by Gabriel
“Guests, my lord.” The footman looked a little panicked, and Gabriel had to work to school his features to something less than a murderous glower.
“Guests?”
“A Mr. Haddonfield and his lady, from West Pershing,” the footman said. “We’re alerting Lady Marjorie, but because the formal parlor was in use, and there was a fire in the library, we put them there.”
About damned time the rest of the reinforcements arrived. “The library will do nicely. Send along the tea tray.”
“Of course, my lord.”
He hadn’t foreseen this, but it was fitting that the Hunt ladies gather under one roof, because much remained unresolved between them. Gabriel’s steps took him to the third floor, where he meant to accost Polly in her studio. Instead, he was nearly knocked off his pins by a small female fury coming out of Polly’s room.
“I saw them,” Allie bellowed. “I saw them coming up from the stables, and you can’t make me go back with them.”
He hunkered and took her by her shoulders. “What are you thundering about, Allemande?”
“Mama and Step-papa are here to take me back to Three Springs, and I don’t want to go!”
“You are not having this tantrum in the corridor for all of creation to hear.” He’d used his most stern tones, the ones his own father had used to cow two rambunctious boys, but Allie was in a taking and not to be out-thundered.
“I can so have it here.” She jammed her fists onto her narrow hips. “I can have a tantrum wherever I please, and whenever I please, and put me down!”
He’d picked her up and carried her bodily into Polly’s room, kicking the door shut behind them, then settling into a chair with the child still bellowing her intentions in his ear.
“Allemande, if you do not hush this instant, I will tell Hildy on you.”
She blinked, mouth open, then shut her mouth and smiled.
“Hildy would be on my side. She doesn’t leave her piglets until they’re nearly grown-up.”
“I’m on your side,” Gabriel insisted. “You must believe I did not know Beck and Sara were coming to call. Your mother is in a delicate condition…” He caught her wounded glare. “Sara is in a delicate condition, it’s snowing, and I cannot think what possessed your… Beckman.”
“Mama wrote to them,” Allie declared. “She wrote that she was thinking of marrying Uncle Tremaine, and I read the letter as it was drying, and she started crying.”
“It’s hard when she cries. Did you tell her you don’t like to be at Three Springs without her?”
“I like to be at Three Springs. I don’t like lying about who I am.”
“You’re Allemande Hunt.”
She gave him a very adult, very disappointed look. “I’m Polonaise Hunt’s daughter and Reynard St. Michael’s daughter. Sara Haddonfield is my aunt, and she is married to Beckman Haddonfield.”
“Is that what you want to say to your mother?”
“No.” She subsided against his chest, and Gabriel allowed her time to think. He certainly needed some—time they did not have.
“I want to ask something,” Allie said, “not tell.”
“What do you want to ask?”
“I want to ask my mama.” And there was no mistaking which lady she considered worthy of that appellation.
“Now?”
“Yes, now.” Allie sat up again. “If I don’t ask now, she’ll leave with Uncle, I’ll go back to Three Springs, and she’ll be gone forever, painting.”
“I begin to fear you have the right of it. I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault.”
That was all the absolution she had to grant, but Gabriel still lingered for a moment in the chair, idly stroking Allie’s bony little back. “She makes the choices she does to try to protect you, you know.”
Allie hopped off his lap. “She makes them because they’re what she wants. She’s trying to be a good girl, and she’s being dumb. I’ve had a talk with Hildy about this.”
“Apparently so.” Gabriel rose. His heart was not easy, not when this confrontation was coming at a terrible time for Polonaise. Though he’d pushed and pushed for it indirectly, now he wanted to protect both mother and daughter from what might be said in anger and hurt.
“You’ll stay with me?”
How he wished he could. “Some things are private, Allemande.”
“But when I try to talk to her, she changes the subject and starts moving around, like she’s too busy to listen.”
“She’s too scared,” Gabriel said. “I’ll stay for a time, but you’ll do the talking.”
Seventeen
The two portraits were curing on easels away from both direct sunlight and the heat of the fire, and they’d turned out well, if Polly did say so herself. Marjorie had posed seated, gazing off to her right, while Aaron was standing, gazing down and to his left. Together, the portraits were an ensemble, the figures appearing to communicate with each other across their frames. Both parties wore expressions of tender regard, and the effect was impressive.
“Polonaise.” Gabriel dropped Allie’s hand to inspect the paintings. “You amaze me. These are wonderful.”
“Wonderful?” The simple sound of his voice was wonderful.
“No other word will do.”
“They’re very good,” Allie agreed. “Where did you get the idea to make two paintings?”
“From the duet I played with your mother before I left Three Springs,” Polly said. “Two instruments, each with its own voice, but in harmony.”
Allie glanced at Gabriel as the words “your mother” were spoken.
Polly caught the glance and felt foreboding well up, engulfing even the sadness she’d carried to be parting again from her daughter and from Gabriel. These two people whom she loved more than life looked set on cornering her, and she hadn’t the strength to elude them. She was going to disappoint them, and how she’d bear their contempt she did not know.
Polly tossed another log on the fire before Gabriel could tend to it, and watched as a flurry of sparks went up the flue.
“Your daughter has something to ask you.” Gabriel spoke quietly from immediately beside her. “Please try to answer honestly.”
“What did you want to ask me?” Polly shifted to face Allie, who was looking at her so solemnly. “Or perhaps we should sit. This looks like serious business.”
And then it hit her: Your daughter, your daughter, your daughter… Polly could not so much as dare a glance at Gabriel.
Allie took a cushioned chair and scooted into its depths, looking small, determined, and scared. Polly took the other chair, Gabriel hovering at her side, which was just as well, because she didn’t want to see his expression as she shattered both her daughter’s heart and her own.
She smiled at Allie “Ask. I’ll answer the best I can.”
Allie traded another of those glances with Gabriel, while he merely stood by Polly’s chair and kept his peace.
“Why…?” Allie’s shoulders shuddered as she took a breath. She hitched back in the chair and fixed her gaze on her half boots.
“Why what, sweetie?”
“Why… don’t… you want to be my mother?”
Allie’s whole face contorted with her grief. She closed her eyes, and tears leaked down her cheeks as she hunched up in a ball and tucked herself into a corner of the chair. “I know you have to p-paint, because you didn’t, for a long time, and it will m-make you rich. But why can’t you be my mother too?”
Polly felt a hand, warm and reassuring on her shoulder, but before her eyes, her only child was dissolving into tears.
“I am your mother,” Polly said, closing the distance and reaching for her daughter. “I will always be your mother. You know that.”
“Mothers don’t go away,” Allie howled. “You can paint and be my mother, but not if you’re far away. You can’t. It isn’t right, and I hate it.”
“Sara is the one who raised you,” Polly tried, but her own eyes had fil
led with tears. “Sara loves you too, and so does Beckman.”
“I want my mother! You are my mother. We have the same hair, and we love animals, and we paint, and I help you bake things, and we love him. Why can’t you stay with me? I’ll be good, and I won’t bring in the mud when I visit with Hildy, and I won’t argue, and why don’t you want to be with me?” She trailed off into brokenhearted sobbing, only to be lifted into her mother’s arms and held fast.
“Hush,” Polly crooned. “Just hush, you mustn’t take on so. I didn’t want to leave, Allie, I didn’t.”
Polly looked up, expecting to see Gabriel’s brooding frown, but he’d left. He’d heard enough, and he’d left.
Polly rocked her daughter and saved the grief of destroying Gabriel’s regard for her for another time. She was going to lose him anyway, and right now, her daughter needed her.
“We must talk about this,” she said, holding her handkerchief to Allie’s nose.
“That’s what I tried to tell you.” Allie shuddered out a sigh and cuddled up. “You wouldn’t listen.”
“I’m listening now, but it’s complicated.”
“It is not.” Allie blew her hair out of her eyes. “You’re my mother. You should be with me.”
“Maybe I should.” Of course she should. “We’re not the only people who have to be considered, though. I have obligations, Allie, paintings that will keep me busy for at least the next year.”
“You can paint later,” Allie said. “For now, can’t you just be my mother?”
***
Gabriel left the studio as quietly as he could, praying every merciful angel in heaven would stay with Polly and Allie and see them through what needed to be said. Those tears, though, so heartbroken and sincere… they’d been more than he could stand without scooping mother and daughter into his arms.
“You’re in a tearing hurry.” St. Michael’s peculiarly accented drawl cut through the fog of emotion and left Gabriel wanting to put his fist right through the man’s toothy smile.
“I thought you were packing to leave?”
“I was, but have you seen the weather?”
“Don’t let a blizzard stop you,” Gabriel growled. “If you’re looking for Polonaise and Allemande, they’re in the studio, though they need some privacy.”
“They paint together sometimes, with interesting results.”
“I know that.”
He knew what they painted and how their styles differed minutely and how much each enjoyed the other’s critical input. He knew the exact tilt of their heads when they studied a work of art, and the particular rhythm with which they kneaded bread dough. He knew they both liked whipped cream on their hot chocolate, and they were both ticklish around the ribs.
He knew so much, except how to win them for his own.
“Something else you should know.” St. Michael’s pretense of lazy disinterest fell away. “I’ve withdrawn my proposal of marriage.”
“She turned you down.” Gabriel could not believe the man would cede the field for any other reason.
“She did not. She will not, but she deserves better, and as to that, she’s more likely to paint well married to you—assuming you won’t exert your atavistic streak and confine her to your bedroom?”
“I should be so lucky,” Gabriel snapped back, “as to be confined with her, but she isn’t having me either, so fear not.”
“She isn’t?” St. Michael’s frown became speculative. “I thought you’d cleared up the business with the death threats and the lawsuits, and were now in a better position to offer.”
“My offer will stand. It will stand until hell freezes over and pigs fly, but she won’t have me.”
“Why not?”
The question, Gabriel saw, was genuine.
“I am damned at this point to fathom her mind. I thought it had to do with my station or her past, but now, I’m not sure.”
“Give it time. There’s a blizzard going on, and nobody can go anywhere at present.”
“Somebody did go somewhere,” Gabriel said. “Beck and Sara are warming their idiot toes in the library.”
“He let her go out in this mess?”
“It wasn’t snowing early this morning,” Gabriel reminded him. “Come. They’ll want to see you, and there are issues to sort out before I lose my bloody goddamned mind.”
“Wouldn’t want that. Things are dodgy enough when you’re in possession of your few and feeble wits.”
Gabriel marched him to the library, exchanged greetings with his guests, and built up the fire.
“Your back must be better,” Beckman said. “You’re tossing around firewood with veritable grace.”
Gabriel rose and dusted off his hands. “I’ll toss some right at your fool head. Coming all this way under threatening skies with your lady wife in tow. But now that you’re here, I’m of a mind to fetch Polonaise to join us. You lot need to resolve a few little miseries that have come to my attention while she’s been here at Hesketh.”
When Beck gave a terse nod, Gabriel left the library, hoping Polonaise hadn’t bolted while he’d rounded up the other principals. He tossed up a prayer that Allemande also would not have decamped for parts unknown before they were done, but had to track his ladies down in the kitchen, where they were preparing to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate with George.
“You.” Gabriel picked Allie up under the arms and thrust her at George. “Keep your eye on him, child, or he’ll have you tippling that god-awful peach hog swill.”
“You.” He grabbed Polly by the wrist. “You are coming with me, and not one word out of either of you.”
He towed her along to the library, relieved to see when they got there that Beck and Sara were on the sofa, while St. Michael, the varlet, looked bored and relaxed at Gabriel’s own desk.
Gabriel took up a stance by the window, unwilling to look at Polonaise as he began to speak.
“This assemblage will, perhaps for the first time, turn its attention to the well-being of one small child whose heretofore chaotic style of existence must come to an end. Half truths and patchwork efforts will no longer suffice, or she will make each of us come to regret it. Polonaise, you know what it means to be a young girl shuffled aside, casually allowed to believe you matter less than the others in your household. You know this, and you can ensure your daughter does not make the same mistakes you did based on such an upbringing.
“You will therefore turn your thoughts to what your daughter needs to be happy and safe in this life, and you will start, I beg you to start, by telling us what you need to be happy, because the child cannot be happy if you are not.”
He turned in time to see Polly dip her head and cover her face with her hands, and still he did not go to her. From where he stood at the chilly window, he silently willed her to feel his faith in her. She was brave, she was strong, and she was going to do this for her daughter.
Also for herself.
“I need…” She took a breath and swiveled her gaze to her sister. “I need to be a mother to my daughter.”
Silence, while Sara and Beck exchanged some intuitive communication, and then Sara was on her knees before Polly.
“I am so sorry,” she said. “I’ve never said how sorry I was, how sorry I am, that I brought that conniving, scurrilous man into your life. I ruined your life, Polly, and you never once blamed me. And then I took your daughter… I am so sorry.”
“You didn’t—” Polly looked up as the protest died on her lips. Gabriel met her eyes with as much steadiness and courage as a human gaze could communicate.
“I hated you,” Polly said wearily. “I hated you and Reynard and myself, but I never hated my daughter. I let you take her, and I’m grateful to you, but, Sara, I need her too. I thought I could finish the giving away and she’d be better for it, but I can’t… I just cannot.”
Sara extended a hand toward her sister. Polly closed her fingers around Sara’s, and the tears started. The men reached for handkerchiefs, swallowed a f
ew times, and carefully avoided one another’s eyes, while Sara shifted to get her arms around Polly.
They held tightly to each other, until Polly began to speak again, slowly, finding the words to say the hard, true things. Sara listened, and spoke, and slowly, carefully, they began to tackle the problem like the mothers they were. Before they were done, Gabriel slipped away, because of all the people in that room, he was the one without any right to be there.
***
Polly didn’t know whether to be relieved or frustrated, but the snow made it impossible for anybody to journey on from Hesketh. Lady Marjorie had had dinner served the night before on trays in people’s rooms, and Allie had dragged Polly off to bed at an early hour, emotionally exhausted by the day.
The next morning, the skies were still leaden, with the occasional flurry drifting down through brutally frigid air. Sara found Polly in the studio, where she’d gone to make one final assessment of her first commissions.
“Are you all right?”
“I am.” Polly gestured to Lady Marjorie’s image. “Did I make her too diffident?”
“No. She’s reserved by nature but warm too, just as you’ve caught her. She can’t help but like this painting.”
“She likes it.” Polly liked it too. “Her husband likes it, but I’ve yet to hear Lady Hartle’s opinion. She’s too preoccupied with impending grandmotherhood.”
“Has she named the baby yet?”
Babies, everywhere babies. Other people’s babies. “That is a detail. Given the way Marjorie and Aaron look at each other, there’s bound to be one soon.”
“And then Hesketh will have its heir, assuming you and Gabriel don’t see to the matter.”
“That isn’t possible, much less likely.” Polly hunkered to stack a log on the fire, then changed her mind. She was leaving Hesketh, and Gabriel was not likely to set foot in the studio again before she left. “The marquess hasn’t found it needful to even address me directly since learning just how fallen I am. I don’t think it’s Allie’s bastardy bothering him, or even my youthful lapse of judgment, but rather, my inability to be honest with him until now.”