Not Quite a Lady

by Loretta Chase

  “I am glad to hear it,” said Lady Lithby. “I suspected that Charlotte heard a threat where there was none.”

  “A threat?” he said. He reviewed what he’d said—for the twentieth time. “Good gad, you cannot mean she thinks I threatened to expose her. I told her quite clearly that my intention was completely the opposite.”

  “She seemed to think your assurances applied only on condition of her becoming your wife.”

  Women.

  He did not grind his teeth. If he could restrain himself when with his uncle, he could restrain himself now.

  “I made no conditions,” he said stiffly. “No gentleman would. If it sounded that way, I can only blame the heat of the moment. I did express myself badly, I am all too well aware.”

  “I wished to make everything clear,” said Lady Lithby. “Some remarks you made might be misconstrued. I am concerned, for instance, that in your zeal to protect her, you made arrangements for the child.”

  “Of course I have,” he said. “This morning I sent my servant Kenning to release him from his articles of indenture. I know it is an unhappy accident of fate, but the child’s present situation is an outrage. He is the son of a lady and a gentleman—a cad but a gentleman by birth. The boy shall have a proper home and an education befitting his station. I have everything in hand. You need not trouble yourself about it.”

  “I must trouble about it,” said Lady Lithby. “We want the child.”

  “You cannot be serious,” he said. “It will be impossible to suppress the matter if that boy remains nearby.”

  “Charlotte does not want it suppressed.”

  For the second time that day, he could not believe his ears. Had Society gone mad while he was abroad? Or was it only the Hayward segment of it? “She cannot admit to bearing a child out of wedlock,” he said. “I cannot believe you will let her do it. Your influence may prevent every door being shut to her, but she will be treated differently. Women far inferior to her on every count will look down on her. Perhaps few will dare to insult her openly, but you well know that Society has a thousand ways of cutting while wearing a politely smiling face. The idea of her being subjected to such indignities—No, it is unthinkable. Lady Lithby, you must dissuade her from taking this step.”

  “She wants her child,” said Lady Lithby. “You must recall your servant from his errand.”

  “Even if this were not completely mad, I could not call him off,” said the colonel. “Kenning has his orders. Everything has been arranged. He ought to be in Liverpool by now, if not on his way to Ireland.”

  Chapter 15

  Daisy did not lead his lordship to the nearest rathole but to his home farm and the pigsty.

  They were still a good distance away when Lord Lithby discerned the small, lonely figure sitting atop the sty fence. Some of the men working in the farmyard glanced that way from time to time, but that was all. Apparently, they were used to the lad’s comings and goings.

  Once upon a time, Lord Lithby recalled, before Hyacinth’s time, he used to hoist his daughter up onto that very fence. They would contemplate the pigs and converse.

  Lord Lithby’s throat tightened.

  The dog reached the boy first, and though she was her usual silently inscrutable self, Pip must have sensed her presence because he turned and looked round.

  Lord Lithby composed himself, squared his shoulders, and approached the pigsty. The boy’s gaze shifted to him.

  As he neared, Lord Lithby saw that one eye was bruised and swollen, making the child look like a little gargoyle.

  He joined Pip and folded his arms on the fence, in the same way he’d done so many times when his daughter sat there next to him.

  “You must be Daisy’s friend Pip,” said his lordship.

  Pip nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “I am…Lithby,” said his lordship.

  Pip’s eyes widened. Well, one of them did, at any rate. “I beg your pardon, your lordship.” He snatched off his cap and made to climb down.

  “No, no, you are perfectly all right there,” said his lordship, gazing at the blond head. The pale hair displayed a tendency to curl and an unmistakable cowlick.

  This was Charlotte’s hair, as it was when she was a child, when she wore it loose, when no pins tamed the cowlick and artfully arranged the curls.

  “You are welcome to admire Hyacinth,” Lord Lithby said, as he would say to anyone who seemed to appreciate his favorite sow. “She is a fine pig, is she not?”

  “I’ve never seen such a pig before, your lordship,” said Pip. “Everyone says she’s the biggest pig in the world. But I don’t know how they can know, when most of them have never traveled as far as Manchester. But they think Manchester’s the ends of the earth, practically, and Salford is on the other side of the moon. Actually it’s very close. It took Mr. Carsington and me only a few hours to get there, and we never went faster than a canter.”

  Lord Lithby recalled what Mr. Carsington had said about the Salford workhouse. His grandson—in a workhouse! It was not to be borne. He wanted to kick the fence to pieces. He told himself not to be an idiot.

  “That is a prodigy of a black eye you have,” he said.

  “I got in a fight,” said Pip.

  “It often happens that way, I find.”

  “Mrs. Tyler is very upset about it,” said Pip.

  “Women often make a fuss about such things.”

  “She said she’d send me back to the workhouse, but I think she was speaking in anger,” the child said. “Even if she meant it, Mr. Carsington said he wouldn’t let me go back to the workhouse, and a gentleman’s word is his bond.”

  “This is true,” said his lordship.

  A silence.

  “I know I oughtn’t to be here, your lordship,” the boy said. “I was supposed to go back to help Mr. Tyler today, but I needed to think. Pigs are good for thinking.”

  “This is where I usually come,” said his lordship, “when I need to think.”

  This is where your mother and I have always talked over important matters, he could have added.

  The most significant matter, the one they hadn’t talked about, sat inches away from Lord Lithby’s elbow.

  “I still haven’t sorted it out,” Pip said. “Mrs. Tyler told me it was wrong to fight, and I said my mother was dead, and it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, isn’t it? And she said it was, but that wasn’t any reason to go about blacking people’s eyes and knocking their teeth loose. And I said what if she had a boy and another boy said something bad about her? Shouldn’t her boy defend her honor? And she said honor was for ladies and gentlemen. She said ordinary folks need to think about getting their living. She said, What if I broke my arm or leg or jaw and couldn’t work?”

  “She has a point,” his lordship said. His face worked, but the child was looking at the sow while he talked and didn’t notice.

  “But I can’t let people say mean things about my mother,” Pip went on. “Who’s going to defend her honor if I don’t? I have to. And if I have to do that, then I can’t be an ordinary person. But I can’t be a gentleman, either.” He frowned. “It’s a conundrum, sir, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t,” said his lordship, his voice not quite steady. “Women don’t see things the same way men do. You were right to defend your mother’s honor.”

  He patted the boy on the shoulder. No one would ever know what it cost him to do that and nothing more. No one would ever know what it cost him to hold back, because Pip’s mother ought to be the first to hold him in her arms.

  “Women don’t appreciate the finer points of fighting,” said Lord Lithby. “What happened, exactly?”

  According to the outdoor servants, Daisy had found Charlotte’s father, and they were headed to the home farm.

  “Of course he would come here,” she told Mr. Carsington as they made their way to the end of the yard where the pigs were kept. “This is where Papa always comes when he needs to—”

  She broke off as
they came round a building, and she spotted them: her father, leaning on the fence as he always did…and Pip, who, judging by his gestures, seemed to be reenacting his fight with Rob Jowett—and threatening to fall into the pigsty.

  She’d fallen in more than once, she remembered.

  Papa would shake his head, and say, One of these days, you’ll learn, Charlotte. I hope.

  “It appears that Pip has found your father, too,” said Mr. Carsington.

  She would have run to them, but he held her back.

  “You must collect yourself,” he said. “You can’t start blubbering. Pip becomes anxious when you cry.” He told her how Pip had come to him the other day, worried because “the younger lady” was weeping.

  “Did he?” she said, her throat aching. “But he is a good boy. In spite of everything that’s happened to him. A good boy, and a gentleman.”

  She peeped over his broad shoulder at Pip, who had turned his head and was watching them. Had he any idea? Had he sensed her in the same way she’d sensed him? Had her voice remained with him somehow, in his heart? Was it there, perhaps without his quite realizing: the broken little speech she’d whispered before she gave him away?

  I love you. I’ll always love you. Please forgive me.

  But how could he remember? He was merely regarding her with curiosity—though it was hard to tell at this distance, given the black eye.

  Papa turned to look at her, too. He smiled as he always did.

  The dog was her usual self, busy shaking a stick into submission.

  Charlotte’s eyes filled.

  “I knew this would happen,” Mr. Carsington said. “You’d better get it out of your system first.”

  “His eye, his poor eye.”

  “He’s proud of it,” Mr. Carsington told her. “He got it defending your honor.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Good grief. Defending the mother who abandoned him. How am I to bear it?”

  “You must stop thinking that way,” he said. “Society makes a grievous shame of such things for women. If you had been a man, you should have boasted of your by-blows. But a woman is supposed to be ashamed, to hate herself, and to hide. If she does not hide her so-called sin, she is made a leper.” He peered down at her. “There, that lecture was pompous enough to dry your eyes, I hope. Are you recovering your composure?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But it is harder than one would expect.”

  “I know this is an emotional time,” Mr. Carsington said. “But you must consider Pip’s feelings. You are about to upset his universe, and though it is a happy kind of upset, it is going to take some getting used to. He needs us both to be calm and steady for him. Take your example from your father. I am sure he wants to seize the boy and take him home, but he restrains himself.”

  She looked at her father, who was smiling at Pip now, the reassuring smile she knew so well.

  “He hasn’t told Pip,” she said. “He wouldn’t. He’d leave it to me.”

  “I take back what I said before about your father,” Mr. Carsington said. “My father merely infuriates me. Yours should make me feel ashamed of myself all the time.”

  “He doesn’t mean to,” she said. “There is no mathematical formula for being a parent. I suppose they are only doing the best they can.”

  “We shall, too,” said Mr. Carsington, “and blunder horribly, as everyone else does, I daresay. Well, are you ready?”

  She had calmed while they talked. He’d done it on purpose, she thought. He’d found a way to lead her through the emotional storm. “Yes, I’m ready, thanks to you.” She stood on tiptoe and daringly kissed his cheek. In front of everybody.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “But remember: no waterworks. Later you can sob over him. For now, though, you need to be strong and calm, for his sake.”

  “I will,” she said.

  “I know you will.” He led her to the pair at the fence.

  “I wonder if we might interrupt, Lord Lithby,” Mr. Carsington said. “The lady wishes to speak to Pip.”

  The boy looked to Papa. He nodded, and Pip leapt down from the fence and came to her, his cap in his hand.

  She hastily wiped her eyes with the back of her glove, gave a little sniff, straightened her posture, and smiled.

  “My goodness, that is a prodigy of a black eye,” she said.

  “I got in a fight, your ladyship,” Pip said.

  “Did you, indeed? Mr. Carsington tells me you were defending your mother’s honor.”

  “Lord Lithby said it wasn’t wrong,” Pip said. “He said women don’t understand, but it was the right thing to do.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I’m very, very proud of you.” She crouched down to bring herself eye to eye with him. She put her hands on his shoulders and smiled, and she thought perhaps there wasn’t a large enough smile in the world for what she felt. She thought her heart would burst with happiness.

  She said, “I’m your mother.”

  Chapter 16

  Lithby Hall library, that evening

  Darius knew better than to suggest taking Pip home with him. Charlotte’s son would stay at Lithby Hall, the boy’s mother and grandparents said, until after the wedding.

  They had wanted to discuss the wedding after dinner, but Darius had already made up his mind what must be done.

  What must be done was not agreeable. Given a choice, he’d rather spend a week talking about nothing but curtains. But it was necessary, for his wife-to-be, and for Pip.

  “We must marry in the local church, and all of my family must be here,” he told them. “That includes Grandmother. We must show a united front.”

  “Good heavens, not your grandmother,” Charlotte cried. “I should never ask that of you.”

  “It’s the only way to assure that you won’t be treated unkindly,” Darius said. “A great many people will not wish to offend Lord and Lady Lithby or lose the chance of enjoying their famous hospitality. A great many will not wish to offend my parents, either. Still, my grandmother represents the one certain way to strike terror into the hearts of the hypocrites and moral zealots. Our united front will be most effective if she’s at the head of it.”

  “If you think snubs will hurt my feelings, you ought to think again,” Charlotte said. “I have my family. That’s all that matters. Losing my place in Society is no great loss. The Beau Monde can be suffocating at times. While I might miss some aspects of it, I can live well enough without it.”

  “So can I,” he said. “Easily. Happily. I should not miss Mrs. Badgely’s company a jot. But that is not the point. The point is, you should be treated no differently for having had a child out of wedlock than a man would be.”

  “That is a radical view, Mr. Carsington,” said Lord Lithby. “I am not at all sure I would wish to encourage women to behave, generally, as men do. We should revert to barbarism, I fear. It is the women who keep us civilized.”

  “Then let us think of my grandmother as a civilizing influence,” Darius said. “And let us try not to let the thought give us nightmares.”

  Though he doubted Pip would have nightmares, Darius went upstairs to say good night before returning to Beechwood.

  Pip was in bed but broad awake, looking at a book, when Darius entered.

  In the candlelight, with that spectacular black eye, he looked like a little hobgoblin.

  A very serious little hobgoblin. He set the book to one side and regarded Darius gravely. “Have they stopped crying yet?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Darius said. “They are arguing about the wedding breakfast.”

  “Then am I to come live at Beechwood, sir? After the wedding?”

  “Yes. Don’t you like it here?”

  Pip gazed about him. “It’s very…large. There are a great many servants. Nobody screams.” He considered. “I like it, but it’s strange.”

  “This has been a very strange day for you,” Darius said.

  The boy nodded.

  “It’s not every day one dis
covers a brand-new mother and a set of grandparents. You bore the upheaval well, I thought.”

  “I thought she—my mother—was funning me at first,” Pip said. He frowned. “Maybe I shouldn’t have laughed.”

  He’d not only laughed but said to his mother, “Go on, pull the other one, your ladyship.”

  “She didn’t mind,” Darius said.

  “No, she didn’t.” A pause. “She’s very beautiful.”

  “She is, indeed.”

  “I thought, if she wants to be my mother, I’m not arguing with her.”

  “She really is, you know.”

  “I expect she is, but I was used to the idea of her being dead,” said Pip. “It’s a bit of a shock. I knew my mother was a lady but she was supposed to be dead and if she wasn’t, I never expected her to be so beautiful and grand. Did you ever see so many ribbons on a hat? What good is a little hat like that with all those ribbons?”

  Darius remembered the frivolous hat Lady Charlotte had been not wearing at their first encounter. He smiled. “It’s for decoration,” he said.

  Following his conversation with Lady Lithby, an alarmed Colonel Morrell rode posthaste to Altrincham, to the Tylers’ cottage. Mr. Tyler was not yet back from work, a daughter reported. Mrs. Tyler was in Manchester.

  “The boy,” said the colonel. “Where is he?”

  “Everyone asks about Pip,” the girl said. “I don’t know where he’s got to. He went to work with Pa like he always does.”

  Colonel Morrell rode back the way he’d come. He met Tyler, heading home on the Lithby Road, and asked about Pip.

  “Like I told Mr. Carsington, the last I knew, Pip was taking the dog back to Lithby Hall,” said Tyler. “He was to come straight back. I had some errands for him to do, for my missus. But he never come back. I reckon he run away, sir.”

  The colonel did not draw a sigh of relief until he’d traveled another quarter mile down the road.