Viscountess of Vice

by Jenny Holiday

  “I suppose it is too soon to have gotten to know any of the children individually?”

  “Yes, though I have spent quite a bit of time with a boy called Alfie. He’s not among the child laborers. His father, recently deceased, was the barrel setter, a man who can hold a barrel up to the light and detect tiny imperfections that the rest of us couldn’t see. If a barrel isn’t perfectly smooth, it will explode on its user, maiming or even killing him. And a barrel with any flaws won’t survive the proving process. So it’s a very important job. The other borers and grinders have taken Alfie on as a kind of informal apprentice. He wants to be a setter like his father, but that comes later. He’s a spirited lad, and he’ll do well if he can buckle down and learn the trade.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  He knew she wanted to be of use, and he couldn’t quite pin down why. Why did she care so much about the children when she was so reckless and indiscreet in the rest of her life? “I think the situation is well in hand. There are only twenty children, and they’re all uneducated, so it should be simple enough to teach them, to start from the beginning with letters and sums.” A thought occurred to him. “Actually, there is something.”

  “Anything.”

  “We’re in need of some supplies. Slates, primers. I’m ready to teach, and they’re ready to learn, but I haven’t worked out yet how to acquire the necessary materials.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Dr. Burnham.” She stopped walking, causing him to turn back toward her. He noticed she’d reverted to addressing him formally as Dr. Burnham, which was fine. It probably signified she was done entertaining herself with him. But as she searched his eyes for a few moments, he had increasing trouble reconciling that interpretation of her with the woman before him.

  “Thank you,” she finally said. “This means the world to me.”

  She didn’t seem to be dissembling. “Mrs. Watson mentioned at her party that you support several children’s homes. I hadn’t known. You have a particular interest in the fate of children?”

  She flushed. It would have been charming if he hadn’t also seen the distress in her eyes. She looked away, just for a moment, then trained her pale blue eyes back on his. “I had a child once,” she whispered.

  He sucked in a breath. The admission was so sudden, he felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. The image of Lady V with a baby was too incongruous.

  “But only for a day before he died. His name was Edward.” A single tear escaped her eye. James started to reach out to catch it with the pad of his thumb, but then he checked the impulse. “No one knew,” she whispered. “No one except my late husband. And a Portuguese maid named Ana.”

  “And no one will hear of it from me,” James vowed. Any lingering anger he’d felt vanished, and he was struck with an inexplicable impulse to press her to him, to kiss away her tears, to promise that no harm would ever come to her. But, of course, he had no right to say those things. And he knew that if he did, Lady V would return and push him away. So he remained silent, sensing there was more to the story.

  She turned and began walking again, this time without taking his arm. “Edward was not Charles’s child, though Charles was prepared to claim him.” She looked over at him, but didn’t slow her pace. “Does that shock you?”

  It did, but James shook his head, wanting her to continue the tale.

  “He would have been the heir to the Viscount Cranbrook, though you won’t see his name in Debrett’s. That’s the worst part.” Walking over to a tree, she stopped and touched the trunk with both hands, as if gathering strength from it, before turning to him, anguish clearly visible on her lovely face. “Dr. Burnham, it’s as if he never existed.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” And he was. God, how he hated to hear such pain in her voice. He moved closer but stopped a few feet from her, sensing that she needed space.

  “I was twenty-three. On the shelf. A spinster.”

  The incredulous huff of breath that escaped him caught her attention. She quirked a smile through her tears, and he smiled back. It was absurd to think that Catharine had ever been on the shelf.

  “I was a different person then. Shy, painfully so. I’d had several seasons without any beaux. I’d hardly even had any dances. My parents, who had some land but were not immensely wealthy, had given up. And then he appeared.” Her tone grew clipped as her pitch rose. “We met at a musicale, a dreadful one. He sat next to me and whispered silly commentary into my ear.”

  James hated this man already, even though he didn’t know exactly how the story would end. “Who was he?”

  Catharine must have been startled by his sharp tone, for she stopped walking and swung her gaze to him. “His name was Thomas, but I’m not sure it matters, does it?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, using all his strength to refrain from insisting on knowing the man’s surname. Though he didn’t yet know the full story, he was beginning to see that perhaps he had misjudged Catharine. Was it possible that all her apparent shallowness was an act? “Please continue.”

  “For the next few weeks everywhere I went there he was. We danced—oh, we danced so much it nearly caused a scandal. Everyone said he was going to offer for me. It was so wonderful to be wanted, Dr. Burnham. And he was so charming, so witty.

  “It happened at a ball. He’d convinced me to take a walk down a dimly lit hallway. I shouldn’t have gone. But I thought perhaps he was going to propose. I hoped he would.”

  She sped up, so much that James, even with his height advantage, had to hurry to keep pace with her.

  “We heard a footman coming, and he hurried me into a parlor. He locked the door and, well…I shouldn’t have been so naive. I shouldn’t have been so stupid. It’s just that I didn’t know exactly…well, I wasn’t familiar with the mechanics. And he kept saying how much he loved me. Stupid, I was so stupid.”

  “So you anticipated your wedding vows. It happens all the time.”

  “There was nothing to anticipate. He disappeared. And anticipate suggests enjoyment, doesn’t it?”

  Anger coursed through James, jumping from finger to finger as he made fists to keep from hitting the tree. “Did he force you?”

  “Let’s just say he was very persuasive.”

  Pure animal rage threatened to swallow him whole. But he had to hide it, or she would retreat into silence. “What do you mean he disappeared?”

  “It wasn’t long before I knew I was quickening,” she said, ignoring his question. “I tried to hide it, but I was a slight girl, and the truth came out. My parents were furious.”

  “Didn’t your father make him—?”

  “He tried. He called on—” Her voice broke and James reached for her, but she backed against the tree and waved him off. She seemed to want to get through the story on her own. “He called on the man’s father, only to find that Thomas had left for America. He’d gone there to marry a second cousin whose family moves in New York society. They had been engaged for more than a year. His attentions to me were merely a diversion.”

  “I would have called him out, were I your father,” James said in a carefully measured tone, trying not to betray the storm raging in his chest. For he had no claim on the woman before him, though he was beginning to understand her better.

  “In America?” she said, shaking her head. “Besides, my parents blamed me. They sent me away, because he couldn’t be made to marry me, obviously. I was to go to Portugal to have the child.”

  “Your parents sent you into a military conflict?” James spared some of the anger he felt toward this Thomas villain for Catharine’s parents.

  “My mother had a distant cousin there, from the papist wing of the family she never spoke about. She’d taken holy orders and worked in a foundling hospital. I was to go to her and leave the child there. They put out that I was visiting an ailing aunt in the Lake District.” She offered him a watery smile. “I really did have one of
those.”

  “And in Portugal you met your husband.”

  “On the crossing. He was headed to join Wellesley’s forces returning there. The Earl of Blackstone, whom you met at the Watsons’ home, was in the same company. I was ill, and so made my way to the ship’s deck. Charles was out smoking. He thought it seasickness, but of course it was because of the babe. I felt better in the open air, so I spent much of the journey on deck. He kept me company.”

  “And you fell in love.” James couldn’t help but keep finishing her sentences, as if by shouldering some of the narrative he could help bear her burden.

  “He did, yes.”

  Of course he had. James imagined a younger, more innocent version of the stunning woman standing before him. Young Catharine, wronged by the world, alone and with child. He, too, would have handed over a viscountcy, had he one to give.

  “I was fond of him from the start, and I grew to love him. He was a remarkable man. Of course, when he proposed I had to decline. I told him the truth. It didn’t dissuade him. And so instead of making my way to my cousin’s hospital, I went to battle. At first Charles set me up in rooms in Lisbon. Wellesley was dug in there for almost a year fortifying the city, so the forces were relatively stationary. Charles came to me as often as he could. I had a maid who spoke a little English, and I learned enough Portuguese to get by. But I wanted to be with him. Once the baby was born—too soon, that was the problem—and died, I begged him to let me follow the drum. Soon after that Wellesley was on the move again.”

  Her voice, thick with unshed tears, twisted a knife in James’s heart. He had so many questions. Why would a man put a woman he loved in danger like that—why not send her back to England? Why would a titled peer go off to war to begin with? He wanted more than anything to embrace her, but he forced his restless limbs into stillness and his unsettled mind to focus.

  “I think he was as heartbroken as I,” Catharine said. “Can you imagine? Even though the child was not his!”

  “It must have been terrible.”

  “It was the happiest I’ve ever been.”

  He must have looked quizzical because she smiled a little. “That sounds absurd, doesn’t it? I was sad about Edward, yes—devastated. But Charles treated me like a person. He was interested in what I had to say. He was interested in me.” She paused and looked at the grass at her feet before finishing in a soft voice, “That had never happened before.”

  I’m interested in you, James wanted to protest, and the thought startled him. He settled for saying, “I’m surprised a viscount would purchase a commission.”

  “He never wanted the title and was very bitter when his older brother died without an heir. I think he went off to war purely to spite his mother, who was…a difficult woman. He never liked talking about it, but I think he essentially ran away from home, from responsibility. He wasn’t the type to be governed by convention.”

  Unconventional Catharine with her unconventional husband. They must have been well-matched. James felt a twinge of jealousy, though he knew it was illogical to envy a dead man. Besides, he reminded himself, Catharine was the last women he should want, so there was no room in his heart for envy. “And so you came back to England a viscountess. You would have to be a saint not to take some pleasure in that, to regard it as a kind of revenge.”

  “And we all know I’m not a saint, don’t we?” He couldn’t read her expression. After an uncomfortable silence in which she seemed to be expecting him to say something, she sighed. “You’re right, of course. I had no interest in seeing my parents upon my return. Nor they me. I wrote to tell them of my marriage, but we haven’t spoken since they sent me away. What I hadn’t expected was to be rejected by Charles’s mother. He had written her about me, so she couldn’t dispute the legality of the marriage or of my inheritance. Charles was a savvy investor before the war, and he had a great deal of unentailed wealth. He left the bulk of it to me, I think mostly to gall his mother, though I don’t doubt he loved me.”

  She had been wringing her hands and, suddenly seeming to realize it, she dropped them abruptly to her sides. It looked as if she was working very hard to keep them still. “I called on her first thing upon my return, hoping that we could… Well, she made it quite clear that she didn’t consider me a member of the family. She had to move out of the main estate, of course, because it belonged to the title. Charles had made arrangements for her to take up residence in a small estate he owned in Kent. I offered to buy her a house anywhere she liked, too—London, Bath. But she refused it all and removed instead to her brother’s estate. I haven’t heard from her since, though I persist in writing a few times a year.”

  “Who holds the title now?”

  “No one. It died with Charles—there were no male heirs. I suppose that’s why she hates me. Or at least it’s part of the reason. I couldn’t manage to bear her a grandchild. So Charles got his revenge in the end.” She smiled sadly.

  “So what did you do?”

  “Well, you know the rest, don’t you? I became a scandalous widow. Life goes on, after all.”

  Her chin rose, and she spoke the last with a harsh sort of forced gaiety that James recognized as Lady V’s persona. He wanted more than anything to hold on to Catharine. Not Lady Cranbrook the scandalous widow, who now seemed as much of a fictitious creation as Lady V, but the real Catharine. It seemed impossible, though, to untangle all the layers that enveloped this woman, to get to her true essence.

  “Who are you?” he blurted, reflexively voicing his thoughts and then immediately regretting the outburst as he saw confusion pass over her smooth features.

  She gazed evenly at him and spoke flatly, all emotion drained from her voice. “I don’t know.” She turned and walked ahead of him, quickly, toward a bench overlooking the path they’d been on before she’d detoured to stand under the tree. By the time he reached her, she’d composed herself. “Forgive me, Dr. Burnham. I don’t mean to be maudlin. It’s a day for confessions, I suppose. I merely wanted you to know where my interest in child welfare comes from. It is genuine, even if little else about me is. I was going to tell you that night after the Watsons’ party, but…it didn’t seem the time.”

  “Thank you for telling me now.” He still wondered why she’d turned him away that night, but didn’t know how to ask without seeming a fool. “I’ve told you I wish you would call me James. When we’re alone, at least.” He sat next to her.

  She smiled, a little sadly, he thought. “I know, but such familiarity didn’t seem proper once I met Miss Andrews. But I shall try, James.”

  “Miss Andrews? What has she to do with anything?”

  She widened her smile, and the hint of sadness he’d seen was no longer in evidence. “If it’s a day of confession, I think it’s your turn.”

  What could she mean? She already knew all his secrets. For God’s sake, it was because of her that he was deceiving the Society, hiding his activities from his closest colleagues. And though they seemed to have entered into an unspoken agreement not to speak of their prior intimacies, she knew what had happened between them, what he’d given her. What more did she want? His soul? Well, she wasn’t getting that.

  “What shall I confess?” he said, striving for a teasing, light tone.

  “I want to know about Miss Andrews.”

  Why did she keep referencing Miss Andrews?

  “I imagine,” she went on, “that by now congratulations are in order?”

  Catharine felt an enormous sense of relief after telling Dr. Burnham—James, she corrected with an inner smile, for he was back to being James—about her past. Amazing how simply speaking aloud something she’d been carrying around for so many years made her feel lighter, as if a grave physical burden had been lifted. How kind he had been, prompting her at times, remaining silent at others, when she needed to let the words tumble out. It seemed he was not going to judge her for her checkered past, and this while he still thought her an empty-hearted aristocrat, amusing herself at a
house of ill repute. Catharine didn’t think she’d ever met a better man. Miss Andrews was a lucky woman, indeed.

  He cocked his head, the crease on his forehead deepening. “What are you talking about?”

  “Miss Andrews. I’m talking about Miss Andrews.” She tried to summon a smile, but feared it appeared as insincere as it felt.

  “So I collect, but what about Miss Andrews?”

  “You are affianced, are you not? Or at least nearly so?”

  “Pardon? No!” James leaped up and took a few steps away from the bench.

  “You have to know I never would have invited you to call on me that evening after the Watsons’ party if I’d known.” It seemed important to explain. She couldn’t bear his disapproval. “You may think me morally bankrupt, and, indeed, I may not be up to your reformer’s standards, but I do have a code of sorts and I—wait. No?”

  “Whatever gave you the impression that Miss Andrews and I were engaged?”

  “Miss Andrews did!”

  “That’s impossible!” He began to pace the grass. Catharine might have thought it amusing if she hadn’t been overcome with the strangest feeling of relief. It felt like warmth, pooling in her belly.

  James sat down next to her abruptly. “You must tell me everything about how you came to this conclusion.” Just as suddenly, he rose again, as if the bench had burned him. “But let us walk.” Then he sat down again, like a marionette being controlled by invisible strings, and Catharine giggled.

  He sighed. “I’m sorry, forgive me. Of course you’re overwhelmed. You’ve had an emotional morning. We can postpone this conversation.”

  Though it was pleasant to realize that James intended to have future conversations with her, by no means would they postpone this particular one. Instead of answering him, she rose, tugged on his arm, and they resumed their stroll. He was like a coiled spring, the tension positively radiating from him as they walked. “Miss Andrews told me you were on the verge of an understanding.” She began slowly, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “At the party. That’s why I refused to see you that evening. I invited you before I’d realized that you were—”