Grace Burrowes - [Lonely Lords 05]

by Gabriel

  Gabriel had knelt, mostly to block her from ending up plastered to the hearth, and then his arms were full of little girl, and Allie had his neck in an exuberant choke hold.

  “I am so glad to see you, and looking very well, too,” she declared. “Aunt must be feeding you properly, but Hildegard has been pining for you and Aunt both. The scraps bucket isn’t the same since Aunt left, but Papa says Hildy is lonesome for Mr. Wilson’s boar hog. Spring is so far off, and she pines. I pined too, for you and for Aunt, but then Uncle said travel can lift the spirits, and so we’re here.”

  She beamed at him, and Gabriel couldn’t help but beam back as he stood with her perched on his hip. She still fit there, as she had for two long years. He hadn’t realized how much he missed her, missed her chatter, her unflinchingly honest emotions, her joy in the smallest of life’s miracles.

  And if she called Beckman Haddonfield papa, well, that was for the best.

  “St. Michael.” Gabriel spared him a nod. “Well done. Now, Allemande, I take it you lingered in the stables to greet your old friend Soldier?” Gabriel addressed the child as he settled her in a chair. “What confidences did he share with you?”

  “He’s very hairy,” Allie reported in all seriousness. “Papa says after the past few winters, all the animals are fuzzing up in anticipation of much snow and cold. There were flurries on the way here.”

  She might have pattered on, but the ladies chose that moment to join them. Because Allie was dwarfed by the back of the chair, her presence wasn’t obvious at first, and Gabriel had to stand by and watch as St. Michael not only kissed Polly’s cheek but slid a proprietary arm around her waist.

  Gabriel leaned over the chair back to whisper in Allie’s ear, “Greet your aunt, child.”

  “You think she’ll be pleased to see me?”

  “Don’t be a hen-wit. She can barely paint for missing you.”

  Allie shot him a dubious look, then pushed out of the chair and came around to stand beside Gabriel, tucking her hand in his. “Hello, Aunt.”

  The words were shy, barely audible, and not at all consistent with the greeting the child had offered Gabriel.

  “Allie?” Polly was on her knees, arms spread wide in an instant. “My Allie? Oh, my dear, dear child…” She enveloped the girl in a tight hug, not even letting the child go to snatch Gabriel’s handkerchief when he dangled it before her. “I am so glad to see you, Allemande. So glad.”

  “I wasn’t sure you would be,” Allie whispered. “Mr. North says you missed me.”

  “I’ve missed you terribly,” Polly assured her, rising but keeping Allie’s hand in hers. “Would the company find it terribly rude if I showed my niece to the studio?”

  “We would not,” Gabriel answered. “Provided both of you ladies join us for dinner in”—he glanced at Marjorie—“two hours?”

  “That will suit,” Marjorie concurred, though it doubtless meant having the kitchen move the meal up by at least an hour. “And it will allow me to show Miss Hunt where our guests will be staying.”

  “May Allie have a trundle in my room?” Polly asked then peered at the child. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

  “I won’t mind.” Allie grinned hugely, while Gabriel felt a stab of consternation. If the child were there of a night, he most certainly would not be. He wiped away his scowl when he caught St. Michael smiling at him.

  Nasty bastard, though Gabriel had to allow the man had traveled a distance with a small child, which showed dedication to the cause at least. Polly and Allie took their leave, followed by Marjorie, who was off to negotiate with the cook.

  “Shall we switch to something more fortifying than tea?” Aaron posed the question, glancing between Gabriel and St. Michael. “Or do we get down the pistols and swords now, so you two can start in strutting and pawing over the lady?”

  “Now, Aaron,” Gabriel chided. “Just because you are up to your neck in wooing your wife doesn’t mean the rest of us must resort to animal displays. And I must concede to our guest that bringing the child was a brilliant stroke. Polonaise was immediately in tears at your generosity.”

  St. Michael’s mouth lifted at one corner. “Tears of joy. Bringing Allemande along wasn’t my idea.”

  “It wasn’t?” Gabriel paused in examining his sleeve buttons, because St. Michael’s admission did not support Gabriel’s desire to toss the fellow right out the window.

  “Would any sane man willingly choose to travel in winter with a human chatterbox? One who wiggles as much as she talks, as much as she needs to stop at every posting inn from here to the South Downs?” St. Michael settled into a chair and let out a weary sigh.

  “It would certainly give me pause,” Aaron volunteered. “She’s a lively child.”

  “She’s the way to Miss Hunt’s heart,” Gabriel said softly.

  St. Michael leaned his head back. “If she is, I can’t see why Miss Hunt would have lined up three years’ worth of commissions all over the Home Counties.”

  Because the oversized, accented, good-looking idiot was blind. “Well, if it wasn’t your idea to bring Allemande to her aunt’s side, whose idea was it?”

  “Beckman’s.” St. Michael accepted a drink obligingly provided by Gabriel’s brother. “And Sara’s. They said you needed reinforcements.”

  A slow warmth suffused Gabriel’s chest. “I did need reinforcments. I do. I most assuredly do, and I am relieved you perceive whose interests my Allemande is campaigning for.”

  ***

  Polly heard a soft tap on the door and opened it only a crack, because Allie was sleeping on a trundle bed at the foot of the four-poster. Tremaine’s hand shot out and encircled her wrist even as he put a finger to his lips, gesturing for silence. He towed her along in the cold gloom of the corridor until they were several doors down.

  “Allie’s asleep?”

  “Of course. Traveling, seeing North… Gabriel again, joining the adults at table. She’s had a very exciting day.”

  “And she saw you again.” Tremaine studied her for a moment by the light of a mirrored sconce, then shrugged out of his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. “We need to talk, Polly, and this is not the place to do it.”

  No, they did not need to talk, but Tremaine apparently needed to jabber at her. “Where are we going?”

  “My room,” he said, taking her by the wrist. “It’s warm and private, and not far from yours should Allie take a notion to wander.”

  “She won’t wander, Tremaine, and you can just… stop.” She shook her hand free of his and glared at him. “I will not be dragged about like this, and we’re not going to your room at this hour.” At any hour.

  He crossed his arms, looking as implacable as a Highland warrior and as imperious as a French king. “Then where?”

  “The library. It’s almost as warm as the kitchens.” Also full of fortifying memories.

  He winged his arm at her, and Polly accepted the more decorous version of escort.

  “You look tired, Polly Hunt, but you’re painting brilliantly.”

  “My subjects are wonderful, when they hold still.”

  He patted her hand, and damn the man, in this frigid corridor, his hands were warm. “They’re not just pretty people though, are they?”

  “Not to me. A portrait is not a still life with human, or it shouldn’t be.”

  “It isn’t meant to be,” Tremaine agreed, ushering her into the library. “Or it isn’t any longer. This was a good first project, though, if you’re finding the work enjoyable.”

  “I am,” Polly said, though something in even those two words had Tremaine eyeing her closely.

  “What?”

  “The work is going well.” Polly went to the hearth and spread her hands out toward the fire. The blaze was roaring, as if in preparation for the master of the house to take a late-night nap on the long sofa. “It’s hard too.”

  “What’s hard?”

  “Being away from home.” Tremaine was Reynard’s surviving bro
ther, and he knew exactly who was related to whom and how, so Polly offered the more honest sentiment. “Being away from Allie and Sara.”

  “I saw the miniature of that cat in your room.” Tremaine stood beside her, looking at her hands. “Allie did it?”

  “She did, and don’t you start getting ideas about that child, Tremaine. She needs time to grow up and make her own choices regarding her art.”

  “She might not get those choices. She’s now the stepdaughter of an heir to an earldom, Polly, and if you thought she’d be raised in bucolic obscurity, you’re wrong.” His words were hard, though his tone was uncharacteristically gentle.

  “She’s already been raised in some bucolic obscurity.” Polly gathered her night robe more closely around her middle, though the fire gave off a marvelous heat, and the library smelled comfortingly of old books. “And she loves it. She’s counting the days until Beck and Sara let her have a pony, and she’s safe, Tremaine. Safe from all the Reynards in the world, safe from what acknowledging me as her mother would cost her.”

  “For now. But how old were you when Reynard came across you and so casually destroyed your whole existence?”

  Not her whole existence—she still had her art—but Reynard had destroyed her innocence. Also her chance for a lifetime at Gabriel Wendover’s side.

  “We need not rehash this now.” Polly turned to sit on the raised hearth, the fire crackling at her back. “You came to see how I fared with my work. I’m doing well enough, so you can go and find me another commission.”

  “When this one is complete, I shall.” He lowered himself directly beside her. “Have you considered my proposal at any greater length?”

  He and Gabriel shared a certain tenacity. On Gabriel, the quality was dear; not so, Tremaine. “No, I have not. I am busy here, Tremaine, and your proposal isn’t what’s occupying my mind.”

  She hadn’t, in fact, given it a thought since waking in Gabriel’s portrait gallery several weeks ago.

  “It should be,” Tremaine replied, slipping an arm around her waist. “I can see the way you regard your marquess, Polly, and he seems to return the sentiment, but you won’t let yourself have him, and we both know it. You’d be honor bound to disclose that Allemande is your daughter, and you won’t shatter his illusions like that. The kind thing would be to tell him now that he’s wasting his time courting you.”

  “I’ve tried,” Polly said miserably. “Tremaine, I’ve told him to his face there is no future for us, but he’s just finding his balance here at Hesketh, and I’m familiar, and we were friends of a sort.”

  “Do you believe what is coming out of your mouth?”

  His arm felt like a weight across her shoulders, like a yoke of lies and despair. “No.” She studied her slippers, where she’d thought of painting an image of Gabriel’s smile. “Well, yes, a little.”

  “He is familiar to you,” Tremaine said. “You’ve pined for him at length. Now you can get him out of your system, and it’s harder than you thought.”

  “Must you be so honest?” And presuming and bold and bothersome.

  He smiled at her, a crooked, genuine smile that some other woman might find charming and Polly found sad. “You’re too hardheaded to accept anything but honesty from a friend, Polly Hunt.” He drew her against him again and kissed her forehead. “You must do what makes you happy, but as you weigh and measure and sort your options, please recall that I would never knowingly make you unhappy.”

  “And there’s the difficulty,” Polly murmured. “You won’t make me unhappy, but you can’t make me happy, either.” Not that her happiness was anybody’s responsibility but her own.

  Tremaine let her go. “I will settle for making you rich, famous, and content. Were you happy to see Allie?”

  “Not subtle, Tremaine.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I was devastated to see Allie, and overjoyed. She thought I wouldn’t be pleased to see her.” Which was awful, the exact opposite of the truth, and possibly a good thing.

  “She worried, as children will, and now she’s reassured. You are too, I think.”

  Polly merely nodded. Perhaps she’d paint Hildegard’s image on her slippers, another female held captive by maternal responsibilities.

  “So you’d have me depart for Three Springs tomorrow?” Tremaine fired the question with exquisite casualness.

  “You know I want all the time with Allie I can get, but the sooner you go, the easier it will be on her and me both.”

  Tremaine got up and left Polly sitting alone on the hearth. “The sooner I go, the sooner I leave the field clear for North—or Hesketh—to break your heart.”

  “I suppose you’d best be on your way, then. Except he won’t be breaking my heart, Tremaine, though I very much fear I will be breaking his.”

  “You owe him the truth, Polly.” Tremaine paused at the library door. “He might surprise you.”

  “By offering me pity instead of judgment?”

  “He’s not a bad sort.” Tremaine appeared to study the molding, which was a pattern of strawberry leaves and pearls. “Though why I should argue on behalf of my rival is beyond me. I doubt he’d do the same.”

  “He’s a very good sort,” Polly said, rising lest she be tempted to remain in the library alone. “Better even than he knows, and he deserves a wife who can give him children, and whose past will stand the closest scrutiny. I would fail him, eventually, and that would break my heart.”

  “So you’ll break his heart instead,” Tremaine said, his tone jaunty. “He won’t mind that in the least. Let me escort you back to bed, and all that nobility of spirit you’re tormenting yourself with can keep you warm the livelong night.”

  Polly kept her silence, lest her honest and somewhat violent sentiments provoke Tremaine to more great good cheer at her expense.

  The door closed, and on the reading balcony above, where a pair of brothers had tippled their papa’s brandy and stolen looks at his “scholarly” edition of a certain work of Hindu erotica, Gabriel sat forward and scrubbed a hand over his face. Tremaine St. Michael had risen a few grudging points in his estimation by proving as honorable as he was shrewd.

  But as for Polonaise… Her words had confirmed Gabriel’s earliest, long forgotten hunches regarding the relationships between the Hunt womenfolk, and redoubled his determination to ensure Polly at least had somebody to share her secret burden with.

  If she allowed it. Polonaise was further gone in her determination to leave than Gabriel had realized, self-sufficiency having become a habitual penance with her. The situation would soon grow desperate, particularly when the woman he loved had barricaded herself of a night in her bedroom tower.

  Fortunately, Gabriel’s most loyal vassal was barricaded in there with her.

  ***

  “You always tell me the truth.”

  “This is so,” Gabriel allowed, but with Allie up before him on Soldier, he couldn’t see her face, and it was easier to parse truth when one could observe the speaker’s expressions.

  “I want you to tell me the truth now,” Allie said, and she did twist around to enforce her words with a glare. “Nobody else will.”

  “If I know the truth, I will share it with you. I may not know it.”

  “You do.” Allie heaved a sigh the size of all England. “Everyone knows it but me, and nobody talks about it. Mama and Papa are going to have a baby.”

  “I don’t think that’s a secret,” Gabriel said, but he knew this child, and though she was a child, she was also a Hunt female and winding up to something. “A baby often follows the vows. How do you feel about this development?”

  “I don’t know. I’m supposed to be happy to have a little brother or sister.”

  “But?”

  “Mama could die. It’s one of the things nobody talks about.”

  “Sara is in good health, and she will receive the best care.” Platitudes the child would no doubt resent. “Why do you think she might die?”
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br />   “Ladies do. They aren’t like Hildegard. Do you know, if Hildy is five years old, she already has hundreds of pigs in her family, and that’s just the babies?”

  “You are not a piglet,” Gabriel said, mentally starting on the math, because Hildy invariably had at least twenty offspring each year, and about half of those were female.

  “She has sisters too, and they have babies, and that means she has thousands in her family. Thousands, and they’re all related, but I get only a mama and a papa who aren’t my mama and papa.”

  The air in Gabriel’s lungs seized, because in all his tossing and turning the previous night, it hadn’t occurred to him that Allie herself shared Polonaise’s secret.

  But she did. She was the secret and a keeper of the secret both, and that was… not fair. Not fair to her, not fair to the mother who loved her.

  “And this baby of Sara and Beck’s will not be your true brother or sister, but rather, a cousin.”

  “Nobody admits that,” Allie said, anger creeping into her voice. “A cousin is not a brother or a sister, but I’m supposed to act like it is. Babies cry and soil their nappies and spit up, and as if that isn’t bad enough, I’m supposed to pretend this is my brother or sister. I don’t like lying.”

  “Lies make for a great deal of confusion,” Gabriel said, also a great deal of sorrow and loneliness and possibly some good art. “Lies can be meant kindly.”

  “My mother, my real mother,” Allies said flatly, “doesn’t love me. Or not enough. I thought she did, but then she comes here, where it’s very grand, and she spends all her time painting, and her letters are dumb.”

  “Tell me about her letters.”

  “They sound like Lady Warne’s. Like I’m supposed to care how much Lady Marjorie likes horses, when I don’t even know Lady Marjorie.”

  Oh, my poor Polonaise. My poor Allemande. “And what do your letters say in return?”

  “They’re dumb too. Aunt doesn’t care about Hermione and Boo-Boo and Heifer. She left us, you see, just when Mr. Haddonfield came along to look after my other mama—Sara—and we could have gone off together and been painters.”