by Beverley, Jo
“But why?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m forty-five years old, Lucy. Am I to be celibate all my life? Now there, see. I shouldn’t have said that to you. I’ve been used to thinking of you as a man.”
Lucy was blushing, but she thought like a man. She wanted to ask why whores wouldn’t do.
“But you aren’t a man,” he said. “I need a son.”
It was as if something dropped out of Lucy, leaving her painfully hollow and mute.
“It was always a sadness to your mother and me that we didn’t have more children, but it was God’s will and our many joys compensated, but now . . .”
“Are you saying you’re glad mother’s dead?”
“Damnation, Lucy!”
She covered her face with her hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know that’s not true. But I never thought you’d find anyone to replace her.”
“And I never will. Charlotte knows that.”
“Charlotte?”
“Charlotte Johnson. She’s accepted my offer.”
I’m sure she has, Lucy thought bitterly. It would be a grand match for the widow of a doctor. But her father had made a typically suitable choice. The only time he’d acted irrationally in his life had been when he’d eloped with a viscount’s daughter.
Mrs. Johnson was a neighbor, a sensible woman of about thirty. More important she was mother to two healthy young children. Girls, but there was every chance of boys in time.
Charlotte Johnson wasn’t a substitute for her mother, but Charlotte’s firstborn son would be a substitute for herself. Lucy had always assumed that she was her father’s heir and would gradually take on more and more tasks in the business, but perhaps her father had never seen it that way. Or if he had, all was now different with the possibility of more children. Charlotte Johnson’s son would steal her place.
“I’m sorry you don’t like it, pet, but Charlotte will be a kind mother to you.”
A new mother?
Ruling in her true mother’s place?
Lucy instinctively hid the extent of her shock and pain. But inside, her thoughts were seething. She’d find a way around this. She’d make everything right again. Somehow. For now, she must say nothing she’d regret, burn no bridges.
“It was just such a surprise, Papa. As you say, you deserve a wife, and Mrs. Johnson will be a good one. I wish you well.”
He smiled his relief. “That’s my girl. And you’ll enjoy having little sisters and a woman to advise you. Charlotte might be able to help you on the way to marriage yourself.”
Lucy smiled, but wondered if it could look natural. She felt ready to explode.
Her father didn’t seem to see anything amiss. That’s my girl, he’d said. His girl, and thus eternally excluded from his world? Women did run businesses. Daughters did inherit them. Rarely, but it happened.
Was it her appearance? Prettiness didn’t mean a feeble mind. He above all men should know that.
He rose and came to kiss the top of her head. “You are my precious daughter, Lucy, and I love you dearly. You know that, don’t you? It’s my dearest wish to see you happy.”
She melted a little. “I know.”
“And restored to your rightful sphere.”
It was an effort to keep calm until he’d left the room. Even then she didn’t move.
Rightful sphere.
In his eyes she didn’t even belong here, in her home, in her world.
In a quarter hour she’d been turned upside down and shaken hollow and she didn’t know how to fill the void.
She leapt to her feet, staring at her mother’s portrait as if it could help her, but it was only in fantastical novels that the dead returned to help or torment the living. She turned away, tears blurring her vision. She couldn’t be exiled from all she loved!
Her life-long friend Betty Hanway lived across the road. She hurried over without even a bonnet.
* * *
“Your father and Mrs. Johnson?” Betty said, once they were alone in Betty’s bedroom. “A stepmother?”
Lucy seized on that excuse. “Unbearable, isn’t it?”
“Completely!” Betty declared, hugging her.
Betty was slim and brown haired, with fine brown eyes and plenty of common sense. “Mrs. Johnson is a pleasant woman,” she said, “but she’ll be mistress of the house.”
“I know. It’s horrible. I can’t remain there.” As soon as Lucy said it, she knew it was true.
“How can you not? Lucy, don’t do anything rash.”
“Rash?”
“Such as grabbing any suitor who’s to hand.”
Lucy laughed. “That’s the last thing I’d do! But I must find somewhere else to live. For a while at least. As I grow accustomed. As I think . . .”
Of a way to overcome this. There has to be a way.
“You can’t leave your home now,” Betty protested. “It might look as if you object, as if you can’t bear the future Mrs. Potter.”
“I can’t bear any future Mrs. Potter.”
“Your father’s a young man. He was bound to marry again.”
Lucy let out a breath. “Why was I so blind to that? I thought their great love . . . I’m losing faith in my rational abilities. Another reason I need time to adjust myself, which I can’t do at home.”
Betty drew her to sit on the sofa. “Let’s try to find a way. What about relatives? Are there any you could reasonably visit for a week or two?”
“With my father a foundling and my mother a scandal to her family?” Lucy scoffed, but then she paused. “My mother’s sister, Lady Caldross, invited me to join her for the season once my mourning was over. Cousin Clara is making her curtsy. I declined, but . . .”
“Move to Mayfair?”
“It’s not darkest Africa! And it would seem reasonable to take up such an opportunity. What’s more, I could escape to there within days. The fashionable frolic is already underway.”
“But you’d know no one.”
“I know my aunt and cousin.”
“Oh, yes. You have sometimes visited.”
“Once Aunt Mary married, she could invite mother to visit, and when I was older, I went with her. The visits were rare, however. My aunt and her family are in London only in the spring and she and my mother were never close.”
“Haven’t you said that your aunt is dull and disapproving?”
“True.”
“What of your cousin?”
“Clara’s three years younger than I, but as best I remember, she doesn’t have two sensible thoughts to rub together.”
“Lucy, you’d hate such company.”
“Betty, I have no choice!”
“That’s what Isabella said in The Curse of Montenegro before she ran off to an Italian nunnery.”
“This is not a novel! I don’t know how anyone as sensible as you can bear the things.”
“Sometimes it’s fun not to be sensible, but I was teasing, dearest. I do fear you’ll be jumping out of the boiling pot into the fire. You know how the so-called beau monde refer to people like us—as Cits.”
“I’m only half a Cit.”
“You’re fully the product of a great scandal, which your appearance there will revive.”
Lucy had overlooked that. “Why do you always see things so clearly?”
“You normally do.”
“Normally, my life isn’t turned upside down in a moment. Given the scandal, it’s a wonder Aunt Mary has invited me at all. She probably sees me as a duty and a sacrifice.”
“Then you can’t go.”
Lucy rose to pace the room. “I have to get away for a while, I have to, and a few weeks with Aunt Mary is the only acceptable means I can imagine. Everyone will understand my seizing such an opportunity. I can even pretend to most that it’s been planned for some time.”
“But you’ll be miserable. All your friends are here, and there’s your involvement in your father’s businesses.”
Lucy had never told Betty th
at he’d cut himself off from her. She was surprised her friend hadn’t guessed, but Betty had probably thought Lucy busy with her father when she’d been in the library reading books, magazines, and newspapers to keep informed.
“He’ll have to manage without me for a month. The more I think on this plan, the more it appeals. Perhaps I have been too sensible. Observing ‘the great’ at ridiculous play should amuse.”
“Just don’t laugh aloud.”
“My manners will be perfect. And I might enjoy some parts of it. I’ve been to many assemblies and private dance parties, but never to a ball in a grand house. There’ll be Venetian breakfasts and musical evenings featuring the finest performers, not to mention rubbing shoulders with dukes and dandies.”
Betty didn’t look convinced. “Might it not be better to marry? Arthur Stamford is probably still interested.”
Lucy shuddered. Arthur Stamford had offered for her only two weeks ago. She’d rejected him, just as she’d rejected a string of other suitors. Men in the City of London didn’t need a published list to tell them which was the largest golden apple on the tree.
“If you don’t care for Arthur, there are others. Charlie Carson has never given up hope and Peter Frome . . .”
“I’m not going to marry!” Lucy snapped, then quickly added, “Not until I fall in love. You’re in love, Betty. You’d deny me the same?”
Betty smiled in the way she always did at any reference to her beloved James Greenlow and their upcoming wedding, but she didn’t lose the thread.
“I long for you to fall in love, Lucy, but what if you fall in love with a lord? An arrogant, wastrel gambler who gets staggering drunk every night of the week?”
That made Lucy laugh. “Can you imagine my doing anything so idiotic?”
“No, but you’ll be going to a world as different as Africa. Who can tell?”
Lucy sat to hug her friend. “When you become idiotic, I know you’re upset. There’s no need, I promise.”
“But you’ll be so far away.”
Ah, now Lucy understood, and it was another blow she hadn’t thought of. How dense she was being.
“It’s only three miles.”
“We’ve lived on the same street all our lives, and if you marry a lord, even a decent one . . .”
“What?” Lucy prompted, bewildered by the pause.
“Who knows where you’ll end up? Your mother’s family comes from Gloucestershire. You could end up anywhere. In Scotland, even! I couldn’t bear that.”
Lucy raised her right hand. “I hereby make a solemn vow that I will not marry a Scottish lord. And speaking of marriage, have you any news of when you can expect your father?”
That distracted Betty. All was settled for her friend’s wedding except the date, which must wait until her father returned from a business journey to Philadelphia. Never had a father’s return been so fiercely longed for.
Lucy listened to new details of the changes being made to some rooms in the Greenlow house, where James and Betty would live at first, and perhaps forever. James was the oldest son and would take over the family’s building business in time. Even now, at only twenty-three, he was running everything in his father’s absence.
The situation Lucy had hoped to be in one day.
Betty’s excited chatter over her wedding made Lucy think of how the preparations for her father’s would go. It was a marriage of older people, but there’d be the same talk of clothes, the wedding breakfast, and—she suddenly realized—changes to her home.
Her home!
She found a way to take her leave and hurried back across the road as if she could protect the house against attack, already searching for signs of change.
She paused outside, letting out a breath. It was still the same—large, handsome, and elegant. Her parents had started married life on this street in rooms over a small warehouse. Later they’d turned the building into a house; then ten years ago her father had bought an adjacent home and joined them to create the largest house on the street.
Many of the richer City men were moving out to live in more rural surroundings, “aping the gentry” as her father put it. He preferred to be in the middle of things. In particular he had wanted to be close to his family, not traveling into the City in the morning and returning home late in the day.
Lucy was of one mind with him on that. The City of London was vibrant with life, the hub of the economic empire, with excitement on every corner. Who needed vistas and trees?
Who needed an intruder, a usurper? But here she came, walking down the street with her younger daughter in her arms and the older one alongside.
Mrs. Johnson was a sturdy, dark-haired woman with a rather homely face improved by a warm smile. Lucy had never paid much attention to her, but she would have described her as pleasant.
The smile was in place now. “Good morning, Miss Potter.”
Lucy had no choice. She smiled and dipped a curtsy. “Good morning, Mrs. Johnson. Father told me the news. I’m delighted, of course.” But if you’re on your way now to invade my home and begin repainting walls, there’ll be bloody war.
“So kind of you. I know this will be difficult for you, to see me in your mother’s place, but I hope we will be friends.”
Pleasant and sensible. Too sensible to suggest that she’d be a new mother.
Mrs. Johnson looked down at her older daughter. “Jane, make a curtsy to Miss Potter. She will soon be your big sister.”
The little girl, who strongly resembled her mother, looked as if she shared all of Lucy’s misgivings, but she made a creditable curtsy. Lucy returned the honor, which made the little girl smile, but then she tucked herself into her mother’s skirts.
Lucy would not feel a kindred spirit with the mite.
“I must hurry home,” she said. “I just went to share the good news with my friend.”
“Miss Hanway. I understand she is to marry as soon as Mr. Hanway is safe home. Our weddings could take place in close succession.”
“An abundance of joy,” Lucy said brightly and went into her house, praying to all the powers that Charlotte Johnson not follow her in.
She didn’t, but Lucy wondered if Mrs. Johnson had been on her way here but had been perceptive enough to see that it would be a bad time. Unreasonable to find the woman’s virtues intolerable, but she didn’t feel reasonable about any of this.
She had her escape, however, and it would give her time to think, time to find a way. After all, even if her father had a son, it would be decades before the lad could play a meaningful part in the business, so perhaps he’d come to see that he still needed her.
Would that be enough?
It would be a start, and she did have her thirty thousand pounds. She could begin her own business with that, carve her own place in the City. She certainly had no intention of handing it over to a wastrel lord.
The first step was to compose herself and find a way to tell her father of the plan to visit her aunt without revealing the reason for it.
She went to him in his office, attempting as lighthearted a manner as possible.
“Lord Penniless has made me think I should take up Aunt Mary’s offer. It will be interesting to see the nobility at play, and I suppose it’s possible that I might lose my heart to a lord.”
She feared he understood all too well, but he approved. “An excellent idea, pet. You’ve always enjoyed parties and dancing, and a wider knowledge of the world never comes amiss.”
“Just for a few weeks, of course,” Lucy said. “I’ll be back for your wedding.”
“And with interesting stories to tell. Perhaps you’ll identify Lord Penniless and find he’s more worthy than he seems.”
Lucy returned to her room fighting tears again. Her father had clearly been relieved. He probably hoped she’d marry Lord Penniless and never return home at all.
She almost hoped she did identify that idiot, for then at least she’d have someone upon whom to vent her frustrations.
&n
bsp; Chapter 2
The south Devon coast
May 13, 1817
David Kerslake-Somerford, the reluctant seventh Earl of Wyvern, was relaxing over ale with a friend. They were in the earldom’s seat, Crag Wyvern, in the room he chose, tongue in cheek, to call his lair.
He’d been born and raised in nearby Kerslake Manor as foster son of his aunt and uncle, and when he’d claimed the earldom, and thus been obliged to take up residence in this mock-medieval monstrosity, he’d done his best to create something as normal here. He’d had the earl’s bedchamber and adjoining parlor stripped and scoured—necessary, when his predecessor had been known as the Mad Earl—then remade.
The walls of the parlor were now paneled and painted, the ceiling plastered, the floor carpeted. He’d economized by buying most things secondhand, but he’d indulged in one way—he’d had a window knocked into the outer walls here and in his bedroom.
Crag Wyvern had been built two hundred years ago to look like a stark medieval keep, and had only arrow slits in the outer walls. The rooms did have windows, but they all looked inward to a courtyard, not out to open vistas. Now his private rooms had windows that looked out to sea, which was pleasant but also practical. He needed to see what went on out there, because in addition to being the earl, he was also deeply involved in the Freetrade. In smuggling.
He was a strapping young man with broad shoulders and long legs, but a lifetime on the hills and cliffs of this coast had made him lean. His jaw was square, his careless hair a blond that was close to brown, and his eyes a changeable gray-blue.
His friend was also fair haired, rather more so, and of lighter build, but he, too, looked as if he could climb cliffs if he needed to. His name was Nicholas Delaney, and he rode over frequently from his Somerset estate to help and advise.
Until last year, David had been employed as the Earl of Wyvern’s estate manager, which was as good a position as could be hoped for when he was known to be the bastard son of Miss Isabelle Kerslake and a tavern keeper. He and his sister, Susan, could have been raised in a tavern if his mother hadn’t abandoned her children to her brother and sister-in-law. Coming from Kerslake Manor had given Susan and him a tenuous place in the gentry.