by Georgie Lee
The chaise hadn’t even stopped before he tossed open the door and jumped down.
‘Good evening, Mr Connor,’ Walter greeted him as Justin strode into the house.
‘Where’s Mrs Connor?’
‘In her room,’ Walter stuttered, surprised at Justin’s curt query. It wasn’t like him to dismiss the man, but he wasn’t interested in the butler, only his wife and her reassurance all was well.
He took the stairs two at a time as he continued to chew on Lady Rockland’s pronouncement. The woman was probably driven by jealousy at seeing her husband’s illegitimate daughter married while her daughter languished for another Season. Justin wouldn’t believe her story until he heard it from Susanna herself.
He flung open the door to her room. She looked up from whatever she was working on with Mrs Robinson at the writing table. She smiled at him, bringing Justin to a halt. He could say nothing and trust in this woman who regarded him with an eagerness and faith few had granted him before.
She set down her pen, her pleasure at his return changing to worry. ‘What’s wrong? Did my father renege on our agreement?’
He glanced to Mrs Robinson who, without a word, excused herself, drawing the door shut behind her.
‘No, he’s purchasing the wines, but he made it clear there’ll be no further help after the masque.’
She drummed her fingers on the desk. ‘We never negotiated for any and we should have. That was my fault.’
‘It wouldn’t have made a difference. He and Lady Rockland are quite eager to see the back of us, as you expected.’
She didn’t gloat over having been correct, but seemed to mourn with him Lord Rockland’s lack of support. Again he considered biting his tongue, but the uncertainty tearing at him wouldn’t allow it.
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ she asked, twisting the pen between her fingers.
‘I encountered Lady Rockland as I was leaving.’ He pressed his fists to his hips, unable to hold back the question which had tormented him since leaving Grosvenor Square. ‘She said you’re carrying Lord Howsham’s child.’
The colour drained out of her cheeks as she dropped the pen to clatter against the table top.
‘Tell me it’s a lie,’ he demanded, wanting to hear the words from her mouth, to soothe the anger roiling inside him. ‘Tell me.’
Her shoulders slumped in a defeat he felt in his soul, and everything between the two of them shattered as the truth rippled through her eyes.
‘Did you know before the wedding?’ he demanded, wishing for a leather dummy from his pugilist club so he could pound out the rage rising inside him. She’d deceived him, all the while pretending faith.
‘I tried to tell you at Gunter’s, but you wouldn’t let me.’
‘So this is my fault?’
She jumped to her feet, reaching for him before pulling her hand back. ‘No, of course not.’
‘I think it is, for letting you and your entire damned family take me for a dupe.’
‘They aren’t my family and it wasn’t about how I could fool you. It was never about that.’ She raised her voice to match his, balling her hand at her sides. ‘I was afraid I’d lose you or you’d reject me and the child. You don’t know what it’s like to be a bastard, to have people scorn you for something that isn’t your fault. To bear a bastard would’ve meant being condemned twice and subjecting the child to an even worse childhood than I knew. Lord Rockland would have thrown me out if I hadn’t gone through with the marriage and then where would I have been? Where would the child have been? I couldn’t condemn a baby to a future in the gutter because of my mistake.’
‘I wouldn’t have turned my back on you.’ Justin stared into the fire, following the rise and fall of each flame as it consumed the coal. ‘I know what happens to women who end up in the streets. I see it each time I visit Moll Topp’s to investigate a potential client’s debts. I see the gaunt, disease-ridden women devoid of hope or happiness, with their daughters washing the filthy sheets until they’re old enough to earn their keep on their backs while their brothers are stuffed up chimneys until they contract soot wart. I know Lord Howsham forced himself on you, taking advantage of your loneliness and lack of experience to satisfy his own lust. If you’d believed in me enough to tell me the truth, I wouldn’t have consigned you or the child to such a fate. Instead you took me for a fool and it burns more than your deceit.’
She laid one hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Justin. I’m sorry I hurt you, I’m sorry I deceived you and didn’t give you the chance to decide.’
He shrugged off her touch. ‘Apologies aren’t enough.’
‘I don’t know what else to say, or do.’ Susanna stared into the fire, the pain etching her face touching him. He hardened himself against it. He didn’t want to pity her or understand her suffering, not with the storm of emotions surging inside him and the new worry eating at him.
‘You’re not to do anything which might endanger your life, or the child’s, do you hear me?’ He wouldn’t have them solve their problems that way or lose Susanna to the darkness of death where nothing, no conversation or the passing of time, could ever bring her back. The idea tore at his insides with claws as sharp as her dishonesty.
Susanna nodded. His insistence she not risk her life or the baby’s spoke to his integrity and increased the shame draping her like a shroud.
‘What will happen between us?’ she asked, as though he was as much a stranger to her now as he’d been the morning they’d entered into this agreement.
‘I don’t know.’ Without another word he turned and left, the door lingering open behind him. Then she heard the back door slam and him call out in the mews for the chaise.
In the dim light of the bedroom, she dropped down on her knees to the rug, buried her face in her hands and wept.
* * *
Justin jabbed his fists at Philip, first one, then another, each time missing his friend. Justin didn’t back up, or try a new position, but swung blindly, his failure to strike anything fuelling the rage hollowing out his innards.
‘You’re sloppy tonight. What’s wrong?’ Philip dodged another hit and Justin growled with his frustration. He shouldn’t be taking out his fury on his friend, but on the punching bag in the corner. With so many other men crowding the club, he wasn’t about to beat the thing into a pulp of leather and feathers in front of everyone.
‘I’m experiencing some marital difficulties,’ Justin admitted through gritted teeth as he shuffled forward to try and land another hit on his friend who easily dodged him.
‘I remember you telling me once to go home and deal with my woman troubles instead of pounding them out.’ Philip leaned away from Justin’s swing. ‘Why aren’t you taking your own advice?’
Justin ceased his mindless jabbing, but didn’t lower his fists, unable to unclench his hands. ‘I can’t go home.’
‘Why not?’
Justin dropped his arms to his sides, his muscles screaming from his exertion, but not as loudly as his heart. He stared at his best friend, the man who’d seen him cry the day he’d lost his mother, who knew every trouble and grief his father had caused him. He didn’t want to reveal this deepest of all his shames, but he had to tell someone. ‘Susanna is pregnant with Lord Howsham’s child.’
What Justin’s fists had failed to accomplish this pronouncement managed, knocking his oldest friend silent.
‘Are you sure?’ Philip asked after a long pause, lowering his fists. The fight was over.
‘Yes.’ Justin briefly explained his encounter with Lady Rockland and coming home to have Susanna confirm it. He’d spent years fighting his father, now it would be his wife. This wasn’t how he wanted to live. The choice had been torn from him by Susanna and the Rocklands.
‘What’ll you do?’ Philip handed his friend one of the towels draped over the ropes of the sparring ring.
Justin rubbed the stinging sweat from his eyes, then flipped the towel over his bare shoulder. ‘What can I do?
We’re wed. In the eyes of the law the child is mine no matter what villain sired it.’
At once he understood why his father drank. What he wouldn’t give to crawl into a gin bottle tonight and forget everything—his mother’s death, his father’s insults, his business failures and his wife’s betrayal.
‘Then treat it as yours and never let anyone aside from us think any differently.’
‘And the Rocklands? The duchess won’t be content to let this secret go.’
‘If she sees her vileness hasn’t troubled you or driven a wedge between you and your wife, then she will.’
‘It has driven a wedge between us.’ He tugged the towel from his shoulder and threw it to a passing boy. ‘Any other bastard and no one would care, but she’s the Duke of Rockland’s daughter foisting her child off on another man. It’ll give everyone from Mayfair to Seven Dials something to talk about.’
‘The better sort don’t care what we get up to.’
‘They do when it involves the illegitimate daughter of a duke.’
‘Then walk away from them and never have anything more to do with them. Then nothing they or anyone else of their class says will ever matter,’ Philip suggested.
‘I can’t, not yet. It would mean missing the ball, forfeiting the chance to cultivate clients and getting stuck with a lot of inventory instead of selling it to the duke.’ It wasn’t so much the wine motivating him now, but the craving to stick a finger in Lady Rockland’s eye by attending. He’d have to do so with Susanna at his side, the two of them grinning like idiots and pretending she hadn’t hurt them. It’d be worth it to spite the old dragon. ‘I refuse to let him out of his agreement, or to allow his wife to sneer and look down on us.’
‘And Susanna?’
‘I don’t know.’ Justin opened and closed his fingers, the knuckles smarting beneath the bruises forming there. He didn’t want to care about how facing the Rocklands might affect her. She hadn’t shown him the same consideration when she’d marched up the aisle to meet him, giving him no say in a future so carefully planned out with the Rocklands. They’d all thought him stupid enough to accept a woman carrying another man’s bastard and like a dolt he’d fallen in neatly with their plans. ‘I love her, as you love Laura.’
It made her betrayal hurt so much more, dragging him down further than the day he’d learned the ship had sunk. Failure dogged him again, predetermined by forces he couldn’t control or account for, just like before.
‘Which gives you more reason to overcome this. I’ve seen the two of you together. You get on well and are good for one another. You can be happy if you find a way to move past this and you must.’ Philip dropped a steadying hand on Justin’s shoulder. ‘You know what might happen when she’s brought to bed.’
‘I do.’ Justin shrugged off his friend’s hand, not wanting to face the truth the way he had the morning his father had told him about his mother’s passing along with the infant they’d anticipated for so many months. His mother’s loss had ruined his father. What might Susanna’s do to Justin? Nothing. Her lie had already destroyed everything.
Justin pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. Spite for the Rocklands burned a hole in his chest, not just because of what they’d torn from him, but what it meant for the future.
‘What’ll I do if the child is a boy?’ Another man’s son would be heir to everything he might build. He could amend his will to cut the child out, give his rightful heirs their due, but it would mean admitting to the world their secret and tainting the child the way Susanna had been tainted. Given what Susanna had suffered, and having been scorned by his own father, he couldn’t visit such misery on an innocent boy. He would have to bring himself to love this child, as much as he disliked it and its mother right now.
‘You’ll have time to figure it out. Nothing needs to be decided tonight,’ Philip reminded him, but it didn’t help.
He needed time and distance, a chance to reclaim the centre which had been knocked out of him by Lady Rockland’s nastiness and Susanna’s grudging honesty. With the masque only a few days away, it was a luxury he didn’t possess. He couldn’t walk away from the Rocklands’ wine order any more than he could from his marriage. He’d see to it the duchess didn’t win, but to do it he’d have to choke down his pride, especially where Susanna was concerned. It was a vintage he wasn’t ready to swallow.
* * *
Susanna sat listlessly by the fire in the sitting room, her eyes sore from another night spent crying alone in her bed. She hadn’t seen Justin in two days. He’d come home well after dark and risen before dawn. She didn’t know where he went. She was afraid to ask and powerless to stop him. All she could do was continue with her routine, going to the shop every day and seeing to the endless tasks. Every time the bell over the shop door rang or the back room door to the alley opened, she held her breath, waiting to hear Justin’s voice, but it was never him.
Coming home to the empty house again today, the stiff upper lip she’d tried to maintain in the presence of the shop assistant and the servants began to flag and her spirits ebbed nearly as low as they had in the days after her mother had died. She sat in the window seat, trying to read, but tears kept clouding her eyes. She dropped her head in her hands. It was too much and she hated herself for what she’d done, but she despised Lady Rockland more. There’d been no reason but sheer spite for her to tell Justin of the child and ruin everything.
The front door knocker banged and she raised her head, unable to see who was waiting outside from where she sat. Rubbing the tears from her eyes, she hoped it was just another messenger with a note for Justin. She picked up her book, attempting to appear composed to whoever might happen to see her, but the pages blurred through her unshed tears.
‘Mr Connor,’ Walter announced.
Old Mr Connor stepped around the man and beamed at her, a new fullness about his crinkled eyes and beneath his square chin. His clothes appeared neater today, though they were still near threadbare around the elbows and collar. He wore his old Wellington, which he swept off his now combed hair and handed it to Walter. In the entrance hall, Mr Green even smiled as he left Mr Connor in Susanna’s care to seek out Mrs Robinson.
‘You look very well today, Mr Connor,’ she remarked, his transformation lifting her for a moment from her own sorrows.
‘Good food will do that to a man.’ He patted his fuller stomach before taking her in with a critical eye. ‘You aren’t looking very well. Justin isn’t running you ragged with the shop, is he?’
‘No, he—’ The brave face she’d worn the entire day began to crack. She wouldn’t cry in front of him, she refused to, but the tears fell in steady streams down her cheeks to drop on to the front of her dress.
‘What’s this, then?’ Mr Connor sat down next to her in the window seat and wrapped his arms around her.
She buried her face in his soft dun-coloured coat. It smelled of tobacco and the coal-filled London air. The scent was as comforting as his large hand rubbing her back, soothing her as she’d wished her grandfather would have done so many times as a child.
‘Tell me what’s wrong, lass. There’s no reason you should be crying.’
His sympathy made the tears come harder for herself, Justin and everything she’d never had in her life and wouldn’t have in the future. For a few short days she’d discovered what it was to be loved and through her own weakness she’d ruined it all. She wished she’d never enjoyed such happiness with Justin so that losing it now wouldn’t be so bitter.
‘Come now, tell me what’s wrong,’ he urged.
The story came tumbling out, all of it, as she cried against him. He’d find out about it soon enough and the patient way he listened made it so she couldn’t hold back the words. While she spoke, he never once stopped in his comforting or pushed her away. Instead he continued to hold her, calming the sobs until only the dried tears on her cheeks and the sense of being wrung out like a rag remained.
She rubbed her wet face
with a small handkerchief from her pocket. ‘You hate me now, don’t you?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t hate you and what’s done is done. I’m not saying it’s right, ’cause it ain’t, but I understand why you did it.’
‘Do you?’ It didn’t seem possible.
‘I’m a man of the world. I know how it works. Why, Justin was almost born on the wrong side of the blanket. Molly and I were so in love and young and foolish. We couldn’t wait for the church’s blessing, so we did what nature drives a man and woman to do. I hadn’t thought of marrying yet, but when she told me, I did right by her. Never regretted it because I loved her and she loved me.’
‘But that wasn’t how it was with me and Justin.’
‘It’s how it is now.’ He patted her hand with his calloused one. ‘You have a good heart and you did what you did because you care for a child which ain’t even here yet. You treat me kind because you are kind and you care for my son.’
‘I love him. And now he hates me.’
‘No, he doesn’t, but you’ve given him a shock and it’ll take time to gain back what you two had before.’
She twisted the handkerchief between her fingers. ‘Do you think he’ll give me another chance?’
‘All the times I’ve come in here cursing at him like the devil and still he hands me money, keeps me fed and housed, talks to me with a respect I should show him.’
‘But you’re his father.’ She didn’t have the same claim on Justin’s affection.
‘There’s plenty out there who don’t give a fig for the hardships of their folks, or their children.’ He rubbed his chin, a pensive look coming over him. ‘I’ve been hurtin’ so bad these many years, ever since I lost my dear Molly. I took it out on him and he didn’t deserve it. Still, he treats me as a son should treat his father. He’ll do the same for you.’
It wasn’t Justin’s regard she wanted, but his love. ‘There’s no reason for him to be kind to me.’
‘Yes, there is. You’re his wife whether it’s been for three weeks or twenty years. He’ll do right by you, but you’ll have to work for it, keep the anger from festering like you’ve done with me. Don’t let him pull away as I have, but hold him close and cherish him. He loves you. Bring it out and I promise you, all will be well.’