The Lady's Deception

by Susanna Craig

  She started to nod, winced again, and whispered, “Yes.”

  “Let me call the physician who lives across the square. Sir Owen—”

  A flare of alarm. “Oh, no. That’s not necessary. I’m fine. I will be fine,” she corrected.

  “When Molly comes in with the towels, you must ask her for anything else you need. Anything that would make you more comfortable.”

  Miss Gorse looked doubtful. “I wouldn’t want to cause her any trouble. I’ll just rest until dinner, if I may. The girls—”

  “Leave them to me.”

  Another flare of worry lit her eyes, but she did not speak.

  He rose, mustering a sort of smile. “Don’t worry. I had nothing in mind more severe than a tongue lashing, I do assure you.”

  The answer did not satisfy her. In her lap, her free hand curled into a determined fist. “That sort of lashing can inflict as much harm as the other, Mr. Burke. More lasting harm, at any rate.”

  The chill that settled over him had little to do with his rain-soaked clothes. She spoke with the certainty of someone who knew from experience the sort of damage words could do. Perhaps that explained why she had been so quick to accept blame for a simple accident. Someone—but who?—had badgered and bullied her into submission.

  Or rather, had tried. He glimpsed in the depths of her eyes a flicker of something. Something that hinted her spirit had not been entirely subdued.

  “Besides,” she said with clearly unpracticed boldness, “you hired me to manage your sisters, did you not?”

  Something like a laugh rumbled in his chest. “I may be a barrister, Miss Gorse. But even I cannot argue with that.”

  * * * *

  He was out the door before Rosamund could reply, and in another moment, Molly entered. In that interval of solitude, albeit brief, Rosamund came to two conclusions.

  First, she felt certain that when Daphne had described her brother as angry, she had misstated the case. Rosamund had some experience with angry, and it was not how she would describe Mr. Burke. Which was not to say he was happy, either. Quite the opposite, in fact. If she were forced to choose just one word with which to label him, it would be sad.

  Oh, he was quick tempered at times, witty at others. Changeable, as she had noted from the first. But the more opportunities she was given to study him, the more she felt certain that sorrow, or something very like it, had etched its mark on his features and his voice. He conveyed a sort of weariness, a sort of wariness, that the occasional sharp retort only reinforced. His determination to have the last word, to manage every exchange as he saw fit, was but one of his ways of holding people at a distance, of keeping them from probing too deeply.

  Her second conclusion was that she had been right to think of Mr. Burke as dangerous. Certainly, he was dangerous to her. His touch, instead of being shocking or unwelcome, made her feel safe, when in reality she was the furthest thing from it. What might he say or do when he discovered that she was not at all the woman he believed her to be?

  Molly’s arrival prevented her from dwelling on the probable consequences of her deception. A spasm of disapproval flashed across the servant’s face as she took in Rosamund’s disheveled appearance—an expression not unlike the one Mr. Burke had been wearing when he’d burst from the back of the house. All at once Rosamund had been a child again, facing her brother’s wrath over an innocent mistake, quickly realizing that what had happened was all her own fault. Then and now, she instinctively curled her arm tighter to hide the injury, to shield herself.

  Molly softened when she spied the compress at Rosamund’s temple. “Let’s have a look, then.” She deposited an armload of towels at the foot of the bed, then turned to inspect Rosamund’s wound. As she gently lifted the damp cloth and studied what was beneath, she clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Cricket.” On her lips the word was an epithet. “I thought you fine ladies had more sense. Well, you’ve a lump the size of a quail’s egg, and you’ll soon have a fine poppy bruise to go with it. Perhaps that will help you to remember not to go messin’ about with balls and bats.”

  Carefully, Rosamund nodded. Play had formed little part of her solitary childhood, and when Daphne and Bell had described the game, it had sounded harmless fun. Now, of course, she knew why such rough and tumble stuff had been forbidden in her youth. Charles often said she had to learn things the hard way.

  Still, there was something comic about Molly’s exaggerated frown. And something joyful in the memory of the light in Bell’s eyes when she’d hit the ball. A wayward smile twitched at the corners of Rosamund’s lips and laughter burbled in her chest.

  Perhaps her mind really was addled if she could see any humor in her current predicament. Perhaps Charles was right.

  Certainly Molly was looking at her as if she feared the knock on the head had done more than superficial damage. With another shake of her head, she replaced the compress. “After we get you dried off, I’ll fetch a plaster to stop the bleedin’.” As Rosamund reached up to hold the damp cloth in place once more, Molly grabbed one of the towels, snapped it open, and wrapped it around Rosamund’s dripping hair. “Not a soul will notice it beneath all this English gold.”

  Her Englishness had been the first thing Mr. Burke had remarked upon. And his tone had not been complimentary, either—not surprising, given what his sisters had revealed about his radical politics. Yet she was not the only English person who had become a part of this household… “Daphne and Bell told me that their sisters married Englishmen.” As she could no longer see Molly’s face, Rosamund felt safe in probing.

  “They did indeed. High-born ones, too. Mr. Paris got himself into a right state when Miss Cami brought her man home. But then, those two always did enjoy a row. Comes of being so close in age. Now, Miss Erica…well, she does as she likes, mostly.” Molly paused and let the towel sag. Rosamund glanced back in time to catch a sly smile curving the servant’s lips. “An’ she was smart enough not to tell her brother what she’d done until it was too late.”

  Rosamund murmured in reluctant admiration of such daring, the sound thankfully muffled by the towel. “The elder Misses Burke sound like spirited women. I believe I can see their influence on Daphne and Bell.”

  Molly nodded, and the smile shifted into fondness. “The dear loves do miss their sisters so.”

  “I’m surprised they did not accompany their parents on the visit to England. I understand there was some childhood malady, but surely—”

  “Between you and me, Miss Rosamund,” Molly said, lowering her voice, “they might’ve gone and been none the worse. But I think Mr. Paris was grasping for an excuse to stay here. Work, he says, and God knows he takes on enough of it. But since those three left Dublin—Miss Cami, Miss Erica, and their brother, Mr. Galen,” she explained, seeing Rosamund’s puzzled expression, “he’s had nothing but harsh words for them. I’ve heard him swear up and down that he’d sooner drown than cross the Irish Sea.”

  Somehow, Rosamund did not think it was fear of the water that kept him firmly planted on his own island.

  She thought again of his involvement with the United Irishmen. “I suppose most of your countrymen share his prejudice.”

  “Well…” Molly stretched the word into several syllables. “I don’t know about most, but a fair few do, and that’s a fact. Then again, his mother’s English, and he thinks the world o’ her.”

  Half English, yet somehow entirely Irish. Did he never feel himself caught between the two worlds?

  When her hair was sufficiently dry, Molly helped her shed her damp dress and offered a faded nightgown from the bottom of the clothes press. “Why don’t you have a lie down? I’ll bring up your dinner in a while.”

  Rosamund could not help but think of Mr. Burke’s instructions regarding meals. “I don’t want to be a burden.”

  The servant waved such concerns away. “Och, go on.
You need your rest after a great thump like that one.”

  When Molly had tucked her securely into bed—an odd yet comforting feeling in the middle of the afternoon—she promised to return in a few moments. “I’ll fetch that plaster for your head.”

  “Thank you, Molly. And please, I wish—I wish you would call me Rosamund. At least in private.” It was a liberty she had never before allowed. Charles would have fired any servant who had dared to take her up on the offer. But Molly was friendly and young—about her own age, Rosamund guessed—and might be an ally. She hadn’t had one of those since her mother had died.

  Molly regarded her skeptically for a moment, then shrugged. “If you say so, miss.”

  When she had gone, Rosamund leaned back against the pillow and closed her eyes, hoping to quiet the throbbing behind her eye. Solitude did nothing to quiet her mind, however.

  Far from providing answers, the conversation with Molly had only further piqued Rosamund’s curiosity. She could almost admire Mr. Burke’s willingness to stay in Dublin with his youngest sisters—her own brother often spoke of the many sacrifices he had been required to make on her behalf. But to hear Molly tell it, Mr. Burke’s actions had actually required little sacrifice at all. He’d wanted an excuse to maintain the distance between him and the rest of his family and had leaped on one when it had presented itself.

  Had his decision been driven purely by his dislike of England and the English? Was his siblings’ choice to leave Ireland the source of his deep sorrow?

  Or was something else to blame?

  Chapter 7

  Paris laid his palms flat against the cool leather of the chair’s arms but made no other effort to rise. It was late and the house was silent. Past time to retire. But he knew with the certainty born of a hundred nights’ previous experience that he would not sleep if he went to bed.

  Restlessness was nothing new. It had been driving him all his life. For as long as he could remember, he had wanted what lay just beyond his reach. He had believed anything was attainable with effort.

  As he’d grown from a boy to a man, he had focused all his energies on securing an independent future for Ireland. He’d joined the radical Society of United Irishmen as a matter of course, though membership in the organization was considered treason. A proud patriot, he’d been more than willing to take a personal risk if it might in the end benefit the cause of Irish independence.

  It’s good to chase your dreams, his father would occasionally remind him, whenever he found him still poring over a stack of law books as dawn streaked the sky, or caught him slipping out to a clandestine meeting under cover of darkness. Just don’t let them chase you.

  Then, last spring, the spark of rebellion had caught and flared to life. Everything had been destroyed in the subsequent conflagration. He’d lost his oldest and dearest friend. He had very nearly lost his brother. His life’s work had been reduced to a pile of ashes.

  His father had been right, as he was about most things. Paris’s dreams had indeed turned the tables on him. How quickly they had become nightmares.

  Was that why he refused his bed? Good God, he was worse than his baby sisters, cringing at every shadow and afraid of being alone. Enough childishness. He heaved himself from the chair and picked up the snuffers to extinguish the candles. A noise behind him gave him pause. The creak of hinges. Slowly he turned, the thin metal implement still gripped in his hand, the feeblest of weapons. A figure slipped into the room, and the candlelight caught a gleam of gold.

  Rosamund!

  Curse Molly for her discovery and letting it slip. Of course the woman had a given name as unusual, as beautiful as she. Well, he simply wouldn’t let the association take root in his mind. No silken petals dewed by a passing summer shower. No delicate perfume that lingered on the warm air.

  He let the snuffers clatter onto the tabletop, watched in satisfaction when she started at the noise, then gave a mocking bow. “You’re up late, Miss Gorse.”

  “Or early,” she replied in her quiet, contrary, oh-so-English way.

  Yes, that was it. Gorse. Prickly. Perfectly ordinary. Vaguely pleasing in appearance at certain seasons, but only from a distance.

  She came closer. Over her nightclothes she wore a brown flannel dressing gown he guessed had belonged to Cami, as its hems dragged along the carpet with every step. It should not have been an appealing costume. Nevertheless, he found it difficult to tear his gaze away.

  He blamed her hair. The way it cascaded down her back in loose waves. The way the candlelight rippled through it with every step she took. Did it still smell of spring rain?

  Then he glimpsed a bit of court-plaster near her temple, too little to disguise either the bruise or the lump. The sight of it chastened him. “You are recovered from this afternoon’s incident?” he asked, softening his voice.

  She smiled. “Incident seems rather grandiose.” A few feet from him, she stopped, dipped into a shallow curtsy. The movement sent more sparks shimmering through her golden hair. “You must imagine I make a daily habit of falling into a swoon.”

  “No, I…” An uncertain laugh broke free. “Do you?”

  Instead of widening, the smile slipped from her lips. “I am sorry, Mr. Burke. You hired me to relieve one burden and instead I have become another.” Worry skated across her features. He might almost have called it fear. Then she rallied, drawing back her shoulders in that way she had and lifting her chin in a posture of determination. “But it won’t continue. You have my word that from here on out, I shan’t cause you another moment’s trouble.”

  He didn’t believe her, of course. Wasn’t even sure he wanted to believe her.

  “Miss Gorse,” he said, at once reassuring and teasing, “I have five siblings. What is a day without trouble?” Her smile slid back into place, though it retained a hint of wariness. “Speaking of, you’re having trouble sleeping, I take it.”

  “Yes. Er, not exactly. At Molly’s insistence, I rested all afternoon. And all evening. I—I couldn’t lie in bed another moment. I thought perhaps a book…”

  Her gaze shifted to the compact library that surrounded his father’s desk, and his own followed. “There’s plenty on those shelves that would cure insomnia, to be sure,” he said. “Legal tomes, scientific works…”

  “I confess I was hoping for something a bit lighter.” Her hand crept to her injured temple, throwing her expression into shadow. “I do still have a touch of the headache.”

  He could offer no fashion plates or magazines. Not even, at the moment, many novels. Their family’s subscription to the circulating library had largely been made use of by Mama and Cami. But he knew of one other possibility. He stepped past the desk and ran one finger along the spines on the uppermost shelf until he came to a thin folio. “Perhaps this?” he said as he withdrew the book and extended it to her.

  Forced to step closer still, she took it with one hand and examined it in the light. “Botanical prints?”

  “Yes. My father’s hobby. I’ve never shared his interest, certainly not to the degree my sister Erica does, but I find the pictures soothing.” As a boy, he’d been allowed to thumb through the expensive volume of hand-tinted illustrations on the rare occasions when he was declared too sick to go out and play. He hadn’t looked at them in ages. But he still remembered his fascination with the strange arcs and lines of petals and stems.

  When he’d been very young, Bell’s age, perhaps, he’d imagined them to be maps of planets no one could ever visit. A few years later, he’d noted a resemblance to more familiar, feminine territories in those alluring curves and hollows, and he’d dreamed of charting them himself. His father had moved the book to a shelf beyond his adolescent reach.

  “Thank you.” She tucked the oversize book against her hip rather awkwardly. “I should let you return to your…” Her quick glance traveled from the empty desktop to the empty table beside t
he chair in which he’d been sitting. “Your solitude,” she finished uncertainly.

  At various points in his life, Paris had constructed elaborate plans of all he would accomplish if ever he had a room, or an hour, to himself. Four sisters and a brother in a modest-sized townhouse had a tendency to interfere with one’s concentration. When he’d reluctantly returned to Merrion Square to care for Daphne and Bell after many years on his own, however, he’d discovered that the boisterous Burke household had grown considerably quieter in his absence, its occupants now scattered, some never to return. As a result, he knew now what he could not have known six years, or even six months, ago: Silence could be a greater distraction than noise. Sometimes, he quite disliked being alone.

  But what did he expect? What more did he deserve?

  Knowing her eyes were on him now, he nodded toward the partner of his chair, opposite the table and further in shadow. “I couldn’t sleep either,” he confessed. “Will you stay and talk?”

  He fully expected her to say no. When she moved with hesitating steps to the chair and perched herself on the very edge of its seat, the book strapped to her chest by her flannel-covered arms like a breastplate of armor, he wished she had said no.

  He ought to have considered the lateness of the hour, her dishabille, the story she’d told of her last employer’s improprieties. What a callous suggestion he’d made, one she was poorly situated to refuse.

  Nevertheless, he did not rescind his offer.

  Instead he wandered with apparent aimlessness to the far end of the room, hoping to reassure her that his intentions were not malicious. As he passed the spinet, he trailed his fingers lightly over the keys.

  “Do you play?” The distance between them was insufficient to muffle the surprise in her voice.

  For answer, he plucked out a few bars of a popular Irish air, not bothering to seat himself at the instrument. “Mama was determined that we all would,” he said, looking back at her. “Galen is the only real talent among us. Cami is proficient, as she is in most things, though I do not believe it gives her any particular pleasure. Bell shares Erica’s impatience and never practices. And Daphne—”