The Bridegroom and the Baby

by Marcy Stewart

  Mrs. Abbott’s face seemed to close. Dorrie made an annoyed sound, and the lady shifted her position absently. “Yes, though I probably shouldn’t have. For some reason, she doesn’t like me to talk about her trip to her aunt’s.”

  “I wonder why,” Ethan said.

  And I wonder why you’re so curious, Madeleine thought. She had believed she understood him, especially after last night. Now she realized she knew nothing. He was as inscrutable as a book written in Italian or German.

  Of one thing she was certain: He had yet to tell her the truth about Dorrie. After she divulged her most painful secret to him, he had responded with fabrication. She felt so angry and ashamed, she could scarcely look at him.

  Of a sudden, Mrs. Abbott also seemed unable to meet the viscount’s eyes. She appeared to have forgotten the baby as well, although she rocked her steadily.

  “It’s hard to say why,” she replied finally. “Leah is so closemouthed. But I have my suspicions. Probably shouldn’t put them to voice, though.”

  Ethan became the portrait of sympathy. “Sometimes it’s better to talk about problems. You may rely completely on our discretion.”

  Hearing this familiar strain, Madeleine’s eyes narrowed. “I’m certain Mrs. Abbott knows what’s best.” She felt very uncomfortable discussing the state of Leah’s emotions when she was not present to defend herself.

  Hardly missing a beat, Ethan said, “Did something happen to upset her? A disappointment in love, perhaps?”

  Madeleine could scarcely believe her ears. “That’s a rather personal question, my lord,” she said, forcing a laugh to reduce her tension.

  Mrs. Abbott did not appear to take offense, although she stared at him intently. “It’s strange you should say that, because—” Her eyes lifted to the doorway. Leah stood at the threshold holding a tray of strawberries, tea, cups, saucers, and plates. “Come in, dear girl. We’ve been wondering what kept you.”

  Madeleine’s heart beat sympathetically for the young woman. By the deadening look Leah slanted in her mother’s direction, she must have heard at least a portion of their conversation. She made no comment, however, but went about serving them with grim efficiency.

  Accepting his cup of tea with impatience, the viscount studied Leah for a moment. “Perhaps when your mother is finished, you’d like to take Dorrie for a while.”

  She bowed her head and muttered, “I don’t know why you’re always trying to get me to hold her. I told you I don’t like babies.”

  Mrs. Abbott looked shocked. “Leah, mind your tongue! The viscount is only trying to be kind to you.”

  “Let him be kind to someone else.” She stood in a rush, moving toward the center of the room and making Madeleine think of an animal cornered by dogs. “He doesn’t know what kindness is.”

  “Leah!” Mrs. Abbott’s voice throbbed as if she had gone beyond embarrassment into a darker realm. “I apologize for her, Lord Ambrose. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Leah cried. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong! He—he comes here with that face”—she jabbed her forefinger in the air, pointing at him—”and it is like a terrible, sick mockery! You speak of kindness! The true Lord Ambrose was kind; he was gentle. But instead of him, that—that person has taken his place! He is worse than an impostor!”

  Even Mrs. Abbott was too astonished to answer this, and the three of them regarded the girl in stunned silence.

  With a grunt, Leah turned and ran from the room. At the same moment, the front door opened and Reverend Abbott, a package in his hands, entered to stand at the opening which led into the parlor. His normally pleasant look faded to bewilderment as Leah paused, then lowered her head and fled up the stairs. He stumbled toward the parlor, his face creasing and uncreasing as he tried to fathom the situation.

  “Well, I—I don’t know,” he said, finally. “That is, I’m very glad to see you, Lord Ambrose, Miss Murrow.” He walked toward them with more confidence. “I seem to have interrupted something—”

  Mrs. Abbott grabbed her nose. “Ooh, dear, I believe you found fish at market today. If you would be so kind to take it to the kitchen before it smells up the parlor, I’m sure Addie will take it from there.”

  “Of course, of course,” he said humbly, and retreated.

  “And then come back immediately,” his wife called after him. “Lord Ambrose has something to ask of you.” Lowering her voice, she looked from Ethan to Madeleine with a worried air. “I didn’t like to say, because Leah is so secretive, and I’m not certain of this. But rather than have you thinking she’s loose in the attic, I’ll tell you what I think.”

  She centered her eyes on Ethan. “Your brother spent much time encouraging my Joseph in recent years. Lately, I mean, not too long before ... well, he took to speaking with our Leah, sometimes walking with her outside. I think she mistook his interest, if you understand me. She felt his passing terribly hard.” The older woman shook her head sadly. “A terrible thing, that—what happened to your brother. Leah’s not been the same since.”

  Madeleine felt a throb of sympathy, although she could not quite forgive Leah for speaking so to Ethan. She might be angry with him, but that did not give the vicar’s daughter license to strike upon his greatest insecurity: the unfavorable comparison of himself to his brother. That was beyond his helping (whereas lying was not, nor was fathering illegitimate babies, although surely he was innocent of that; he must be)!

  Feeling softer toward him than she had in the past half hour, she glanced across the room, then felt her stomach clench. All color had drained from Ethan’s face; he looked utterly shattered. When the vicar returned, Ethan mumbled instructions concerning Mrs. O’Tooley, then took his leave of the Abbotts with a minimum of words. Had Madeleine not grabbed Dorrie and hurried after him, she believed he would have forgotten them both.

  Chapter 9

  Not long after the sun topped the trees the next morning, Ethan and Viking broke into a gallop across the rose-tipped grounds of Westhall. With his uncanny ability to read his master’s moods, Viking flew like a windstorm, his hooves clipping the hard earth, his breaths pumping strong and steady. They were one being, a man-beast, without past or future, without confusion, distress, or bitter loss.

  Or so Ethan wished. If only the rhythm of Viking’s stride could banish the persistence of his thoughts. He longed for blankness, for the peacefulness of a newborn’s mind. How well it must be for Dorrie, who anticipated each new experience and found fault only with physical discomfort.

  His spirits had not sunk so low since his brother’s death.

  He felt as if he’d lost Lucan all over again.

  Yesterday, unable to endure Madeleine’s fiery, curious glances any longer, incapable of carrying on the pretense of interested host, he had gone to bed by nightfall. He didn’t want to speak to Madeleine. He didn’t want to speak with anyone.

  Well. He could not deny it would be good to converse with his twin. “Lucan,” he would say, “was your saintly life a lie? Were you as deceptive—no, worse—than myself? Did you seduce the vicar’s daughter with your golden words, and leave yourself a hero in her eyes because of your untimely death?”

  Please take care of our little one, for I cannot. Our little one. Lucan’s and Leah’s? It could not be true; it simply could not! His fingers flexed into fists on the reins.

  No, it did not bear thinking of, that his brother would violate the trust of a sheltered innocent. If that could happen, everything Ethan believed in was suspect.

  Yet how overwrought the girl had been. Sorrow for a mere friendship could not explain such a display.

  When he reached the wooded border that defined the boundary between the Redding estate and his, Ethan slowed Viking, guiding him among the trees as a respite. As he always did, he gazed upward at the thick stand of oak and ash leaves and listened for the sounds of birds and the rustle of undergrowth hinting at hare and squirrel. He gained none of his usual sense of peace, no feeling of the old conn
ection with Lucan. He could not count how many times they had ridden this route together. Now he longed to be through. He should have gone somewhere else, broken the pattern.

  Near the end of the wood, the path widened, and he urged Viking into a canter. Gray daylight shone ahead, and the beast gathered speed, his muscles bunching for a renewed sprint.

  Lucan. All the times you reproved my behavior, claiming concern. Did you hide your own darker side? Why did you pretend?

  Seconds before they would have cleared the last of the trees, Viking stumbled, whinnying sharply. Ethan had time for only a brief awareness that they were falling together when his world exploded into pain, and everything became dark.

  * * *

  “We may get rain today,” Thomas commented, scanning the sky as he and his daughter strolled down the lane which passed by the viscount’s house.

  “Um,” Madeleine answered. In only a couple of hours, it would be time for luncheon. She expected Ethan to appear from his ride any moment; he was, in fact, late. She didn’t know what to say to him when he arrived.

  Thomas gazed down at her. “We’d best turn around; your mother won’t like us being out of her sight for so long with these clouds. She worries too much.”

  “All right.”

  Madeleine walked on. Mr. Murrow gently took her arm and guided her in the opposite direction. She did not appear to notice. Her father pursed his lips.

  “I saw an elf in my bedroom this morning,” he said. “He stood no higher than my knee and was dressed all in green with pointed red shoes. After playing several melodies on his pipe, he granted me one wish.”

  There was a pause. “How nice,” Madeleine said.

  “Do you know what I wished for?”

  “What?” Madeleine said absently, staring at the viscount’s home, studying its odd angles and profile. From here she could see her mother sitting on the bench in the side garden—if one could compliment it with such a title—with Mr. Brandt.

  “I requested a daughter who would converse with me as my own used to do.”

  “Hm?” She gave him a vacant look, then came sharply to the present. “I’m sorry, Papa.” Her eyes darkened with memory. “Did you say something about an elf?”

  “Ah, you were listening. I thought someone had taken my child and put a wraith in her place.”

  “I was woolgathering. I’ll try to do better.”

  “Thinking about the viscount, I imagine. Did something happen yesterday? He seemed uncommonly quiet last night—as did you, I recall.”

  She turned solemn eyes upon him. “If you don’t mind, Papa, I’d rather not speak of Lord Ambrose just now.”

  “I see.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “He didn’t become forward with you on the way to the vicar’s, I hope.”

  “Pardon?” Her cheeks suddenly flushed. “Oh, goodness, no! You have nothing to worry about in that regard.” Immediately, memories of their exquisite time together in the library flooded her, and her blush deepened.

  His posture relaxed slightly. “Then you are experiencing doubts.”

  It seemed her father was determined to talk about him anyway. She wanted to let down her guard and tell him everything; it would be a relief to seek his advice. But his growing prejudice against Ethan precluded her voicing too many suspicions.

  How the viscount’s behavior on the previous day plagued her! Much of last night and all morning long, she’d reviewed his strange actions in her mind. He had questioned her about secrets ... hadn’t he? She struggled to remember their conversation word for word but remembered only impressions.

  “I told Lord Ambrose the truth about Bettina’s death,” she said, feeling her way, trying to recapture the gist of those moments.

  Her father looked shocked. “Do you think that was wise?”

  “He won’t tell anyone,” she said, and watched a meadow pipit wing skyward from a tangle of gorse. For a moment she wished she could fly away with it and leave her confusion behind. “Why should he? It would mean scandal for himself as well.”

  “If you marry him, you mean. That’s not written in stone yet.”

  “He won’t tell,” she repeated firmly.

  “But something is troubling you about it.”

  “Yes.” They had reached the bottom of the viscount’s drive, and she paused, not wanting to stop now that she had begun and knowing if they ascended the path, she could say nothing in front of Mr. Brandt. “When I spoke of Bettina, he seemed ... let down. Oddly so. Not scandalized as I had feared, but ... I don’t know. Deflated, perhaps. As if he’d expected to hear something else entirely.”

  “Maybe our history disturbed him more than you thought.”

  “I don’t believe so. And then there was his strange behavior with Leah Abbott.”

  “With whom? Oh, the vicar’s daughter.”

  “Yes.” She pivoted toward her father, clutching her hands behind her back in unconscious imitation of him. “Do you recall at dinner how he urged her to take Dorrie, and she wouldn’t?” When Thomas nodded, she went on, “Well, he did it again! In fact, he went so far out of his way to suggest it that I almost believe that was why he brought the baby with us yesterday. And the questions he asked about Leah when she was out of the room—how odd they were!”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Well .... he asked Mrs. Abbott about Leah’s mood before she left for her aunt’s. And he wanted to know if she had been ...”

  Disappointed in love. That was the question he had asked.

  She could not go on. Suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. If she said more, her father might guess the horrible conclusion she was drawing.

  Ethan’s bizzare interest in Leah’s personal life ... his prodding her to hold the child and her strange refusal to do so ... As sure as she breathed, he suspected Leah Abbott of being Dorrie’s mother.

  There was no cousin; there never had been. But she’d known that for a long time, hadn’t she? Even before his extravagant explanation yesterday about their whereabouts.

  Italy, indeed.

  And if he suspected Leah was the mother, what did that make him? Had he been so low as to father a child without knowing who its mother was? Perhaps his problem with drink was much, much greater than he let on. She had heard of such addictions that led people to forget entire episodes in their lives.

  Her father gestured expectantly, prompting, “If she had been ...”

  She was not ready to voice her suspicions yet. She could be wrong; she prayed she was wrong. But let her father grasp a corner of her fears, and Westhall would soon be a dot on the horizon.

  “Been? Oh, if she had been to Italy.” She winced at the untruth. She did not lie to her parents, not since Bettina was alive, anyway, when she and her sister had tried to wriggle from their childish scrapes.

  Her father appeared befuddled. “To Italy?”

  Something moved at the corner of her vision, and she turned with feigned interest. A woman was approaching down the lane, seemingly headed in their direction. “Now who is this, I wonder.”

  They waited, both drawn by the sight of the forlorn woman in the frayed blue dress. She wore a ragged straw bonnet over pale hair that fell in strands across her shoulders. A large, disreputable reticule dangled from one arm. As she drew closer, Madeleine estimated her age as being eight to ten years older than herself. She was a pretty woman marred by deep shadows beneath her eyes and a body too thin for health, let alone beauty.

  When she reached where they stood, the woman curtseyed and bid them good morning in genteel tones. “My name is Rose McDaniel, and I am looking for employment,” she explained. “Someone in the village told me the master here—Lord Ambrose, is it?—might be looking for someone.”

  “I couldn’t speak for him, Miss,” Thomas said in a kind voice. “We’re only visitors. Perhaps if you ask at the house.”

  She hesitated, glanced at them, then the manse. Madeleine noticed her hands moving nervously at
her sides. “I heard there was a baby and that he needed help with it.”

  “Yes,” Madeleine said softly. “There is an infant.”

  Dipping her head, she thanked them both and walked on past. So as not to appear they were shadowing her, Madeleine and her father dawdled a few moments before continuing up the path.

  “She is no ordinary servant,” her father commented.

  Madeleine agreed, trying not to sound overly interested; but her suspicions were on full alert. Something in the way the woman talked and carried herself bespoke an elegant upbringing. Obviously, she had fallen on hard times.

  Giving birth to a child out of wedlock could do that to a woman.

  Her imagination flew. How tragic the woman looked, and how sad her situation if she could only be with her baby by pretending to be her servant. It reminded her of the story of Moses, whose mother had set him adrift to be found by the daughter of the Pharoah. That mother, too, had been hired to care for her own child.

  Well, goodness. Now that she suspected Ethan of trying to find his baby’s mother, she was seeing potential candidates behind every bush. Next, she would be accusing Betsy.

  She stumbled. Her father murmured in concern and offered his arm.

  “I’m fine, Papa,” she said, laughing a little, shuddering at the hysteria she heard in her voice. “I believe I was thinking of elves.”

  * * *

  Ethan awoke to tearing pain and the feel of cold wetness on his cheeks. A soft rain was falling through the canopy of leaves above him. He tried to rise, then groaned. The back of his skull pounded like thunder. His entire body ached, but his leg concerned him most. He leaned sideways and saw a long, bloodied gash in his pantaloons running from thigh to mid-calf. He must have scraped his limb against the knobby tree at his back as he fell. Carefully he bent his leg at the knee, then rotated his ankle. The pain was excruciating, but he didn’t believe he’d broken anything.

  It was then he saw Viking lying motionlessly a few feet away. All thought of his own hurts vanished. He dragged himself across the undergrowth and laid his hand on the horse’s flank, not releasing his breath until he saw the gentle rise and fall of Viking’s side.