As to titles, she had one again herself, so she felt less skittish about making light of the formalities. “Just call me Lace,” should work.
With the butterflies in her stomach, she wore one of her new day dresses in gold gauzy muslin, trimmed at bodice, waist, and hem with an intricate embroidered edging in flowers and curls of aubergine. She loved the new styles. Since the last time she was measured by a seamstress, high waists had gone the way of walking sideways through doors to accommodate wide-hooped skirts.
Dresses all had slight flares to the skirts now with ankle hems, cinched waists, wide shoulders, and ballooning sleeves. What made this one especially lovely was the pleated V-bodice to the neck and the double-layered matching capelet one could add for morning calls.
Last night in the parlor, with Cricket and Mac looking on, Gabriel had surprised her with it, and with a confection of a silver gown for Nick’s ball. He said he ordered it the day they went shopping for her new wardrobe while she went to look at bonnets in the shop next door.
Cricket had jumped up and down and applauded, and Mac’s eyes teared as she gave Gabe an approving nod.
Bridget came in bringing Lace back to the present with a happy smile because her girl was all frilly frocked and sable hair curled, as excited about making friends with their company’s children as Lace was about new and old friends.
“Lacey?” came the call. “Lace, where are you?”
“I know that voice,” Lace said, taking Bridget’s hands. “Wait until you meet my bestest friend,” she whispered.
But Jade’s little Emily came flying into the room first and threw herself at Lacey’s skirts, pushing Cricket out of the way.
Lace bent to embrace Emily, the child she’d come to love at Peacehaven.
Bridget crossed her arms over her chest and stamped a foot as if to say, “You’re supposed to be hugging me.”
Lacey laughed and brought the girls’ hands together. “Emily, also known as Emmy, I’d like you to meet my Bridget, also known as Cricket. You’re both nearly five.”
“Emily Fitzalan, you come back here,” Jade called.
“We’re up here,” Lacey shouted.
Jade filled her doorway, and Lace burst into tears. They were in each other’s arms in a blink.
Two pups, dachshunds, also old friends, found each other: Ivy’s Tweenie and Emmy’s Mucks were soon dancing beside them, yipping and generally hugging in their own puppy ways. Ivy came in to say his hellos to Jade and Emmy before he went to the Towers to join the Scoundrels for a good cigar.
“Where are the rest of the wives?” Lace asked. “I’m nervous-sick with anticipation.”
Jade looked her up and down, brows furrowed. “Nervous-sick, you’re—glowing!” Lace turned to Emmy and Cricket. “Girls, go down to the drawing room and tell the ladies we’ll be down in a minute.”
Lacey spoke up. “Cricket, find your kitten now that there’s another pup in the house, and put her in the barn until we can introduce her to Mucks properly. We don’t know that they’ll get along as well as Merry and Tweenie.”
“Want to see my kitten?” Bridget asked Emily, taking her hand. “Her name is Merrycat.” And just like that, they ran from Lacey’s room and down the stairs as if they’d been doing it forever.
Jade circled Lacey. “That glow. Are you—?”
“Happy? Sure. Almost.”
“Are you sure you’re not—?”
“Not.”
“Lace, we lived together for four years, became best friends. You’ve got a look, bit of a give-away radiance.”
“As to that, so do you, Jade Smithfield Fitzalan. Rosier cheeks. Twinklier eyes.”
“There you go, and you’re right. Iam in a delicate condition. Are you?”
“Oh, mercy, Jade. Gabriel says he wants to marry me.”
“Good thing, considering. So have you told him?”
“Nothing to tell.”
Jade stepped back, her lips firm, her eyes seeing too much. “What’s stopping you from marrying him?”
“He keeps forgiving me for sleeping with Nick.”
“Isn’t forgiveness a good thing?”
Lace huffed, slapped her hands to her hips, and tapped a foot.
Jade grinned. “Ah, I remember the story now. Even though you said you did, Gabriel should have known instantly that you would never.”
Lace gave her friend one strong nod. “Exactly.”
Jade chuckled. “Trust beats forgiveness.”
“Trust is everything.”
“Lace, he might havetrusted that you’d never tell a lie, especially about something so important.”
“Don’t take his side, however valid your point.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” Jade hugged her.
Lacey clung and bit her lip. “Well, if he didn’t know back then that I lied, he should know by now. I’d marry him if he believed in my unconditional love. If he said, ‘You couldn’t have slept with Nick. It’s impossible,’ I’d marry him today.”
Jade rolled her eyes.
Lacey narrowed hers. “What?”
“We’re not here for a ball. We’re here for your wedding. Youare marrying him today.”
“What!”
“Gabriel planned it as a surprise. He brought a vicar from a neighboring estate, invited all of us, and he doesn’t even know you’re . . . glowing. Give him credit for loving you, for wanting you so badly, he’d pull a bull-headed, man-stupid stunt like this. It’s you he wants, perfect and high up on that pedestal where he set you, with him as your lowly servant, the unworthy vicar’s son—which is what keeps him from seeing the truth. Fact is, he doesn’t think he’s good enough for the Lady Lacey Ashton. You know that, right?”
“I know humiliation,” Lacey said. “And I’m trying not to plan his public flogging.”
“Lord, Lace, I only met him a short while ago, and even I can see how much he loves you.” Jade sat on Lacey’s bed and pulled her down. “You mourned that man for four years at Peacehaven. You came back to him, and now, well, you could be, couldn’t you?”
Lace sighed, “Perhaps.”
Jade giggled. “There’s no halves about procreation, love. Either you did or you didn’t make it possible. I’d like to think you did. So let’s say on the off chance that you are, do you really want to be ostracized again? I say marry him tonight and make peace with his stupidity later. Or flog him, whatever. But this time have his name ready for any children that may come of your love.”
Lacey rose and dusted off her skirt. “I’ll think about it. All of it. You know, they saywe’rein a delicate condition. My current situation wouldkill a man.”
“Then you are?”
“Idon’t know.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Maybe,” Lace granted.
Arm in arm, they went downstairs discussing how strong—not delicate—a woman had to be to bear a child.
The Scoundrels’ wives were a delight. They agreed not to share titles, just first names. “This is Patience, married the longest, Faith married the next longest, and this is Patience’s last remaining ward, Sophie.”
Sophie curtseyed. “I’m the only one she couldn’t marry off when she gave us a season to find husbands. I don’t seem to take. Too American, I think.”
“Too forthright and too much the hoyden, I think,” Patience said. “It’s your excellence in pugilism,” she added. “If you keep beating up your suitors, bloodying their noses and knocking them unconscious, you’ll never find a man.”
The ladies nodded with wide eyes, hands over mouths, and reluctant chuckles, while Mac brought in an assortment of aromatic teas, scones, berry jams, and clotted cream.
“I’ve never been so hungry at teatime,” Lacey said, finally relaxing with her guests.
Faith’s daughter, Beth, age seven, ended up sitting on the floor with Emmy and Cricket, three new friends, each with a pet in hand—Mucks and Tweenie, the dachshunds, and Cricket’s Merrycat. Bridget had made Merr
y’s introduction to Mucks the minute they came down.
“Where’s Abigail?” Lacey asked looking for the only other woman she’d expected to know. Abigail had been an inmate at Peacehaven when Lacey taught there, until Abigail and Jade became sisters-in-law after marrying the Fitzalan brothers.
Jade beamed. “Abby and Garrett couldn’t make it. They’re due for their second at any time, but the rest of us wanted to come down and meet you—while our husbands stink up the Towers library with cigar smoke and talk of schoolboy pranks.”
“If we hadn’t come soon,” Sophie said, “we couldn’t have come for afternoon tea. That’s the law of the land, right? No visits of an evening? Not like in America when we trod all over everyone’s evening just for the pleasure of their company, and maybe a game and a dance or two, all unplanned.”
The ladies chuckled, because Sophie obviously acted the gauche American on purpose.
Patience slipped an arm around Sophie’s waist. “Our Sophie entertains the ladies, though notnearly as well as she entertains the men.”
“Speaking of which,” Faith, Justin’s wife, said, “I do believe that our host, the Duke of Ashcroft, or Nick, which he told us to call him, is smitten with Sophie. He may have left her side on occasion since we arrived, but he has barely taken his gaze from her.”
Lacey grinned. “Entertain Nick with your pugilistic skills, young lady, and you will have him in your pocket for life.”
Sophie’s head came up at that, her eyes wide and eager. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Have at him. He’s yours on a silver platter.”
“Is he yours to give?” Sophie asked.
Lace bit her lip.Oh, the schools of thought on that one.“Yes and no. He’s my distant cousin and we were raised as siblings, so I will never be truly rid of him, but Gabriel would as soon I lose him to someone,anyone, as soon as may be.”
Sophie’s string of questions inspired Lace to lead the ladies out the French doors to the garden, away from three giggly young girls so Lace could tell her tale away from tender ears and impressionable minds.
Mac must have seen them from the kitchen, because she came to move the tea tray outside, after she set a low table with sweetmeats for the girls.
Cricket and her new friends came out to the garden some long time after tea. “MyLacey, may we accompany our guests back to the towers and Uncle Nick?”
“It sounds like a lovely jaunt, especially as the afternoon is waning,” Patience said, “and will you show us the Ashcroft property on the way? It’s a beautiful estate.”
Since that sounded like a fine way to finish an afternoon, which broke all rules of etiquette, Lacey let Cricket lead the way with Beth and Emmy beside her, and she gave the tour like the Lady of the estate.
To Lacey’s dismay, however, they eventually came ’round the church to the graveyard, and Cricket stopped at one dear little pink marble headstone. “MyLacey’s baby girl sleeps here,” she said.
Jade placed a protective hand over her growing child.
“Oh, look,” Emily said. “That man is digging a grave.”
Every mother said “No,” which did not stop the girls from darting over to him.
Lacey failed to recognize the gravedigger, though he did resemble the one who worked here when—They could be related, though this man was younger, and she did not remember the elder’s Christian name. He had always answered to Digger. “Excuse me,” she called to the young man, because she couldn’t wait a minute longer to get an answer to the question plaguing her.
He removed his hat and turned it in his hands as she came his way.
“Was it your father who used to work here?”
“Father and grandfather, yes ma’am.”
“Oh. It must have been your father I knew. I don’t suppose he told you about the woman from the Towers who gave birth and was sent away? Her baby’s gravestone is that pink one over there.”
“The Ashton baby from Ashcroft Towers?” the young man asked.
“I was a lad, and I’ve heard the story mor’n once. My father was pretty old when he told it at the last. I never was sure he got it right. Such a jumbled tale of a stillborn babe.”
Lacey nodded graciously. What else could she do? She’d lived the jumbled tale. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know your name.”
“Wills, if you please, ma’am.”
“On behalf of the family at the Towers, let me just say that we appreciate the way your father served us.”
“Oh, m’lady, thank you.” He bowed awkwardly.
Lace appreciated his effort. “Wills, did your father tell you what happened the day he buried that baby? Was a graveside service forbidden? Did Lady Ashcroft say why? Didno one say a prayer over my babe’s wee casket?”
“Your babe?”
Lacey raised her chin and gave a half-nod. Being the village wanton would never sit well or get easier. She wondered what her guests might think, but not for long. Suddenly they’d closed ranks, and each of them touched her. She felt the flat of a hand at her back, on her arms. Cricket’s hand slipped between hers and Jade’s, though Cricket clutched Jade’s hand, too, while Emmy held Jade’s other. They were all of them connected in helping her bear her loss.
Lace cleared her throat. “Wills?”
“No service was forbidden, m’lady. But me Da, he said he din’ dig no hole, y’see, ’cause t’weren’t no casket to bury. No babe to put in one, Da said. He set the stone there like yer Ma told him, but he never buried no baby. Your ma, she paid him regular to say naught till she died.”
Someone slipped an arm around her on the instant, holding her up when she might have lost her legs. No information could have shocked her more.
“One more thing, m’lady, if I may. You asked if anyone prayed over the grave. Well, I was a lad, y’see, playin’ in the churchyard, when I should’a been in bed, but I was scarin’ m’friends, like boys do, when we hear somebody coming, so we scatter. Me, I hid behind that stone over there. It’s small, but it’s my gramps, and I always figured he’d keep me safe here.”
“I’m certain he does.”
Wills beamed. “So we see this giant of a man wearing a cape, dark, a shadow against the church. A monster in black, he looked.”
Lace smiled, grateful for the touchstone to reality amidst a sea of unreality.
“And he kneels at your baby’s grave, prays, and then—this really scared us—he starts to cry so loud, we run away. I don’t like remembering that part, m’lady. I always want to apologize when I see him for being there.”
“You know him?”
“Sure. He’s our vicar. Well, not anymore since the bishop sacked him.
“Da didn’t tell till after your mother passed, and then he did it all secret like so we’d never tell, but you’re . . . I mean that wasyour babe supposed to be there.”
His words echoed in Lacey’s head. . . supposed to be there.
Wills shrugged. “Your mother and my Da are both gone, now, and you have a right to know.”
NannyMac came around the corner calling Bridget’s name, stopped, took one look at the women, the gravedigger, pulled her apron over her face, wailed into it, and ran back the way she came.
Lacey covered her mouth with a hand.
Bridget, now standing once again beside that pink marble slab over the fake grave, traced the numbers on the stone. “MyLacey, I know these numbers,” she called. “They’re in my mother’s book, the one I told you about. Mama made me memorize them.”
Lacey turned toward Wills. “Thank you for your honesty.”
She went over to Bridget. “Where is your mama’s book?”
“In my dresser, bottom drawer, in the back with the sad things.”
Lacey hugged Cricket, kissing the top of her head. “Thank you, sweetie.” She turned to the three wide-eyed little girls and knew they didn’t belong here right now. “Patience, Faith, and Sophie, dusk is nearly upon us. Will you take the girls up to the Towers to play? I need Jade
to help me carry on here.”
The three nodded, rounded up the girls, and took their hands.
“Lacey,” Jade asked. “Should we ask them to send Gabriel down?”
“No, please.” She touched Jade’s hand imploringly. “Not yet. Ladies, can we keep all these confusing revelations to ourselves for now?” Lacey asked, though she wasn’t sure why. “Girls, can we turn this into a game and not mention it until I know the answer to the puzzle. I’ll tell you when, all right?”
The thought of a puzzle brought some light into the girls’ eyes. The ladies, too, seemed relieved.
But she couldn’t count on children keeping silent, and perhaps it was too much to ask of them, except that they looked delighted at the prospect of a game, which prompted a stroke of brilliance. “Why don’t you get Ivy to let you put on a play with his puppets later? Find him at the Towers, borrow the puppets, then practice in secret.”
Lacey snapped her fingers. “Sophie, since you’re not tied to a husband’s whims, can you get Nick to help you find the girls a place at the Towers for them to practice? And would you be so kind as to keep an eye on them? Tell Nick your intent, he might help you, and tell him I said it’s a secret. He’ll understand.”
They would surely discuss what they’d just heard, and no worries if Nick heard the story.
The girls got herded up the hill in the bright promise before sunset, the ladies vigilant, so when she and Jade rounded the chapel and the children were lost to sight, Lace turned into Jade’s arms and burst into tears. “How can I feel both hopeless and hopeful at the same time?”
“I don’t know,” Jade said. “Because my emotions are right there in that tug-of-war with yours. You’re thinking no baby, no death, right?”
Lace gave a half-nod, before her tears returned at the uselessness of such a hollow hope. “Thank you for standing by me. Again.”
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