by Mary Balogh
“Poor Agnes,” Eve said. “She wants to help.”
“She may help,” he said, “by doing her job and keeping the household running smoothly. You and I will call upon the Earl of Luff, Eve. Allow me to escort you to your room so that you may freshen up and change your clothes.”
Mrs. Pritchard sighed. “Oh, I knew that if only you would come, Colonel, all would be well,” she said.
He took Eve upstairs and stopped outside her room with her before proceeding to the guest room where he had stayed before.
“It is still early,” he said. “Would you like to sleep for a few hours before we go out?”
She shook her head. “I could not sleep,” she said. “I will not be able to rest until I have my children home. But Aidan, I cannot embroil you further in the sordid crises of my life. There is so little of your leave left, and you have not had the freedom to enjoy any of it properly yet. You must return to London or to Lindsey Hall. You must not worry about—”
He set a finger across her lips. “I will see this thing through to the end,” he said. “When I leave you, I will leave you safe and secure and happy.”
“Because of your vow to Percy?” she asked.
“Because you are my wife.”
She drew breath to speak, and he thought she was going to argue the matter in her usual way. But she merely nodded and turned to let herself into her room.
When I leave you. It would be soon now, within a day or two, once the children were back home where they belonged. He would return to London and enjoy what was left of his two months in England. He would be unencumbered at last, almost free again. He would recover the life that was long familiar to him. But first, he thought grimly, letting himself into the guest room and ringing for hot water for a wash and shave, there was Luff to tackle.
When I leave you . . .
DIDCOTE PARK, COUNTRY SEAT OF THE EARL OF LUFF, was a property on which Eve had never before set foot, even though it was not far from Ringwood. Invitations to social events at the house were issued only to those families who were of indisputably gentle birth. Her father, with all his wealth, had never come close to qualifying.
The house was an elegant, perfectly proportioned Georgian mansion. It was where John had grown up—his home. But Eve had few thoughts to spare for him.
“What if the earl refuses to receive us?” she asked.
“Refuses?” Aidan looked at her with obvious surprise. “Why would he refuse?”
“I am,” she reminded him, “the daughter of a Welsh coal miner.”
“And the wife of a Bedwyn,” he said.
How different their perceptions of reality were, she thought. As the son and brother of the Duke of Bewcastle, it would never occur to him that he might be refused admittance to even the grandest of stately homes. And of course he never would be.
“What if he will not listen to us?”
“Why would he not?” he asked. “It is his duty as a magistrate to listen.”
How could she explain to him what it was like not to be of the privileged aristocratic class, not to have the power or influence to be confident of the outcome of a visit such as the one they were paying? The Earl of Luff knew her as the woman whose father had had the effrontery to suggest a marriage alliance between their families.
“What if he says no?” she asked. “What if he refuses to change his mind?”
“We will see to it,” he said, “that that does not happen. If you expect the worst, Eve, the worst is what you usually get. Ah, here we are.”
He helped her alight while Sam Patchett rattled the door knocker. Her knees felt weak, and her stomach was queasy even though she had eaten no breakfast and even though she had worn one of her smart new carriage dresses for confidence. Aidan was wearing his dress uniform.
“Colonel Bedwyn and Lady Aidan Bedwyn to see the Earl of Luff,” he told the porter who answered Sam's knock. He cupped Eve's elbow and led her into the entrance hall, unbidden.
She had always coveted her independence. She might normally resent the confident manner in which he took charge. But this morning she was grateful for it. If she was doing this alone, she would probably be on her way back home by now, the door of Didcote firmly closed behind her. His confidence was obviously well founded. After a mere two or three minutes of waiting in the hall, they were escorted to a downstairs room that turned out to be a library, and were bowed inside.
The Earl of Luff was rising from behind a huge oak desk. He was an older version of John, his blond hair now gray and thinning on top, but he was still a distinguished looking man.
“Colonel Bedwyn?” he said. “Lady Aidan? This is an unexpected pleasure. Do have a seat. May I offer you something to drink? Or would you prefer tea, ma'am?” His eyes had swept over her with bland courtesy.
“Neither, thank you, my lord,” Eve said.
“Ah,” he said. “What about you, Bedwyn? Brandy? Claret? Something else?”
“Nothing.” Aidan held up his hand. He indicated a seat to Eve, and they both sat. She felt almost dizzy with anxiety and exhaustion.
“Well, then.” The earl seated himself in a leather armchair and crossed one leg over the other. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Surely he must know. They could have only one reason for being here.
“I want my children back,” Eve said, hearing in dismay that her voice was thin and shaking. “You let Cecil Morris take them from me. But they are mine. They belong at Ringwood. They are happy there. I want them back.”
He lifted his eyebrows in apparent surprise. “Are you referring to Morris's young cousins?” he asked. “The children your household would not allow to return home to him, ma'am, because you were not there to give your permission? It was a simple matter of dealing with your absence.”
“Home?” she said. “They were home. They live with me. And my household was not consulted until Mr. Biddle and four other men came to take the children forcibly away. They belong at Ringwood.”
“Pardon me, ma'am,” he said, “but what is your relationship to the children in question?”
She felt the knife thrust of a deeper fear.
“None,” she admitted, “except that I am Cecil's cousin on his father's side. But it is with me that they live.”
“It is my understanding that they are orphans,” the earl said, “and that they were sent to live with their relative, Mr. Cecil Morris. He explained to me that you kindly opened your home to them during an indisposition of Mrs. Morris, his mother, and that during that time you left them alone while you went to town to enjoy the pleasures of the Season with your new husband.”
“I did not leave them alone!” she exclaimed. “I—”
“Perhaps, sir,” Aidan said, “since there is some dispute over who has a claim to the charge of these orphans, you would reopen the case and listen to the arguments of both sides.”
“But it would appear,” the earl said, “that all the rights are on the side of Mr. Morris.”
“They are not!” Eve cried. “He does not even want the children.”
“Then he has a strange way of showing it, ma'am,” he said, frowning.
“Will you at least listen to my wife's side of the story?” Aidan asked, sounding infuriatingly calm, almost bored. “These children are important to her. She has cared for them for the better part of a year and thinks of them as her own.”
“A year!” The earl's brows snapped together. “Mrs. Morris was indisposed that long?”
“She has not been ill at all,” Eve said.
“I am asking you to grant us a hearing,” Aidan said. “With both Morris and his mother present if they wish.”
“Oh, no!”
He held up a staying hand.
“And any witnesses he may care to call. And any witnesses my wife chooses to call.”
Eve could feel tension knot in her stomach. She wanted to plead with the earl now. She wanted to get him to see sense now. She wanted to go straight from Didcote Park to Cec
il's to take her children home with her. She did not want a hearing at which Cecil could tell his lies again and force Aunt Jemima to tell lies for him.
The Earl of Luff sighed. “It seemed a perfectly straightforward matter,” he said. “It still seems straightforward. I am not going to all the faradiddle of calling a formal hearing, Bedwyn, with clever counsel arguing the case around and around in ever more dizzying circles. But I will allow an informal hearing if I must. It will have to be today, though. I have plans for the rest of the week. Two o'clock in the assembly rooms at Heybridge. Take it or leave it. I'll have Morris informed.”
Aidan got to his feet. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “We will be there.”
“But,” Eve protested, “I wanted this matter settled this morning. I cannot wait until this afternoon.”
“Then, ma'am,” the earl said curtly, “you must be happy with having it remain settled in Morris's favor. I will certainly be happy.”
She got to her feet. “This afternoon it will be, then,” she said.
A few minutes later they were back in the carriage and moving down the driveway away from the house. It was all very well to tell her not to expect the worst, Eve thought wearily, but how could she not do so? The law would seem to be clearly on Cecil's side. Love was going to be no argument.
“Eve,” Aidan said, “we are going straight home and you are going to bed. You are going to sleep.”
“I cannot sleep,” she protested.
“But you will anyway.” His voice was stern, his expression hard. “If you want those children back, you must sleep and make your mind more alert. I strongly advise that you allow me to do most of the talking, and that when you do talk, you not rely upon emotion alone.”
“How can I not be emotional!” she cried.
“He will win if you are,” he told her. “Take my word on it.”
She stared into his cold, harsh face and felt suddenly so all alone that she could bear it no longer. She turned sharply away, buried her face in her hands, and wept. She rarely gave in to tears, but she could not control them now, try as she would. She had forgotten how physically painful it was to cry. Her throat ached. Her chest felt as if it had been pierced by a dozen knives. Her heart felt as if it would break.
For perhaps a minute she was alone indeed. Then a hand settled between her shoulder blades and rubbed lightly back and forth. When her sobs had finally been reduced to hiccups and convulsive heaves, a large handkerchief appeared in her hand. She dried her face with it and blew her nose.
She had never, she thought, been more tired in her life.
It was as if he had read her thoughts. He leaned over her, one arm coming about her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, and he lifted her bodily onto his lap. Before her mind could quite register the shock, he had braced his booted feet against the seat opposite and settled her against him in such a way that her head nestled comfortably on one of his shoulders. She did not know when her bonnet had been removed or who had removed it but it was gone anyway.
“It will get better, love,” he murmured against her ear.
“Will it?” But it was a measure of her weariness that she did not need to hear his answer. At that moment she trusted him utterly. How wonderful it was sometimes to have the burdens of life lifted from one's shoulders.
“I promise it will,” he said.
The next thing she was aware of was waking up outside Ringwood when the carriage rocked to a halt.
CECIL MORRIS WAS LOOKING SMUG, HIS MOTHER nervous. Eve was pale and drawn, despite the fact that she had slept both in the carriage and in her bed after they returned home from Didcote Park. Mrs. Pritchard was visibly anxious, Miss Rice tense. The Reverend Puddle was seated between them and showing deep concern for both ladies. The parish constable and his four assistants—one of them sporting a swollen beacon of a nose and two purple eyes—stood about importantly as if they expected a brawl to break out at any moment. A rather large number of other interested persons were in attendance, though how they knew about the hearing Aidan had no idea.
The Earl of Luff was late, and when he did arrive, he appeared to be in a bad humor.
“Let us get this business settled without further ado,” he said, seating himself behind a table that had been set up along one end of the largest of the assembly rooms and glaring about him as if he were the one who had been kept waiting.
Cecil Morris was called up first to take the chair beside the earl's table and repeat his reasons for believing that custody of the orphans, David and Rebecca Aislie, should be granted to him. He did so, after taking an oath of honesty on a large Bible, perjuring himself with every breath. According to his story, he was inordinately fond of his young cousins, as he had been of their poor dead parents, while his mother positively doted upon them. He had been prevailed upon, against his better judgment, to allow his cousin, then Miss Eve Morris, to offer hospitality to the children while his mother recovered from a lengthy indisposition, but he had been disturbed to learn that she had abandoned them in order to jaunter off to London to enjoy the Season.
Aidan set a staying hand on Eve's arm when she drew breath to say something.
He had sought and won legal custody, Morris explained, and had sent the constable to fetch the children because the last time he had gone to visit them and assure them that soon they would be at home with their dear aunt, his cousin's new husband had threatened him with violence. He had feared that the other members of the household, some of whom were convicted felons, would do him harm—or worse, harm the children—if he went in person to demand their return.
“And as you can see, my lord,” he said, making a dramatic gesture toward the bulbous-nosed, purple-eyed constable's assistant, “my fears were not ill-founded.”
Aidan, feeling Eve's continued agitation, reached beneath the table and squeezed her hand.
“Who did that?” the earl asked, frowning at the assistant.
“I did, your worship,” Eve's housekeeper said from somewhere behind them. “And I would do it again to anyone who came inside my mistress's house without a by-your-leave, wanting to drag away poor innocent little babies just because he—that villain there—wants his revenge. I just wish it was his nose I had got at the end of my fist.”
“Sit down, woman,” the earl said sternly, grasping the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and looking weary.
“Well, you did ask,” she said.
“I did,” he agreed. “Now sit down. Lady Aidan, do you have any questions you wish to ask Mr. Morris?”
Aidan squeezed her hand again, but she ignored his silent plea to speak for her and got to her feet.
“Yes,” she said. “Becky and Davy were brought by stagecoach to Heybridge on September 5 of last year. It will be very easy to verify that date with stage records. Will you tell the earl, please, Cecil, how long they were at your house before my aunt's alleged illness forced you to allow me to take them?”
“How am I to remember that?” he asked her. “A month, two months, maybe longer.”
“My household records show,” Eve said, “that I hired Mrs. Johnson as a nurse for the children on September 6. The same records will show a number of clothes and other supplies being bought for them within that same week. Mrs. Johnson will testify, if necessary.”
“My dear mama was ill—” Morris began.
“And will you tell the earl about your visit to Ringwood two days before the anniversary of my father's death?” Eve asked him. “I will refresh your memory, if you wish. You thought at the time that you would be inheriting on that anniversary. In my absence, you had everyone in the house line up in the hall so that you could address them. Every one of my servants will attest to the fact that the children were included in that line. Will you tell us what you told them all?”
“I cannot remember,” he said. “That was some time ago.”
“Plenty of people can remember,” she told him. “You said that everyone—everyone—was to be gone by the
time you came back to take up residence or you would have them all arrested for vagrancy.”
“Eve!” His eyes widened in shock. “I did not mean my poor young cousins. They were in the hall because they were to come home with me. But that woman”—he pointed at the housekeeper—“threatened me with a carving knife, and for the sake of the children I withdrew.”
There was a snort from somewhere behind. “If I had had a carving knife handy,” the housekeeper remarked, “I would have sliced your ears off for you, you lying little rat, and improved your face.”
“Woman,” the earl said sternly, “hold your tongue or I will have you removed. Return to your place, Mr. Morris. We will hear from Lady Aidan. Step up here, ma'am, and take a seat. Tell me why I should grant custody of David and Rebecca Aislie to you when there is no blood relationship between you and them.”
Aidan fixed his gaze on her as she seated herself and took the oath on the Bible, and willed her to stay calm, not to become distraught as she had so nearly become in Luff's library this morning.
She explained how on the death of their parents the children had been sent from one relative to another until they had arrived at Heybridge to be rejected yet again. There had been nothing left for them except an orphanage somewhere. But her aunt had come weeping to Eve, unknown to her son, begging her to take the children in. And so she had. She had hired a nurse and a governess for them and had spent as much time with them herself as she could until before long she had come to love them as her own. She explained how it had never occurred to her to seek legal custody of them since no one else wanted them.
“How do you explain Mr. Morris's actions of the past week if he does not care for them himself?” the earl asked. “He obviously felt deep concern over your absence and neglect of his young relatives. He went to some trouble to take them into his own home.”
“Revenge,” Eve said.
“I beg your pardon?” the earl asked.
She described how she had kept her inheritance by marrying before the anniversary of her father's death. She described again the threat Morris had made to everyone in her household two days before that date and his behavior on that morning until her husband had ordered him to leave Ringwood and never set foot on the property again.