“And what would you have me become?” she railed.
Hearing the anger in her voice, Mick was actually relieved that he’d finally gotten a rise out of her. The only chance he had of getting through to Lettitia was by appealing to her emotions. Because, without a doubt, her mind was trapped in the prison of her twisted sense of duty.
“How about becoming a woman? A woman who’s not afraid to speak her mind. A woman who’s not afraid to follow her passions.”
“But I am just that… a mere woman. And as such, my wants, my desires, will always be secondary to the wants and desires of the men around me.”
“Says who?” When Lettitia stared at him in dumbfounded silence, Mick grabbed her by the shoulders. “Whoever told you that is full of it. In the twenty-first century, women grab the bull by the horns. They go to college, they have careers, they run corporations. Hell, they run whole countries. And you can be a part of that. You can become the woman that you were meant to be. All you have to do is step through the time portal with me.”
“I cannot.” Lettitia stared at him, a pained look on her face. “I have a duty to my family.”
“Your Uncle Phidias had it right when he said that duty can be a double-edged sword. And you’re bound, set, and determined to fall on yours, aren’t you?”
“What choice do I have?”
“Damn it, Tisha. I want you to stand up for yourself. I want you to tell your father to go to hell. And more than anything else, I want you to live a happy life.”
Teary-eyed, Lettitia cupped his cheek with her hand. “I was happy for the few short days that we were together.”
Mick jerked his head away from her hand. “I don’t believe that I’m hearing this.”
In that instant, the sickening realization hit him—theirs was a clash of cultures. More than a hundred years separated them. In that time, the social order had been upended. Lettitia was unable to even conceive of a world where her wants and wishes would matter.
Now he understood why William Hardwicke had up and gone to India. If he was anything like Mick, he’d become so frustrated with Lettitia that he could no longer bear to listen to her pre-programmed litany about duty and family obligations. Yeah, those things were important. Damn important. But when duty and family responsibility were twisted in such a way that they threatened to devastate a person’s spirit, then it was time to cut to the chase. Cut the strings. Cut bait and run. Whatever it took to save oneself.
“Mick, I’m very sorry that—”
“Get out of my sight,” he rasped, his eyes watering with the sting of bitter tears.
Lettitia clutched her throat with her hand. “Mick, I—”
“I said get out!” Grabbing her by the arm, he forcefully shoved her toward the door. “I’ve had it with you.”
Like the well-trained, dutiful object that she’d allowed herself to become, Lettitia headed for the door. Without uttering another word, she opened it and walked out.
Standing at the window, Mick watched her head across the field toward the main house. She’d gone about eighty feet when a shot suddenly rang out, followed quickly by two more shots.
Christ. Somebody, somewhere, had Lettitia in their gun sights. “Tisha!”
Wobbling, Lettitia turned toward the window where he stood. Even from that distance, Mick could see that she wore a terrified expression.
Hearing another round, Mick charged out of the oast house and took off running. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, fast and furious, as he sprinted across the field toward Lettitia.
“Hit the ground!” he hollered.
Either she didn’t know what that meant or she was too paralyzed with fear to react. It didn’t matter because, in the next instant, Mick came at her in a flying tackle and both of them hit the dirt in a bone-crunching thud.
Although he’d tried to pull her on top of him so that he would absorb most of the impact, he still managed to knock the wind out of her.
And dinged the hell out of his injured ribs in the process.
“Lettitia, sweetheart, are you all right?” he asked anxiously. At seeing the dazed expression on her face, Mick worried that she might have gone into shock.
“I’m f-fine,” she sputtered with a shaky nod. “Wh-what happened?”
“Someone just took a couple of potshots at you. That’s what happened.”
Mick scrambled to his feet. Since enough time had passed without any more shots being fired, he figured the danger had passed. He then gave Lettitia a helping hand, pulling her upright.
“With the shooting party taken to the woods this weekend, it clearly isn’t safe to be out and about,” she remarked as she brushed bits of dried debris from her skirt. “Somebody obviously mistook me for a bird.”
Mick’s jaw slackened. “You think somebody mistook you for a bird?” he iterated, stupefied. “That has got to be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard for attempted murder. And believe me, I’ve heard some doozies.”
“Who would want to murder me?”
“Well, our two prime suspects quickly come to mind. Maybe somebody got scared by all the questions we’ve been asking.”
“I can assure you that Lord Wortham will not wish me dead until after we are wed. Lest you forget, he wants my dowry. And my father stands to lose his bid for Parliament if I don’t marry. So, you see, neither of our suspects has a motive for killing me.”
Mick couldn’t fault her logic. Which left only one person—Wortham’s boy-toy, Freddy Merryweather. Just wait until I get my hands on that little weasel.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing her by the arm. “I’m taking you back to the house.”
“I am quite capable of getting from here to there by myself,” Lettitia huffed, some of the old fire having returned to her eyes.
“So, humor me.”
With Lettitia in tow, he started back to the house. The trip was markedly quiet. No doubt, she’d come to the same conclusion that he’d come to: they’d talked the subject of their relationship to death and no amount of heated argument would change the outcome. What they’d found in each other’s arms was soon to end.
And didn’t that hurt like a bitch? Literally. The pain was so intense that it felt like someone had cinched a pair of red-hot vise grips around his heart.
When they neared the large conservatory situated on the southern side of the house, Mick noticed a woman standing sentry on the other side of the glass—a woman who, when she caught sight of them, opened the glass door and approached them.
“May I have a word with you, Lettitia?” Davinia Merryweather inquired in her soft whisper of a voice.
“Of course, Mother.”
Chapter 16
“That is a most unusual fern,” Lettitia remarked, striving for a chatty tone. “I do not recall seeing it previously.”
Davinia glanced at the plant in question. “It is a Lady Victoria fern. And it has been, I think, quite some time since you last visited the conservatory.”
At hearing her mother’s gentle rebuke, Lettitia had the good grace to blush. When she came into her majority eight years ago and inherited a small annuity, she’d immediately moved to London. Since that time, her visits to Stag House had been few and far between. And always of brief duration.
Gesturing to the wheeled tea cart, Davinia said, “I thought we could take tea together.”
As Lettitia seated herself in one of two wicker chairs that were situated in a leafy bower, she noticed various telltale signs that suggested her mother spent a great deal of time sequestered in the cozy retreat. In addition to the two amply pillowed chairs, there were a divan, several stacks of books, and a half-worked antimacassar set next to a basket of colored silk threads.
“A cup of tea would be most welcome,” Lettitia said as she hastily plucked several bits of dried hops from her bodice. “I have had a rather trying afternoon.”
“I can well imagine. When I happened upon you and Mister Giovanni a few moments ago, you appeared—” her mother pause
d, smiling enigmatically—“quite flustered.”
“Mister Giovanni all too frequently has that effect on me,” she blurted without thinking. Realizing, too late, the damning implications of what she had just said, Lettitia feigned a sudden interest in a nearby potted palm. She hoped that her careless remark went unnoticed.
Davinia lifted a Wedgwood teapot from the wheeled cart. “From what I have observed these last two days, I would say that you have the same effect on Mister Giovanni,” she commented as she poured each of them a cup of tea. “Moreover, last evening at the banquet table, I could not help but notice that the man frequently held you in his gaze.”
“Ah, my favorite tea! Spiced orange pekoe.” Lettitia exclaimed, accepting the cup and saucer from her mother. Somewhat nervously, she took a sip. “Umm, so fragrant. Absolutely delicious,” she babbled inanely, desperate to steer the conversation in a different direction.
“In fact, if you will forgive my boldness, dear, it has not escaped my notice that you and Mister Giovanni seem quite enamored of one another.”
Lettitia fiddled with her teacup. “Surely, Mother, you are imagining things.”
“Do you think that I don’t know the look of love when I see it?” her mother inquired as she offered Lettitia a lavender scone.
Refusing the cake with a shake of her head, Lettitia guiltily dropped her gaze to her lap.
Are my feelings for Mick Giovanni so plainly evident for all the world to see?
Knowing the answer to that unspoken question, Lettitia suddenly deduced the reason for her mother’s invitation to take tea and why she had not invited Mick to join them. Her mother feared that a potential scandal loomed, not unlike the one that ensued when Emmaline ran off with the stable master.
“Worry not. I know where my duty lies,” Lettitia assured her mother.
Davinia peered at her over the top of her raised teacup. “But that is precisely what I wish to speak to you about.”
Lettitia nodded. Her mother had every right to take her to task for her unseemly behavior. “I will not deny that Mister Giovanni and I are… are attracted to one another. Be that as it may, I have informed him that I am not at liberty to break off my engagement to Lord Wortham. Being a gentleman, Mister Giovanni has accepted my decision in this matter.” She did not feel bound to tell her mother that, in so doing, she’d broken Mick Giovanni’s heart. As well as her own.
“In all honesty, Lettitia, I had accorded you more good sense than that.”
While the reprimand was wholly justified, Lettitia hastened to reassure her mother that her fears were for naught. “While I may have exercised a lack of common sense in this matter, I assure you that no scandal will ensue. If you must know, Mister Giovanni will be leaving England tomorrow.”
For several long moments, her mother wordlessly stared at her before she said quietly, “Like William Hardwicke before him?”
Perplexed by the cryptic remark, Lettitia stared into her teacup. For a man who’d been dead seven years, William’s name had been popping up with alarming frequency of late.
“I did my duty then, Mother, and I shall do my duty now,” she affirmed. “You need not fear on that account.”
Davinia set her teacup and saucer on a low-lying wicker table. She then leaned over and placed a hand on Lettitia’s forearm. “My greatest fear is that you will make the same mistake that I made thirty years ago. Do not turn your back on love yet a second time.”
“Whether or not I… I love Mick Giovanni does not… does not signify,” she maintained somewhat feebly. Does Mother not understand what is at stake? Suspecting that she did not, Lettitia clarified the point. “Our family’s good name is in the balance.”
“Alfred’s name is in the balance; that is all. And to suggest otherwise is to make spun silk out of dross,” Davinia remarked calmly as she reached for her teacup. In the next instant, as though they were discussing nothing more trifling than the latest fashions, she raised the cup to her lips and took a ladylike sip.
Openly staring at her mother, Lettitia wondered if she’d taken leave of her senses. “Surely, you are not suggesting that I… that I break off my engagement to Wortham?”
“May I be blunt, dear?” When Lettitia hesitantly nodded, her mother said, “For all that the man possesses a title, I never approved of Lord Wortham. And though I cannot lay claim to worldliness, there is something in Wortham’s manner that hints at the depraved.”
Having followed Lord Wortham to The Golden Dragon, Lettitia knew that her mother spoke the unvarnished truth. Yet that was hardly just cause to break off the engagement. Her marriage to Wortham, after all, would be one of convenience. Admittedly, his convenience, not hers.
“Need I remind you, Mother, that ours is not a love match.”
“That is precisely my point,” Davinia asserted as she reached for the teapot. With a poise borne from years of practice, she refilled both their cups. “If one is to marry, it should only be for love. To do otherwise is a betrayal of one’s self.”
Then why in Heaven’s name did you marry Father? Although the question begged to be asked, Lettitia could not bring herself to utter the words.
“I married Alfred because I was forced to do so,” her mother said, having uncannily guessed Lettitia’s unspoken thoughts. “At the time I felt that I had little choice in the matter. My family’s good name was at stake.”
“That implies that—” Lettitia paused, scarcely daring to think such a thing of her soft-spoken, well-bred mother—“that a potential scandal was involved.”
Davinia wordlessly nodded.
Peering into her mother’s gray eyes—eyes that mirrored her own in shape and color—she wondered at the chain of events that had consigned Davinia to a marriage with a man she did not love.
“For quite some time, I have longed to tell you the story, Lettitia. But I refrained from doing so, fearful that it would cause you to look upon me with something less than familial affection.”
“There is nothing that you can say that would diminish my love for you,” Lettitia stated emphatically.
“We shall see. Before I begin, will you kindly hand me that basket of thread?”
Baffled by the unexpected request, Lettitia obediently retrieved the basket from the divan. She was even more mystified when her mother plucked from it a packet of bound envelopes that were yellowed with age.
“For thirty years, I have kept these letters.” Davinia ran a hand over the bound packet, her gesture curiously suggestive of a lover’s caress. “They tell a tale of a true untainted love, the likes of which only the poets dare document.”
Mesmerized by the wistful tone in her mother’s voice, Lettitia found herself eyeing the packet of bound letters with keen interest. Without being told, she knew the letters had not been written by Alfred Merryweather.
“Your maternal grandfather, while titled, possessed little in the way of wealth. It was greatly hoped that I would make a well-connected match in order to recoup the family fortune. But I had little concern for such matters, for I had fallen in love with a young man from the neighboring estate.” As she spoke, Davinia hugged the packet of letters to her chest.
The inherent pathos in that simple gesture suggested to Lettitia that thirty years had done little to diminish her mother’s affection for the young man in question.
“While my father had the greatest regard for his neighbor Sir Hugh Carlyle,” her mother continued, “he did not think highly of the fact that I had fallen in love with Sir Hugh’s youngest son, Terrance, a man who had neither rank nor land nor money.”
“What did you do?” Lettitia asked, thinking her mother’s tale strangely similar to her own.
“Given that neither of us could secure our family’s approval for the match, we decided to elope.”
“Do you mean to say that you married this man?” Lettitia gasped, unable to hide her shock.
“I had every intention of wedding Terrance.” Davinia paused, tears pooling in her gray eyes. “En ro
ute to Scotland, our carriage overturned. While I weathered the accident unscathed, Terrance broke his neck. He died instantly.”
Lettitia remained respectfully silent, remembering her own grief upon receiving word of William’s death in India. While such pain lessens with time, it never truly dissipates. As she knew all too well.
“Is that the scandal that forced you to wed Father?” she inquired after a lengthy pause.
Her mother shook her head, disavowing her of the notion. “It was the fact that I carried Terrance’s child that was so scandalous.”
As she and her mother silently stared at each other, Lettitia wiped her clammy hands on her skirt. She had a sudden horrifying feeling that she knew where this tale was headed. If correct in her assumption, the repercussions would be nothing less than earth shattering. A Copernican shift in all that she held dear.
“Are you telling me that… that Alfred Merryweather is not my father?”
“No, he is not your father,” Davinia replied in a surprisingly firm tone of voice. “Terrance Carlyle is your father.”
Stunned, Lettitia gracelessly lunged to her feet. Clutching at the neckline of her high-collared dress, she fretfully paced back and forth, staggered by her mother’s revelation.
After several moments of restless pacing, she came to an abrupt halt. “Does Fa—” She broke off suddenly, the word “Father” sticking in her throat. “Does Alfred know the particulars of my birth?”
“He does,” Davinia confirmed. “For the privilege of marrying into an old and noble family, Alfred was willing to give you his name.”
“But not his love,” Lettitia countered, finally understanding the reason for her father’s antipathy.
“I deeply regret all of the anguish that you have suffered on account of Alfred’s indifference. Just as I deeply regret the day that I dutifully acquiesced to my father’s demands and married a man I did not love.” Reaching for Lettitia’s hand, her mother said beseechingly, “You were meant for better things than to live the life that I have lived. You have been given a second chance at love. I implore you, Lettitia, to take it.”
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