been. At that time he had not yet looked into her eyes with that special light in his own. At that time he had not yet told her that he loved her. He had told her quite the opposite, in fact. He had said that there would be no love between them. And she had seen steel in his eyes.
I love you. She could hear him saying the words the night before his departure. She could see the look in his eyes. And she quickened her steps up to the nursery, feeling so happy despite her anxieties that it was difficult not to break into a run. What would the servants think if they saw her do that? Anna smiled at the thought.
She stopped abruptly in the doorway of the nursery. The room was empty. What a disappointment! Where had Nurse taken Joy? It was a fine day outside, but the baby’s nurse always avoided the outdoors unless she had been given direct instructions to take the child out. She had the strange notion that fresh air was harmful to a child below the age of one.
Anna crossed the room and jerked on the bell pull. If the nurse had Joy somewhere in the house, then Anna would take her outside herself. Perhaps she would take her all the way to the falls. Emmy could come with them. The outing would help fill in time so that the day would pass quickly. Though she must not expect Luke tomorrow, she told herself. If she did, she would be disappointed if he did not come.
She would be disappointed anyway. She smiled again.
The nurse came into the room alone.
“Where is Joy?” Anna asked. She must be with Emmy, though Emmy never took her out of the nursery.
The nurse smiled. “The duchess took her out for a picnic, your grace,” she said. “I thought you would be pleased. She has never shown much interest in the child before. Packed a bagful of changing cloths, she did, and some extra clothes. As if she were going for a week, I told her.” She laughed. “Though I told her, too, she could not keep Lady Joy out for very long because she would want her feed. That will be another hour, your grace.”
Henrietta? She had taken Joy for a picnic? Alone with no nurse? With cloths that she would change herself? Anna remembered suddenly the smile Henrietta had given her when leaving her and Sir Lovatt alone in the drawing room three days ago. She felt instantly uneasy, even frightened. Henrietta had never shown any interest in Joy.
“Where did she go for the picnic?” she asked.
“She did not say, your grace.” For the first time the nurse looked uneasy herself. “But she did say that she spoke to you at breakfast.”
Anna left the room without another word and hastened down the stairs. Though she stopped halfway and hurried back up to her dressing room, where she took the knife from the drawer where she had hidden it the day before and slipped it into her pocket again. The action frightened her and she tried to tell herself that she was being absurd. She rushed back down the stairs.
But where would she begin looking? And why would she need to look? In another hour or less Joy would be hungry and would first fuss and then cry lustily. Henrietta would come hurrying back when that happened even if she did not return sooner. She had done this deliberately, Anna thought, merely to be tiresome.
How she disliked Henrietta. And how sad she felt at the change in their relationship. There had seemed to be so much love and friendship at first.
Henrietta, Anna saw as she stood uncertainly in the doorway, was strolling in leisurely fashion through the formal gardens toward the house—alone. She stopped walking and smiled when Anna came hurrying toward her. It was that same smile she had worn in the drawing room a few days ago.
“Where is Joy?” Anna asked. She was seriously frightened now.
“Quite safe,” Henrietta said. “She is with your lover.”
“W-what?” The darkness threatened again.
“I value our friendship even if you do not, you see,” Henrietta said, her eyes glittering with that strange look of triumph. “I still love you, Anna. I have been helping you, making your elopement easier. You have only yourself to take to the gamekeeper’s cottage. The child is there already. You are fortunate that your lover is willing also to take the child. Many men would not. But he appears quite to dote on her.”
“Oh, dear God.” Anna gazed wildly at her sister-in-law. “What have you done, Henrietta? He is not my lover. And now he has kidnapped Joy. You must go for help. Please!” She clutched at the other woman’s sleeve. “Go and tell Mr. Fox and Cotes. Get them to send as many menservants as possible. And quickly. Please, Henrietta. Please?”
Henrietta continued to smile. “Of course,” she said. “Of course, Anna. You run along. Did I do wrong?”
But Anna did not stay to answer. In her panic she broke into the run that in her happiness she had resisted inside the house.
She dared not think as she ran, though thoughts and images teemed unbidden through her mind. Sir Lovatt with Joy in his arms. Sir Lovatt threatening to dash out her brains on the stone outside the gamekeeper’s cottage unless Anna promised to bring the money and jewels and to keep her mouth shut when Luke came home.
She would do it too. She would sell her soul to get her child safely back.
She had to pause on the bridge, one hand pressed to her side as she gasped for air. Oh, dear God, she prayed as she stumbled onward. Dear God. Please, dear God. God had seemed her friend again lately. Was he to turn deaf ears to her pleas again now? But it was a child for whom she prayed now. A helpless infant. An innocent. Please, dear God. Please, dear God.
A man stood in the clearing before the cottage. A man she had not seen before. Undoubtedly the servant who had delivered the letters and left the bills beneath the stone and retrieved her money. Perhaps she had seen him once ride up to the house.
Anna came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the trees. “Where is she?” she demanded. “Where does he have her?”
The man set his fingers to his lips and whistled piercingly. Then he grinned at her.
A few moments later Sir Lovatt Blaydon stepped out from among the trees opposite, a blanket-bound bundle in his arms. The baby was still and quiet—was she dead?
Anna stumbled toward him, arms outstretched. “Give her to me,” she begged. “Oh, please give her to me.” She did not even try to control the hysterical sobs that came with the words.
But two strong hands clamped onto her upper arms from behind before she could get close enough, and held her still.
“Dearest Anna,” Sir Lovatt said, smiling tenderly, “the time has come. There is a gate in the wall close by. My carriage awaits beyond. Do not worry that you bring no trunks or boxes. I have provided them for you. And I would prefer that you bring nothing that he has bought for you. Come, my dear.”
“What?” Hysteria gave place to frozen terror. “Where are you taking me?”
“Home, my dear,” he said. “I am taking you and the child to the home I prepared for you more than
a year ago. In America, my Anna. Across the ocean, where we can be at peace together with no one to pursue or find us.”
“Oh, dear God,” she said.
“Come,” he said, and he nodded to the servant who still held her arms from behind. “We will talk as we travel.”
“No!” she shrieked. “You cannot take us to America. Not without a word to my husband. And you cannot take Joy. She is his daughter.”
“She belongs to you,” Sir Lovatt said. His tender gaze was transferred to the sleeping child in his arms. “And to me now. She is beautiful, my Anna. But come. No more delay.”
Anna struggled against the servant, who urged her forward. “Take me if you must,” she said. She was sobbing again. “But please send Joy home. Oh, please. She is his. She belongs here with him. Please send her back home. I will come without a struggle if you will but send her home.”
But Sir Lovatt merely nodded curtly to his servant, who swept her up into his arms and strode with her through the trees to the gate she had never seen before and beyond it to a waiting carriage. He thrust her inside, and Sir Lovatt climbed in behind her, the baby still in his arms.
Anna moved to the corner of the seat and reached out her arms blindly. He set the baby in them and seated himself beside her. Anna bent her head over the warm bundle of her daughter and wept as the door was firmly closed from the outside. A moment later the carriage lurched into motion.
• • •
Emily clutched the gatepost and watched the carriage disappear along the road. She felt such panic that for a full minute she stood rooted to the spot. She could not decide whether to go running after the carriage or to race to the village, which she could reach in perhaps five minutes if she ran without stopping, or to run all the way back to the house.
But she stood rooted to the spot in despair. There was no point in trying to follow the carriage on foot. And if she ran into the village she would not be able to make anyone understand that her sister and her niece had been abducted. If she ran back to the house, a great deal of time would be wasted and she would still face the same problem.
Ashley. Oh, Ashley.
She started to cry in her fright and frustration and then turned back to the house. She had to make someone understand. She had to. But not when she was around—Henrietta.
Emily had seen Henrietta take the baby from the nursery and had been struck by how unusual an event it was, especially the fact that she also brought from the nursery a large bag of supplies. How foolish the nurse was, Emily had thought, letting the baby go so easily when Anna was not at home to permit it and Luke had gone away for a week.
Emily had followed, keeping well behind the woman and child, careful not to be seen. And to her amazement it had soon become obvious to her that Henrietta was taking the familiar route to the gamekeeper’s cottage.
Emily had watched it all—the meeting with Sir Lovatt Blaydon, his taking the baby and smiling down at her, Henrietta smiling and happy and turning back to the house. But Emily had stayed where she was, sick with terror and bewilderment and indecision. Should she show herself and try to wrest the baby away from him? But that servant Emily had seen before was there too. It would do no good to show herself. It was her duty to keep herself hidden so that at the very least she could tell Anna where the baby had gone.
She had stood there long enough for despair to set in. Sir Lovatt had disappeared with Joy while his servant had remained, pacing up and down before the cottage. Waiting. Waiting for what? For whom? For Anna? But of course for Anna. Henrietta would return to the house and tell her about Joy and Anna would come for her. But surely not alone. Surely she would bring servants who could help get the baby back.
Emily had known that Anna would come alone.
And so she had stood hidden, helplessly watching the scene before her as Anna had struggled to reach the baby and as she had eventually been carried away by the servant. Sir Lovatt following with the baby. Emily had followed them cautiously and had discovered the gate, which she had never seen before despite her wanderings.
And she had seen the carriage drive away and had experienced the greatest frustration and despair of her life.
How was she to tell anyone? she thought as she hurried back in the direction of the house. Henrietta would doubtless have told some plausible story to account for the absence of Anna and Joy so that for many hours no one would even realize that they were missing. How was she, Emily, to convey that message? And even if she could, even if someone understood and believed her, how could she tell anyone where he had taken them?
To America. Across the ocean. She had seen his lips form the words. She remembered Anna’s explaining to her—when Blaydon had left Elm Court after Papa’s death—that America was far, far away at the other side of the world, across the vast ocean. Emily had known that Anna was glad he had gone so far away and had hoped he would never come back. Emily had hoped it too.
And now he was taking Anna and Joy there. How was she to explain this to anyone?
Emily could feel the pain of her breathlessness and her sobs as she hurried onward.
• • •
“I am what?” Anna stared wide-eyed at Sir Lovatt Blaydon, ignoring Joy’s protests at being held so close and at not having her early hunger pangs satisfied. “I am what?”
Sir Lovatt chuckled and looked fondly back at her. “Yes, ’tis true,” he said. “You see what a wonderful secret I have hugged to myself all this time, my Anna? You are my daughter. Mine and my beloved Lucy’s.”
“I most certainly am not,” she said, indignation flashing from her eyes. “How dare you suggest such a thing, sir.”
His eyes softened. “I know ’tis a shock to you, my dear,” he said. “I know you were fond of the man you called father, worthless drunkard as he was. But in truth you are mine, Anna.”
“Liar!” she spat at him.
“Anna,” he said, not at all perturbed by her fury, “dearest Anna, do you know how many months after your dear mama’s marriage you were born?”
Her eyes widened again. “She fell!” she said. “I was born a month early. I was so small that ’twas thought I would not live. And Mama almost did not survive.”
“Ah, Anna,” he said, “that was the story she told your papa, my dear. ’Twas fortunate you were small. He might have suspected the truth had you been larger.”
Anna felt suddenly cold. And filled to the brim with horror. It could not be. Oh, it could not. Mama and this man? Papa cuckolded? Herself the daughter of the fiend who had stalked her and tormented her for three years? She would rather die than have it be true.
Only gradually did she realize what was causing unbearable aggravation to her anguish. Joy was crying lustily.
“See to the child, my Anna,” Sir Lovatt said. “My dear granddaughter. She is hungry?”
“She is wet and hungry,” Anna said.
“Ah. But I had the forethought to have supplies brought with her,” he said, placing the bag of changing cloths and clean clothing on the seat opposite.
Anna changed the baby over her continued protests. And all the while, as she stood awkwardly, feet braced against the swaying of the carriage, she pictured the movements she would have to make to get at the knife in her pocket without his seeing and the way she would have to swing around and stab with it. Stab hard enough to kill. But the space was too confined, and if she was not successful all hope would be finally gone. Besides, Joy was in the carriage. It would be far too dangerous to try to wield a knife while she lay on the carriage seat.
“Here.” Sir Lovatt smiled as she sat down again with the furious baby. “A shawl to guard your modesty in the presence of your father, Anna.”
He wrapped it about her shoulders, a beautiful cashmere shawl that enabled her to loosen her clothes at the front and set Joy to her breast without the embarrassment of exposing herself to a man who was not
her husband.
Oh, Luke!
The child suddenly fell silent. It seemed strange to Anna at this particular time and in this particular place to feel the pleasurable suction of her baby’s mouth drawing milk from her. Strangely normal in a situation that had no other normality about it.
Sir Lovatt chuckled. “She was hungry,” he said. “I did not want you to marry, Anna. You know that. Since we were forced to live apart during your growing years, you and I, I thought ’twould be enough for both of us to have only each other for the rest of my days. But I allowed you to marry after all so that we could have a child in our home. Your child, my grandchild. Three generations together. The two of you to gladden my heart through old age until my passing. And then you will still have the comfort of little Joy when I am gone, Anna.”
“I am not your daughter,” Anna said firmly. “And my child is not your granddaughter. This is absurd. Bizarre. Even if ’twere true, your behavior is incomprehensible. Why have you done all these things to me in the past three years? Why do you want me all to yourself? Any normal father would be delighted to see his child happily wed and happily producing more grandchildren for him.”
“You were attached to people who were no concern of yours, Anna,” he said. “To that worthless man who would have brought ruin to his own family if I had not come to his rescue. And to a boy and girls who are only your half-brother and sisters—one of them not even quite human. It hurt, Anna. And to know that my Lucy, your dear mother, was torn cruelly from my arms by parents who insisted she marry an earl. Anna, all your life you have been kept from me. You were even given his name. But no more. You are Anna Blakely—my real name—and my granddaughter is Joy Blakely. Joy indeed. I am glad you gave her that name. At last we are all together. Do not blame me for wanting us always to be together. I will make you happy, my Anna. Happier than you have ever dreamed of being.”
“I am happy with my husband,” she said. “I love him. This child is his. Ours.” She disengaged her nipple from Joy’s mouth and lifted the child to her shoulder. She rubbed her back gently and patted it to dislodge any wind she had swallowed.