Chapter 11
Lizzie held her breath and shut her eyes. A childish action she could not quell.
A broad accent rolled into her ears. “Well, I never! Come in, Lady Felmont. It’s right kind of you to call.” Little Mrs. Thwaite beamed at her while smoothing her voluminous dark skirts and straightening her neat white cap. Her wrinkled eyes seemed to laugh without having to trouble her mouth, which never seemed to be still.
A wave of words began, but they were directed towards James for being such a fool as to ring the bell instead of opening the door for Lady Felmont, so she didn’t have to stand on the doorstep like regular folk.
Lizzie ignored the stream of words and looked around the hall, lit at the far reaches only by two small leaded windows. In the gloom, she saw a large suit of armor draped with pink gauze threaded with ribbons of every color.
Sea shells littered the surface of an old priory table and each of its chairs. They were a collection from the Folly that had been looted by the Beast’s father, along with anything else movable that took his fancy. Most of it had been sold at auction to provide some ready cash after her Tempest uncles refused to advance more.
“Come in, Lady Felmont.” A tug on her arm brought Lizzie back to the moment. She was getting used to being pulled about by Thwaites.
Of all the silly things in the world, men must be the silliest. The Beast had installed his foster mother at the Priory and here was James by her side, looking for all the world as if he were embarrassed by it. She gave him a reassuring smile as she was hauled into the maw of the ancient house. It smelled of age and polish.
This was why James was acting as if something dire had happened. Even now, he hovered in the doorway reluctant to enter.
Lizzie smiled down at his mother. “Mrs. Thwaite, how pleased I am to see that the Priory has at last got a sensible resident.” Had the Beast hired a French maid for his foster mother? Had James known and been embarrassed by it? It was the only explanation she could think of. Even the viscount dared not sin in front of this tiny, formidable woman.
“Let go, Ma, you can’t pull Lady Felmont about like that. You must excuse my mother, Lady Felmont.” James looked about nervously. “If you’ll excuse me, Lady Felmont, I’ll just go.”
Lizzie watched him flee. He closed the door on his way out. She’d no such nervous wobbles now, not when she was with Mrs. Thwaite. The thought that she might actually get to see the Beast being beaten, or clattered as James called it, by the small, smiling woman seemed unlikely, but Lizzie could hope.
“Do come into the parlor and sit down, Lady Felmont, and I’ll get our Molly to make us some tea. Though, I might have to get that nasty hag who reigns in the kitchen to turn her hand to it. Can you believe I am not supposed to go in there and do for myself? Rubbish, I say! But it’s right kind of you to call. I know I shouldn’t be here. Told his lordship it wouldn’t do. If you could persuade him to let me go home, I’d be grateful to you, Lady Felmont.”
“Nonsense, Mrs. Thwaite! This old house needs some sense, for I’m sure it has seen none before you arrived. I am very pleased to call you neighbor.” Lizzie let herself be led towards the parlor door.
A shadow appeared at the end of the long hall. The Beast moved into the light. He had been listening. Drat the man!
Colored ribbons streamed over his shoulders, falling from a circle of pink gauze that crowned his dark hair. No doubt, he had been amusing some little Thwaites by letting them dress the suit of armor and himself with girlish finery. Lizzie hid a bubble of nervous laughter with a cough.
The warmth began again, as her body remembered his. Her blood raced in a most disquieting way.
Strange, how his presence filled the hall. How it grew darker, gloomier. His dignity, and her sudden embarrassment over her body’s reaction, made it impossible to even mention his unusual attire.
“Welcome, dearest wife.” He approached close enough to lean down from his great height to kiss her cheek. She looked down, unable to meet his gaze. The ribbons he wore swayed forward to flutter between them, to land on her breasts with the lightest of touches, like a host of butterflies. Lizzie held her breath as the Beast’s lips touched the corner of her mouth.
To her relief, Mrs. Thwaite intruded with a sharp sound, drawing his attention. The little woman frowned and gestured furtively to his head.
He returned her gaze, the picture of innocence. “I am being polite, Ma.”
“Get that thing off your head, our Dace! Now look what you made me say in front of Lady Felmont.” The little woman bustled closer to take Lizzie’s arm again. “Take no notice of him, my lady. He’s in one of his giddy moods. Come into the parlor and sit down.”
The Beast did not look the least bit giddy. His great long face seemed no different to Lizzie, except, there was an odd expression in his eyes. He smiled at her as she was pulled away from him. Her traitorous lips responded in kind before she could stop them.
In the parlor, he insisted on seating her near one of the small leaded windows with a view of the lawn leading to the entrance of a shrubbery maze. Lizzie could see Molly’s two boys playing with a small wooden chest as they took turns to dig a hole in one of the flowerbeds scattered like bouquets strewn on the grass.
The fire in the hearth was not lit. The Beast stared at it mournfully, his dark clothes blending into the ancient paneling on the walls. A portrait of his mother, dead these ten years or more, graced the far wall between two sconces.
“That’s better.” Mrs. Thwaite removed the crown from his head and the stray ribbons from his arms while he bent meekly to her command. “Now don’t go sulking over the fire. It’s the middle of summer. If you are cold, you need to get your blood moving. Stop larking about, your lordship, go and fetch the little lady so she can pay her respects to your wife.”
Lizzie wondered if morals were different in the lower orders. Just who was in residence at the Priory? Surely James’s mother could not have moved in with one of the Beast’s whores?
The viscount gave a great mournful sigh, sounding very much like Lizzie’s mare. He shook his head and took himself off, his dark jacket covered in bits of grass at the back.
Mrs. Thwaite saw it and bit her lip.
Tea arrived on a large silver tray carried by a handsome footman once employed at Felmont’s Folly. His dignity was no match for Mrs. Thwaite, who found fault with everything from his disdainful expression to the disgraceful way he lazed about doing women’s work. The footman slunk away with reddened ears.
Twenty minutes passed in deep conversation, most of it conducted by Mrs. Thwaite who drank her tea from the saucer with gusto. Lizzie could scarcely concentrate for wondering who the Beast had been sent to fetch. Had he been overcome with lust? What was keeping him?
“Found his lordship in the church, I did, after his christening,” recounted Mrs. Thwaite with a cheery laugh. “Can you believe it? They’d left him there, forgotten all about him. His mother had been taken ill, and his father had a new whore. He’d rushed off to get on with it. Never was a man more—I shouldn’t say it if you weren’t a married lady—he were besotted with carnality. And there was the little mite tucked into a corner of the family pew. Not a sound did he make, near death from want of milk, I thought. So I gave him the breast, I did. Almost drowned him, for I’d always a copious supply, more than our Jim needed. By the time they came back for him, our Dace was sucking like a champion and he howled fit to wake the dead when I tried to take him off.”
Lizzie knew the story. His mother had refused to have her son in the house lest he die like all his brothers. She had given the care of him to the tiny woman who lived in a one-room cottage on the fell with her brood of healthy children.
“The viscount’s mother were right strange, weren’t she?” said Mrs. Thwaite. “Never looked at him but she wept. Touched in the head by sickness, I think. Not that his father was much better. After our Dace was seven years old, I was ordered to flog the lad if he came to visit us. And God help Dace if he said a w
ord like we speak, instead of like the gentry speaks—flogged till the blood ran, he was. His father were a right rotten sod. But our Dace is a good lad. I hope you won’t make him unhappy, my lady, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Not at all, Mrs. Thwaite.” Lizzie drank her tea, thankful nothing more needed to be said to make the tiny woman beam.
“Oh, here he is, talk of the devil.”
The Beast entered, leading by the hand a child about five or six years old. “Lizzie, I’d like to introduce you to my daughter. Sarah, this is my wife, Lady Felmont.”
Blond hair framed Sarah’s pretty face. She was sturdily built, the picture of health, though she tried to hide behind the viscount. She peered round his legs to look at Lizzie with large green eyes. The little girl dipped a curtsey from her hiding place. Curiosity got the better of her or the Beast’s hand brought her to stand beside him.
Lizzie could not believe her eyes or her ears. The enormity of his sin struck her dumb. She remembered to take a breath of air. Sarah was his daughter! The child was the image of her lovely unfortunate mother, Sarah Williams. At so young an age the child gave promise of a great beauty with the same clear green eyes, the same blond curls and lovely skin, the same curve of her lips as her mother. Only her nose, not yet grown into prominence, attested to her Felmont blood.
To give the Beast every chance to clear himself, she asked, “Your daughter?” She was pleased her voice sounded calm, if rather high-pitched.
She looked up to see his warning frown. “Yes, dear wife, Sarah is my daughter. Her mother is, alas, not in residence.”
The child frowned up at the Beast. “My mother is dead, so she can’t be here.”
Sarah had more sense than the viscount. Everyone knew Sarah Williams had died of smallpox. Debauched, licentious, Beast! Did he regret the poor unfortunate woman had managed to escape him. Sarah Williams had not dared return to visit her family in the village until the Beast’s father had been safely buried in the family crypt. She had not long survived him.
Lizzie was glad she had been able to assist little Sarah’s beautiful mother to run away from the Beast’s father. Little had she known why! No wonder his father had raged and threatened—his mistress had been seduced by his son!
Lizzie looked down, not daring to meet the Beast’s eyes lest she betray her shock and horror at learning he had seduced his father’s mistress. She could hear Mrs. Thwaite busy herself with the teacups. The infamous viscount tapped a booted foot on the polished floor.
Were there not women enough in England and on the Continent for his evil deeds, must he practice his satanic arts on his father’s mistress?
It made her head spin.
Mrs. Thwaite took the teacup and saucer from her. The rattling sound stopped. Lizzie looked up to see everyone staring at her.
She said in a carefully modulated voice, “I am pleased to meet you, Sarah.” It was not the little girl’s fault. Nor was it her mother’s fault—that unfortunate being almost torn apart by the lusting Beast and his cold, merciless father.
The Beast’s father in full hue and cry after his mistress had been a frightening sight. Now she understood why he was in such a rage, Lizzie could not blame him. Who’d have thought she could ever have felt sympathy for the Beast’s father? It quite took her breath away. He’d been cuckolded by his son.
“Are you well, my dear? Care to take a turn around the garden with me to clear your head?” How politely he phrased the invitation to be private with him, to bully her or worse.
Lizzie smiled up at him, determined not to leave Mrs. Thwaite’s side. “How kind of you to offer, dear husband, but I’d much prefer to stay here and talk to Sarah.”
After the child’s initial hesitation wore off, Lizzie was the recipient of many childish confidences. The Beast watched all the while, as if to reassure himself Lizzie was not going to be rude to his daughter.
“I’m named for my mother,” said the little girl. “She died of smallpox. I’ve been vaccinated and I didn’t cry at all. My father is going to take me to meet my relatives. Did you ever meet my mother?”
Lizzie’s tongue dithered in her mouth. “Was she as pretty as you?”
“Yes, my father says she was very beautiful. She lived in a small house in London, close by my other father’s home. He never lets me visit, but my real Papa is going to let me go there to see where my mother lived.”
Who was her other father?
“Never listen to the child babbling about her mother. Be thankful you have a father who wants to look after you. Poor little bast–” said Mrs. Thwaite.
“Ma!” The Beast scooped up the child with a warning glance and carried her away.
Moments later Sarah’s squeals of delight came from the garden as she played a dashing game of tag with the two small boys and the viscount, who appeared inept and easily caught.
A tall, elegant woman appeared on the lawn to claim her. Mrs. Thwaite pointed her out so there could be no mistake. “Foreign, she is. Nice enough, though. Madame Celine, we are to call her. She came with Sarah. Said it was more than her life was worth to let the little one go alone with the viscount and our Molly. Right funny ideas she has, but then she is French. They talk it together. You’d never guess that little lass is as English as me to hear her chattering away.”
The tiny woman heaved a sigh. “Beauty is a terrible curse. I was always glad my lasses never attracted any attention from the nobs. I believe a man has to marry the woman who quickens from his seed.”
Lizzie waited for more to be said, but Mrs. Thwaite shrugged and turned the conversation away from the sins of the nobility. “Sarah has a maid of her own and another one to wait on the first one. Fancy that! Well, I suppose you had the same when you were a child, Lady Felmont.”
Lizzie nodded and smiled until she saw the Beast fall to the lawn exhausted. The two boys stood over him and cheered.
The game had ended.
The viscount didn’t want to stay any longer. He insisted Lizzie drive him back to Felmont’s Folly. James stood behind with Arthur, both as silent as statues. When they slowed to go past the Folly’s gatehouse, the viscount ordered her to stop.
She really had no choice about it. He helped her down and turned to lead the way to the path through the trees to the lake.
The curricle continued down the long drive to the stables, driven by James with Arthur sitting on the seat next to him. Lizzie watched them go with regret. She gathered her dignity to follow the Beast, who lingered on the path as if unsure she’d willingly go with him.
“Well, my bride, what have you to say to me?” He watched her with one corner of his mouth quirked down. When she made no answer, he strode down the path with his easy loose-limbed gait, pausing now and then to brush the branches away before they snagged her skirts. At last, they reached the far end of the lake.
“Nothing at all to say?” he enquired, when Lizzie stopped to admire the sight of the great house reflected on the water.
She studied the view. They were far from the spot he had thrown her in all those years ago.
A wetting seemed not so dreadful now. Even being drowned was a better fate than a slow and oozing death. She was married to a man who thought nothing of debauching his father’s mistress. Whores and demi-reps were only an urge away from his licentious body.
“Hellfire! Lizzie!” The viscount eyed her with distaste. “Would you rather I cast her off, did not claim her, love her and raise her?”
Lizzie recognized the truth of his words. He could even be commended for his fatherly instincts. Was she expected to praise him instead of flinging his sin in his face?
She didn’t want to argue with him about it. She saw no advantage in accusing him of ravishing his father’s mistress. Far better to watch silently for him to sin again. She’d never been any good at verbal battles. Far better to comprehend the depth and magnitude of his depravity, then give him enough rope to hang himself.
He gripped her arm. Lizzie shook him
off. He groaned with pain and clutched his shoulder. “Gently Lizzie, I have jostled my shoulder playing too many games today.” He moved to stand in front of her to block her view of the Folly. “I shall take care of her and she shall grow up to be a lady, but I’ll need your help to raise her. Ma can’t do it, neither can Molly. Are you so cold-hearted that you cannot find room in there for one little girl?”
Lizzie answered in a low voice, not able to meet his accusing gaze. “I am not in the habit of being unkind to children. Even when we are divorced, I promise to help Sarah as much as I am able.” Lizzie turned from him and walked on around the lake.
His boots crunched on the path after her. “Spit it out, Lizzie. I give you permission to upbraid me on this matter. You have been swallowing your tongue since you met my daughter. Let it out. Say whatever you have to say, but know this, we are not getting divorced any time soon. You have promised me legitimate children and, by heaven, you will give them to me.”
“Do not blaspheme, Felmont. I am yours only until you sin, then the devil can claim his own.”
“Dearest wife, you have just broken your word and our pact, or are you warning me out of the warmth of your desire for me. Have you forgotten you must pretend you love me during the day?”
“Love doesn’t have to be tainted by desire. I forbid you to talk of low things to me. A loving wife must surely warn her husband when she fears he is dooming himself to a fiery eternity, dear husband.”
How was she to pretend she loved him? Yet she must or doom herself to submit to his lust at any time and place. A shiver rippled down her body. It reminded her of how she had convulsed in his bed.
Her cheeks warmed.
“Let me thank you with a kiss.” He suddenly appeared on the path in front of her. So close she almost walked into him.
“At midnight if you must, Felmont!” Lizzie stepped smartly to the side. Did he think of nothing else?
“Oh, much more than a kiss then, Lizzie, but a good place to begin.”
She followed the path around the lake with the Beast beside her. From the look on his face he was planning licentious midnight deeds. They rounded the Chinese willow tree where a stream trickled over tumbled stones after descending from the fell and skirting the Folly. A garden wall belonging to the dower house was just visible through the trees.
Both of them halted at the sight of Mr. Rackham perched on a rock a few yards from the shore. He stood like a heron, while staring at Felmont’s Folly as if in a trance.
Lizzie Tempest Ruins A Viscount (Felmont Brides Series Book 1) Page 13