by Sophia James
‘Was there a child from our union, Sandrine?’
Ah, so easy to simply lie given his uncertainty, but she found she could not.
‘There was. There is,’ she amended and heard breathlessness in every syllable. ‘Jamie is three years old and will be four at the end of next month. He was born in Paris at the end of July in 1847.’ All the facts for him to place together, the answer hanging in any interpretation he wanted.
The quiet continued for one moment and then for two.
‘He is mine.’
Cassie had never heard such a tone from Lord Lindsay; the hope was audible as was the shock, but it was the simple yearning that got to her.
‘Ours.’ She could not say more, the tears in her eyes welling with the relief of her admission.
‘And Lebansart?’
The ugly name crept in to all that should have been beautiful. ‘He never touched me in that way.’
Emotion was etched into every hard line of Nathaniel’s face. ‘It certainly looked like he wanted to from where I stood.’
‘The names I gave him put paid to that. He was too keen to use the information I had recited to think of anything else. He left with his men ten minutes after you last saw him.’
‘Did he hurt you?’
Turning her face away, she was glad not to see the question in his eyes. ‘James Nathanael Colbert Northrup is our son’s name. I could not think of another way to make sure you would know you were his father if anything was to happen to me.’
He breathed out loudly, a tremor in the sound, all other thoughts washed away. She was pleased for it.
‘When can I see him?’
Cassie was quiet. She was, after all, not certain just what sort of a part Nathaniel wanted to play in his son’s life. Or what kind of a role she might be placed into.
‘Does he know about me?’
‘He thinks that his father died in France. I thought that, too.’
With a curse, his glance took in the far horizon. Allowing himself time to take in the enormity of all that she had told him before he needed to give an answer, she supposed.
‘Why was he born in Paris?’
A different tack. Beneath such a question other queries lingered.
‘My uncle’s best friend had a house there and allowed me the use of it. He sent servants to help me settle.’
‘You did not think to come back to England?’
Shaking her head, she took his hand. ‘I wanted to have Jamie first. I wanted to have our baby without the pressure of all that would transpire in London had I come home alone. I was sick for most of the pregnancy and I did not trust a sea journey. I also believed that I could find you in Paris and explain.’
His grey eyes sharpened. ‘Did you know you were pregnant before Perpignan?’
Looking straight at him, she nodded.
His anger was immediate. ‘You knew and yet you still left?’
‘Much has happened since we were young, Nathaniel. Good things and bad. But Jamie is one of the good things and that is where our focus must lie.’
Relief filled her when he nodded. A relationship held by the smallest of threads, the past between them a broken maze of trust. Sandrine Mercier and Nathanael Colbert had been vastly different people from Cassandra Northrup and Nathaniel Lindsay. But each of them in their own way was now trying to find a direction.
‘Where does this leave us, then?’ She heard the tiredness in his words.
‘If we were to be friends it might be a start.’
* * *
Friends?
Nathaniel mulled over the word, hating the limitations upon it, yet at a loss to demand more. She had borne him a son in a place far from home. Jamie. James. The word budded within him like a prayer answered.
But it was Cassandra whom he needed to think about now. In France they’d experienced lust and passion and avidity as they had made their way through the high mountain passes. Now she needed friendship. It was what she was asking of him, this quieter calm after a storm. Friendship, an emotion he held no experience of with a woman. Did it preclude touching? He moved back, for the expression on her face looked as uncertain as his, eyes shaded equally in worry and hope.
Taking a breath, he smiled as he saw her hand shake when she pushed back the curls that had escaped from beneath her bonnet. ‘Does he have hair your colour or mine?’
‘Yours. I am constantly amazed that my sister does not see the resemblance and comment upon it.’
‘A St Auburn, then.’ The words slipped from him unbidden, and she sobered instantly.
‘A piece of paper all those years ago was easy to sign, but a father should be for ever. You will need to meet him first, Nathaniel, and understand what it is you offer.’
‘Then let me, Sandrine. Let me get to know both of you again in a way we did not have the chance of before. In fact, let us begin right now. I can tell you something of my life as a child and then you can tell me yours.’
Her smile was tentative.
‘After my parents died my grandfather found it hard to cope. He left me in the hands of a nanny and myriad servants and went to Italy for three years. When he returned home I was sent straight up to Eton. From the age of nine to the age of eighteen I barely saw him. When I did I found he was a man I couldn’t like and I am sure that the feeling is mutual.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘At St Auburn. He rarely leaves the place and I seldom go there. Such an arrangement works for us both.’
‘You never had sisters or brothers?’
‘No. My mother had a difficult birth with me and could not have other babies. Perhaps that was a part of my grandfather’s dislike.’
‘Surely a grown man could not blame a small child for such a thing.’
His smile widened. ‘My point exactly.’
With the wind in his hair and the sun on his face Nathaniel Lindsay looked to Cassandra like the epitome of a wealthy and favoured lord of the peerage. He also looked maddeningly beautiful, a fact that worried her even more than the détente that they spoke of.
She wondered if she could withstand such a thing and not give in to the feelings that swirled inside her. This time she was no ingénue with a hard-luck story as the unfortunate victim of crime. No, now she was the one who had betrayed honour and had the scars to prove it. With only the shedding of clothes would he see the living, breathing marks of treason branded into her right breast.
Hence she moved away. From touch. From closeness. From temptation. His confession about his relationship with his grandfather was worth more to her than all the gold and riches in the world because for the first time she saw the child who had made the man.
‘I don’t know what it would be like to be an only child. Through all the years of our early childhood it was my siblings’ presence that made everything seem bearable.’
‘You think that Jamie needs a brother or a sister?’
Despite meaning not to she laughed. ‘A gentleman should not mention such a thing, Lord Lindsay.’
The dimple in his right cheek was deep and whilst he was speaking so candidly of his past she did not wish to waste the chance of knowledge. ‘What is St Auburn like?’
‘The house was built in the sixteenth century by a Lindsay ancestor and has been added on to ever since. It sits in the midst of rolling farmland and there is a lake it looks down upon.’
‘It sounds like a home that needs to be filled with family and laughter.’
Nathaniel smiled. ‘Perhaps you are right. Are you always so wise, Cassandra Northrup?’
‘If I was, I doubt I would have needed to go to France in the first place. I might have recovered from my mother’s death like a normal child and been a proper lady of society with all the airs and graces.’
‘I like you better as you are.’
The blush began as a small warm spot near her heart and spread to the corners of her body. Out in the air in the quiet winds of late summer it was so easy to believe in such troth.
‘You do not really know me at all, Nathaniel.’
‘Then let me. Come to St Auburn. Bring Maureen and Kenyon Riley. Bring whomever you like to feel comfortable, and come with Jamie.’
The grey in his eyes was fathomless today, a lover who would show her only what he might think she wished to see. He was good at hiding things, she thought, the trait of a spy imposed upon everyday life. She wondered how easy that would be, to live with secrets that could result in the downfall of governments if told. Her own had been a hard enough task to keep hidden.
When a group of well-dressed ladies accompanied by their maids walked into the park they were forced to return to the road, though once there awkwardness enveloped her. On the street she saw others watching him, a well-known lord with the promise of an earldom as a mantle around his shoulders. With Nathaniel Lindsay she could not afford to make a mistake or go too lightly into the promises that he asked of her.
Jamie’s welfare rested on good decisions and proper judgement. No, she would rest on his suggestions for a while until she had mulled them over.
* * *
An hour later, Nathaniel sat in his leather chair behind the large mahogany desk in his study and looked about the room without really seeing anything.
He had a son. Jamie. James Nathanael Colbert Northrup, she had said, his name sandwiched in between her own.
He should have asked Cassandra other things, should have found out what Jamie liked and what he didn’t. Did he read, did he love horses, did he play with balls, did he have a pet?
Almost four years old. For a man with little contact with children the number was difficult to get his head around. What could a nearly four-year-old boy do? Sitting back against the seat, he closed his eyes.
God, he was a father. He was a father to a child conceived in the wilds of the Pyrenees above Perpignan.
He took a silver flask from the drawer and unstopped it. Cassandra had been on edge, the usual flare of awareness between them doused by responsibility and worry. Did she think he might take their son away or insist upon the legality of their marriage?
Legality.
The child was a legitimate heir to the St Auburn earldom and fortune. Nat wondered just what his grandfather, William Harper Wilson Lindsay, would say to that.
The past few days had been full of surprises. Yesterday in Wallingford he had discovered another girl had been murdered in the exact same way as those in London. He also had the name of the tall and well-dressed Londoner who had left his room at the inn the day the body had been discovered.
Scrivener Weeks.
Nat had spent a good few hours since last night trawling through the names of all those in society, but come up with nothing.
His mind reeled with all that had happened and as he took a sip of his brandy he smiled.
Chapter Eleven
Jamie was sick, the temperature he ran more worrying by the hour, and Cassandra was increasingly beginning to panic, something she seldom did in any medical emergency.
Her mind would not be still as she imagined all the possibilities and problems that could befall her son if the fever didn’t begin to abate. Maureen had helped her with the nursing for most of the day, but had gone now with Kenyon Riley to a dinner with the old duke in Belgravia. His nanny, Mrs Harris, had also been here for the past hours, but Cassie could see that she was tired and so sent her off to bed.
Hence she was alone, the weak and pain-filled moans cutting through all sense and making her as fearful as she had ever been. By eleven o’clock she had had enough. Scrawling out a note, she asked for one of the Northrup servants to deliver it immediately to the Lindsay town house and wait for an answer.
She wanted Nathaniel here. She wanted a man who might love her son as much as she did and who could bring some sense and calm into a situation that was spiralling out of control for her. A tiny whisper that predicted Jamie might not recover was also part of the reason. If her son died, then Nathaniel would never have seen him. She shook the thought away and ordered back sanity.
It was a simple fever with a high and sudden temperature probably brought on by the dousing he had had in a rain shower in the garden. Visions of young children who went on to develop rashes and stiff necks came too, however, and she had seen enough of life in the past years to know that things did not always turn out happily.
Yesterday in the park Nathaniel had offered her the chance of reconciliation. Tonight all she wanted was his strength and his composure. She tried to regulate her breathing so that Jamie would not pick up on her panic, but found that the beat of her heart was going faster and faster, a clammy dread beginning to take over completely.
She should have called the doctor, she knew she should have, but the Northrup physician was a man who still believed in doing things in his way and even after she had stressed a number of times to him the importance of clean hands and tools he had not taken up the learning. Her father had wanted to replace him, but the traditions of the Batemans attending the Cowper family in the capacity of medical practitioners had been a difficult one to break and so he had given up. Usually Cassandra dealt with any sickness and she did it with such acumen and success they seldom asked for the physician’s attendance.
Jamie was so deathly still, that was the problem, and the lukewarm water that she sponged his little body with was making no inroads to a gathering heat. She had used infusions of camphor, basil and lemon balm, angelica and hyssop, yet nothing seemed to be making any difference.
The sound of footsteps had her standing, heart in mouth, and she turned to the door as Nathaniel walked through, his shirt opened at the collar as if he had not even had the time to find a necktie, pale eyes taking in the scene before him without any sign of panic.
Cassie burst into tears, an action so unexpected and unfamiliar that she even surprised herself for having done so. He did not break a step as he gathered her into his arms and brought her with him over to the bed, his eyes hungrily taking in the features of his son.
‘How long has Jamie had the fever?’
‘All...day.’ She swallowed, trying to make her voice sound more like it usually did.
‘You have bathed him?’
‘Many times, and I have used up all my remedies.’
Jamie’s fit began with a twitch and a quiver, the right side of his body tensing and moving in a rigidity that spread to his legs and feet. While paralysing fear held Cassandra immobile, Nathaniel whipped off the thin sheet and spread it on the floor, lifting Jamie down to lie on his side and crouching by him.
He did not restrain him or hold him in any way, but let the shaking take its course for ten seconds and then twenty, just watching to make sure that he did not injure himself with the movement. Finally, when Cassandra thought it might never pass, Jamie relaxed, vomiting across the boots of his father.
‘So this is what it is to be a parent?’ Nathaniel turned towards her, his hand passing across the forehead of his son and relief evident.
Nodding, she thought that she had never loved Nathaniel more than she did at that moment, his certainty and strength edged with gentle compassion and humour.
‘I had the same sort of fits when I was a child, Cassandra, and the St Auburn physician assured my mother and father that they would disappear as I grew older. Which they did. He will be fine. Better than my boots, at least.’
He leane
d over to wipe the traces of moisture from his fine dark-brown Hessians, the gleam of leather a little tarnished. ‘If you straighten the bed, I will lift him back up for I think the worst is over now.’
* * *
Nathaniel felt as though he were lifting treasure, his son, the small and damp body smelling of sickness and fatigue. Yet he was beautiful in the way only small boys could be, a scrape upon his left kneecap as if he had been running somewhere too fast and his colouring exactly that of a St Auburn heritage.
The same dark hair and skin tone, the same line of nose and cheek he had seen in the drawings of himself as a child. His heart turned in his chest and squeezed with a feeling that was foreign, half fear and all love, the utter storm of fatherhood beaching upon him, winding him with its intensity, fervour and suddenness.
‘Thank you for calling me.’
‘Thank you for coming.’
‘He is beautiful.’
‘I think so.’ For a second a smile tweaked at the corner of her lips, the worry and fright beaten back a little, the tears drying on her cheeks.
‘Is it the first time this has happened?’
‘It is. Jamie is usually so well and full of energy. It was the fright of the difference, I think.’
‘I had three of these fits across the space of a year when I was about his age and, according to my mother’s diary, she was always as worried as you appear to be.’
Jamie suddenly opened his eyes, the pale grey confused. ‘Mama?’
‘I am here, darling.’ Cassandra took his hand and brought it to her lips, kissing the fingers one by one. ‘You have been sick, but you are getting better now.’ The small face came around, questions contained within it.
‘This is Nathaniel Colbert Lindsay, Jamie.’
‘Nearly my name?’
‘He is your—’
‘Papa.’ Jamie finished the sentence, and that one word sealed a lifetime of loyalty. Glancing over, Nathaniel saw Cassandra nod, and he came down on his knees beside the bed to take the offered hand of his son. Warm fingers curled into his.