Not Quite a Lady

by Loretta Chase

  “I cannot make flowery speeches,” he went on. “It were absurd to feign to be other than the plain fellow I am. I shall not bore you with my accomplishments or prospects. You know them already and have formed your own judgment. You know I can keep you in the style to which you are accustomed, that my position in the world is not low and in time shall be higher. There is no need to expand upon these matters. What I wish to say, simply, is that I admire and love you exceedingly. I want nothing more than to protect and cherish you. I hope you will allow me to do so by doing me the great honor of becoming my wife.”

  If he had made a flowery speech or boasted of his accomplishments and prospects, it would have been easier for her. As it was, she was grieved to disappoint him.

  Oh, why had he not given her some warning!

  She took time to try to calm herself and assemble the words she must say. She took a deep breath and let it out again. “Colonel Morrell, you do me a great honor,” she said. “I hold you in high esteem, and I have been grateful for your friendship, but I cannot offer more than that. I cannot accept your offer.”

  He let out a sigh. “Ah, well, I expected as much,” he said. “I had better not keep you any longer from your errand. May I accompany you as far as the gates?”

  She nodded, relieved that the matter was disposed of so easily, that he took it so well.

  He was a soldier, after all, as both he and Mr. Carsington had pointed out.

  She gave her horse leave to walk on, and the colonel did likewise.

  “I collect your business at Beechwood is important, to take you back so soon,” he said.

  “It is rather important,” she said. “I heard that the boy Pip—the one who walks Lady Lithby’s dog—got into a fight with another boy and is to be sent back to the workhouse. I’m not sure that Mr. Carsington has been informed of this turn of events. I wanted to warn him.”

  “Ah, yes, the apprentice boy in whom Mr. Carsington has taken so much interest,” the colonel said. “Does he know that Pip is your son?”

  Darius sat at his desk, regarding Tyler through narrowed eyes. “This had better not be a trick,” he said. “I will not be made a game of.”

  “It ain’t no game, sir,” Tyler said. “Pip’s bolted.”

  “That makes no sense at all,” Darius said.

  “He took the dog back to Lithby Hall afore noon,” Tyler said. “He was to come straight back and do an errand for me. It’s two hours now, and he ain’t back.”

  “He’s a boy,” Darius said. “They’re easily distracted. What would make you think he’s run away?”

  Tyler shuffled and looked everywhere but at Darius. “That fight yesterday, with Jowett’s boy. My missus had a deal of work cleaning and mending Pip’s coat and breeches. She said he was an ungrateful boy, and deserved to be sent back to the workhouse.” Tyler wrung the cap in his hands. “She didn’t mean it, sir. She was vexed was all.”

  Darius did not believe Pip was foolish enough to run away. Had Darius not told the child to come to him if he lost his place? Surely he trusted Darius to keep his word?

  Still, he was a boy, and they were not the most logical beings.

  “I’ll look for him,” Darius said. “I doubt he’s gone far.”

  Your son.

  Long practice kept Charlotte firmly in her saddle. Years of self-discipline kept her countenance calm while within she reeled from the blow, so sudden, so utterly unexpected.

  The cold came first, a chill so deep that she might have believed, for an instant, that her heart had given way and she was dying.

  “You didn’t know, then,” Colonel Morrell said. “I wasn’t sure. I’m sorry to distress you but it cannot be helped. I learned of it. Others might.”

  She found her voice. “You cannot be serious,” she said.

  “I wish I were not,” he said. “But one cannot change the facts. Philip Ogden was born in the year 1812 on the twenty-fourth of May near Halifax, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.”

  Halifax. Twenty-fourth of May. Born at four o’clock in the morning. Gone out of her life within an hour.

  “He was the son of Captain George Blaine,” Colonel Morrell went on. “The captain was killed in a duel the previous November. The mother, reputed to have died in childbed, did not die, though she was gravely ill for a long time afterward. Her name was—is—Lady Charlotte Hayward.”

  Pip. Her son. Alive.

  She’d known. Of course she’d known, the instant she’d seen the child. She had known in a deep, secret place in her heart. Everything else she’d thought and told herself since that moment was pretending, as she’d always done. Trying to follow the rules. Trying to be sensible. Trying not to upset anybody. Trying to live up to her father’s love and Lizzie’s, too. Trying to be a good girl.

  She wasn’t a good girl. Never had been. Never would be.

  “It was his eyes, you see,” Colonel Morrell said. “Frederick Blaine served under me. I knew his brother George’s reputation, and I remembered that he’d been stationed near here not many months before his death. About the time of his death, you fell ill suddenly and were taken to Yorkshire. But you were not ill then. You were pregnant with his child.”

  He went on to describe Pip’s early life: the death of the Ogdens, the two years with Mr. Welton before he, too, died, then the time in the workhouse.

  “The facts were all readily available but scattered and apparently unrelated,” Colonel Morrell said. “It was an odd happenstance that I had more facts at hand than most people. This made it relatively easy for me to piece together the story.”

  “You sound as though you have no doubt you’ve pieced it together correctly,” she said.

  “No doubt whatsoever,” he said. “Last week I made sure to be traveling the road to Altrincham at the same hour Mr. Tyler and his apprentice walked to work,” he said. “The boy has the Blaine eyes. Everything else…” He paused and smiled faintly. “Everything else seems to be his mother’s.”

  Mine, she thought. Everything else is mine.

  “I would rather not have to tell you this,” he said.

  “Yet you have,” she said.

  “The charade cannot continue for much longer,” he said. “You had a discontented former coachman at large. Though he knew next to nothing, he made a great deal of it, and dropped obscure hints about skeletons in the family closet. If I hit upon the kernel of truth in his drunken maunderings, others could do the same.”

  Fewkes, she thought. He’d been a groom ten years ago. Was he the one Geordie had bribed to get near her?

  “Fewkes is on his way to foreign parts,” Colonel Morrell went on. “This is but one of many precautions that ought to be taken. I can do a great deal more. Something must be done about the boy, certainly. Buying his articles of indenture is only the first step, no trouble at all. While it is impossible to acknowledge him, one must see that he’s raised in a good home and given a gentleman’s education. This can be arranged discreetly. Your honor—and that of your family—must be protected. This trouble must not burden your father. Among other things, he must not learn of your stepmother’s role in the deception. Naturally, I should feel it my responsibility to see to all this and more…for my wife.”

  What had Mr. Carsington said? Males will do whatever is necessary…and they are not overly scrupulous…

  “I see,” she said.

  She saw clearly: no way out.

  “You need only reconsider the answer you gave a moment ago to my proposal of marriage,” Colonel Morrell said. “You need only give me a different answer, and I shall serve you as I serve my king—to the utmost of my ability.”

  There’s always a choice, poor mad old Lady Margaret had written.

  No, there wasn’t, not always.

  Chapter 14

  “No,” said Lady Charlotte.

  Colonel Morrell had prepared himself for everything. He had all his facts in order. He had gauged this meeting to a nicety.

  He was not prepared for no, and
he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I thought you said no.”

  “That is what I said,” she said. “No the first time and no again. I can hardly believe you would use these tactics. But yes, I must believe it, because I know men can be unscrupulous in such matters.”

  He was not unscrupulous. He was trying to save her from her own folly!

  “Lady Charlotte, I think you are letting your emotions get the better of your sense,” he said.

  “I’m done being sensible,” she said. “Ten years of it have brought me nothing but regret.”

  He saw her slipping through his hands, after all these months of making her feel safe in his company, all this time getting her used to having him about.

  This was not supposed to happen. She was supposed to see that he was the steady one, the man she could rely upon. He’d found out her secret and not breathed a hint of censure. He was prepared to do whatever was necessary to keep it, to protect her. He was her knight in shining armor. Why couldn’t she see that?

  Because Carsington stood in the way.

  “Lady Charlotte, I heard about the walk after church with Mr. Carsington,” he said. “You think his intentions are honorable. They may be. For the moment. But to some men, marriage means nothing.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” she said.

  “For God’s sake, don’t be a fool!” he said. “Don’t risk everything—your honor, your family’s honor—to throw your life away on a man who won’t stand by you. Don’t make the same mistake you made when you were sixteen.”

  “It’s not the same mistake,” she said. “This is a completely different one.”

  “Lady Charlotte.”

  “Thank you for telling me about my son,” she said.

  She rode away.

  Darius had mounted his horse and was about to set out for Altrincham when two riders entered the stable yard, one male, one female.

  One, Lady Charlotte. The other, Tom Jenkins.

  She wore a blue habit, which Darius supposed was plain and practical compared to her other attire. Yet ribbons sprouted gaily from her hat, a lacy ruff encircled her throat, and puffs jutted out from the shoulders of the riding dress, whose absurdly long sleeves were festooned with braids. She was braided up the front, too, in a deranged imitation of a military fashion.

  The attire was pure feminine froth. But as she neared, Darius saw nothing light or frivolous in the way she carried herself. Something was very, very wrong.

  He looked into her taut, white face. “What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  She glanced back at Tom Jenkins, who withdrew to another corner of the yard.

  “It’s Pip,” she said.

  “Yes, he’s gone missing,” Darius said. “But don’t worry. He can’t have gone far.”

  “He’s mine,” she said. Her eyes filled. “He’s mine, and it is—” She broke off, swallowing hard.

  “Well, yes, I surmised as much,” Darius said, wishing he could take her in his arms. At the moment, that was not only indiscreet but impractical. He ached for her, but emotion would not solve any problems. They needed to be rational. “He’s deuced expensive, too,” he said. “You would not believe the sum the Tylers want for him. But I’ll find the money. You needn’t worry about that.”

  “The Tylers,” she repeated. “Good grief. The money. His articles. You said he’s gone missing. The colonel said—Oh, dear God, we must find him.”

  “Charlotte, you must try to calm yourself,” he said, handing over a handkerchief. “What is this about the colonel?”

  She wiped her eyes, her nose. “It was Colonel Morrell who told me about Pip,” she said. “He knew everything: the date my baby was born and where and the couple who adopted him. Everything. But I knew. Even before the colonel told me, I knew Pip was mine. But I wouldn’t let myself believe it. I wouldn’t let myself look for him or talk to him. I was afraid. A great coward, as I told you. My whole life has been a lie. A house of cards. If I faced the truth, told the truth, everything would fall to pieces.”

  Darius saw it in an instant: the scandal, the end of respect for her…shame for her family…heartache for her father. Endless repercussions.

  “You are not a coward,” he said firmly. “You were facing catastrophe.”

  “I should have faced it,” she said. “Now I don’t know what Colonel Morrell will do. He may be angry enough to tell my father. I don’t know. I don’t know him at all, I realize. But I think—I’m afraid, truly afraid he’ll take Pip away. For all I know, he’s sent him away already. He said the articles were easy enough to buy.”

  Darius swore, quietly but fervently. “No one will take Pip away,” he said.

  “I knew you’d say that—or something like that,” she said. “He said I couldn’t count on you, but I knew I could.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I could have spared you this trouble if I had not been such an idiot yesterday. I had been wondering if you knew—or guessed,” he said. “I meant to ask you about it yesterday, but I’m not good at broaching delicate subjects delicately and then I was distracted by the drawers on your head and the fornication and such.”

  She tried to smile. Her mouth trembled with the effort and a teardrop made its way along the side of her nose. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I only knew I couldn’t agree to Colonel Morrell’s proposal. I want you. I want my son. I came to you because I didn’t know what else to do. I cannot think clearly. You are so—so logical. I knew you would sort it out.”

  And he knew he would do anything for her. She was his to love, to protect. He’d never guessed how good it could make him feel, to be needed, and to know he was capable of doing what needed to be done.

  “Of course I will,” he said. “Wipe your nose.”

  They must first go to the Tylers’ place in Altrincham, Mr. Carsington told her. That was where he was already planning to go when Charlotte arrived, he said. He’d found it hard to believe Pip would run away for the reason given, and he suspected this was a ploy of some kind.

  “I doubt Mrs. Tyler would give up Pip easily, in any event,” he said, as they rode out of the stable yard. “If she thinks she has two parties interested in him, she’s likely to play one against the other, hoping to raise the price. She seems to believe that all aristocrats have bottomless purses.”

  But Mrs. Tyler wasn’t at home when Charlotte and Mr. Carsington arrived. The eldest daughter, Annie, said her mother had left for Manchester in the morning, leaving Annie in charge. Mrs. Tyler wasn’t expected back until tomorrow. In response to further questioning, the girl said, yes, a man had come about Pip this morning. Not a gentleman. A bald man who talked a long time with her mother. No, Pip hadn’t come home yet. Annie thought the bald man had gone looking for him, but she couldn’t say for certain.

  “Do you recall the bald man’s name?” Charlotte asked. “Was it Kenning, by chance?”

  Kenning had been with Colonel Morrell in the army, she knew. He was the one the colonel would trust with a secret, or something underhand.

  The girl thought, then shrugged. “Might’ve been, your ladyship. I don’t remember. I’ve seen him before. Goes to the tavern regular. I don’t like him, always nosing about.”

  Annie seemed genuinely baffled at the idea of Pip’s running away. “But he’d got nowhere to go to,” she said. “Anyway, Ma always screams like that. She don’t mean half what she says. She’s always saying she’s going back to Manchester and leaving us, as we’re so ungrateful and troublesome. She’s only cross, you know. Even when she does go, she always comes back. She didn’t want to leave there and come here, but Pa said we had to, for the work and because we can live cheaper here. Pip knows how she is. He’s very clever, is Pip.”

  When they left the cottage, Mr. Carsington did not lead Charlotte back to Jenkins and the horses but in the other direction, not many steps away, to a quiet corner of the churchyard.

  “I doubt Mrs. Tyler has take
n Pip to Manchester,” he said. “Annie would have said so. She did not seem concerned about keeping any secrets. She was more than happy to express her opinions. Now at least we understand why Mrs. Tyler is so short-tempered and greedy. She doesn’t want to live here. If foolish aristocrats are willing to pay a high price for Pip, she’ll take it—and move back to Manchester.”

  “But if she hasn’t got Pip, what if Kenning has?” Charlotte said. “He might have offered more money than she could resist. And if Kenning has Pip, where would he take him? Colonel Morrell said he sent Fewkes abroad.” The nearest port was Liverpool, not forty miles away: a journey of a few hours. “What if Pip is on his way to Liverpool?”

  “Wherever he is, we’ll find him,” he said. “We’ll need more resources than I have, though, if matters have gone as far as that.” He paused. “Whether they have or they haven’t, it’s long past time to speak to your father. The day is getting on, and he needs to know the truth. It would be better if he heard it from you than from Morrell.”

  She looked away toward the church. “The colonel’s probably told him already.”

  “Possibly. On the other hand, Morrell might be giving you a chance to have second thoughts, to come to your senses. He may be waiting, as men often do, for the woman to recover from the emotional storm and look at matters more practically.”

  “That is possible,” she said. “He did seem thoroughly flummoxed when I said no. And it was clear he thought he was saving me from myself.”

  “We’d better go to Lithby Hall now,” Mr. Carsington said. “The sooner you speak to your father, the better.”

  “I know.” That’s what her brain told her. Meanwhile, her heart raced, and the inner cold came and went.

  “He won’t reject you,” Mr. Carsington said. “He loves you too much.”

  “I know!” she cried. “That’s the trouble. He’ll be hurt—for me. He’ll grieve—for me. So much love for his perfect daughter, the apple of his eye. I know he won’t love me any less, but it is so…hard, knowing I’m not what he believes me to be, knowing I’m unworthy of so much love.”