The Lady's Deception

by Susanna Craig

  After a moment, Paris said quietly, “I will not tell you that you can make amends.” A week ago, he’d set out on a quest, animated by two parts guilt and one part desire to avenge poor Henry. Now, however, he saw matters differently. What he sought now was a way forward. For those who had no voice. And for himself. “But there is something you can do. You can make sure your agent pays for the suffering he inflicted on others.”

  “Quin? Was there really so much harm in what he did? A bit of this for a bit of that…”

  “The harm,” Paris explained, an icy edge to his voice, “is to your son.”

  Dashfort looked baffled. “Alexander?”

  “Tommy Fagan. The poor child of your former maid, locked in a cell in Kilmainham for theft. He suffers from a condition called albinism—no color in his skin or hair. Quin’s been using the boy in his scheme, to frighten intruders—”

  “Kilready’s ghost,” breathed Rosamund.

  Paris nodded. Dashfort shivered.

  “But if you can muster no sympathy for him,” continued Paris, “then by all means, think of Alexander, who must someday hope to make an honest living from his Irish estate, if you haven’t ruined it first, with your rackrenting and your absenteeism. Give him tenants who can earn their bread, rather than steal it, and I daresay he won’t find himself facing a rebellion.”

  Abashed, Dashfort nodded. “The boy—Tommy. You can arrange his release?”

  “No, my lord. But you can—in exchange for your testimony against Quin in the smuggling case. I shall send an express to an associate of mine regarding the matter, but you must return to Dublin as soon as possible to speak on Tommy’s behalf. The court will listen.”

  “Yes, of course,” he agreed, more readily than Paris could have hoped. “I’ll leave tomorrow. And once I’m there, I—I’ll stay. I’ll try to repair the damage I’ve done at Kilready. All of it. You have my word.” That announcement was met by stunned silence. “Forgive me, Miss Gorse,” he added with a bow in her direction and a sharp glance at Setterby. “Your brother used our old friendship—and my grief—to make me believe…” He shook his head, unable to complete the sentence. “I should have known better than to listen to him.” This time when Dashfort left the room, Ashborough made no move to stop him.

  After a few moments, Rosamund asked, “What happens to Charles?”

  Setterby still seethed nearby, kept quiet and in his place by the force of Raynham’s glare. “I suppose you’d be satisfied to see one of your friends here run me through?”

  “On the contrary, Charles.” Rosamund’s eyes were wide with horror. “I never wished you ill. But you cannot continue to manage my life.”

  “The terms of the will dictate that Tavisham Manor is yours when you reach your majority,” Paris explained.

  “Why, that’s in less than a fortnight. I suppose that was your great hurry to find me and marry me off to Lord Dashfort?” she demanded of her brother, who could not deny the accusation.

  “There are innumerable ways to make a man pay his debts,” Ashborough said. “I propose a written and signed confession—a sort of note of hand, if you will. To be called in at any time Miss Gorse feels necessary. The right word in the proper ear about your behavior, and you’ll be ruined, Setterby. Look what a little gossip has done to your friend Dashfort. That required no swords, no pistols, no courts of law.”

  “Damn you all,” Setterby muttered. But his shoulders sank a notch lower in defeat.

  “Come,” Raynham said, gesturing toward the study where Rosamund had hidden. “We’ll find paper and pen in here, I trust. Ashborough has other matters to which he must attend.” With a grateful nod, Ashborough left the room. “I may not have his experience with notes of hand, but I’m quite good at getting confessions.”

  Raynham closed the door behind them, and suddenly, Paris was alone with Rosamund.

  “That was quite an entrance,” she said. “I was a little afraid you’d left for Dublin without saying goodbye, even after…”

  “About last night…” he began.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been thinking.” He stepped toward her, stretched out his hands for hers. “About the past. And the future. When you said I’d been hiding, you were right.”

  “From your family?”

  “From the mistakes I’d made—many of which involved them. It was foolish of me. If I hadn’t already begun to see how foolish, Erica made sure I knew.” He smiled and brushed his thumb across her knuckles. “And this trip has shown me I can’t go on hiding from the people I love.”

  “Your family.”

  He did not know how to read the look in her eyes. “And you. Ah, Roisín,” he whispered, stepping closer still. “I don’t know how it happened. I wanted a governess to escape the responsibility of caring for my family. Instead, you gave them back to me. I was lost. But now I know what I want.” Gathering his courage, he dropped onto one knee. Years of experience had taught him never to ask a question to which he didn’t already know the answer. But he was determined to do it anyway. “Rosamund Gorse, will you be my bride?”

  His heart raced as a welter of emotions crossed her face. Words started to her lips and were withdrawn. Finally, she set them in that prim little line he’d grown to love. “On the way to London, Mr. Burke, you told me that you believed your brothers-in-law could solve my problems. Without diminishing the important contributions of Lord Ashborough and the Duke of Raynham to today’s proceedings, I’d like the record to reflect that I was right all along. I needed a lawyer, didn’t I? I needed—need—you.”

  “Is that—is that a yes, love?”

  Again, she hesitated. “I love you, Paris. I love Tavisham, too, though I never thought I’d see it again. Oh, I thought I was so clever, wanting to make all my own choices. But now I don’t know how to choose”

  He’d known as soon as he read the will that her inheritance could be the end of his hopes. In a matter of weeks, she would be quite independent. If she wished, eventually, for marriage and a family, the landed daughter of a viscount could do far better than a Dublin barrister.

  But persuasion was his stock in trade. “Then don’t. You’ve read my sister’s book?” he asked. Rosamund nodded, a trifle warily. “So you know that at the end, the heroine proposes her own act of union, so to speak. Between an English gentleman and Irish lady. I despised it when I first read it. It was giving up, I thought. Giving in. But lately, I’ve begun to think Cami might have been right. Union might be a way forward, though I don’t say it will be perfect, or easy.”

  “I suppose there’s no reason to think it couldn’t work just as well the other way around, an Irish gentleman and an English lady?” Her teasing smile gave him hope. “Could you be happy at Tavisham, Paris?”

  He was sure of only one thing. “I cannot be happy anywhere without you. But I’ve got to go back to Dublin, first,” he warned, “to see things settled there.”

  Her smile grew into something marvelously wicked. “When you return, I’ve got a job for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve recently discovered I’ve got a parliamentary seat in my pocket,” she said, patting her hip.

  He laughed at first, but her eyes were serious. An M.P.? A huge responsibility—was he ready to face it? Once he’d dreamed of serving his country thus, but he thought that dream had died with all the rest. Now a new future opened before him. He might do more for Ireland at Westminster than he ever could have at home.

  He tilted his head to the side and tried to muster a bit of his old savage mood. “Well, now,” he growled. “I’m not quite sure how I feel about being your pet Irishman.”

  At that, she laughed and freed one hand to brush the hair from his eyes. And then she was in his arms and kissing him and there were only the two of them in all the world. A perfect union, indeed.

  For a moment, at least. Somewhere
in the house a door slammed and a moment later, a dog the size of a small pony ran into the room, being chased by a tiny white kitten. Behind them Bell squealed and Daphne said, “I knew it, Miss Gorse. I knew you were going to marry my brother.” Erica smiled a knowing smile.

  Soon after that, his father appeared in the doorway. “Worked it all out, eh?”

  Rosamund freed herself from Paris’s arms to go to him. “Oh, Mr. Burke. I owe you my thanks. You were the one who found the will—that was the paper you asked your daughter to give to Paris, wasn’t it? That was what you meant yesterday when you assured me the matter was well in hand.”

  His father shrugged away her gratitude. “It wasn’t much, really. When I got Paris’s letter, I called in a favor from an old Oxford chum. And when I saw what was in the will, I knew your brother didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

  Paris thought for a moment. “What if Erica had forgotten to give it to me? Or I had neglected to read it?” What if, in other words, he’d failed Rosamund too?

  His father smiled. “Ask your clever governess.”

  Rosamund tipped her head, considering her answer. “Based on what I know of your sisters’ education, I’d say your father trusts his children’s ability to sort things out for themselves. And from what I’ve seen, that trust is not misplaced.”

  “Never yet,” his father agreed. “But I confess I kept a second copy of the will,” he added with a knowing wink, patting his breast pocket. “Just in case you got, er, distracted.”

  Paris threw back his head and started to laugh, but stopped abruptly when Ashborough staggered into the room looking dazed. Despite the presence of ladies, he sank into the nearest chair and dropped his head into his hands.

  “Is Cami all right?” Erica demanded.

  Without lifting his head, he nodded. “Camellia is amazing.” The words were slightly muffled, but his state of shock was clear. “And I—I’m a father. Of two beautiful little girls.”

  Paris let out a low whistle. “More Burke women, eh?” Though he had the utmost faith in Cami’s ability to reform this particular rake, daughters would surely seal the deal.

  His father nodded sagely, his thoughts apparently traveling a similar line. He made his way to the sideboard, poured two fingers of brandy, and took them to his stunned son-in-law. “Well, today goes to prove what I always say: Men may make the laws, but justice is a woman.”

  Everyone, even Ashborough, laughed. Paris’s eyes sought and found Rosamund, who was laughing too. Her usual prickliness had, at least for the moment, disappeared. He watched her amused gaze dart from one member of his family to another, stopping at last on Elf, who was trying to hide beneath a too-small chair while Eileen stalked across the room with her tail in the air.

  He crossed to Rosamund’s side and leaned down to murmur in her ear. “This is family, love. Being surrounded by utter chaos most of the time. You’re sure it’s what you want?”

  She turned, took his chin between the fingers of one hand, and brushed his hair back with the other so he could not hide from her devastating blue eyes. The governess had come back in full force, thank God.

  But she could not disguise the quirk of pleasure on her lips as she at last said, “Yes.”

  Chapter 24

  As she stepped out into the sunshine of a lovely morning in mid-May, ghosts were the last thing on Rosamund’s mind, despite the nearby churchyard.

  She was, at that moment, wondering whether the large basket of flowers Daphne and Bell had been persuaded to carry up the aisle of the church would also contain a kitten; whether Elf had already chewed through the stout rope with which Mr. Whitt, the village blacksmith, had tied her to an anvil; and whether Mrs. Riggs, Tavisham Manor’s cook, had kept her promise to stay on through the wedding breakfast, despite the discovery that the affair was to be attended by a “real live duke.” “Really, Mrs. Riggs,” she’d overheard the vicar’s wife saying, “I hear tell the marquess is the one you have to watch out for”—which of course, hadn’t helped matters a bit.

  Beneath a charming wrought-iron trellis hanging with ivy, Mr. Burke stood waiting to walk her down the aisle. While Paris had been busy in Dublin, and Mrs. Burke occupied with her new granddaughters, he had come to Tavisham to help Rosamund order affairs there. He’d sat beside her as she listened to her tenants and made note of their needs. He’d read through leases and explained their terms with patience. He’d helped her figure out how to make it all run smoothly—for, as it turned out, Tavisham was not quite as small a property as her brother had claimed, and when better managed would provide the young couple with a comfortable income without continuing to drain the farmers who worked its lands.

  “Did you sleep well, my dear?” Mr. Burke asked, holding out an arm to guide her down the rough path to the church door.

  She’d stayed with the vicar and his wife last night, for every room at Tavisham Manor was taken: by the Duke and Duchess of Raynham, Lord and Lady Ashborough and Phoebe and Chloe, and Mr. and Mrs. Burke and Daphne and Bell. Paris and Galen, who’d been scheduled to arrive from Oxford last evening, had been forced to put up at the inn in the next village.

  “I did,” she told him, though she was almost embarrassed to admit it. Should a bride be nervous on the night before her wedding? Or maybe it was tonight she was supposed to be nervous. But she wasn’t nervous about that, either. Not after the agony of spending six long weeks apart.

  And almost before she realized it, they were entering the little stone church, filled to overflowing with the good people of Tavisham and her family-to-be. Her eyes went immediately to the chancel. To Paris, standing there, handsome as ever, in a green coat and a dull gold waistcoat. His sharp profile was turned toward Galen, whose auburn hair curled over his collar and gave him the air of a poet. They were laughing quietly together, some private joke between brothers.

  Before silence fell over the company, before anyone had even realized she was there, Paris looked up and found her. How had she ever imagined she could hide anything of herself from those dark, knowing eyes? But he couldn’t hide from her, either. A look of awe spread over his face, and then he smiled. Just the open, genuine smile she had always longed to see.

  She wanted to run to him. Thank God for Mr. Burke, who kept her steady. She drew a deep breath, straightened her spine, and walked slowly and deliberately into her future.

  Afterward, she could remember only snatches. The way Paris’s fingers trembled as he lifted the delicate veil of Irish lace she’d pinned to the bonnet he’d given her. The breathless moment when the vicar asked if there were any objections—and was met with silence. Nothing from Charles, who’d gone skulking back to Suffolk. Not even the cry of a hungry baby. And the swell of love when the vicar had pronounced them man and wife, and she and Paris had turned to face their cheering, smiling, sobbing family, and Eileen had shot like a bolt of lightning down the aisle. Thankfully, Elf had not been at liberty to give chase.

  Rosamund couldn’t have told a soul what was served at the wedding breakfast, but the Duke of Raynham praised the lightness of the sponge cake and she made a mental note to give Mrs. Riggs a raise. Phoebe and Chloe, dark-haired and easy-going, were passed from hand to hand and lap to lap. Rosamund thought her heart might stop when she caught a glimpse of Paris at the far end of the table, a baby in each arm, debating with the Marquess of Ashborough over the merits of some piece of legislation soon to come before the House of Lords.

  When the meal was finished, Galen got stiffly to his feet and raised his glass.

  “To the union of two souls. To the joining of two kingdoms. To the Burkes.”

  A rousing chorus of “Hear, hear!” went up from the company. From out of nowhere, her husband was at her side asking for a kiss. And whether it was the toast or the kiss that had been the signal for a general remove, she couldn’t say, but afterward, the party began quickly to scatter.

  Lord and Lady
Ashborough and the babies were the first to go, heading a parade of three coaches that included Mr. and Mrs. Burke and their youngest daughters, who would stay a while at Stoke Abbey, Lord Ashborough’s ancestral estate in Shropshire, before going on to Wales and then home. It had been essential, confided the Duchess of Raynham, for her to see her mother off and not the other way around. For Erica and the duke were now on their way to Bristol, where they would meet Mr. Remington and board the naval vessel that would take them to the West Indies, a voyage over which the family had already shed its share of anxious tears. “We’ll be back in a year,” she insisted to her brother as she waved from their coach.

  Borrowing a bit of the duke’s calm certainty that the trip would be a success, Rosamund squeezed Erica’s hand and said, “Bring me something lovely for my garden.”

  Galen was the last to go, “but not without a kiss for my new sister,” he cried before climbing into his gig. She had been told a bit about what had come between the brothers, but she saw no evidence of it now as they exchanged a few low, laughing words.

  “Don’t forget this,” she said, handing up his walking stick.

  “Ah, yes. He wouldn’t want to be without that,” said Paris with a wink. “I hear the ladies find it dashing.”

  When Galen’s gig was out of sight, Paris took her hand in his, and they walked in silence along the gravel drive. She tried to think of something to say, but his frequent letters from Dublin had already answered every question that came to mind. Tommy Fagan had been released from prison and returned to his mother, on whom Lord Dashfort had settled a sizable sum and a pleasant cottage on the edge of the village. The earl had also hired bricklayers to close up the secret passage into Kilready’s dungeon, and hired Mr. Graves’s younger brother to tutor his children. She sincerely hoped that, over time, Alexander and Eugenia would recover from the trauma of losing their mother and come to love the country that was now theirs.