Guilty Series

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  Yes, it was just what she would have expected. Silk palm trees, lots of gilt mirrors, and red wallpaper. Why the houses of courtesans always had red wallpaper was something she didn’t understand, but it had to mean something. There was smoke in the air, and she could smell both tobacco and hashish. Papa might be in that parlor, or he might already have gone upstairs with one of the women. She had to find out.

  She stuck her head around the edge of the door for a longer look. There was a pianoforte in the corner, and a young man was playing it. There were several card tables in the room where men and women were playing poker and taking their clothes off. There were couples lounging about in chairs, on the settees, on the floor, and they weren’t making conversation. A black boy was sweating as he waved a huge fan over the group, but the thick haze of smoke from the cigars and glass pipes made his task futile.

  Isabel dodged out of sight again, and her lips pressed together with anger and disgust. Things weren’t any different here in England than they’d been in Metz. Things were exactly the same. Only the parent was different. And she’d had enough of it.

  Her father was here, somewhere in this house, and she was going to find him. She took another look, letting her glance sweep more slowly around the room this time, and that was when she saw him. He was in a far corner of the room, lying the wrong way on a chaise longue, his head toward the door, his hair partially caught back by the hand of the woman beneath him, a woman with long blond hair that spilled over the front of the chaise and onto the floor. Isabel watched as he smiled at the woman, and she felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. That was her papa, and no mistake.

  He lowered his head, burying his face against the harlot’s nearly exposed bosom, and she arched her body toward him. Her arm fell sideways, leaving his black hair to fall like a curtain over them both. With that, Isabel saw all her plans to be part of a real family disappearing into oblivion. She stepped into the parlor.

  No one noticed her for several moments. Then the piano stopped playing, heads started turning in her direction, and the room began to quiet. Above the lowering voices and shocked murmurs, one woman’s jaded laugh could be heard. “How, now?” she cried. “What have we here?”

  Isabel didn’t turn to look at the woman who had spoken. She kept her gaze fixed on Papa, folded her arms, and said in a loud, clear voice, “I have come to fetch my father home.”

  She watched as he lifted his head and shook back his hair. A grim, satisfied smile curved her lips at the appalled, stunned expression on his face.

  His shocked baritone voice broke the silence in the room. “Good God!”

  Chapter 14

  Dylan did not wait for his carriage to be called. He did not glance at the other people in the room. He did not even grab his evening coat from the floor. His only thought was to get his child out of this place. Silently, he picked her up in his arms and carried her out of the parlor, putting a hand over her eyes at the half-dressed and quite passionate couple on the stairs. Then he walked out the front door.

  “Papa—” she began as he hauled her to the stables behind the house.

  “Not a word from you, young lady,” he said. “Not a word.”

  She seemed to take it meekly enough, for she didn’t speak, and he was glad of it. He didn’t want to discuss this, not when it was twisting his guts to know what she must have seen. He breathed in deep gulps of air, trying to get clear of the haze of hashish. His own pulse hammered like a staccato drum, and the whine in his brain began to get loud again. He did not think he had ever been more angry in his life.

  “Roberts!” he bellowed, entering the stables and interrupting the coachman’s lively dice game. “We’re leaving, and I mean now!”

  The young, good-humored driver lost his smile as he spied the bundle in his master’s arms. “What in blazes?” he cried, then looked at Dylan’s grim expression, pulled at his cap in a gesture of complete acquiescence, and started to hitch the horses. Dylan took Isabel out to the stable yard to wait.

  It was not until they were both inside the landau and the carriage had begun the ride home that he found the ability to speak. “What did you think you were doing?” he demanded. “And how did you get here?”

  “I rode on the back like a footman, and why does it matter? I wanted to know where you go at night, and I guess now I know, don’t I?” Isabel looked at him, and the moonlight through the window showed her face. Her expression was one of both loathing and feminine contempt. His daughter, looking at him that way, did something to him, sliced him in a way no woman had ever been able to do.

  “Do you know how dangerous London can be?” he shouted. “When I think of what could have happened to you—” He broke off, too furious, too appalled, too alarmed by the possible dangers to a little girl on a London street at night. “If you follow me again, I will peel the skin right off your back.”

  Isabel turned her face away, looking out the open carriage window. He caught the gleam of a tear on her cheek, a tear of genuine pain, and a force as powerful as a physical blow slammed into his chest. It made his heart hurt, and the pressure pushed up into his throat, trying to choke him. He’d known from the start he would be a bad father. Here was his evidence.

  Dylan rubbed his palms over his face, not knowing what to do. If Grace were here, she could advise him, but considering where he had just been, he could hardly explain and ask for her help.

  That blond courtesan had looked a bit like her, slender, with all that hair spilling down like gold silk. That was why he had chosen her, of course. Her eyes had been blue, not green, but since they had been closed and her lips had been parted in pretended ecstacy as he’d caressed her under her skirts, he had almost been able to believe the fantasy. A poor substitute for a desperate man.

  Now he looked across at his daughter, who was the one suffering for it, and he did not know what to say. He reached out and touched her cheek, brushing the tear away. “Isabel,” he began. “Don’t cry.”

  She slapped his hand away. “Don’t tell me I can’t cry,” she shot back with all the childish fury an eight-year-old could muster. Wiping away the tear herself, she added, “Nothing’s different here. Wherever I was, I used to sit in my room and look out and dream that one day you would come and get me and I would have a real father. I thought you’d come and take me to England and we’d live at your house in the country, and I’d have a pony and an apple orchard and you’d take care of me.” Her eyes bored right through him, accusing, angry, contemptuous. “You never came.”

  “I didn’t know about you.”

  “You do now,” she countered, a point he could not refute. “But it still doesn’t matter.” Her voice caught on a sob. “All you want is for me to be out of the way! You’re just like all the rest of them.”

  Dylan frowned. “Who are the rest of them?”

  She leaned back in the corner of her seat. Sniffing, she folded her legs up, wrapped her arms around her knees, and looked at him. “Mama’s friends. Every time she’d get a new friend, we’d move into a house and he would come and stay, and Mama would say that he was going to be my papa, but none of them were my papa. You were, and you never came. When that new, pretend papa got tired of Mama, we’d move again. That place—” She paused to jerk her thumb back in a gesture to show where they had just been. “Mama was living in one of those when you first came to Metz. I heard her tell someone about it.”

  Vivienne. A vague memory brushed his mind of a pretty, dark-haired courtesan with brown eyes. They hadn’t been able to come to terms. He’d had a night or two with her, but her price for exclusivity had been too high. He hadn’t thought her worth her asking price.

  The earth beneath him must have been cracking, for he felt himself falling down into a deep, dark cavern, headed straight for hell.

  This wasn’t my fault, he tried to tell himself. I hadn’t known. But he could find no consolation in that. Sitting in front of him was a child, his child, and he understood with terrible clarity the l
ife she had lived. The pain in his chest deepened.

  Isabel began to sob, wrenching, inconsolable sobs. “I thought you’d be different. I thought since you were my real father, you’d take care of me and want me, but you’re not my father. You’re a pretend papa, just like all the others.”

  Each word flayed him.

  “I’m not stupid, you know!” she cried. “Those men back at that house, I know what kind of men they are! The same kind I’ve known all my life. When they came to see my mama, I knew what they wanted!” Suddenly, she hurled herself across the carriage at him, her small fists striking out at him wherever they could. “You’re just like them!”

  Just like them. Dylan wrapped his arms around the flailing fury attacking him. He was sickened and ashamed in a way he had never been in his life before. Just like them.

  And, God, he was.

  He lifted the sobbing child up onto his lap and held her tight. He could not think of anything to say that would console her. He could only hold her and smooth her hair as she cried, each tear sending him further into the pit of hell.

  As the carriage rolled back to London, a protective instinct Dylan had never known came over him, and he knew he had to do something to make up for the neglect she had suffered, for the lousy hand that her mother and he had dealt her. This was his daughter. His to raise, defend, and protect. His responsibility, and no one else’s. He could not shirk this duty. He no longer wanted to.

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” he muttered against her hair. “So damned sorry. I didn’t know you were there. If I’d known, I’d have come. I vow on my life I would have come and taken you away.” He wasn’t completely sure of that, but he’d have said anything to stop the flow of her tears. Anything.

  “All I ever wanted was a real family,” she said, her sobs muffled by his shirt front.

  “I know.” He kissed her temple. “I know. We’ll be a real family. You and I. We will.”

  Isabel didn’t answer. She grabbed a handful of his ruffled shirtfront and burrowed her cheek into his shoulder, still crying. It wasn’t until they reached Hyde Park that she finally cried herself to sleep. Dylan pressed his lips to the sleeping child’s hair and whispered, “I’ll change, Isabel. I’ll be a real papa for you. I swear it.”

  Grace was in a panic, but so was every other person in the house, so she strived to be the calmest one. “Think,” she ordered the handful of servants surrounding her in the foyer. “Where could she be?”

  Molly began to cry. “Oh, ma’am, it’s all my fault. I only left her for a few minutes. I couldn’t sleep and came down for a cup of tea. I thought she was asleep.”

  Grace pressed a hand to her forehead, the bit of nightgown lace at her wrist tickling her cheek. “I know, Molly, but stop berating yourself. It does no good. Did she take any of her clothes?”

  “No, ma’am. I checked twice to be sure. She just put on one of her old pinafores and her old white shirt that she wore with the nuns, you know. A pair of her shoes and her cloak.”

  Grace lifted her head, glancing at Osgoode, then at Mrs. Ellis. “She’s not in the kitchens or any of the servants’ rooms? And she’s not outside in the park?”

  The butler and the housekeeper both shook their heads.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Grace said. “If she changed out of her nightgown and took her cloak, she must have run away, but why didn’t she take any of her things with her?” No one answered her, but then, she hadn’t expected an answer.

  “We shall search the house once more, and if we don’t find her, we’ll have to call the constables. Osgoode, have the footmen search the park again, the north and south mews, and all around the square. If they see anyone outside at this hour, have them ask if they have seen her. Mrs. Ellis, take the maids and search the servant quarters. Work your way up. Molly and I shall take the nursery and do the same in reverse. Molly, come with me.”

  The group started to split up, when the bell for the front door sounded. “Oh, maybe someone’s found her!” cried Molly as Osgoode opened the front door.

  Molly proved to be right. It was Dylan, sans his evening coat and cloak, with a sleeping Isabel in his arms. Grace was so relieved at the sight of them that she went weak in the knees.

  He glanced at the group in their nightgowns and dressing robes. “Looking for something?” he asked as he stepped into the foyer.

  “Bless us and save us!” Molly cried. “She’s been with the master all this time.”

  The servants began to ask questions, but Dylan cut them off. “Hush, or you’ll wake her. She’s all right, just worn out.” He started toward the stairs. “Molly, come with me. Everyone else may go back to bed.”

  Molly went with him as he carried Isabel up the stairs. Grace, who had no intention of going back to bed without finding out what had happened, followed them to the nursery. She waited nearby as Molly pulled back the sheets and Dylan placed Isabel in bed. When the nanny reached for the sheet and counterpane to cover the child, Dylan stopped her.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Grace watched him as he tucked his daughter in for the second time that night. She studied his countenance and the grim set of his shoulders, and she knew something dreadful had happened. She suspected that Dylan had not taken his daughter with him voluntarily, but that was as far as her speculations went before Dylan straightened away from the bed.

  He looked across at Molly, who was twisting her hands together in nervous agitation. “If you ever leave her alone again,” he said quietly, “I shall send you packing. Do you understand, Molly?”

  “Oh, yes, sir!” she whispered, so relieved by the second chance that her knees almost gave way. She grasped the bedpost. “Thank you, sir.”

  Dylan leaned down and kissed the unconscious child’s forehead. “Sleep, little one,” she heard him say. “And don’t cry anymore.”

  He strode toward the door, and Grace followed him out of the nursery and down the stairs. “Why was Isabel crying?” she asked as they reached the ground floor. “What happened?”

  “Go to bed, Grace.”

  She watched in astonishment as he opened the front door. “Where are you going now?”

  “For a walk.” He shut the door behind him.

  Grace turned and went back up the stairs. Inside her own room, she blew out the candle, but she was still far too agitated to just go back to sleep. She walked to the window and looked down at the square. The moon was bright, illuminating the shrubs and trees of the park in the center of the square. She caught sight of Dylan almost at once, but he was not taking a walk. Instead, he was sitting on a bench in the park, his body slumped forward, his face in his hands.

  Something was horribly wrong.

  Grace pulled her black leather short boots from beneath the bed and hurriedly laced them up, then put her dressing gown back on. She grabbed her cloak, wrapped it over her nightclothes, and went downstairs. When she came outside, she found that he was still sitting in the same place and position, and he did not look up as she closed the front door softly behind her and walked to where he sat.

  It wasn’t until she was standing almost in front of him that he noticed her. He stiffened at once, pulling his hands from his face. He sat up. “I thought I told you to go back to bed.”

  “I do not do things just because you tell me to.”

  He didn’t even smile. “True.”

  Grace sat down beside him. “Dylan, what’s wrong? What happened?”

  He was silent for so long, that she didn’t think he was going to answer her question, but he finally did. “Isabel climbed onto the back of my carriage and followed me tonight.” He paused, took a deep breath, and turned his head to look right into her eyes. “I was at a seraglio.”

  Grace stared at him in shock, yet she did not know why she should be shocked. After all his passionate kisses, after she had refused him, he’d gone to a bawd. Her body remembered every place he had ever kissed her or touched her, and he’d gone to a bawd.

  “I see.
” She looked away. It doesn’t matter, she told herself. The child is what matters. “Did Isabel—” she broke off, too appalled to continue.

  “She saw me, yes.”

  The harshness of his voice caused her to look at him again, and she watched as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, just as he had been before she’d come down.

  “How she got into the place without anyone seeing her, I don’t know,” he said, his voice lowering to a hushed, agonized rasp. “She saw me with a—”

  “Whore?” Grace supplied the word when he did not.

  He did not flinch at the hard edge to her voice. “I do not blame myself for that part of it. I was on fire, and you know it.”

  “Are you saying I am to blame?” she asked quietly.

  “No, damn it, that is not what I am saying!” He sat up, turning on the wrought-iron bench to face her. “I am saying that I wanted you so badly, I just could not accept not having you. So I went to the courtesan who looks the most like you!”

  Grace stared at him, astonished by the revelation. After a moment, she asked, “Am I supposed to be flattered by that?”

  “She is a poor substitute, I grant you, but there it is. I am a man, I am a bachelor, and I am accustomed to having a mistress. When I do not have a mistress, I seek out other feminine company, and that fact is hardly a secret. I am not going to defend myself for needs and desires that are natural and just.”

  Grace did not know how she felt about the fact that he’d gone to a courtesan who resembled her because he couldn’t have her. How was a woman supposed to feel about something like that? Disgusted? Complimented? Appalled?

  She reminded herself she had no claim on him. She had rejected him, her choice. He’d gone to a whore, his choice. Not much surprise there, except, of course, on the part of a little girl, who, if her father were a different sort of man, would not have felt the need to follow him out at night.