by Darcy Burke
“You’re sure? I haven’t shattered your vision of a fairy tale prince?”
He was watching her skeptically, but she wouldn’t hang her heart on her sleeve for him. He didn’t need to know she secretly longed for the sweeping romantic sort of declaration her best friend had received from her lover just a few months ago. Instead, Elizabeth had received this bumbling half-proposal. It was possibly the only offer she’d ever receive, and it had been butchered completely. Thank you for upholding your end of the bargain.” She owed him at least her gratitude, for all the trouble she’d unwittingly put him through.
“Well, then, I’ll be off,” he said when she continued to watch him mutely. He swept her a courtly bow, then turned on his heel and quit her drawing room. When he must have been near to the foyer, his voice filtered down the hallway, as if he’d just remembered to add, “Please think about that thing with my mother, Elizabeth. It would please her immensely to see Oliver.”
The front door clicked and he was gone. The house seemed silent in his wake. For one, pregnant moment, Elizabeth wished he hadn’t left.
Ridiculous, foolish fancy. But a feeling that nonetheless wouldn’t be brushed aside by logic. As she hurried to the nursery to see to her son, it suddenly came to her why she didn’t want to leave England despite fearing Nicholas’s dogged determination to expose her lie. For just over a decade, she’d tried to prove she was worthy of being loved. She’d left her father’s cold house with a man who’d promised to cherish her forever. Every man after him had been just as willing to prey on her emptiness. Now that she had Oliver, one of her missing pieces was pressed into place. Her hollowness was finally filled by her son. She wasn’t entirely whole, but fulfilled enough that she need never fall victim to another pretty word tripped off a lying tongue.
Or was she? Her yearning to be loved had started her on her path to ruin, and was the reason she would never, ever be separated from Oliver again. She wanted a family. Oliver might be her only chance for one. But there was one more piece to her puzzle, one she wasn’t ready to give up on just yet. What if she’d been searching all of this time for her father’s love, when only he could give it?
She’d left Chelmick, his tightly run estate, on appalling terms. She’d never meant to go back. But what if she went now? Would her father agree to see her because of Oliver? Could he forgive her at last, now that she’d been changed by motherhood?
She couldn’t leave England until she knew for certain that her roots had truly been torn from the soil. Fifteen was a tumultuous age for any girl. They’d had their differences, but surely her parents had grown wiser, too.
But as she made plans to pack up her house and servants, she couldn’t shake her foreboding.
Chapter Five
ELIZABETH ARRIVED at her parents’ house in a carriage fit for royalty. Another, less ostentatious carriage followed behind. Her hands twisted in her lap. She’d lost sleep wondering whether appearing at their door surrounded by obvious signs of her wealth would help or hurt her reception. Was it better to demonstrate the success she’d found even without their help and love, or better to arrive modestly and risk them thinking she’d done it all for naught?
Her desire to prove herself had won out. But she must still wonder if she’d made the right decision.
Their Gothic-style house lorded over an expansive lawn speckled by imposing evergreens. Her yearning for it startled her. She hadn’t seen this house since she was fifteen. The ensuing years had done little to make it more welcoming, and yet she searched hungrily for the distinguishing features that had imprinted on her younger self. The flying buttresses marching across the front. Equilateral arches filling the space between them, their traceries undecorated so they appeared to look on her with stoic, empty eyes. In the winter, snow and ice would freeze over what meager color the pale stone structure possessed and give it a haunted, abandoned look. The reddish façade didn’t fare much better in the weak summer sunlight, and she shuddered despite the heat.
Two footmen clad in her family’s ivory livery ran out to greet the carriages as her horses clopped across the stone drive. She pressed her back to the velvet squab of her bench, keeping herself out of view of the narrow windowpane. What did she think she’d accomplish here? In all the years since her mistake, her parents had never once attempted to reconcile with her. What would they think when she suddenly presented herself on their doorstep?
The servants went about efficiently setting the carriage to rights in preparation for her eventual exit. She adjusted the tiny emerald hat tilted at a jaunty angle on her head and pinched her cheeks. It would have been much more proper to have written ahead, but she’d had no reason to believe they’d reply. No, she’d rather pretend she was out and about in this part of Shropshire and force them to close the door directly in her face.
She steeled herself. She hoped her parents were at home. She would almost prefer they were not.
Mrs. Dalton and Oliver met Elizabeth as she descended the carriage. Elizabeth offered the nursemaid a grateful smile and reached for her son. He was awake and alert. She smiled softly. His little round head jerked as he took in the new sights and colors of Chelmick Hall. “He looks happy,” Elizabeth observed.
“He fussed a bit for the last mile, but I gave him a bit of milk-soaked bread and he settled enough to catch a wink.”
Elizabeth nodded at this and looped his small hand around her fingers. Her lips touched the down-softness of baby hair curving just over his ear. “Do you like the house? We must introduce you to your grandparents. You’ll be a good boy for them, won’t you?”
The double doors of the hall had already been thrown open. A wide, shallow-stepped staircase led to the gaping mouth of the house. She took a deep breath, then began the ascent. At the top of the stone steps she paused. She cuddled Oliver to her one more time before handing him back to Mrs. Dalton.
Those of Elizabeth’s retainers who were not helping to unload the carriages were being shown to the service entrance by other ivory-liveried footmen. Everyone seemed occupied, leaving Elizabeth alone to face her childhood fears.
Upon entering the foyer, however, she saw her first familiar face. Dodger, her family’s old butler, moved on decrepit legs to greet her. A wide smile revealed his toothless gums. “Lady Elizabeth! I never! Oh, but your parents aren’t expecting you, are they? I heard them talk just this morning of making their way to Bath.”
She reached for Dodger’s white-gloved hands. They were cold, even through his gloves, and she curled her warm palms around his fingers. He’d been like a grandfather to her when she was a child, though she was sure her parents didn’t know of the many evenings she’d spent wedged between Dodger and Mrs. Elf, the housekeeper, in their private sitting room below stairs. “Th-they aren’t here?” she asked of her parents.
“They are; it’s just that we’ve been waiting for the order to pack them off. I’m sure they’ll stay now that you’re here. Oh, dear, dear girl. You have no idea how Prudence and I have worried about you.” His toothless grin didn’t falter. If anything, his happiness at seeing her was enough to raise her hope.
Perhaps this time, it was true. She was loved.
His rheumy eyes searched her face as though he couldn’t believe he was seeing her. “Just wait until Prudence sees you. What a pretty lady you’ve become.” He squeezed her hands.
Gratitude welled inside her, but she wouldn’t cry. Not before she’d heard those words from her own father.
She wasn’t foolish enough to think she would.
Footfalls sounded behind Elizabeth. Dodger released her hands and collected himself into a more regal posture. Just as he turned to greet Mrs. Dalton climbing the steps with Oliver in her arms, the baby let out a soft coo. Dodger’s amazement upon seeing him turned Elizabeth’s insides to warm pudding.
If he’d been happy to see her, he was ecstatic to greet her son. “Oh, my. Oh, my. A little one!” He reached for Oliver before noticeably struggling to collect himself again.
“Benson, find Mrs. Elf and inform her that the nursery must be prepared immediately. Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie, my girl,” he said, using the name he and the housekeeper had used back when Elizabeth was barely out of leading strings, herself. “Mrs. Elf will be beside herself with excitement.”
The next hour was a blur as Dodger barked orders for the lodging of herself, Oliver, Mrs. Dalton, and the three maids, four footmen and two drivers who’d accompanied her to Shropshire. Not a word was said of her parents. Elizabeth startled each time a door opened or footsteps sounded in the hall. Surely, they must have been informed of her arrival by now.
At last, after she’d been bathed in rosewater and had her hair styled into a confection of dark curls, she was handed a small note card by Bertha, her mother’s lady’s maid.
Bertha’s countenance bore none of the excitement Dodger had failed to contain. She must be in her early forties now, but her pinched disapproval made her look years older. “Your mother wished me to remind you that there are to be neither gentleman callers nor any display that even hints at vulgarity while you are under their roof.” With that, she bobbed and stalked from the room.
If Elizabeth were still a girl of fifteen, she might have stuck out her tongue at Bertha’s retreating back. Since she was five and twenty, she did nothing. If her parents thought she might try to sneak a man into her bedchamber, it was because she had done it before.
Recalling the note, she looked to the card in her hand and flipped it over. Her mother’s flowing penmanship left no word illegible. The message was spelled out with perfect clarity:
Elizabeth,
Your father and I would have appreciated a word of notice. I’d say you were raised better than to drop on our doorstep, but then I would say you were raised better about most of the decisions you have chosen to make. So really, it makes no difference whether I wish you had sent word ahead or not, because you will only do what is best for you.
In any case, we were forced to retract an invitation to Lord Tweley and his wife lest we put them in the distressing position of encountering you, so you need not worry there will be company at dinner. I hope you do not mean to be here long. Your father and I wish to retire to Bath for the remainder of the summer, and I am sure you will not be rude enough to think we would change our plans for you.
Lady Wyndham
Elizabeth’s heart constricted with each succinct word, folding in on itself until she felt small, just as she had when she was a child. Her mother was horrid. Horrid, horrid. Even if Elizabeth did acknowledge that her scandalous presence imposed on her parents, and had forced her mother to cancel their evening’s entertainment in a most undignified way, surely Elizabeth deserved to receive this setdown to her face. A coldly worded note only served to emphasize the very aloofness from her parents that had driven her into the arms of a silver-tongued captain.
She stared dully at the papered wall of her former bedchamber, knowing her sisters’ old rooms were on the other side. For years she’d felt bitterly toward her parents, who had cut her from their family without so much as a look-in to see if she was happy with her choice. What if Captain Moore had loved her? What if they’d eventually married? Her parents would have had to acknowledge her then, wouldn’t they? It had never come to that, but she’d resented that they washed their hands of her, rather than try to save her.
Elizabeth tucked away her melancholy as best she could and reviewed the collection of her gowns now freshly pressed and hanging in a wardrobe. Though her mother’s note hadn’t outright extended an invitation for her to join them at dinner, it did give roundabout permission. She vowed her parents wouldn’t find fault with anything she wore down.
Mrs. Dalton helped her to dress carefully in a watered silk gown. Elizabeth drew a satiny gold wrap around her shoulders and checked her appearance. In the month during which Nicholas had kept her child from her, she’d become skeletal, but over the last week she’d begun to fill out again. Nonetheless, the gown didn’t stick to her like it used to and she breathed a sigh of relief. The less kindling she gave them, the better.
She was shown to the drawing room by Dodger, who couldn’t keep his smile hidden. She hung back before entering the room. “Might you and Mrs. Elf go up to the nursery after the dinner’s been cleared?” she whispered.
He almost blinded her with his delight. “Oh, certainly, certainly. It’s been so long since there was a little one here. I miss seeing you and your sisters toddling down the hallways.”
She smiled faintly and touched his sleeve. “I’m so glad to see you again, Mr. Dodger. Thank you.”
With that, she stepped into the drawing room. It was empty. Were her parents not coming after all?
Before she knew what he was about, Dodger reached out and squeezed her hand. “You will always have Mrs. Elf and me.”
The click-clack of her mother’s sure steps, pitted against her father’s long strides, caused Elizabeth to jump away from Dodger. He stepped back against the wall, leaving Elizabeth only somewhat alone to face her parents.
The Countess of Wyndham was fearsomely handsome. That hadn’t changed. Her dark hair was done in a crown of simple braids that accentuated a sharp widow’s peak a less formidable woman might have concealed. She looked down her long, patrician nose at Elizabeth and tugged on her husband’s arm. “At least she’s finally outgrown her baby fat, Wyndham.”
“Now, Jane,” her father boomed, “she’s what, five and twenty? Long in the tooth to be sporting chubby cheeks. Even so, Elizabeth, you will want to mind what you eat. A trim figure doesn’t come easier with age.”
His brown side-whiskers were threaded with white now, as was the hair on his head. Otherwise, he looked exactly the same. He’d always worn a poof of hair in a curl over one eye, and he preferred the brass-buttoned coat issued by his old regiment to a dinner jacket. Ten years ago, the red coat had been outdated. Gaping open across his belly now, it looked the victim of another two wars. “Well, girl, don’t just stand there,” he said to her, “a homecoming like this calls for whisky.”
Realizing Dodger had abandoned her after all, she went to the sideboard and poured a whisky and two sherries. When she returned with the tray, it was to see that her parents had seated themselves in two wingback chairs facing a long sofa.
She was to be interviewed, then.
She settled onto the sofa. The large bench dwarfed her, likely their intention. Her mother and father sipped their drinks and watched her with unflinching contempt. She swirled her sherry, uninterested in imbibing spirits when so much needed to be said.
Silence stretched between them until Elizabeth could stand it no longer. “Were you told I have a child?”
Her mother made a disgusted noise. Her father leaned forward and thwacked the bottom of his empty snifter against the low table. “I suppose you’ve brought him to meet us. Think it will butter us up, do you? Think we will take him under our wing and let bygones go by?”
Her throat tightened so much that she could barely form a response. “He’s a baby.”
Her voice sounded weak. She hated that her voice sounded weak.
“Exactly,” Wyndham shot back. “An innocent baby who has no notions of immorality. He ought to be raised as a gentleman rather than a whore’s son, but you’ll never be selfless enough to admit that, will you? You’ll keep him for yourself and hinder any help his father’s name might have lent him, bastard though he is.”
She stared at her father incredulously. He was on Nicholas’s side? But how did he know?
“You should have left him with his father,” her mother said, further confirming Elizabeth’s horrible suspicion that they knew about Nicholas. “But of course, it doesn’t surprise us to hear you refused the man his own offspring. You’ve always been a headstrong girl. Had I suspected you would have the nerve to come here, however, I would have kept Clara here another day. Now I must send her a letter with your whereabouts. How embarrassing it will be to have to explain this.”
Elizabeth’s v
ision blurred. She shook her head at her mother’s vitriolic words, though she couldn’t make sense of the last. “Clara?”
“Lady Montborne,” she replied with a disdaining scowl. “Lord Constantine’s mother.”
Elizabeth blinked. Her heart thumped against her breast. They didn’t know about Nicholas. They wanted her to give Oliver to Lord Constantine. That was much, much better.
“You’re exchanging letters with Lady Montborne?” Elizabeth still didn’t understand what this meant.
Her mother’s pinched derision matched her tone. “She said you aren’t cooperating with his efforts to bring his child into his care. It doesn’t surprise me in the least, given—”
“I am a headstrong girl. Yes, I’ve been listening. Why did she write to you?” Elizabeth’s heart pounded so loud she could hear it. What if Con were still determined to “borrow” Oliver?
Her mother draped her fingers over her heart, as if she couldn’t countenance what she was about to say. “Write to me? She came here. What an awkward tea! Never in my life did I imagine I would entertain the mother of my daughter’s paramour. I told her in no uncertain terms that I had no notion of your whereabouts and I most adamantly would not insert myself into a custody complaint over a natural child, even if he is my grandson of sorts.”
“He’s no grandson of mine,” Wyndham said with a harrumph. “I’m more than happy to step in if I must.”
Elizabeth’s head spun. Lord Constantine couldn’t have sent his mother here.
Her dizziness made it difficult to speak. Lady Wyndham had never required her daughter’s participation to brew a fight, however. “All the same, I certainly will not harbor him. What a scandalous circumstance that would be, when poor Lord Constantine is being denied his own flesh and blood. Elizabeth, do sit up straight. You’re looking very common these days.”