by Jude Knight
“You’re wrong, Overton. In any case, what you said about Society? I can think of ways to bury her past, if she marries into the lower levels of the peerage, but a duchess? When I choose a bride, the harpies and the gossip rags will dig until they’ve uncovered every wart and fart.” He shook his head again.
“It could be a daughter. The baby, I mean.” Hugh was surprised to find he was considering the outrageous proposition.
Aldridge obviously understood. “I still have to present the idea to Becky,” he warned. “She didn’t much take to you, Overton.”
Chapter Twelve
Once Overton had agreed, Aldridge was keen to get back to London, but had to wait for his friend to fire the governess and arrange his absence. Overton fetched his old nurse from the cottage he had given her for her old age, put her in charge of the girls, and told them they could have a holiday till he returned.
Finally, they were ready, or Aldridge was. The luggage coach had left at first light, but Overton insisted on waiting till his daughters were awake.
Aldridge stood with the horses, watching Overton say farewell.
“I will bring a new governess with me,” Overton said.
Little Emmaline reached for her sister’s hand, and Sophriana said, “But not a pinchy-pokey governess, Papa? A nice governess?” Overton dropped to his knees and took both girls into his arms. “A kind, gentle governess,” he promised, and the look he shared with Aldridge made it a knight’s vow. “And perhaps another playmate, my dears. Would you like that?”
The girls agreed, cautiously, that they would. Prompted, they curtseyed polite farewells to Aldridge, kissed Overton, and waved. They were still standing on the steps, waving, when the two riders paused at the top of the hill and looked back.
They loved their stepfather, and he loved them. If Becky would agree to the marriage; if Overton didn’t stuff it up with his starched notions; Aldridge’s child would be safe, secure, and loved.
During the ride to London, they honed their strategy. They’d use the separation between the Winstanley and Darling identities, and Aldridge would marshal his army of female relatives and friends to the support of the new Baroness Overton.
Overton pointed out that many people knew, or at least suspected, that Becky Winstanley and Rose Darling were the same woman. “We need her to be seen in two places at once,” he said.
“Or two of her in the same place,” Aldridge agreed. “Pity Sarah isn’t a little older. She is going to look just like her mother in a few years.”
“The Astley rider.” Overton seemed to think that meant something.
“What has an Astley rider to do with anything?”
But when Overton explained he’d seen a mirror image of Becky at Astley’s, Aldridge could see the advantage. If they could find her, Overton’s fiancée, Mrs Winstanley, and Aldridge’s mistress, Mrs Darling, could meet face-to-face in front of the largest grouping of high society the plotters could find.
By the time they reached London, they had gone over their plans a dozen times. All they needed now was Becky’s agreement.
“No.” Becky didn’t even pause to think. Baron Overton? “Have you run mad, Aldridge? No, I will not marry Lord Overton.”
“Hear me out, Becky,” Aldridge pleaded. At least he’d had the grace to see her alone, leaving the baron in the parlour to entertain himself.
“What could you possibly say, Aldridge? Overton is a drunkard and a womaniser. He would be a worse husband than you!”
“Not usually, Becky. He has a bit of a blowout when he comes down to London, but I’m probably to blame for that.”
“Huh!” she said. “So he is weak-willed, too. Anyway, he despises me. It would never work, Aldridge.”
Aldridge, his half-smile more exasperated than amused, rubbed one hand over his head, ruining his valet’s careless tousling.
“I swear, I’ve already had this conversation! The two of you are perfect for one another. Yes, Becky, he judged and condemned you without a hearing, just as you have done him. But he was big enough to admit he might be wrong and agree to at least get to know you.”
Infuriating man! How could he put her in such a position?
“You persuaded him, you mean. And what does ‘get to know you’ mean?”
“Conversations. Walks in the park. Visits to a museum, if you like. He will treat you with respect, Becky, I promise. He is deciding whether to court you.”
“Hah! I saw the way he looked at me. He called me a whore, Aldridge! How can you make promises on his behalf?” She paced the room, her skirts swinging with each stride. The man was a dunderhead. Could he not see?
“I have his promise, Becky, and he is a man of his word.” Aldridge added fuel to her anger by staying calm.
“I cannot risk Sarah. I cannot.” Her deepest fear and her trump card.
“Hugh has two daughters who need a mother, Becky. The older is Sarah’s age. You lose nothing, risk nothing, if you give the man a hearing. Is it not worth the chance to give all three girls a complete family?”
She argued some more, but he had a counter for every point. In the end, she said: “Very well. I will talk to him. But do not expect me to change my mind.”
Aldridge went off to the study she kept for him, to wade into the ducal post that followed him everywhere, leaving Becky to see Lord Overton on her own. He was sober and on his best behaviour.
“Black, oolong, or green tea, my lord?” she asked.
“Oolong, please. No milk, thank you.”
She poured his cup and presented it to him, returning the sugar basin to the tray when he refused. She poured the same for herself—oolong with no milk or sugar.
“You prefer the oolong?” he asked.
Did he think she drank it just to imitate him? “I do, my lord.”
“Your daughter... I trust Miss Winstanley is in good health?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“She appeared happy with her doll.”
“She was, my lord.”
“I bought dolls for my girls.” Overton was twisting his tea bowl round and round in the palms of his large hands. Capable hands, they looked. Well-manicured and clean, but a little worn, with calluses and healing abrasions from recent physical work. “They were happy too. With the dolls, I mean.”
“I am sure they liked them. Would you care for cake, my lord?”
“No, thank you. This is very good tea.”
Becky nodded. Only the best for Aldridge and, by extension, any household he supported.
Overton cast about for something else to say. “May I say, your dress is very charming?”
It was a morning gown in her signature powder blue; one of the Winstanley gowns, thank goodness. She would not have been able to face this interview in a Rose of Frampton gown. High-necked and long-sleeved, it armoured her against unwanted attention, and the high waist disguised her swelling belly.
“Thank you.” She should make a bit more of an effort. “My modiste tells me these slight puffs are all the rage in Paris,” she offered.
“Ah. Very nice.” Overton lapsed into silence again, exploring the room with his eyes, as if another conversational topic might be hiding in a corner or on top of the bookshelf.
“I see you are reading about roses?” he managed. He must have excellent eyesight. The catalogue she’d been exploring was across the room.
“A dream of mine, my lord. I have no garden here in London, but I would dearly love to grow roses.” As she warmed to the topic, she forgot her self-consciousness in her enthusiasm, explaining the difference between the English roses and new double Scotch roses just now appearing on the market. He did his polite best to keep up, poor man, until she took pity.
“My lord, I am sure you have no more interest than I in the latest Paris fashions, and very likely, less interest in the best plant food for roses. Shall we discuss this ridiculous scheme my Lord Aldridge has cooked up?”
That got his attention. While she talked of planting roses wi
th a nail and a bone in the hole, he had been staring into his cup, but he jerked his head up, his eyes wide. “Are you so set against it, then?”
“Gloves off, my lord?” She returned his nod with a brisk one of her own. “Very well. I will not marry where I am despised. And I cannot imagine what Lord Aldridge has said or done to convince you to consider it. You think me a whore, and you are right. I have sold my body since I was ten-and-five. I spent three years in a brothel, and have been passed from protector to protector ever since.
“And I tell you this, my lord. You look down on me, but the women of Society?” She gripped her gown in white-knuckled fists, the better to keep her hands from sweeping the tea service off the table in a satisfying crash. “The ‘ladies’ you and Aldridge lie with? Who will abandon all that is moral and right—risk their reputations, their families, and their health for a bit of frivolity? For a GAME?” The word echoed in the room as she took a deep breath, trying to still her shaking.
When she could trust her voice again, she said, “They have a choice. You and Aldridge have a choice. I was given none. I have done what I must to survive.” She glared at Overton, trembling with grief and anger.
“I...” Overton hunched one shoulder slightly as if to shelter from her words. “I cannot argue, Mrs Winstanley. You have seen me at my worst, and you are right. I have no right to condemn you for behaviour I have been willing to exploit, and I have no idea what drove you to this way of life.
“Aldridge would not tell me about your past. He said that was up to you. But he is a powerful advocate for you. He believes you would be a good wife for me and a good mother for my stepchildren.”
Becky, despite her misgivings, had to admit Overton was a powerfully appealing advocate for his own case. He seemed sincere. And she had found him attractive from that first night, the scarred side of his face just adding to the charm of the other. “I do not understand why you would even consider it, my lord. The baby I am carrying might be a son. Have you thought of that? He would disinherit any sons of your own who came after. Unless you repudiated him.”
“Did Aldridge not tell you?” Overton shifted in his seat and picked at his cuff. “I cannot sire a child. Your baby, if he is a boy, will be the next Overton. If not, the title becomes extinct. I have no relatives, you see.”
She took a turn around the room. This would be much easier if he had remained the disdainful, half-drunk, leering buffoon of a few weeks ago. Sober and respectful, he was temptation personified. But it would never work. “I would expect fidelity, my lord. And sobriety.”
“So would I,” he responded.
Fair enough. Most of the barques of frailty she knew lightened the gloom of their lives with drink or opium. Or laudanum, which combined the two. She had started down that track in the brothel; had nearly died of an overdose. She still shuddered at the memories of the withdrawal, and the cravings she fought afterward. “I do not drink, my lord, and keep my promises. If ever I marry, I will be true to my vows.” She could not resist emphasising the final ‘I’.
“So will I,” said the baron.
Becky sank back into her chair again. “I must do what is right for my daughter.”
“If you marry me, she will also be my daughter.”
“Aldridge says you have a stepdaughter the same age as my Sarah. Ten years.”
That was one of the ways Aldridge had persuaded her to at least consider Overton’s offer: that he was a good father to his two stepdaughters.
“My Sophie is nearly eleven, and Emma is eight. They would welcome another sister.”
If only it could be! Sarah, with sisters and a father, and a safe future as the acknowledged daughter of a baron. But Sarah would not be safe, would she? “You tempt me. But no, my lord. The answer must be no.”
“Is it because I am scarred?” he asked.
“No!” Indignant, she slammed the palm of her hand on the table between them and leapt to her feet. “I am not that shallow!”
“My wife could not bear to look at me. The face is bad enough, but it continues down almost to the knee.”
His matter-of-fact tone tore at her heart and dragged the truth from her. “It is not your scars, my lord, but mine.” The rasp in her voice came from a painfully stiff throat, but she forced the words out.
“I have lived a life you cannot imagine and my soul is sick from it. I am afraid, Lord Overton; afraid I will come to love you and your daughters and then you will cast me out.”
She paced the room like a caged animal, faster and faster, as if she could escape her past, were she only swift enough. But there was no escape, and it was cruel to tempt her so. She flung the words at him. “When my history becomes known, and surely it will, and Society takes up against me, you will cast me out, if only to protect your daughters.”
He caught her then, stopped her in her stride with a hand on each shoulder. His dark eyes sought the raw wounds he and Aldridge were making of her scars. “I’ve set a plan with Aldridge to establish you safely, and I promise you this. Whatever comes, I will stand by you and your children. If you and I agree to wed, I will never abandon you.”
He was taller than Aldridge, and broader. She felt tiny next to him. But his hands were gentle and his eyes kind and sincere. Could she trust him? The quiet anonymous life of a middle-class widow would be safe, but the dream she had outlined to Aldridge was ahead of her, if she dared reach for it. Perhaps even love. He would be easy to love, this battered warrior who sheltered orphans and was prepared to change his mind when he was wrong.
“I will think about it,” she conceded, and he smiled, the unscarred side of his face glowing with pleasure.
“As will I.”
Chapter Thirteen
After they agreed to consider a future together, Mrs Winstanley took him to see Sarah, with Aldridge trailing along.
“Do you feel better now, Lord Overton?” the little girl asked, politely.
Hugh had no wish to discuss their last meeting. “I am, thank you.” What could he say to give her mind another direction? “How is your doll, Miss Winstanley?” he asked.
Her eyes lit, but she retained her reserve. “Very well, thank you, Sir.”
“My daughters liked the ones I bought them in the same shop.” And talked about them and showed them off to anyone who would listen. Surely this grave child would take the bait? “I chose one with dark hair for Sophie, and fair hair for Emma. Sophie’s doll is named Frances, and Em’s is Charlotte.”
Sarah admitted her doll was called Anne, and—at a suggestion from her mother—went to fetch the toy and its wardrobe. After half an hour sitting on the carpet in the parlour, displaying all the doll’s treasures, Sarah had thawed only slightly, largely because ‘Uncle Lord Aldridge’ was down on the carpet with them.
If Hugh made little progress with the daughter, he had, at least, pleased the mother. When he left after the proper thirty minutes, she gave him the warmest smile he’d yet seen.
“We are invited to Mrs Winstanley’s for the evening,” Aldridge told him, when they met to dress for dinner at Haverford House. “Miss Winstanley’s actually, but Becky is moving to stay with her daughter.” He exaggerated his sad face, pushing out his lips and drooping his mouth and his eyes. “She says she cannot lie with one man while she is contemplating marrying another.”
Hugh forbore to comment. Or to punch Aldridge, as the man deserved.
“She is still under contract,” Aldridge complained. Hugh rethought the punch, then saw Aldridge’s lip twitch in a half-smile. The man used to needle the masters at school just so—to relieve boredom, satisfy curiosity, or out of sheer devilry.
“Poking the bear, Aldridge?”
Aldridge just laughed.
Hugh’s admiration for Mrs Winstanley grew in the course of the evening.
Aldridge’s claim that she came from the gentry was borne out. She showed it in a thousand ways. Gentle manners and speech could be learned, of course, but she was natural, and at ease, and never made
a slip.
She showed a keen mind, too, and was clearly well read, discussing with equal ease the impact of enclosure on the good health of farming workers, Walter Scott’s new narrative poem, and the war on the Peninsula.
They left early, but not before Mrs Winstanley had accepted his invitation to go driving the next day.
Becky and Sarah were waiting when Lord Overton arrived at two o’clock, just as he had promised. Becky paused on the doorstep. He had borrowed a curricle from Aldridge; she recognised the horses. It would be a tight fit for the three of them.
Sarah had no such qualms, and was already down in the street, renewing her acquaintance with Prince and Brown Beauty, chattering away to the groom Lord Overton had also borrowed, another old acquaintance.
“We’ll tuck Sarah between us where she will be warm, and out of the wind,” Lord Overton said, correctly interpreting her concern. “Neither of you are large. We will fit.”
It was a tight fit, and at first Sarah shrunk away from Lord Overton. Soon, though, she was telling him everything she knew about the horses, as they made their way through the streets to the park, the groom up behind.
With his focus divided between Sarah and the horses, Becky was free to watch him, and to wonder what life would be like as his wife. If he continued to be kind and respectful, if he were not putting on an act, if this plan of Aldridge’s worked...
By the end of the drive, Sarah and Lord Overton were friends, and he cemented the friendship by producing sugar cubes for her to feed the horses. She went to her governess and the schoolroom in full charity with him.
Lord Overton stood in the hall, smiling, watching her skip up the stairs.
“Do you intend to charm me by charming my daughter, Lord Overton?” Becky challenged.
He turned, laughing. “Is it working, Mrs Winstanley?” Then, serious again, “But no, I wanted to charm her, as you call it, for her own sake. Is she always so quiet and good?”
“She does not take easily to strangers,” Becky said. Sarah had reason to be wary, and Becky would do well to remember it. Still, Lord Overton’s attempt to win Sarah’s favour was more to his credit than not.