by Diane Gaston
Brentmore walked up behind her, a silent support.
‘Do not be profane when speaking of Mama,’ she scolded.
The man half-rose from his chair. ‘I’ll speak of her any way I like. She was my wife. Not his.’ He jabbed his chest again.
‘Mr Hill.’ Lord Brentmore spoke without accent in a low, firm voice. ‘Heed what you say. Your daughter is already overwrought with grief.’
Her father sprang to his feet. ‘Heed what I say? Ha!’
Lord Brentmore pulled her behind him, placing himself between her and her father. ‘Enough, sir!’ he ordered.
A puzzled look crossed her father’s face, but that was the only indication he noticed the coach driver now spoke like a marquess.
Her father sank back in his chair and covered his face with his hands. ‘He ought to have come. He ought to have shown his respects.’
‘Who, Papa?’ Anna asked.
His bleary eyes caught hers. ‘His lordship.’
‘Lord Lawton?’ She gaped at her father. ‘You are not making any sense. Why expect Lord Lawton to come? Mama was only a laundress.’
Her father gave her a disgusted look. ‘There you go, pretending you do not know.’
Her anxiety rose. ‘Know what?’
Lord Brentmore put a hand on her arm.
Her father lifted Lord Brentmore’s empty glass and peered into it as if it might be hiding more gin. ‘Why d’you think you were chosen to be the companion?’
He was changing the subject.
Her father pointed to her. ‘He could not have you reared to be a servant, could he?’
Lord Brentmore’s grip on her arm tightened.
‘Papa.’ Her heart pounded. ‘Speak plainly.’
‘Papa,’ he mocked her. ‘I’m not your papa, girl, and I don’t ever again have to say I am.’
She felt the blood drain from her face. ‘Are you saying... Lord Lawton?’
He slapped the arm of the chair. ‘See? You knew it all the time. His lordship sired you. Not me. Not me.’
Her head spun and inside she shouted, No. No. No.
Her father—the man she’d thought was her father—continued talking. ‘She used to work in the house, y’know. An upstairs maid and the prettiest thing you ever did see. Caught his eye and every chance he got he tumbled between the sheets with her.’ He stared into the fire. ‘Then she was increasing. Made her ladyship furious when she found out. Sent her out of the house, but only far as the laundry because he wouldn’t let her go. He had a plan, you see.’ He sighed. ‘His lordship came to me. How would I like a cottage? he says. More pay, he says. All I had to do was marry her.’ He laughed, a dry mirthless sound. ‘I was as young as she was. I thought she’d fancy me after a time, but it was always him.’
He glanced at her. ‘She made him promise. Raise you to be a lady, not a servant. Wouldn’t bed him ’til he agreed.’ He rose from the chair and staggered to a corner where he rummaged until he found another bottle. ‘Then his legitimate daughter turned out to be a mousy little thing and he sent you to teach her some backbone, not that her ladyship ever liked that.’ He laughed again. ‘You know all this. Everyone knows this.’
She’d never suspected.
No wonder this man had never loved her. No wonder Charlotte’s mother had always been cold to her.
But Lord Lawton never showed her any favour. None at all.
‘Does Charlotte know?’ Was Anna the only one who didn’t know?
He waved a hand again. ‘The twit? Not at all.’ He rose from his chair again, swaying as he tried to take a step. ‘Thing is, he should have come. Should have come before she died. Should have come to put her in the ground!’ He took a step and reached out to steady himself on the back of the chair.
He missed and collapsed to the floor.
‘Papa!’ she cried.
Lord Brentmore rushed over to examine him. He looked back at her. ‘He’s just passed out from the gin.’
She backed off. ‘I—I can’t believe—’
Lord Brentmore lifted him from under his arms and managed to hoist him over his shoulder. ‘Where’s his bed?’
She led him into the room he’d shared with her mother, to the bed that her mother probably shared with Lord Lawton as well.
Lord Brentmore dropped him on to the bed like a sack of flour. He started immediately to snore.
What was she to call him now? Even in her head she could not say he was her father.
Brentmore took her arm. ‘Come.’
As soon as he closed the door behind them, the enormity of her mother’s death and her father’s disclosure fell on her. It was like being pummelled with fists.
She clutched her stomach and closed her eyes.
Lord Brentmore enfolded her in his arms. He held her tight against him. The strength of his arms encircling her, the warmth of his body, the steady beating of his heart, held her together.
But the pain remained. ‘I have nothing now,’ she cried against his chest. ‘Nothing.’
‘Anna, you are exhausted,’ he murmured. ‘Go to bed. Tomorrow will be better.’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing could be worse than today.’
‘That is right.’ He released her, but brushed her hair away from her face with his fingers. ‘Nothing will be worse than today.’
He picked her up, surprising her so much she was speechless. ‘Where is your bed?’
She pointed.
It soothed her to be absolved of the need to walk. He carried her into the little room she’d rarely slept in as a child and lowered her on to her bed.
‘Goodnight, Anna.’ He started to walk away.
She jumped off the bed and seized the cloth of his coat. ‘Don’t leave me, please. I—I don’t want to be alone! I don’t think I can stand to be alone.’
‘I will stay right outside your door,’ he assured her.
‘No. I will still be alone.’ She was sounding irrational, but she could not stop herself. ‘Stay with me, my lord. Here. Hold me. Please.’
He stared down at her, his eyes darkening. ‘Very well,’ he murmured. ‘I will stay.’
* * *
Brent held her all night. Both of them remained fully dressed, but he shared her tiny bed with her.
He could not say that no thought of making love to her crossed his mind, but she was in too much pain for him to take advantage of her and he cared about her too much.
He watched her sleep, savouring the sight of her pretty face, even though it was still pinched with pain. Sleep had not come easy for her.
Nor for him, but eventually he had dozed off and on until dawn illuminated the room.
* * *
Anna murmured something in her sleep and moved from her back to her side, cuddling against Brent.
He tried to remain very still.
The door suddenly burst open, banging against the wall with a report as loud as a musket.
Anna’s eyes flew open and she sat up.
Brent vaulted from the bed.
Mr Hill stood in the doorway. ‘Harlot!’ he shouted. ‘Just like your mother!’ He advanced on her, rage and disgust on his face. ‘Tumbling into bed with the likes of this.’ He gestured to Brent. ‘At least your mother bedded an earl. At least she got something for it.’
Brent blocked Hill’s way and seized his arm. ‘You, sir, are leaving.’ He forced the man out of the room.
‘How dare you put your hands on me! You scum!’ Hill tried to break free of Brent’s grasp, to no avail.
‘Now you listen to me.’ Brent forced the man against a wall. ‘She’s done nothing to deserve your words. You were cruel and drunk and I could not leave her alone with the likes of you. Her mother died, man! And all you cared to do was hurt her.’
Hill gaped at him. ‘I thought you were Irish.’
Brent leaned into his face. ‘I am more Irish than is safe for you.’ He continued to glare at the man. ‘Now tell me why you dared enter her room.’
Hill cowered. �
�I—I wanted to see if she was there.’
He tightened his grip. ‘Do you believe me when I say I am able to get you fired from your job?’
Hill’s eyes widened and he nodded.
‘Then say nothing of this. You created this situation. You will not make her pay for it by sullying her good name.’ He shoved the man towards the door. ‘Now go and make some use of yourself in the stable.’
Hill rushed out of the cottage. Brent turned away and saw Anna standing in the doorway of her room.
‘He will tell them.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I will be the talk of the household.’
Brent raised his brows. ‘Shall I have him fired, then?’
She shook her head. ‘It does not matter. I will never come back here.’ She glanced away. ‘Would you take me home, my lord? To Brentmore, I mean. I do not want to stay here.’
He crossed the room, as drawn to her as he’d been that first glimpse of her. Only now he knew her. And cared for her.
He lifted his hand to touch her, but dropped it again. ‘We can leave right away.’
Chapter Eight
While Lord Brentmore stopped at the stables to have the horses hitched to the chaise, Anna walked over to the house to say goodbye.
‘You mustn’t go!’ Mrs Jordan cried. ‘It looks like rain outside.’
The maids chimed in, ‘Stay longer, Anna. You just arrived.’
‘I—I must get back to the children.’ Anna explained. ‘It is a very good position and I do not want to lose it.’
The maids nodded. They all knew the value of good employment.
Mrs Jordan sighed. ‘Well, go if you must.’ She turned and bellowed to one of the maids, ‘Mary! Pack up some food for Anna and that nice coachman of hers.’
Would they gossip about her after she had left? Her father—the man she knew as her father—would certainly lose no time in passing the word that he’d found her in bed with her coachman. Blood will tell, they would likely say. At least her mother bedded an earl.
Mary placed the box of food in her hands and Mrs Jordan and the maids hugged her goodbye. Anna knew she would never see any of them again. Once they tired of the gossip, would they ever think of her? She did not know.
She walked to the servants’ door, past rooms once familiar to her. She knew she would never walk past them again.
She had an impulse to run up to Charlotte’s room. To see it once more. To see the schoolroom. The library. The music room. All the lovely places she and Charlotte had passed their days. She wanted to run in the gardens again where they had picked flowers or played hide and seek.
She squared her shoulders and kept walking to the outside door.
She’d had the privilege of growing up here because her mother bedded the earl. What she’d believed was a beautiful opportunity now seemed soiled and tarnished.
When she stepped outside, Lord Brentmore was there, waiting in the chaise. He’d secured her portmanteau under the seat. She placed the food into the basket she’d brought from Brentmore and left the box by the door. No part of Lawton House would come with her.
Lord Brentmore helped her into her seat. ‘How are you faring?’
She steeled herself against the grief of all she had lost. Her mother. Her home. Her very identity. ‘I will fare well.’
His glance was sceptical before he signalled the horses to be on their way.
She made herself not look back. The life she’d missed so acutely had never truly existed. When they passed through the village, she kept her eyes resolutely on the road. Once the village was behind them, all that was once familiar to her was behind her. Lost to her for ever.
Anna’s gaze was captured by a leaf caught in a whirlwind ahead of them. The leaf rose and fell at the whim of the wind. She felt like its kin.
* * *
After they passed through a tollgate, the road was nearly empty of traffic. Lord Brentmore gave the horses their heads.
Without looking at her, he spoke. ‘Did I ever tell you about Ireland?’
He was attempting to distract her from her grief. His kindness made tears prick her eyes.
She tried to keep her voice steady. ‘You lived there once.’
‘I was born there.’ He turned his gaze back to the road. ‘My father’s regiment was stationed in Ireland and somehow my father met my mother and married her. My mother was the daughter of a poor Irish tenant farmer and was as common as they come. The poorest of the poor. The old marquess—my father’s father—disowned my father for marrying her. Cut him off without a penny and never spoke to him again.’
‘Because he married a commoner.’ She was a commoner who had aristocratic blood in her veins. How ironic was that?
‘Yes.’ He looked away. ‘My father died soon after and my mother and I lived with my Irish grandfather. I was barely out of leading strings when she, too, died.’
This distraction was only increasing her pain. Her heart ached at his loss.
He continued. ‘Even as a small boy I worked the farm with my grandfather.’ He glanced at her. ‘Seeing you and the children in the kitchen garden that day brought that memory back.’
She could not look into his eyes.
He fell silent.
Keep talking, please! she wanted to beg. His voice seemed all that was keeping her together.
‘How did you come to England?’ she asked.
‘An uncle I did not know existed—my father’s older brother—died,’ he said. ‘The old marquess needed an heir and thus came looking for me. Up until that time, I thought I was Egan Byrne. I knew nothing of my real name, Egan Caine, and nothing of my father being English. I was suddenly the heir and the old marquess took me from Ireland and brought me to Brentmore Hall. I was ten.’
‘Was that a good circumstance?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘At the time I did not think so, but it was good in that I had food to eat, clothing to wear and a fire to keep me warm.’ He glanced at her. ‘What I want you to know is that I remember that time in Ireland with a clarity that sometimes escapes me when I’m trying to recall what happened yesterday.’ His Irish accent slipped into his speech. ‘And I mostly remember the happy parts.’
She understood. ‘So I will remember the happy times at Lawton?’
He gave the briefest of nods. ‘The memories will be with you always.’
She wished she could believe she would some day remember Lawton without thinking of how her life was conceived and how the education she held so dear had been exacted. It seemed impossible.
‘You have not spoken of happy times, though,’ she accused. ‘You tell of suffering and grief.’
‘Only to show the contrast,’ he explained. ‘Those events are like shadows. What I remember most clearly is sitting near the fireplace in the cabin with my grandfather, while he told story after story of the fairies or silkies or pookas. Or walking at his side through the potato fields.’ He shook his head. ‘I know it rained a great deal, but I only remember the sunny days. Like one day when I worried my daideó by running all the way to the sea. Must have been three or four miles.’
‘Your daideó?’
‘My grandfather.’
‘What happened to him?’ she asked.
‘He fought with Billy Byrne in the 1798 Rebellion and was killed at the Battle of Arklow.’ His voice turned hard. ‘I read of it in the newspapers when I was at school.’
She gasped and felt the pain of his memory as if it had been her own.
She stole a glance at him, needing now to distract him as he had tried to distract her. ‘You should tell Dory and Cal your grandfather’s Irish stories.’
‘Never!’ He looked appalled. ‘The less they know about their Irish blood, the better.’
‘You cannot mean that!’
‘Indeed I do,’ he said with emotion. ‘I’ll not have them suffer the taunts and cuts that were my lot. The less they know of their Irish blood, the better. They must think themselves the privileged children of a marquess. Nothing else.�
��
She’d merely pictured the children sitting on his lap listening to the stories, as she’d pictured he had sat on his grandfather’s lap. It would be something she never had.
‘Tell me the stories,’ she said to him, lest she dwell on fathers who cared nothing for her. ‘I want to hear about fairies and silkies and pookas.’
So he filled her ears with tales of mischievous little people, of fearsome horses with yellow eyes and fantastic creatures that shed their skins to become human.
* * *
As the day passed, the overcast sky turned grey and soon rain pattered the top of the chaise, getting thicker and thicker as the miles went by. When it started to pour as hard as it had done that first day she’d met the marquess, he pulled into an inn.
‘We must wait out the rain,’ he told her.
They left the horses and chaise to the care of the ostlers and ran through the rain to the door of the inn.
Inside it was noisy and crowded with other travellers taking shelter from the storm.
He found a space for her in a corner. ‘Wait here. I’ll speak to the innkeeper and see what is available.’
She watched him disappear behind the other people waiting out the rain and her anxiety rose, as if, without him, she might blow away like the leaf she’d watched on the road. The buzzing of all the voices filled her ears and mixed with the clatter of more carriages arriving.
There were all sorts of travellers stranded here. Gentlemen. Tradesmen. Workmen of all types. She saw a woman holding a little girl’s hand and she remembered how her mother’s hand felt holding hers. Tears threatened again and she searched the crowd for Lord Brentmore.
It seemed an eternity until he came back.
‘There are no private parlours and no rooms,’ he said over the din. ‘We can wait in the public room, though. I arranged for a bench near the fire. It is somewhat private.’
She nodded and took his arm. He led her through the people into the tavern, more crowded than the anteroom. The scent of ale and meat and unwashed people assaulted her nostrils. Their combined voices were like beating drums and every inch of the space seemed filled.