Manage the thing. How can they do that? Experience taught her that few places, even on the broad and untamed North American continent, would provide safe haven for a woman alone with children to raise. Her husband could find her wherever she hid.
Drew pulled on her skirt and began to chatter about his adventure with Private Pratt, his new friends, and the good times he had in his absence. She allowed him to talk for a while, content to know he was well and happy.
Once he subsided and returned to the games he played with the other two boys, Lena allowed another child who had introduced herself as “Mary” to pull her to the other side of the nursery where “more interesting things than those boys care about” could be found. Meggy watched her daughter, still barefoot and dressed in a man’s shirt bound up at her waist, smiling up at an exquisitely turned out little girl who almost certainly should have been addressed as Lady Mary, and groaned.
We don’t belong here. She shuddered at the ways in which that reality could be borne down on her children. However kind these people may be, they won’t tolerate the children of the enlisted ranks forever. Charity wears out.
Meggy had no idea what to do next, where they meant for her to stay, or what her children were expected to do. Lena and Drew had no such unease. Left to herself, she roamed to the bank of windows at one end of the room. The nursery windows opened out over a back garden, with a few trees, all of them well below window level. She feared a man might be able to hide behind the mews. Even from the height of the nursery, she couldn’t see behind them. She pondered the difficulty such a man would encounter if he tried to scale the wall to the nursery.
“Papa!” The word startled Meggy and drove her heartbeat to frenzy before she realized the cry was one of pure joy. One of the boys she’d noticed earlier hurried across the room to greet the Duke of Murnane. The boy moved with less energy than Drew, but his greeting was no less affectionate. She watched the duke bend to his son, warmth in every gesture, and felt a stab of loss on her children’s behalf. They never had a father’s love.
The duke smiled across the room. He approached her with his arm around his son. “Mrs. Blair, my I present my son, Viscount Eversham?”
Holy angels! This child’s an actual viscount. Her voice caught in her throat, but she managed a wobbly smile.
“She knows I’m Jonny, Papa. Don’t you, Mrs. Blair?”
She watched the duke’s face, but he didn’t object to the informality. In fact, he beamed at his son. She smiled down into gray-blue eyes. Side by side, the resemblance was unmistakable, although she thought the boy’s hair was lighter auburn, closer to Rand’s.
“Did you find your son well?” the duke asked.
“Thriving,” she said without thinking. The duke’s sad eyes brought her attention back to his son. She could see the purple patches under the boy’s pale blue eyes, stark against an unhealthy pallor.
“I knew he would be. The nurseries of Chadbourn House are the best.” Meggy felt a rush of compassion for the duke and for his son who had none of Drew’s health and vigor. Illness reduced wealth and power to nothing.
“Drew and Toby have built a castle, Papa. Come and see it,” Jonny said, losing patience with adult conversation.
“Certainly, Son.” The duke smiled apologetically. “I suspect you are anxious to clean up now that you know your son is well. Catherine has stationed a footman in the hall to show you the way.”
Charles joined the group of boys. He had changed into a perfectly tailored suit, and his hair, still damp from washing, had been carefully brushed. She felt like a street urchin in the stolen dress, an imposter who should be tossed out the servants’ door to fend for herself, by comparison. Drew waved but went right back to the conversation. The duke smiled over his shoulder but turned back as well.
Meggy met the footman outside the door.
The young man, slightly shorter than the footmen she saw earlier, stepped forward. He had carroty hair and a slight but noticeable limp. Meggy began to suspect Lady Catherine gave refuge to all manner of wounded souls. The footman, hardly older than a boy, bowed formally. Meggy thought he could see how uncomfortable that made her because he ruined the effect with a sympathetic grin.
“It will all be well, ma’am. Lady Catherine will see to it. She suggested you would want to freshen up. She has assigned a maid to assist,” he assured her.
“What’s your name?” she asked. She wondered whether Rand’s people asked a servant that sort of thing. She wondered where she fit.
“I’m Alfred, ma’am,” he said, coloring up. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the way so you can dress for dinner.”
Dress for dinner? Meggy fought a bout of hysteria and tamped down the urge to run. Not now, Meggy, not now. She allowed herself to be led.
No matter how hard Rand stared at Meggy’s door, it remained firmly shut. He avoided fantasizing about her at her bath by forcing himself to think about Blair and the forgers. Charles informed Will they had gleaned too little after all to shut them down. The duke reminded Rand they couldn’t deal with Blair until they did. Rand debated whether to remove Meggy and the children back to Canada or to stand and deal with Blair once and for all. He had no answer.
Meggy had been assigned a guest room on the same floor as the nursery, a room tucked away down a hallway that bent toward the back of the house in such a way that a person not used to London townhouses, particularly one as large as the earl’s, might get lost.
It wasn’t strictly proper for Rand to be there, yet he told himself she needed help finding her way. Catherine had assigned one of the younger footmen to assist her, but Rand sent the man on his way. The boy limped away with such obvious disappointment Rand suspected the lad was already smitten with Meggy.
After what seemed like hours, the door opened, and Meggy paused, fidgeting with large bows on both shoulders. The youngest lady’s maid Rand had ever seen smoothed the back of the dress and prattled her encouragement.
“You are lovely,” he said with a choked voice. Lovely doesn’t begin to describe her. He always found her beautiful, but the dress she wore put her feminine assets on display to such a degree that shockwaves coursed through his whole body and set his manhood on full alert. The dress cinched tight at her waist, the skirt flared out to emphasize her hips, and wide bands of ribbon crossed between her breasts.
Meggy’s head jerked up, and relief flooded her. “Rand, thank the angels! I feel like a fool in this dress.” She reached out a hand to him.
Behind her, the maid gave a horrified gasp. “Oh no, Mrs. Blair. You look just right, truly.”
Rand took her hand and pulled her from the doorway. “Listen to your maid, Meggy.”
He gave the girl a reassuring smile. “You did well,” he told her before she bowed and retreated into the room, leaving him alone in the narrow hallway with Meggy. He tugged her toward a pool of light at the juncture of the next hall.
“What are you doing?” Meggy demanded.
“Making sure,” he teased, spinning her into the light. He found her even more stunning. Her hair had been pulled up into an elaborate knot and embellished with ribbons, giving him a view of the back of her neck. He suppressed the desire to plant his lips just there. Side curls framed her face. The little maid had talent. The dress, which he assumed to be one of Catherine’s, was a deep rose imprinted with a tiny floral pattern, giving her dark coloring a rosy glow, and was perfectly appropriate for a family dinner. Fashion had evolved in the six years he had been gone. Waistlines were tighter, skirts wider. He quite liked it.
“You are gaping. Do I look a fright?”
“On the contrary, you take my breath away,” he said, raising his eyes to her face. “Perfect.”
“I feel ridiculous in this,” she said, pulling on the large bow over her left shoulder. The dress dipped from one shoulde
r in a deep curve above her bosom up to the other shoulder, each side anchored by an elaborate ribbon concoction. He longed to put diamonds around her neck and across the expanse of exposed skin he could only wish dipped even lower. No, he thought, not diamonds. Rubies. Perhaps pearls as well.
“Rand, stop staring at my chest. I will run back to the room and hide.”
Devilment took over, and he grinned down at her. “May I come?”
She pushed at his chest. “Behave.”
He sighed dramatically. “Alas, Catherine would only come herself to see what keeps us,” he said, enjoying her horrified expression.
He lifted an eyebrow and winged an arm for her to take. “Shall we go down to dinner?”
She lifted a shaking hand and placed it on his arm.
“I am an imposter,” she said flatly.
He covered her quivering hand with his free one to still it. “They are people, Meggy. Plain folks.”
She shot him a scowl.
“Family, Meggy. They like you already.”
“They don’t know me,” she said primly. “We’ll see when they know the whole of it.”
He led her to dinner, filled with a sense of rightness. It was family. She belonged there.
Chapter 31
“And then Fred announced that Charles had to ride the pig home since it was his fault.” Those at the table convulsed with laughter at the earl’s words. Charles, Rand, and the countess all watched the earl talk, eyes brimming with amusement.
Rand had told her the simple truth. In spite of the finery, it had been a family dinner, not that different from life around the rough plank table in her father’s cabin. Not that much different, as long as she forgot the clothing and overlooked the gleaming silver service in the center of the table, the delicate porcelain plate in front of her, and the exquisite lace table covering. At least she understood laughter over familiar family stories.
Servants cleared dishes and began to serve another course. She fought the urge to leap up and help them by concentrating on the duke. The story tickled her, and she dared a question. “What did you do then?”
“What any intrepid Wheatly would do. I climbed on the pig, held on to her ears, and kicked her side to get her moving.”
“Did you get home?” she gasped, causing another explosion of laughter around the table.
“The sow objected. She took off in the opposite direction and didn’t stop until she had dumped him in a mud wallow,” Rand told her, swallowing laughter that made him gulp for breath. “We were three hours catching her and leading her home.”
“I strolled home at dark and tried to sneak into the servants’ quarters, but they had been set on full alert, and my mother swooped in within moments. She almost fainted at the sight of me,” the duke sighed dramatically.
“He wasn’t permitted to the farm for a month, as I recall,” Rand continued.
“Which was fine because Fred threatened me with no end of retribution for the entire debacle,” Charles concluded.
Meggy smiled, momentarily comfortable. She glanced at the countess, who signaled the butler to serve the pudding. Meggy put her hands in her lap and waited, watching carefully to see how the others, the countess in particular, responded. She mimicked the countess’s posture, choice of spoon, and delicate manner of dipping the spoon into the cake that had been served. The sweet would have tasted heavenly were Meggy not so busy struggling to behave correctly. She didn’t think she had yet disgraced herself, but she feared they were all being kind.
A few moments passed in silence before Charles addressed the earl. “Are the others coming this evening?” he asked.
“Tomorrow,” the earl responded.
Impatience in Charles’s voice alerted Meggy that more than dinner occupied his mind. She wondered who the others might be. Catherine must have read something in Meggy’s face because she spoke up.
“No business over dinner!” the countess demanded, glancing at Meggy and then away. “This is family time. Time enough for business later. I would have preferred you put it off a day or two in any case.”
“We don’t have time to put it off, Cath,” the duke said. “The counterfeiters grow bolder, and they now know we’re aware of their activity. The sooner we act the better. Will invited only Sudbury and close friends, people we know we can trust and—”
“Later.” Catherine frowned at Charles and turned the conversation to the children’s latest plots and plans. “I understand the latest obsession is the South Seas. I would applaud that for its educational value if they weren’t so taken with fantastical sea creatures!”
The conversation lurched forward with the pretense of interest in the boys’ newest interest, but the room had become subdued. Meggy wondered who the “close friends” were and how many exalted titles they held among them.
Footmen cleared dishes as they were emptied, moving on silent feet. The others didn’t seem to notice, but Meggy watched every graceful move. When Catherine caught her doing it, Meggy felt heat rise on her cheeks and hoped they didn’t betray her feelings. The countess merely smiled and went on with her conversation with Rand.
It felt like an eternity before the countess rose. “We’ll leave you to your port,” she said, and the men all rose as well. Meggy scrambled to her feet to follow her.
At the door, Catherine turned, and the sort of silent communication only wives and husbands can muster passed between the countess and her earl. “Chat away, but don’t think we’ll allow you to exclude us from tomorrow’s discussion. I sent word to Lily that her wisdom might be useful.”
“Who is Lily?” Meggy asked as they stepped into the hall, hoping for another sister or aunt.
“The Duchess of Sudbury,” Catherine replied with a rueful smile.
Duchess? Meggy’s heart sank.
“You will like her,” Catherine said.
Meggy fought another urge to bolt. She reminded herself she didn’t know London and had no place to go. She also knew that if there was a discussion about criminals they would talk about her husband. She had to know what they said; all her experience taught her to be ever vigilant where Fergus was concerned. She was determined to be present no matter how many exalted personages arrived.
The women were sitting side by side in a corner of the drawing room a half hour later when the men entered. Rand’s piercing look, as if he might see right inside her, grabbed Meggy’s complete attention when he strode toward them.
“You’ll wear her out with your questions, Cath,” he growled, pulling up a chair. He addressed his sister, but his eyes were on Meggy, and she squirmed under his blatant examination.
“Nothing of the sort. Your sister and I were talking about children,” Meggy told him, turning away. She didn’t mention that they also talked about those they had lost. Catherine’s ability to dig as deep as she did, as quickly as she did, baffled Meggy. Still, some comfort wrapped itself around her when she learned that children raised in privilege in England could succumb as readily as those who struggled to survive on the Canadian frontier. The discussion had earned her a hug from Catherine and bound the women together in ways she believed no man would understand.
“You are worn out,” he said, glaring at Catherine.
Meggy acknowledged the truth of his observation with a nod and turned to her hostess. “I don’t mean to offend, my lady, but would it be permissible to seek my bed? I am—”
“Exhausted! Of course you are,” boomed the earl, surprising her by his nearness. “How thoughtless of us.” He stood in front of them and rocked on his feet.
Meggy rose unsteadily. “I would like to visit the nursery before I turn in.”
Rand rose and put out an arm for her to take. “Of course. Drew and Lena will want their stories.”
The earl inserted himself between them with a
smile and took Meggy’s arm in his. “I am perfectly capable of stories as you well know. I claim the privilege of escorting Mrs. Blair to the nursery floor. I’m the only one who has had little chance to get acquainted. You, Randy, need to spend some time with your sister. Tell her about your adventure in the Portsmouth jail.”
Rand started to protest, but Catherine put a hand on his arm. “Do tell, little brother.”
He smiled at Meggy apologetically. “I’ll see you in the morning. We can talk then.”
Meggy longed to ask Rand about his brother-in-law’s friends, about the forgery investigation, and about what he planned to do next but lacked the courage to tell the Earl of Chadbourn she didn’t want his escort. It would have to wait. She let the earl lead her away.
“Try to get him—or Charles—to tell you the whole truth about how he got arrested,” the earl said over his shoulder. Meggy felt her face heat and her stomach squeeze just thinking about how Rand came to be in the clutches of the constables—the room, her state of dress, and Fergus. Lacking those details, the story of Rand’s imprisonment would no doubt end up just another amusing Wheatly story. It was obvious to Meggy that Rand protected her from his family’s censure. Once again, she felt like a fraud.
When they reached the hallway, the earl paused and turned toward her. “I fear my teasing words distressed you. If so, I apologize. Teasing one another is a compulsion in this family.”
She hung her head. The heat on her neck and face felt so intense she knew she must look horrid. Shame held her in place.
The earl put a knuckle under her chin and lifted it, forcing her to face him directly. “Rand told me your husband used you as bait to lure him. He went knowing that would be the case. You have nothing to regret. Shame belongs to the man who used you poorly.” He smiled. “And perhaps a bit of blame to a rash young man who ran to the rescue too quickly?” His voice rose on the last word, but she didn’t think he expected an answer.
The Renegade Wife Page 20