“I’ll get ’er,” Monk said, and Boy didn’t doubt his word for a minute.
WINTHROP HOUSE, LONDON
OCTOBER 1814
“That’s it, then,” Theo said, his shoulders hunching. “I can’t imagine what his lordship will do now.”
Lily had told the children of their uncle’s presence.
“I’ll blast his liver,” said Sam, but he didn’t sound like he really meant it.
“He’s not a nice man,” Laura Beth said.
Lily sighed. “What’s done is done. I tried to have everything tied up as completely as I could with the viscount’s solicitor, Mr. Jones. If Arnold vents his spleen tonight, well, perhaps the viscount will feel compelled to keep you three.”
“No!”
“I’ll plant him a facer!”
“He’s young.”
Lily tried for a very reasonable, child-convincing voice. “But, my dears, the fact is I’ve lied to him. Evidently it hasn’t occurred to Arnold that I would change my status. If the viscount says something, if Arnold gets distracted, it’s over. There will be absolutely nothing I can do about it.”
“If he finds out and he gets really mad, then we’ll all leave, that’s all.”
Dear Theo, he didn’t know what the real world was like. How cold and difficult and mean it could be. But he and Sam were her protectors, so she tried for a smile and gave each of them a hug.
She donned her best gown two hours later. She kissed the children good-night, promising that she would come and tell them about the dinner. The boys were in a very large bedchamber that adjoined hers and Laura Beth’s. She walked downstairs, managed a travesty of a smile for Duckett, and allowed him to open the drawing room doors.
“Lily!”
She paused a moment on the threshold. Standing directly behind Arnold was Knight, and he looked calm, utterly relaxed, though there was a glint of amusement in his eyes, she was certain of it. He hadn’t guessed a thing. Arnold hadn’t said a word against what he thought to be true about her. Realizing this had the effect of eradicating every ounce of fear she’d felt for Ugly Arnold—for all of one minute. During that precious minute she saw him as a rather pitiful man, with ignoble aims and an unfortunate predilection for her.
“Hello, Mr. Damson,” she said pleasantly, nodding at him. “I trust you had a pleasant journey here to London? I hope Gertrude is well.”
“Gertrude is fine. She is always fine, though she complains of her bile humors, as you know.”
“It is kind of you to come and see that we are settled in and comfortable.”
“No, it isn’t. That isn’t it at all.”
“You don’t wish us to be comfortable? I assure you that Lord Castlerosse is a very polite host. He would never be—”
“That isn’t what I meant.” Arnold wished the damned viscount would take himself off. He tried to calm himself. Right was on his side. But just looking at Lily made nearly all logical thought fly out of his head. She was tastier-looking than even he remembered. He recognized the pale peach silk gown. It was modest and perhaps a bit out of date, but on her it looked wonderful enough for a bloody queen. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a thick braid. Loose tendrils floated down her neck and over her ears. She looked calm, composed, that serene expression of hers he remembered so well firmly fixed on her face.
“I see. What do you mean, sir?”
“I mean that you and the children—”
“Dinner is served, my lord.”
Arnold cursed, luridly, but only Knight heard him. He swallowed the bark of laughter. “Thank you, Duckett. Mr. Damson, would you please give Mrs. Winthrop your arm?”
Lily didn’t want Ugly Arnold within six feet of her, but she merely smiled and waited for him to take her arm. He was trembling and she wondered why. It was she who was the fraud, after all, not he.
When they reached the dining room, Duckett was holding her chair for her. She moved toward him, but Arnold didn’t release her arm. She tugged, but still he did not let her go.
“Mr. Damson, please.”
“Oh,” said Arnold and dropped her arm.
Knight looked at Arnold, a brow flaring up in utter astonishment.
Arnold flushed, Lily prayed he wouldn’t say anything, and Knight decided to let the farce continue. Once they were all seated, he said to Duckett, “You may serve now.”
“Very well, my lord.”
It didn’t take long for Arnold to drop the first shoe. Over a serving of braised mutton he said, “I wish to leave on the morrow, Lily. You will have the children ready.”
It was now or never, she thought, her fork poised halfway between her plate and her mouth. “No, Arnold. We aren’t going anywhere with you. We’re staying here.”
Arnold then dropped the other shoe.
Four
DAMSON FARM
HARROWGATE, ENGLAND
“Yes’m. We’re friends of Lily Tremaine, yer brother’s little gal. We’re awful sorry that old Tris got jiggered, but we’d be mighty glad to see his little gal, yep we would.”
Gertrude Damson managed to glean the essence of this unworldly speech, although it didn’t much reduce her fear of these two villainous-looking creatures. The large man who had spoken looked mean enough, with his beefy face and flat dark eyes, to steal from the vicar’s poor box and then throttle the vicar. As for his weaselly little partner, he looked as if he’d hold down the vicar while his friend was doing him in. She got hold of herself. So they wanted to speak to Lily, did they? They were Lily’s friends? Not likely, but Gertrude didn’t mind, not one bit. She looked about for that fool, Beem. He was nowhere to be seen. Why had he let these creatures in to see her?
Actually, Beem was five pounds richer, but worried nonetheless. He hovered outside the drawing room, praying that the man wouldn’t strangle the mistress.
Gertrude knew deep down that she would have yelled her head off had the men asked to see anyone on Damson Farm except Lily Tremaine, the little slut. She still smarted from Arnold’s miserable infatuation for the trollop. So he wanted the children back, did he? A man who had paid little heed to his own offspring now wanted to be the “father” to poor Tris’s? Gertrude would have spit in his face if he hadn’t been so pitifully obvious. But Lily had packed up the children and simply disappeared. Gertrude had more than a sneaking suspicion of what had caused that flight, but she would never admit it to herself, to the vicar, or to any powers higher than she herself.
Gertrude smiled at the two villains who stood with their grimy hats in their hands in the middle of her pristine drawing room. She said brightly, “Lily Tremaine is in London. I believe she’s now living with Viscount Castlerosse. He was my brother’s cousin, you know. I don’t recall his address.”
Monk wasn’t prepared for such easy capitulation. He frowned at the blousy, big-bosomed woman and wondered if she was lying to him. “Are ye certain?” he demanded, at his most menacing.
Gertrude blinked. “Of course I’m sure. My husband left to fetch her and the children back here.”
“Oh, ah,” said Boy and tugged on Monk’s sleeve. “Let’s scuttle, Monk.”
“All right,” said Monk, still floored at the ease of his success. No need for threats; no need for the delicate little stiletto, his most valued possession and a long-ago gift from his sainted mother; no need to curse. It was disheartening. It wasn’t what he was used to.
After Beem had shown out the two villains, he immediately presented himself to the mistress and told her of their threats to his person if he didn’t allow them entrance. Gertrude just looked at him and held out her hand. “Give it to me, Beem, all of it.”
Beem fluttered, denied, tried his best to look both affronted and innocent, and ended up placing the five-pound note in his mistress’s outstretched hand. It wasn’t fair.
“They wanted Miss Tremaine,” she said as Beem watched her stuff the note down her massive bosom.
Beem was instantly alert. “Oh, dear,” he said. “I
hope you don’t know where she went, ma’am.”
“Of course I know, and I told them, you old fool. Unlike the rest of you absurd men, I don’t think they’ll melt at the sight of her beaux yeux. Now get out of here before I have you kicked off Damson Farm.”
WINTHROP HOUSE
LONDON, ENGLAND
“Tell us everything, Lily. Everything.”
Lily shook the sleep from her eyes and mind. She looked at the clock on the mantel and saw that it was just six o’clock in the morning, and here were the three children, bouncing up and down on her bed. They’d been fast asleep when she’d checked on them last night and so had not awakened them to relate the events of the evening.
“All right. Just give me a minute. All of you get under the covers. It’s cold and I don’t want any of you to become ill.”
Laura Beth, Czarina Catherine stuffed under her arm, slithered down next to Lily and snuggled close. Theo and Sam got under the covers at the end of the bed, propping themselves up with bolsters.
“Will we have to leave, Mama?” asked Laura Beth.
“I don’t—no, we won’t.” Lily prayed she was telling the truth. She simply didn’t know and was afraid to become an optimist. That was what her father had been all his life.
“Tell us,” said Theo, and his voice was frightened. “We can take it.” Lily wanted to hug him close and vow that she would never let harm come to him, never. Instead she gave him a warm smile, what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Well, Ugly Arnold was himself. Early into the evening meal I thought it was all over for us.” She looked toward the portrait of an ugly woman swathed in a stiff farthingale the color of a bilious green. A long-ago Winthrop? With bad taste?
“Mama,” said Sam, impatient, and she brought herself back.
“I’ll tell you all of it.” Not quite all, she amended silently to herself. Not the cursing, the nastiness barely coated with false civility.
“Lily, you and the children will come back with me,” Arnold had said. “I am the children’s uncle by marriage. If you refuse, I will take them away from you and no court in the country would gainsay me.”
“On the contrary, sir,” the viscount had said. “Lily and the children will remain here. Won’t you have some of the curried sweetbreads? Cuthbert is very fond of them and makes them very nearly edible.”
“No!”
“Surely you wouldn’t like to just try them, sir?”
“No, I mean, Lily will come with me!”
Knight didn’t look at her. He’d already seen her pallor, the stark fear in her fine eyes. He’d known her and the children for all of twenty-four hours. It was bizarre. They had turned his well-measured life upside down. And he was enjoying himself immensely. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on the awesome fact that he would be the legal guardian of three—three—children whose existence hadn’t troubled his life until just yesterday. “Mr. Damson, I should prefer to eat my dinner in relative calm and peace. We could discuss this, ah, slight disagreement later.”
“No,” said Arnold, “I want to settle things now.”
“Very well,” said Knight on a long-suffering sigh. “Duckett, you and the footmen please take yourselves off. We will serve ourselves. How, I don’t know, but I assume we will be able to manage.”
“Very good, my lord.” Duckett led Charlie and Ben away, much to their respective disappointment.
“Now, Mr. Damson,” Knight said, “if you won’t try the sweetbreads, perhaps the haricot mutton strikes your fancy?”
“There isn’t any!”
“Ah, I see that you are quite right. Well, then, some fowl à la béchamel?”
“My lord,” said Arnold, growing desperate now at this excess of affability, “I came to dinner simply because I wanted to see Lily and tell her my plans. You are not a close relative; you can have no say in the matter.”
“Not as close as Gertrude, that’s correct. However, Mr. Damson, it really doesn’t matter. The children and Lily remain with me. Very shortly I shall be their legal guardian.”
“You can’t! I won’t allow it! I will get a solicitor—”
“Please do, sir. Perhaps my own solicitor could recommend an able fellow for you. But you know, such a case as this could drag on and on. You, sir, simply haven’t a chance in the long run. No, even though your motives are doubtless elevated to the heavens themselves, you must relinquish all thought of the children. They are mine now, and that’s an end to it.”
“I shan’t allow it, my lord. Never.”
Knight said very gently, “Mr. Damson, did I neglect to tell you that I am excessively wealthy? I did, didn’t I? Forgive me. I am, you know. You haven’t a prayer. Now, can we finish our dinner? Lily, do finish your fricasseed chicken.”
Lily very nearly choked. She couldn’t believe her ears. The viscount was adamant. She had prayed he wouldn’t toss her and the children willy-nilly into Arnold’s panting arms, but to be her champion? It was beyond what she’d expected.
“You just want to bed her. You just want her to be your damned mistress.”
Lily gasped and flushed to her eyebrows, not in embarrassment, but in fury. “You horrible—”
Knight merely raised a hand to shut her off, then gave Arnold a look that shriveled his toes. He felt such a surge of rage at the man’s rudeness, it was all he could do to stop himself from stuffing the sweetbreads down Arnold’s skinny throat.
Arnold, seeing he’d wrought stunned silence, plowed onward, despite his gut fear of the viscount. “Lily, you can’t stay here with him. He’ll ruin you—you’ll have no reputation left at all. You must come home with me. I—Gertrude wants you very much, truly.”
Knight moved back his chair and rose to his feet. He said quietly, “Do stand up, Mr. Damson. I don’t want to break your nose whilst you’re seated.”
Arnold knew he’d gone too far. But it was galling, the cheek of this damned man. Just because he was rich as Croesus and a damned peer of the realm, he believed he could do as he pleased.
“No, I won’t rise. You won’t break my nose—if you do I’ll see you in Newgate.”
Knight couldn’t help himself. Ugly Arnold had turned into a completely unexpected melodramatic comedy. He threw back his head and laughed deeply. “All right,” he said, all neat amiability after he had caught his breath. “I won’t break your nose. It is already rather ugly. And, Lord knows, I shouldn’t like to be in Newgate. Lily, would you please go into the drawing room now? I should like to finish the business with Ug—with Mr. Damson now. Please, that’s right. Don’t worry.”
It was a half an hour later when the viscount joined her in the drawing room. He stood for a moment, just looking at her. She was by the fireplace, the flames crackling behind her, and she was so beautiful he wanted to—
“He’s gone,” Knight said as he walked into the room. “When Ugly Arnold realized there was no hope for it, he folded his proverbial tent. He didn’t want to, mind you, but he did, cursing me, cursing fate, cursing, of all people, his poor wife, Gertrude.”
“He—he didn’t say anything? About me?”
Knight walked to the sideboard and poured himself a brandy. He held up the decanter, but Lily shook her head.
He sipped the wonderfully warm, wonderfully French, brandy. “About you? Well, I did offer him the children, but that treat he refused, which, of course, came as no surprise. Said it wasn’t fair to remove children from their mother. It affected him profoundly—such a consideration.” Knight saw the look of relief sweep over her features. Immense relief. He’d already told her that Arnold was gone. Why this show of relief now? He smiled thinly at her, then attacked.
“This afternoon when we were enjoying our verbal fisticuffs, I recall that I referred to the fact that I was but four years older than you. You corrected me, saying that I was older than twenty-three. Now, why don’t you tell me the truth, all of it.”
Lily had prayed devoutly that that horrid bit of information had slipped by him
in the heat of verbal battle. It hadn’t. She was a fool to have lost her head so easily.
“Lily?” His voice was very, very gentle.
She cleared her throat and said, “I will be twenty on the second of December, just a bit over a month from now.”
“I see.” He felt instant and utter rage toward Tristan. None at all toward Lily, the poor girl. Dear God, Tris had taken her to wife when she’d been all of fifteen. A child. And he’d gotten a child on her immediately. “You were a child bride,” he said, and his anger would have been evident to the meanest of perceptions. “Your father indeed sounds honorable.”
Lily looked at him blankly. The guillotine blade hadn’t dropped. Then she understood. He’d drawn the most awesomely wrong conclusion. She sent a silent thank-you heavenward. “I suppose you could say that I was somewhat young.”
“Somewhat. You were a bloody babe. I didn’t realize Tris was such a—” His bile dried up. Tris was dead. Besides, if Lily had been as beautiful at fifteen as she was now, which was undoubtedly the case, poor Tris hadn’t had a chance.
He forced an elaborate shrug. “We will finalize my guardianship soon. Why don’t you go to bed?”
Lily walked backward to the door, thanking him with every step, until he threw up his hand to cut her off. “Do stow it, Lily. I’m not such a villain to give you over to Ugly Arnold. You or the children.”
She nodded now at the children, just as she’d nodded the previous evening at the viscount when she’d ducked out of the drawing room.
“And that was really all there was to it,” Lily finished and smiled at each of the children. “So I think we will perhaps be all right.”
She heard Theo’s very adult sigh of relief. She stretched forward and patted his arm. “That part about me being very young when I married your father, try to remember and not give it away.”
“We’re safe,” Theo said, and Lily knew he felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.
Night Shadow Page 6