“Still ’n’ all, I shouldn’ta had the little ones out on the quay,” she said with a shake of her head. “Anyway, I’d as lief it be Pa as Henry.”
“Is Henry one of your brothers?”
“Naw. He’s my intended. But I know no man wants a woman who don’t know how t’ mind the flock.”
As luck would have it, the intricate steps of the dance brought Sarah into his path at just that moment, and his scowl fell fully upon her. There was hardly time for a nod of acknowledgment before they were drawn apart again and Georgina Mackey’s hand was back on his arm.
He considered briefly the efficacy of giving Colin Mackey a taste of his own medicine.
But he knew it would do little good. Doubtless few in the village would understand—to say nothing of share in—his wrath. Even Georgina seemed oblivious to the wrong that had been done to her. In her world, such correction was a father’s prerogative and, afterward, a husband’s.
And it was in this world that darling little Clarissa was being raised.
What kind of treatment could she expect to receive at its hands? He thought of Mrs. Kittery’s glower of contempt. What kind of treatment had she already endured?
Well, no longer. Not if he had anything to say about it—and by God he did, whether he was her father or not. Whatever snubs she might endure from polite society could not be worse than the suspicions that dogged the child in this narrow-minded little fishing village.
When the dance was ended, he returned Georgina to her mother’s side. Mrs. Mackey, a washed out–looking woman long past her youth, thanked him twice for his goodness. In his haste to extricate himself from the burden of her gratitude, St. John backed into Mr. Gaffard.
“Evening, Lieutenant. Have you been enjoying the festival?”
“It’s had its moments,” he said, thinking of his small triumph over Fanny Kittery.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Gaffard said, nodding. “I almost didn’t ask, given the rumors . . .”
“Rumors?”
He cut a glance at St. John’s scar. “I’m not certain I should say anything more. I know how you military men like to settle your differences,” he said. But when St. John scowled, he cleared his throat. “Mrs. Kittery would have it that you didn’t go to his lordship about the festival at all, but rather because he’s the magistrate. That you accused Mrs. Fairfax of theft, and . . . something worse.”
The features of Sarah’s dancing partner swam before St. John’s eyes, to be replaced by those of David Brice.
“A lot of nonsense, I’d say,” Gaffard continued. “There were questions about her, o’ course, when she first came to Haverhythe, but I feel certain Mrs. F. would never have done something that wasn’t proper.”
Not the Mrs. Fairfax they knew, at any rate.
But what if there had only ever been one?
“You’ll excuse me, Gaffard.” St. John was already moving away from the nervous shopkeeper. He knew what had to be done.
“I say, Lieutenant,” Gaffard called after him. “I didn’t spread that gossip one step further than it had already gone.”
But St. John had stopped listening. Like a bullet released from a pistol, he shot across the dance floor in four long strides. “Mrs. Norris. Norris. Beals. Ma’am,” he said, with a curt bow to each of them and eyes only for his wife.
Sarah blushed. “Lo-Lieutenant Fairfax.”
She had very nearly called him “Lord Fairfax.” And at the moment, he would have welcomed the misstep. He was heartily tired of playacting.
“It is my dance, I believe, Mrs. Fairfax. If you will excuse us,” he said to the others.
“Oh, of course,” said Mrs. Norris, papering over the awkwardness with good cheer.
Sarah laid her fingertips on his arm. She would not meet his eye.
As the musicians took up their instruments, St. John glanced at the other couples gathering on either side of them and stopped short. “On second thought, Mrs. Fairfax, I believe I’d prefer a walk.”
* * *
The sounds of the festival followed them up the cobblestoned street and had only just begun to fade when noise and light burst from the Blue Herring, where those who chose not to dance had gathered. Farther along, the street was quiet and dark. Here and there, Sarah saw a candle flickering in a cottage window, but they met no one. She released the arm she had taken only for propriety’s sake and clasped her hands behind her back.
The sense of lightness and freedom with which she had greeted the day was gone. For a foolish moment, she had trusted St. John, and he had rewarded that fledgling trust by going to Haverty Court and exposing her as a thief and a whore. With Fanny Kittery on the case, how long before all the missing pieces of the puzzle that had been her identity fell into place? The life she had so carefully built here was about to be torn down.
To unsuspecting eyes, she had spent the evening joking with Mr. Gaffard, fussing over Mrs. Norris, and dancing with Mr. Beals, but beneath that calm façade, her mind had been whirling, searching for a way to escape, a place where she could take Clarissa and start over. She glanced up thankfully at the nearly full moon. By its light Bert Thomas could safely take them across the bay tonight, after the merrymaking had subsided. She had hated to behave as if he owed her some recompense for the assistance she had given his family, but she had nothing of value left to offer him in exchange for making the trip.
She did not even know whether her parents would take her in.
At last, St. John spoke. “You must be pleased by the success of the festival.”
The festival? Digging the nails of one hand into the palm of the other, she mustered a civil reply. “I am pleased that so many in need will be helped, yes.”
“And did you enjoy yourself?” he asked.
Sarah shook her head. “My enjoyment is entirely beside the point.”
“That is not an answer to my question, Sarah.”
The slight edge to his voice spurred her annoyance. “Very well, then. No,” she snapped. “I did not enjoy myself.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” he replied. “Everyone else seemed to find it great fun.”
They walked a few further steps in silence and paused when they reached the archway that led to the alley behind the long row of seaside cottages.
“How could you?” she cried. “You promised not to interfere. How could you go to the earl?”
“How could I—” He shook his head, as if trying to clear it of the echo of her outburst. “I went for the people of Haverhythe. I went to save your festival, Sarah,” he said, his voice soft, as if he did not quite believe the explanation himself. “I went . . . for you.”
For me? She could no longer imagine he had intended it as a kindness, but even if he had, it little mattered. The results would be cruel nonetheless. “Did you not realize that by revealing yourself, you would expose me?”
“Harold Bessmer and I were at school together. I had considered that a sort of advantage. I imagined I could . . . persuade him to do the right thing.” He paused. “The Widow Fairfax was a perfect stranger to him—still is, I don’t doubt. But unfortunately, he remembered all too well what Lady Fairfax, my wife, did three years ago.”
She resumed walking, as if she could escape the simple logic of his explanation. “Well, now Mrs. Kittery knows, and soon the whole village will have heard what I am believed to have done. By tomorrow morning there will be nothing for me in Haverhythe but cold faces and cutting words.” She meant never again to suffer that fate—and never to subject her daughter to it, either.
“I know.” His long fingers curled around her elbow, slowing her agitated steps. “Gaffard told me what he had heard, and I guessed what must have happened. Please believe that was never my intent. I’m sorry.”
She froze upon hearing the unexpected apology. “What happens now?”
She had asked the same question once before—would he give the same answer?
“I have been thinking all day about the best thing to do. I ha
d almost determined to leave you here—to leave you in ‘peace’, as you asked.” Despite herself, Sarah gasped. Was that still what she wanted? “But even before I knew what Mrs. Kittery had done,” he continued, tucking her arm in his and walking as he spoke, “I had come to the conclusion that Haverhythe is no place for Clarissa.” He paused, but she could not determine if uncertainty or reluctance halted his speech. “Nor for you, it seems. I thought, perhaps, you might be more comfortable in Hampshire . . . ?”
“At Lynscombe?” she whispered. They were nearly to the back door of Primrose Cottage.
His chin lifted in a cautious nod.
She very nearly forgot to breathe. Was he really offering to take her and Clarissa to his family home? To accept his child?
What would be her own role in this new arrangement?
“And,” she began, unsure how to ask what she wanted to know. “Would I . . . that is, would we . . .”
He opened his mouth to speak, as if he anticipated her question. But before the words could pass his lips, he stumbled in the near-darkness of the alley. With the toe of his boot, he pushed some large, heavy object into the open so that it could be identified.
The brass banding of her traveling trunk gleamed in the starlight. St. John let out his breath in a low whistle. “Well, well, what have we here? I guess Harold Bessmer isn’t the biggest fool in Haverhythe after all.” He turned to face her, and in the moonlight, his eyes were as pale as seaglass. “Were you expecting my offer, ma’am, or has someone else made you a better one?” When she did not answer, he shoved the trunk against the wall with a muttered oath and moved closer to her still. “Tell me, Sarah, is there somewhere else you’d rather be?”
Fear licked along her spine. “I did not mean—I was angry and frightened, and I—”
“And you were going to run away, just as you did before,” he finished. She could feel the heat of his body through the thin muslin of her gown. “Do you know, for the briefest of moments, I imagined I had caught a glimpse of the woman you really were—generous, creative, loyal. I actually feared I had misjudged you,” he confessed with a wry shake of his head. “But now I remember why I was so reluctant to believe in you.” Tossing up a hand, he brushed her aside. “Well, go then. Do as you please, Sarah.” He began to make his way back down the alley.
She would survive this. She had survived starting over once before, although she did not think she could have, had it not been for her daughter.
Then he spoke the words that she had dreaded hearing from the start.
“But Clarissa comes with me.”
The tongue of fear became teeth. Raw, ragged pain tore through Sarah’s heart, like nothing she had ever felt before. She scurried to catch up to him, stretching out a hand to claw at his coat sleeve. “No!” she pleaded. “You can’t take her away from me.”
His steps faltered only slightly. “I can, and I will.”
He was right, of course—or at least, within his rights. The law gave women no say in what happened to their children, especially not women who had been accused of crimes.
And keeping a nobleman from his child was the one crime of which Sarah was actually guilty.
“You claim she is mine,” he said, looking down at her, his gaze pitiless. “Did you imagine that once I knew of her existence, I would allow her to grow up in Primrose Cottage, to live out her life in Haverhythe, never knowing the truth?”
No.
But a part of her had hoped.
Then again, was it right to condemn the daughter of a nobleman to a life of penury in some obscure fishing village? She had been determined to do whatever it took to keep her child, but that did not mean she had never wondered how it would feel someday to watch a beautiful young woman who might have been the toast of the ton instead marry Bertie Thomas or one of the Mackey boys and then walk the quay at night, dreaming of something better.
Sarah shook her head.
“What I propose will be best for her,” St. John concluded, in a voice that did not invite challenge.
“How can it be best for her to be separated from her mother?” She was teetering on the brink of hysteria, but she managed somehow to keep herself from screeching, knowing that her neighbors could hear every word.
She could have sworn that he flinched at her words, but when he replied, his voice was as cool as it had ever been. “Your actions have decided the matter,” he said.
He had kept his promise to her about the festival. He had asked for nothing in return.
But now the day of reckoning had come.
Curling her fingers against his arm, she recalled Fanny Kittery’s bitter accusations. Despite her new dress, she felt dirty and tattered. There was no use fighting with him any longer. She could not stay in Haverhythe. She could not surrender her daughter. What choice did she have?
“Please,” she whispered. “Take me with you.”
Chapter 16
“I can’t believe it, Mrs. F. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d finally get a look at what’s beyond Haverhythe—and in Lord Haverty’s coach and four at that, with Lieutenant Fairfax for an outrider.” Emily Dawlish turned shining eyes away from the window only long enough to smile at Sarah, and then turned right around again.
“I don’t wish to seem unwelcoming, Emily,” Sarah began. And, indeed, she was very glad of the company and the help on this awful journey. “But how is it that Lieutenant Fairfax came to ask you to join us?”
Emily pulled herself from the lure of the passing landscape at last, and her place at the window was quickly taken by Clarissa. “Well, last night, after the festival, I come across the lieutenant walkin’ up-along. He seemed out o’ sorts. Angry. A cold kind of anger—gave me a chill just to look at him, you know?”
Sarah nodded. She was quite familiar with the expression.
“Still, he asked after me all the same, polite as always. Truth be told, I was in a right huff, too, and I guess I was so distracted I started natterin’ away, told him that some folks think I’m too green to understand the way the world works, too young to know my own mind—my own heart.”
“Who could have said such a thing to you, Emily?” Sarah’s first guess was the girl’s mother, whose resentment of her daughter’s gifts was sometimes thinly veiled. But something about the flush high along Emily’s cheekbones made Sarah think that this time the hard words had been someone else’s, that some man had at last succeeded in turning the beautiful young seamstress’s head—while his own remained unbowed. Poor Emily.
“Oh, don’t you mind about that now, mum. I didn’t really think Lieutenant Fairfax was listenin’ to me rattle on, either. But then he stops me and says, ‘Miss Dawlish’—not ‘Miss Emily,’ but ‘Miss Dawlish,’ right proper, like—‘Miss Dawlish, you’ve given me an idea.’ Well, I didn’t see how that could be, but I says, ‘Yes, sir?’ And he tells me that somethin’ important had happened, and he was leaving Haverhythe first thing to go on a long journey. On his way to ask his lordship for the use of the carriage, he were. But he’d been worryin’ what to do with the wee one. ‘If you, Miss Dawlish,’ he says, ‘was willing to come along, it would solve a problem, it would. The girl would like to have a familiar face by.’ ” Emily dipped her chin toward Clarissa. “ ‘And it’d give you a chance to see a bit more o’ the world, besides.’ ”
There was something almost amusing about hearing St. John’s precise aristocratic voice filtered through Emily Dawlish.
But Sarah did not smile. “So here you are,” she said. Had he hired Emily as nursemaid because he feared Sarah would not see out the trip to its end?
“Aye, here I am.” Emily ran one cautious, curious hand over the plush carriage seat. “Then the lieutenant told me to get along home, and I began to think it were all a grand joke. But first thing this morning, afore the sun was even up, a footman from Haverty Court come a’knockin’ on the door and told me to follow him! Carried my bag and everythin’!”
“Ah. How thoughtful.”
“Did he come for your things, too, mum?” she asked, eyes bright and unsuspecting.
“No. Lieutenant Fairfax was, er, kind enough to carry my trunk himself,” Sarah confessed, remembering the way he had hoisted the trunk to his shoulder in the alleyway last night and walked off toward the Blue Herring without a backward glance. She had taken it for the answer to her plea.
Suddenly exhausted, she leaned back against the squabs and closed her eyes, feeling as if she had made this journey once before—three years past, to be precise. Then, too, she had wondered and worried what lay at the end of the road.
What had made St. John relent and agree to bring her along? She supposed he meant to divorce her, as he had suggested on the night of his arrival. By removing her from Haverhythe, he ensured that the coming war would be waged in a theater of his own choosing, with friends and family arrayed for battle on his side.
A divorce would scar them both, but for her the scars would be permanent. She must resign herself to living out her life despised and despising. Perhaps alone. Certainly lonely.
And what of her child? Would he keep Clarissa with him, accept her as his own? Or would he shunt her aside, leave her with some caretaker—Emily Dawlish, perhaps?
She had allowed herself to imagine that the years had changed him. But this was the familiar coldness, the familiar heartlessness, she had come to expect from him. She could have persuaded herself that the intimacies they had shared in the watchman’s hut were only another of her foolish dreams, if she had ever known enough to dream of such a thing.
Hours later, she felt the carriage slow as they approached an inn, and Clarissa squealed when St. John cantered into view on a dapple-gray gelding.
“Look, Mama! Sijin!”
“What’s that?” Emily asked, peering over her shoulder.
“My husband,” Sarah explained with a nod as he cantered past. She felt vaguely resentful of the fact that her attention had been drawn to his figure on horseback. “St. John is his given name.”
Emily’s eyes grew wide. “Why, I never heard the like, Miss Clarissa. Why don’t you call him Pa?”
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