The Accidental Elopement (Scandalous Miss Brightwells Book 4)

by Beverley Oakley

  Odette blushed charmingly, and Fanny could see how she appealed to Jack. Yet Odette had not the depth and spirit her Katherine did. She was sure of it. Nor did she love Jack like Katherine, she thought fiercely.

  “Yes, warm praise indeed for such a notoriously difficult to please gentleman which is why, I daresay, he remains unwed. Now, where has Jack got to? Ah, there he is, talking with his father. Or rather, uncle, I should say.”

  Introducing the element of uncertainty regarding Jack’s parentage might be of no account, but it couldn’t hurt, Fanny thought. But then, if Odette really loved Jack, that would not signify.

  Having just spied Bertram, Fanny was weighing up how safe it was to navigate their way in his direction. Bertram was a wild card, yet he’d been the only one to come up with anything resembling a plan to bring together two unlikely hearts that were elsewhere engaged. If only some great drama could be orchestrated, she thought wistfully. Bertram was the king of drama, but unfortunately they usually didn’t go according to plan.

  She was about to take Odette’s arm and gently steer her in her brother’s direction when the girl said, “I do wish Jack wouldn’t talk of his parents as if they were a charitable institution.” She ventured an uncertain look at Fanny, then, perceiving encouragement, went on, “They’ve been so good to him, not distinguishing him from their other children, yet he speaks all too often as if he really were some foundling child adopted by Mr and Mrs Patmore.”

  “But he is a foundling child,” Fanny said cautiously. “And Mr and Mrs Patmore have been very generous to him in giving him their name.” To anyone else she’d have fiercely claimed Jack was just as good if not better than anyone else in the room, and most definitely the equal of the Patmore’s natural children. “Is there something about that that troubles you?”

  Odette looked ashamed, then fierce, then sorrowful. “Sometimes I have to cover my ears with my hands when he says the reason he’s driven to work so hard is that for all he knows, his father might have been a highwayman for whose misdeeds he must atone. Or even a murderer. I hate hearing him talk like that.”

  Dismayed that Jack should continue to be tormented for such fantasies when Fanny knew the truth of his parentage, she swallowed and asked, “What do you say?”

  “I tell him that he is a gentleman in my eyes, and that he should just go on about his business to the rest of the world on that basis. I don’t think he should tell people he was adopted, and he certainly shouldn’t spout all this nonsense about criminals and highwaymen, or else people will question whether he deserves their respect.”

  “Perhaps you respect him more for having worked so hard to get where he has despite his origins?”

  Odette shrugged. “I’d fallen in love with Jack long before I found out he was adopted. Papa never told me. It was quite a shock, but I resolved that I wouldn’t let it stand in the way of how I felt about him.”

  “You just wish he’d never talk about it?”

  “That’s right.” Odette darted a worried look at her. “You don’t think that’s wrong of me, do you?” she asked.

  “I think it’s important we’re all honest about our feelings, my dear. Otherwise, how can we trust each other if we keep secret what we really feel?”

  Sadly, she thought of her Katherine, bottling up the secret of her love for Jack all these years. And, intercepting a fleeting look between Jack and Katherine and realising the depth of her feeling was more than reciprocated, her resolve hardened that the no doubt worthy Odette must be replaced.

  “Come, my dear. Have you met Lord Derry? You have? Ah then, as he’s talking to my brother who was interested to know how you enjoyed your visit to the tower, there’s no need to introduce you if we join them, is there?”

  Chapter 23

  Diana was certain that hiding under the bed would solve all her problems. The moment she’d heard her grandmother’s voice in the hallway five minutes ago, she’d taken advantage of the fact that her nursemaid had just left the nursery to look for a cloth to clean up the paint water she’d spilled.

  Now, as she heard Betsy calling her name, her breath came in shaky bursts as she contemplated the consequences of being found.

  Her grandmother wanted to take Diana back to her house. “To spend a few nights there so we may become better acquainted,” she’d overheard the old woman saying.

  Diana couldn’t imagine anything worse. She imagined days spent pressed against the stiff purple silk of Lady Hale’s clothes, which smelt musty and nasty, while her grandmother read her stories with Diana perched unwillingly on the chair beside her. It was like a nightmare. As was the fear that her grandmother might steal her away.

  At the evening party her great-uncle Lord Quamby had held the night before, Diana had overheard such a possibility being suggested by two men, one of them Lord Quamby’s son George whom Diana didn’t trust at all, and the other, Lord Derry, the gentleman who was always mooning over her mama. Although Diana had known him all her life and, in fact, didn’t object to him like she did her mother’s cousin, George, she’d been frightened by what she’d heard.

  She remembered it with terrible clarity. Cousin George had sauntered over to Lord Derry who was standing by the sofa near where Diana was hiding behind a large pot plant, and said, “Lady Hale thinks Diana should spend a few days with her as per Freddy’s dying request that the two become better acquainted after his death.”

  “Katherine wouldn’t let his mother over the threshold after she insulted her that memorable evening, and I don’t blame her. Lady Hale is a deplorable woman.” Lord Derry had taken a sip of his drink, sighed, then said, “Well, if you think that can help influence Katherine, I’d be enormously grateful. I don’t want to force her into anything against her will, you do understand; I just feel that I can help her to be happy.”

  Diana had thought that those words were very strange: I can help her to be happy.

  Diana knew he couldn’t. Her mother only ever smiled when she spoke of her happy memories of being a child and when she first came to London, and how everything changed the night the carriage came.

  The carriage.

  She strained her ears for the sound of Betsy’s footsteps then pulled herself out from under the bed and ran to the window. Standing on a chair, she saw Lady Hale’s carriage and, in front of it, the carriage belonging to the nice man from across the sea who always made her mother smile, though her mother looked even sadder when she watched him leave. Diana was very attuned to what made her mother smile and what made her sad. Lord Derry made her mother anxious and sad, and Mr Patmore made her mother smile when she was with him and sad when she wasn’t.

  Jack. He was a nice man. Diana also didn’t mind the lady he always brought along. She was pretty and laughed a lot. But Diana would rather that Miss Worthington stay at home instead of going everywhere with Jack.

  Still, she might have some of those clotted cream caramels she’d given Diana last time she’d visited, and she certainly wasn’t cross like Diana’s grandmother.

  As she watched Mr Patmore step from his carriage, then help out the pretty lady who looked a bit cross today, followed by another older lady, she thought how nice and cosy the carriage would be to hide in. It both amused her to think of how cross Lady Hale would be as she’d no doubt be when she sent Betsy off in a fluster to look for her. Suddenly, it seemed a very good idea to leave the house and run across the lawn and jump in.

  Diana was reasonably confident Mr Patmore wouldn’t be cross with her when he discovered her there after he returned to his townhouse only a few blocks away at the end of his visit. He was always nice to everyone.

  Especially to her mama and to Diana.

  “I’m sure I like Ladies Fenton and Quamby, but there are other people to visit,” Odette whispered to Jack as they waited upon the doorstep of Quamby House to be admitted. “Please, let us not stay long. Aunt Harriet, you don’t want to, do you?”

  Jack wondered if Odette’s reluctance to be here had anything
to do with Katherine. The thought made him uncomfortable. He’d tried so hard to deny his feelings for Katherine and, when that proved impossible, make himself immune to them. He hoped Odette was not aware of the frisson of intense emotion that swamped him each time his old friend was anywhere near.

  “We’ll stay as long as necessary to be polite, and then you can remind me of your dressmaker’s appointment,” he told her, trying to summon warmth towards Odette when she smiled her gratitude and squeezed his arm, saying, “You are the most thoughtful man a wife could have, Jack.”

  Last night, when Lady Fenton had invited a small group to join her and her sister for a morning tea this morning, there’d been no room to refuse. Jack had been both glad and otherwise. It was becoming increasingly harder to deny that his attraction to Katherine was becoming almost unbearable, not to mention difficult to hide.

  Odette squeezed his hand as they heard footsteps in the lobby, and he returned the gesture. Odette’s father was dying, and she needed to know she could rely upon him.

  “Miss Worthington and… Miss Worthington. Jack, welcome!” Lady Quamby greeted Jack, Odette and her chaperone. Jack was surprised to see that Lord Derry and Bertram Brightwell had been included in the morning tea when they were shown into the drawing room. Katherine was not among them.

  Disappointment was quickly followed by forced relief, until the sound of Katherine’s voice in the passage made his pulse skitter and the blood scald the surface of his skin.

  There she was standing in the doorway, no doubt looking as beautiful as he remembered though he forced himself not to jerk his head around at her entrance for fear he’d give himself away. Instead, he allowed Derry to be the first to move forward, the older gentleman taking Katherine by the hand in the most familiar of gestures before leading her to a chair.

  “You look flustered, my dear. Is everything all right?” Derry enquired.

  Jack would have liked to have asked Katherine the same thing. He didn’t think it was Derry’s excessive attentiveness that accounted for the flushed look on her face for she’d looked harried the moment she walked into the room.

  Katherine glanced at the others and, seeing that only Derry was paying her any attention—Jack was pretending to listen to what Odette had to say—muttered, “Lady Hale has come to visit Diana unexpectedly, and my daughter is not behaving as an exacting grandmother would like.”

  “Or her mother?” Derry enquired, patting Katherine’s hand consolingly.

  Jack noticed Katherine pulled it away though not rudely.

  Katherine lowered her eyes. “I don’t like her grandmother either so I can hardly blame her. I’ve asked Lady Hale to join us in a few minutes as Diana needs to be punished for yesterday’s naughtiness and do an arithmetic lesson instead of have a story. I thought a white lie that involved draconian measures would be more likely to have the desired effect.”

  Jack was surprised at Lord Derry’s warning tone as he addressed Katherine. Several others had begun to talk, but Jack’s ears were attuned to the intimate discussion between his friend and her… He wasn’t sure what to call Lord Derry, who was saying gravely, “You know Freddy was quite particular in his final wishes that Diana spend more time with her grandmother. You don’t want her to decide she’ll take Diana on a more permanent basis.”

  Katherine’s hand flew to her mouth. “She couldn’t. Diana’s my daughter.”

  “But a father’s last wishes count for a great deal more than the desires of a mother in the eyes of the court.”

  Jack wanted to shake Derry. What was the man playing at? Meanwhile, he was doing his best to attend to two conversations at once, and only realised how poor a job he was doing when Odette patted his knee and asked, patiently, “Jack, dearest, isn’t that right? We can’t stay very long today as—”

  He was relieved when Lady Quamby interjected cheerfully, “I believe, Jack, that you are taking Odette to see your father in the country after this. You’ll stay for lunch, naturally. It’s three hours to Patmore Farm by carriage. I was expecting you’d stay for proper refreshment. I thought that’s what we’d agreed.”

  He felt Odette stiffen beside him at the same time he caught Katherine’s clear-eyed glance across the table. She was still upset, and his heart tumbled to his boots at the knowledge he could do nothing to help her; that he was, in fact, contributing in another way so greatly to her pain.

  He forced himself to look away, his only consolation that Katherine’s decisions had been made by herself. She’d thrown herself into her marriage with Freddy Marwick incautiously, recklessly, when he’d advised her to show restraint.

  But wasn’t that one of the things he loved about her? Her exuberance, her impetuosity.

  There was little evidence of it now, though. The past seven years seemed to have quashed so much of that spirit, and Jack wondered sadly how much remained. Enough to extricate her from a marriage with Derry that she didn’t desire?

  For there was Derry, now, murmuring words of comfort in her ear judging by the conciliatory pat upon her sleeve and frown of concern.

  As Jack accepted Lady Quamby’s invitation, he heard Katherine’s steely rejoinder and was pleased at the fact she could still assert herself. “Diana will not be spending any more time with her grandmother than absolutely necessary, Derry. I don’t care what Lady Hale has been saying to you. Nor can I imagine why she would voice such sentiments to you.”

  * * *

  Fanny tried to appear bright over lunch, but the downcast spirits of her daughter, earlier, and Jack’s obvious solicitousness towards Odette depressed even her. Time was ticking towards Jack’s nuptials, but Bertram’s plan to bring together Derry and Odette seemed increasingly doomed to fail, if not ridiculous. The surreptitious glances Jack and Katherine sent each other endorsed the fact they were secretly in love, but Odette’s shining love for Jack and her frail dependence upon him would make it impossible for him to forsake her. Fanny knew him too well.

  As for Odette and Derry, it was clear the pair enjoyed one another’s company when on the dance floor and during the few minutes she’d ensured they sat alone together at her little gathering. But what possibility was there of them suddenly being overcome with wild romantic love for one another without provocation? And what provocation could possibly be instigated?

  When Jack and Odette rose, declaring they must leave, there was nothing to suggest that fate would run its course. Katherine and Jack, she feared, would again be denied.

  Chapter 24

  It was only three hours to Patmore Farm, and travel was to be conducted during the day. So when Odette’s aunt declared herself suddenly unwell, it was agreed by all over pudding that it would be acceptable for Odette to travel in the same carriage with Jack, unaccompanied.

  “What a treat,” she murmured, pressing her cheek against his shoulder when the door was closed upon them and the horses moved forward. “Soon we can be together, forever, always. You’re all I have left, Jack. Papa will be gone soon, and I will have no one. No one except you.”

  Jack squeezed the little gloved hand she placed in his and tried not to think of Katherine. She’d looked so beautiful and so tragic over lunch today. If Jack were free to offer her the world, offer her his heart, he would do so. But with Odette depending on him so heavily, he could not.

  “And my adoptive parents,” he added. “They’ve been so good to me when under no obligation. I owe them the world. You will be like a daughter to them, I know it.”

  She smiled. “I hope so. But Jack, I do wish you’d stop referring to them as your adoptive parents. They gave you their name and their backing. There’s no need to tell the whole world you’re adopted, and there’s certainly no need to tell them you’re originally from the foundling home.”

  “It’s the truth, and I’m proud of it,” Jack said. “Would you not consider it worse if I were to say nothing and then have people think I was trying to deceive them or present myself in a false light?” He paused. “Would you have felt d
ifferently about me if you’d known earlier that I was an orphan who had no idea who his parents were? You say you fell in love with me from afar and long before you met me. And your father never said anything to you about my origins—but if you’d known, would you have felt differently?”

  He’d been gazing through the window at the passing countryside now they’d left behind the city and straggling villages clustered on its outskirts. He glanced at Odette. She was toying with the fringe of her flounced skirt, biting her lip, and when she looked up at him, there were tears in her eyes.

  “Your unknown origins—as you refer to not knowing about your parentage—means nothing to me, Jack,” she whispered. “But it would be wrong to pretend other people feel the same unconcern.” Her shoulders trembled, and for once Jack felt no desire to hold her to him. Odette’s frail need had once appealed to his sense of manliness. He’d wanted to protect and nurture her. In India, she’d seemed like a fragile flower in a hot and hostile environment. Since coming to England, however, she’d shown a steely resilience that had at first impressed him but now had him questioning who she really was, since she alternated so greatly between fire and frailty.

  “So, what are you saying, Odette? That I should pretend to the world that the Patmores are my real parents? Why, half of society knows the truth.”

  “Well, there’s no need to tell everyone on your first meeting with them,” she muttered.

  “Do I?” He squared his shoulders feeling aggrieved, for she made him out to be some angst-ridden get-ahead man who hadn’t reconciled the truth of what he was. Dread assailed him. But he had, hadn’t he? He’d long ago accepted he was a bastard, just as he’d reconciled himself to not knowing what his parents might have been. A prostitute for a mother, and a murderer for a father? He’d accepted the worst possible pairing he could come up with so that he was prepared, should he ever be served up the truth. Not that that was possible unless someone visited the foundling home twenty-five years later looking for him and revealed the truth, which may or may not ever be delivered to him.