The Secret Pearl

by Mary Balogh

  “He left,” Mrs. Laycock said. “Just disappeared about three months after his grace came home. There are those who said there was not room for the both of them in the one house and that his grace ordered him to leave. And there are those who say other things. I do not know the rights of it. But he has never come back.”

  “And the duchess married his grace after all,” Fleur said. “The story has a happily-ever-after ending.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Laycock got to her feet and brushed at the folds of her black dress. “She married him. Though such a wailing she put up when she came here with her papa and discovered that Lord Thomas had gone, that I had a hard time of it to quiet the servants’ talk, Miss Hamilton. And his grace so happy to be home only three months before that and catching her up in his arms and twirling her about when she stepped from her carriage for all the world to see.”

  They strolled on, each wrapped in private thought. It was strange that the duke spent so much time from home if he loved it so much, Fleur thought, and if he loved the duchess so much and had such a strong sense of responsibility.

  But not all of Fleur’s time was spare time, of course. She did have about two hours each day with her pupil, a small, thin, dark-haired child who might one day grow up to be handsome if her frequently petulant look did not become habitual. She did not resemble her mother in any way at all. She must be all her father.

  The child was difficult. She did not want to look at books, she did not want to listen to stories, she did not want to pick up a needle, and when she painted she often did so carelessly, wasting both paper and paint and becoming mulish when Fleur insisted that she clear away the mess she had made.

  Fleur tried to be patient. Lady Pamela was, after all, little more than a baby, and she must know, as children usually did, that her mother and her nurse were on her side. Fleur tried to entice the child into wanting to learn.

  There was an old harpsichord in the schoolroom. Fleur sat at it and played one afternoon when Lady Pamela had refused to cooperate in any of the planned activities, and she continued to play when she was aware of the child standing still to one side of the stool.

  “I want to play,” Lady Pamela demanded when Fleur’s fingers finally fell still.

  Fleur smiled. “Have you had any instruction?” she asked.

  “No,” Lady Pamela said. “I want to play. Get up.”

  “Please,” Fleur said.

  “Get up!” the child said. “I want to play.” “Please,” Fleur said again.

  “You are a servant,” Lady Pamela said haughtily. “Get up or I will tell Nanny.”

  “I will gladly get up,” Fleur said, “if you will ask me rather than tell me.”

  The child flounced off in order to scold and slap a shabby doll she had brought to the schoolroom with her.

  Fleur sighed inwardly and resumed her quiet playing. It all reminded her of so much. Cousin Caroline and Amelia, haughty and imperious because they were suddenly Lady Brocklehurst of Heron House and the Honorable Miss Amelia Bradshaw after the death of her parents.

  And they had treated her just so because they were obliged to offer her a home in the house where she had always lived. Amelia had taken her lovely Chinese bedchamber and relegated her to a plainer room at the back of the house.

  She had a few good days with her pupil. Lady Pamela had been excited one morning because her mother was to take her visiting in the afternoon, but word came to the nursery at luncheon time that her grace was feverish and had been told by the doctor to rest during the afternoon.

  Fleur, who was taking her luncheon upstairs, saw the look of intense disappointment on her pupil’s face and the tears that formed in her eyes and her trembling, pouting lip. The child saw far too little of her mother. But Fleur knew that the chief disappointment would be in not seeing the Chamberlain children and their dogs after all. Lady Pamela also saw very little of other children.

  “Would it be possible for me to take Lady Pamela to visit the children?” she asked Mrs. Clement when the child could not hear her.

  She expected a rebuff, but the nurse looked at her consideringly and said she would consult her grace. Within half an hour Fleur had the pleasure of seeing the child’s face light up so that she had looked almost pretty. She jumped up and down on the spot, cheering until her nurse cupped her face in her hands and told her not to get overexcited.

  She had done one thing at last, Fleur thought, that had won her pupil’s approval.

  They set out as soon as they were ready and the carriage had been brought around. And Fleur smiled as she watched Lady Pamela sit forward in her seat, looking at the scenery pass the window, waving at the gatekeeper’s wife, and chattering intermittently about the Chamberlains’ dogs.

  “Mama will not allow me to have a dog,” she said, “or a cat. Or a rabbit,” she added a moment later.

  For almost the first time in their acquaintance, Fleur felt, her pupil looked like a child.

  Mr. Chamberlain was a widower of about forty years, who lived with his sister and his three children in an elegant manor that looked remarkably like the cozy manor of her dreams when she had been traveling into Dorsetshire, Fleur thought.

  She explained to Miss Chamberlain, an elegant lady in her mid-thirties, who wore a lace cap on her smoothly parted dark hair, that her grace was indisposed and that Lady Pamela had been disappointed at the prospect of losing the treat of playing with the children. She asked to be allowed to sit in the servants’ quarters for an hour.

  “In the servants’ quarters?” Miss Chamberlain said with a laugh. “I would not hear of any such thing, Miss Hamilton. You are Lady Pamela’s new governess? We heard that there was one. You will take tea with Duncan and me, if you please, while the children play.”

  Fleur followed her hostess into the drawing room, where they were soon joined by Mr. Chamberlain, who bowed to her and showed no outward chagrin at being forced to take tea with a mere governess.

  “Our conversation will doubtless be drowned out by barkings before long, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “The poor dogs will be dragged inside to the nursery to be played with. It is always so when Lady Pamela is here. She does not have the chance to mingle with other children or with animals often enough, I believe.”

  “And she had been taught that horses are dangerous,” Miss Chamberlain added, handing Fleur her cup and saucer.

  Her brother smiled at her. “I suppose it would be easy to be overprotective of an only child,” he said. “It is a pity Adam is not home more often. Have you heard if he is to return for the ball, Miss Hamilton?”

  “I am afraid I do not know, sir,” Fleur said.

  “It will not be the same without him,” he said. “But the Willoughby balls are always the most splendid of occasions. Opinion seems to be evenly divided in the neighborhood as to whether the indoor balls or the outdoor are the more so. Emily believes the outdoor ones far more romantic, don’t you, my dear?”

  “Oh, more romantic, yes, without a doubt,” she said. “I am not sure that they are more splendid. There is nothing like a promenade along the long gallery, Miss Hamilton, with music wafting through from the great hall and candles lit in all the wall sconces and all the Ridgeway ancestors watching. Are you pleased with your place of employment?”

  Fleur spent a pleasant hour conversing with brother and sister and walking in their flower arbor with them. They seemed quite unperturbed by the sounds of boisterous merriment coming from the upper part of the house.

  “I employ a nurse to worry about broken bones and pulled hair and such,” Mr. Chamberlain said when Fleur expressed her hope that Lady Pamela was behaving as she ought. “A little noise I can easily endure.”

  “By shutting yourself off into your books, Duncan,” his sister said. “One could yell boo into his ear when he is reading, Miss Hamilton, and he would be oblivious.”

  For one hour Fleur felt like a real person again. Though perhaps even the word “again” was inappropriate, she thought as she led a reluct
ant Lady Pamela to the carriage for the return ride home. She had never been treated with a great deal of respect when she lived at Heron House.

  “We will bring the children to the Hall for a return visit one afternoon,” Mr. Chamberlain said, taking Fleur’s hand to help her into the carriage. “Thank you for bringing the child, Miss Hamilton. I am sure the outing has done her good. And thank you for calling on us.”

  “I do not know what your working hours are,” Emily Chamberlain said, “but I suppose you must have some time to yourself. Do call here at any time, Miss Hamilton. I would enjoy your company.”

  “One of the dogs bit Randall’s bottom when he was climbing over a chair,” Lady Pamela told Fleur as the carriage jerked into motion. “Their nurse said it was because we had made the dog overexcited.” She giggled. “But it was ever so funny.”

  Fleur laughed with her but resisted the urge to hug the child. It was too early for that yet.

  True to his promise, Mr. Chamberlain brought his sister and his children to call several days later. While Miss Chamberlain sat drinking tea with the duchess, he brought his children upstairs, only to find that Lady Pamela was in the middle of an arithmetic lesson in the schoolroom.

  “I do beg your pardon,” he said when Fleur answered the door to his knock. “May I invite your eternal wrath, Miss Hamilton, and beg that Lady Pamela be released early from classes in order to play with my trio? I am sure she will work twice as hard tomorrow, won’t you, Pamela?”

  “Yes,” she cried eagerly, jumping to her feet.

  “She is also an accomplished little liar,” he said quietly to Fleur with a smile, “as are all children. Can I persuade you to step outside so they may romp and shriek and argue without murdering our ears?”

  “What a splendid idea,” Fleur said, and led the way downstairs and out through a door at the back of the house to lawns that led back to a distant tree line. She hesitated when he offered his arm while they walked. The children had run on ahead with a ball, which one of the Chamberlain children had been clutching. Was it proper? She was a servant. He was a visitor.

  She took his arm.

  “If we stroll slowly enough,” he said, “the children will get far enough ahead that we will not feel obliged to listen for naughty words or unkind insults. The very best way to deal with children, Miss Hamilton, as I have found from personal experience, is to become blind, deaf, and dumb. And, of course, to have a competent nurse and a long-suffering resident sister. Tell me about yourself. What has brought you here?”

  Fleur felt guilty about the lies and half-truths she felt forced to tell.

  “You will be at the ball?” he asked when taking his leave of her some time later and turning to summon his three children. “I hope to dance with you there, Miss Hamilton.”

  She hoped so too. As she led Pamela by the hand back upstairs to the nursery, and endured the icy glares of Mrs. Clement when she observed the child’s flushed cheeks and somewhat disheveled hair, Fleur hoped so profoundly. She returned to the schoolroom to put away the books they had abandoned earlier, and twirled about, the arithmetic book clasped to her bosom.

  It was so good to feel young and happy and full of hope again. And to have had an attractive gentleman ask her to dance with him at the ball.

  Not that she would be seduced by expectations for the future, of course. Nothing but the very mildest of flirtations was at all possible for her. Certainly marriage was completely out of the question. But she would settle for a mild flirtation. It would be quite enough.

  And finally, it seemed, his grace was to come home. Lady Pamela brought her the news one afternoon, rushing through the schoolroom door, when she usually dragged her feet and frequently looked sullen as well.

  “Papa is coming home,” she announced triumphantly. “Mama has just had a letter from him. He should be here any day. He should be here before any of Mama’s guests arrive.”

  The duchess was expecting close to twenty guests within the week, the day before the ball.

  Fleur smiled. “How lovely for you,” she said. “You will be very happy to see your father.”

  “No, I won’t,” the girl said. “I shall be cross with him.”

  “Indeed?” Fleur said. “Why is that?”

  “Because he has been gone forever,” the child said. “And because he sent you.”

  Fleur smiled quietly to herself. She thought she had been making progress. But only outside the schoolroom, it seemed. Rome was not built in a day, she had to remind herself. “Shall we look at the alphabet book?” she suggested.

  “I have a headache,” Lady Pamela said. “I want to paint.”

  “A picture for your papa?” Fleur said. “A very good idea. But ten minutes of the book first.”

  Battle was engaged.

  “I shall get Papa to send you away again,” Lady Pamela said.

  “Will you?” Fleur said, seating herself beside the girl and taking her gently by the arm when she would have got up from her place. “Do you remember this letter?”

  “A for apple,” Lady Pamela said without even looking. “That is easy. I don’t remember the others. I have a headache.”

  Yes, Fleur thought, his grace might well dismiss her. She worked for no more than two hours a day, and even then, trying to teach Lady Pamela was rather like trying to pull a mule.

  But she would not think of dismissal and all it would mean to her. She would not allow herself to be plunged into gloom again. It felt altogether too good to be happy and alive.

  HOUGHTON WAS A VALUABLE EMPLOYEE. He had been in the Duke of Ridgeway’s service for more than five years—almost since the duke’s return from Belgium, in fact. And his grace had come to rely on him more and more to conduct the day-to-day business of his life. The man was sensible and hardworking and discreet.

  One quality in Houghton the duke valued as much as any other, though, and that was his ability to sense his employer’s mood and to adjust his own behavior accordingly. They took their meals together when in London and frequently conversed on a wide range of topics. But when the duke wished to be silent, his secretary seemed not to feel the necessity of keeping a conversation going.

  Today as they neared Willoughby, Houghton sat quietly in the carriage, regarding the scenery through the window beside him, and held his peace.

  His grace was grateful. That ache of love and nostalgia was in him again. They were driving beside the old park wall. Soon now they would be on the lime avenue and he would be home indeed. He wondered if all men felt about their homes as he did about his. It was like a part of his identity, a part of himself.

  He thought in particular of that time six years before when he had returned after so long and so painful an absence. The porter’s wife had had her apron to her eyes, crying at the sight of him—her wrinkled face was wreathed in smiles now as she bobbed him a curtsy. He raised one hand in greeting and smiled at her. All the servants had been out on the upper terrace to greet him—they had even cheered him—and he would swear that their happiness had not been feigned.

  And Thomas. The memory lost some of its luster. He had not thought—foolishly he had not thought of what the year of his reported death had meant to Thomas. He had been the Duke of Ridgeway and was now merely Lord Thomas Kent again.

  The duke had always thought Thomas was fond of him, although they had had their differences and although they were only half-brothers—Thomas was the son of his father’s second wife. Perhaps he had been. Perhaps the blow of finding himself suddenly deprived of a title and property he had thought his had been just too much.

  And Sybil later that same day. Sybil, about whom he had dreamed for weeks before that, ever since his memory had returned. Back in his arms again—for a brief moment. More beautiful than ever.

  He would not think of it. He was coming home again now and there was excitement in him despite the fact that Sybil was there.

  Mrs. Laycock and Jarvis, the butler, were standing at the top of the horseshoe steps before the
massive double doors leading into the hall. Dearly familiar. Mrs. Laycock had been housekeeper at Willoughby for as long as his grace could recall, and Jarvis had been at the house all his life, rising through the ranks of the footmen to his current position, which he had assumed four years before.

  Mrs. Laycock curtsied and Jarvis inclined his body into the bow that had stiffened noticeably the very day of his promotion. The duke smiled and greeted them.

  Sybil had not come outside or even into the hall to meet him. She was in her sitting room, Mrs. Laycock informed him.

  Almost an hour passed before he attended her there. Sybil would not appreciate being greeted by an eager husband dressed in the creased garments he had traveled in. He bathed and changed first.

  His wife was reclining on the daybed in her sitting room. She did not rise at his entry.

  “Adam,” she said breathlessly, smiling at him. The same beautiful, fragile, wide-eyed Sybil he had fallen in love with once upon a time. “Did you have a comfortable journey?”

  He bent over her to kiss her and she turned her cheek to his lips. “How are you, Sybil?” he asked. There was a high flush on her cheeks.

  “Well,” she said. “Bored. Sir Cecil Hayward held a dinner last evening and entertained the company with stories of his new hunter and praises of his hounds. I left early. I could not stop yawning.”

  “He is, I’m afraid, just a typical country gentleman,” he said with a smile. “Have you recovered from your chill?”

  She shrugged. “You are not going to fuss, are you?” she said. “Nanny does enough of that.”

  “I must remember to thank Nanny, then,” he said. “How is Pamela?”

  “Well,” she said, “despite circumstances, the poor darling. You really must get rid of that governess, Adam. What whim was it that made you send her here?”

  “Is she not doing a good job?” he asked.

  “Pamela is too young to be spending hours in a schoolroom,” she said. “And she dislikes her governess. I would like to know what she was to you, Adam.”

  “Houghton hired her,” he said. “Whom have you invited here apart from Chesterton?”