by Olivia Drake
You, Ethan Sinclair, are a worthless excuse for a man.
A cough broke the silence. “M’lord?” ventured old Grigsby, the village solicitor. Tugging at his gray forelock, the gaunt little man shifted from one foot to the other. “If ye wish the wording to be altered, I should be happy to do so.”
“Everything looks in proper order.”
“Then if we might proceed, yer lordship.” Grigsby respectfully pulled out the chair at the mahogany secretaire. “Miss Mayhew requested I wait while ye sign the document. We’ll require two witnesses, of course.”
“Of course.”
Fighting the urge to rip the document into shreds, Ethan stalked to the bellrope and rang for a footman. Jane was doing him a favor. There was no need to feel so disgruntled about giving up his right to claim a baby.
But what if Marianne was his?
The possibility nagged like a sore tooth. It was the one question he could not ignore. The one question he could not answer satisfactorily, though he assured himself it couldn’t be true. He treated his women well, never made false promises of undying love, and scrupulously avoided virgins and spinsters. He left his lovers satisfied, with an expensive parting gift to ease the loss of his attentions. Any of his women would have felt free to approach him had she later discovered herself pregnant. None of them would have left a baby on the doorstep of his self-righteous neighbor.
Unless someone wanted revenge on him. Someone who knew him well enough to realize that Miss Jane Mayhew would cause him trouble. Grimacing, he thought of one female who would play such a trick on him.…
The footman entered, and Ethan snapped out instructions to fetch his clerk and his steward. Within moments the men were assembled in the library and Ethan seated himself at the opened secretaire.
He snatched a pen from the silver cup and dipped it into the inkpot. His hand hovered over the document.
You, Ethan Sinclair, are a worthless excuse for a man.
The rebuke galled him. Age had not improved Miss Jane Mayhew. She’d glared like a governess straight out of a boy’s worst nightmare. Her shapeless gown of muddy black had a collar so high he wondered that she didn’t choke. A knob of mousy brown hair had protruded from the back of her head. Though her eyes were a tolerable shade of gray-blue, her features were plain, her skin sallow, her shoulders militantly squared. She possessed nothing of the feminine softness he liked in a woman.
And she was as bossy as ever. He would never forget the time she had caught him in the stables with a comely maid and scolded him for taking advantage of a servant, regardless that the giggling girl had enticed him.
Yet Jane Mayhew, despite her flaws, would make a far better parent than he would. He didn’t need her harsh truths to know that.
In angry black strokes, he scrawled his name across the document.
Even as he did so, a commotion came from the corridor: voices and the tap of feminine footsteps. Irritated, Ethan snatched off his spectacles and turned around to order the library door closed. But the words halted in his throat as an exquisite woman glided into the room.
A drift of expensive perfume preceded her. Draped in a gown of peach silk that hugged her slim figure, Lady Rosalind looked more like a girl than a woman in her middle years. Her tawny, upswept hair and dainty features glowed as lovely as ever.
Stopping before him, she opened her arms wide. “Ethan, dearest,” she said, smiling. “It seems forever since last I saw you. Do give me a kiss.”
He reluctantly rose from the desk and touched his lips to her smooth cheek. She could not have chosen a worse time to reappear in his life. “Hello, Mother.”
“Oh, my,” she said, gazing from him to the other men. “Have I interrupted a business meeting?”
“Yes,” Ethan said bluntly. He stood in front of the secretaire to block her view of the document lying there. “I should be obliged if you would await me in the drawing room. I’ll only be a moment.”
“Ah, you’re sounding as stuffy as your father used to be. Now, we haven’t seen each other since autumn, and I wish to tell you all about the delights of Italy. Not to mention, learn all your news.” She made a little shooing motion with her fine-boned hand. “You men may return later.”
Gritting his teeth, Ethan dismissed them. As the clerk and secretary headed out the door, Mr. Grigsby picked up the document. “I’ll deliver this to Miss Mayhew, your lordship.” He blew on the signature, then rolled the paper into a tube.
“Miss Mayhew?” Lady Rosalind asked, looking sharply at Ethan. “What business have you with that unpleasant old maid Wilhelmina?”
He didn’t correct her mistake. “It’s nothing. A minor legal matter.”
The diminutive solicitor hadn’t taken two steps when Lady Rosalind plucked the paper out of his gnarled hand. Before Ethan could stop her, she unrolled the document and frowned down at it. “Oh, Jane Mayhew. My dear friend Susan’s daughter. I always thought it a shame poor Jane lost her mother at so young an age … what’s this? Jane has found a baby?” Her blue eyes rounded, Lady Rosalind looked up at Ethan. “Your baby?”
He held out his hand. “Give that paper back to me.”
Lady Rosalind clutched it to her breast. “At long last, a child. And you would give her away, just like that?”
The shock and disappointment on her elegant features stabbed into him. He felt like a boy again, scolded for peering into the ladies’ retiring chamber at one of her soirées. He resented the rebuke from a featherbrained socialite who had breezed in and out of his childhood on a whim. “It’s doubtful she’s mine.”
“Bah, I know your reputation,” his mother said, not disapprovingly. “If Marianne is your only offspring, I should be surprised. But you will not give away my granddaughter like an unwanted stable cat.” Turning from him, she glided to the hearth and dropped the document into the flames.
Momentarily stunned, Ethan sprang after her. Too late. When he snatched at the paper, the edges were already curling to black, and he succeeded only in burning his forefinger and thumb. “Damn it, Mother!”
“Kindly refrain from cursing.” Lady Rosalind watched as he shook his stinging digits. With a snap of her own fingers, she directed him to the door. “Come, Ethan. You and I are going to visit my granddaughter.”
Chapter 2
Marianne had a fine set of lungs. It dismayed Jane to learn just how piercing a wail one infant could emit.
Cuddling her close, Jane paced the length of the kitchen. Marianne had looked beautiful in slumber, with fine black eyelashes, plump cheeks, and a sweet little mouth, as physically perfect a creation as one would expect of a Chasebourne. Now, however, that cherubic face shone red with fury. As she’d done several times already, she turned her head and rooted against Jane’s bosom, then sobbed all the louder.
Jane felt horribly inadequate, and a lump clogged her throat. “Shhh, darling,” she murmured. “The milk is warming. If you’ll just be patient.”
“Oh, I don’t know how much more of this my nerves can bear,” Aunt Willy said plaintively. She reclined in a chair by the hearth, fanning her jowly face with a black-edged handkerchief. “I daresay you stuck a pin in her when you…”
“Changed her nappy? I assure you, I was very careful.” Frustrated, Jane held on to her temper with effort. “She’s hungry, that’s all.”
“You ought to have let that Crockett girl suckle her.”
“Lucy Crockett is filthy. I won’t have her anywhere near Marianne.” Jane shuddered to recall the only nursing mother in the village: a slovenly innkeeper’s wife who stank of musty sweat and stale liquor. Jane had promptly sent her packing.
“I simply do not understand why that baby was left here, of all places,” Aunt Willy complained. “It is Lord Chasebourne who ought to assume guardianship of the child, not us. Oh, what a vile sort he has turned out to be! And divorced, no less! It is a blessing no one saw you visit there.”
Her aunt would suffer heart palpitations if she knew Jane had stormed into
his bedchamber and seen him naked. Feeling hot color at the memory, Jane ended the pointless quarrel. “That is precisely why I am keeping her. Here, you hold Marianne while I prepare her bottle.”
“Me?” Aunt Willy recoiled, fumbling vainly on the table for her flask of restorative. Her graying brown curls jiggled as she shook her head vigorously. “I’ve no affinity for babies.”
“You came to live here when I was an infant. Surely that gives you some experience.”
“But your dear father—God rest his soul—hired a nursemaid to care for you. And of course I never married due to my exceedingly delicate constitution—”
“You’ll survive a few minutes.” Desperate, Jane pressed the crying infant to that broad, maidenly bosom. Aunt Willy’s arms came up automatically to clutch the squalling parcel.
“Oh, mercy!” The older woman sat rigidly straight, staring down in wide-eyed fright at Marianne. “Mercy me!”
Too harried to coddle her aunt as she usually did, Jane dashed to the hearth and dipped her little finger into the pan of milk. She snatched it back. Too hot.
Wrapping the corner of her apron around the handle, she carried the pan to the long table and added a dash of chilled milk from the crock, stirring until the temperature seemed right. Then she poured the milk into a brown glass jar and used a bit of twine to tie on the new teat. If this method worked for orphaned lambs, it ought to work for human babies, too.
It had better work.
She rescued Marianne from Aunt Willy, who promptly snatched up her flask and took a long drink, then squawked about her ordeal. Paying no heed, Jane nestled the baby in the crook of her arm and gently inserted the teat into that toothless, howling mouth.
The crying died to a gurgle. Tiny lips closed around the makeshift nipple and sucked. Once, twice, thrice. Oh sweet, blessed child.
But Jane relaxed too soon.
Marianne spat out the teat, turned her head away, and screeched louder than ever. Jane coaxed her, but the baby refused again and again. Milk squirted over Jane’s bosom. She bit back a sob of failure. Then a tiny flailing arm connected with the bottle and sent it crashing to the floor.
It shattered on the stone flags. Liquid drenched the bottom of Jane’s gown.
“Good gracious!” Aunt Willy moaned. “Whatever shall we do now?”
Jane had no answer. Bowing her head, she hugged the unhappy infant. The tears she’d been fighting coursed down her cheeks. She wanted nothing more than to sink to the floor and bawl along with the baby. She felt useless, ineffectual as a woman, a poor excuse for a mother.
The door hinges squeaked. A male voice drawled, “There’s no use crying over spilt milk. Or so goes the old adage.”
Aunt Willy let out a maidenly screech. Jane froze. Blinking to clear her watery vision, she stared aghast at Lord Chasebourne.
Ethan Sinclair lounged against the door frame, a gorgeously groomed gentleman in fawn breeches and forest-green coat, the snowy white cravat setting off his swarthy skin and pirate eyes. His elegance made her all the more aware of her own rumpled appearance. Her hair hung in hanks around her face, her everyday black gown reeked of milk, and she jiggled a squalling baby in her arms.
His baby.
Instantly hostile, she clutched Marianne close. “You’re supposed to be at home,” she accused. “Mr. Grigsby is coming to see you.”
His mouth hardened into a grimace. “That’s precisely why I’m here.”
A woman glided out of the shadowed corridor. “It’s why we’re both here.”
Jane had been so focused on Ethan that she hadn’t noticed his companion. Her tawny-gold hair was fashioned in an artful cascade of curls that Jane could never duplicate if she lived to be a thousand. Clad in peach-colored silk, she looked too slim and lovely to be the mother of anyone, let alone a full-grown man. Jane’s throat went dry as she recognized the dowager countess—her godmother, though Lady Rosalind had always regarded the role with carefree negligence.
“My lady! I heard you were abroad.”
Lady Rosalind’s smile seemed almost pained as she listened to the baby’s squall. “Oh, I’ve been back for a few days. I wouldn’t miss the Season for all the world.”
“Dear Rosalind,” Aunt Willy put in. “Forgive me if I don’t rise. My lumbago, you know.”
“Dear Wilhelmina. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to trouble yourself on my behalf.” Lady Rosalind glided closer, stepping daintily around the broken bottle. In a silly, nonsense voice, she added, “And who is this fussy little darling?”
For one horrified moment, Jane wondered what to say.
Then the countess continued. “Is this my new granddaughter?”
Lady Rosalind knew.
Jane’s heart sank lower. She looked at Ethan, who glowered in the doorway, clearly wanting nothing to do with this disastrous scene caused by the fruit of his philandering. If he’d seen Grigsby and signed the paper, why was he here?
A sharp fear pierced Jane’s bosom. He must not have signed. He must have come to claim Marianne, after all.
“My goodness, you do have a temper,” Lady Rosalind was saying in that absurd, singsong tone that seemed to come naturally to her. “We heard you all the way to the front step. You look to be at least two months old … and quite well cared for. Oh, look at those pretty blue eyes.” She aimed a telling glance at her son. “Your papa had blue eyes when he was born. I wonder if yours will turn as dark as his.”
She tickled Marianne beneath her small chin. Marianne blinked at the newcomer. For the space of a few seconds, the sobs slowed, but the lull was only temporary. She sucked in a breath and wailed again.
“She’s hungry,” Jane said in despair. “I tried to feed her a bottle, but—well, you can see what happened.”
Lady Rosalind tilted her head in a thoughtful pose and raised her voice above the noise. “Have you looked for a wet nurse?”
“Yes, I sent out my cook, Mrs. Evershed. But she hasn’t yet found anyone suitable.”
“You should have brought the child to my housekeeper, as I instructed you,” Ethan said from his stance by the door. “Obviously, you know nothing about mothering an infant.”
His superior expression made Jane feel all the more inadequate. She resented him for it. She had done her best for his child, and this was her thanks?
She marched across the kitchen. “You know so much. Perhaps you can do better than I.”
She thrust the fretful baby at him, and he caught Marianne awkwardly. His dark brows rising in horror, he held her away from himself, as if he expected her to bite.
“Afraid she’ll piddle on your pristine coat?” Jane taunted.
“Don’t play games with me,” he snapped. “I never said I knew anything about babies.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come here, spouting advice. You ought to have signed that legal paper and stayed with your little blond tart.”
His mother coughed delicately.
Mortified at her own shrewishness, Jane said hastily, “I’m sorry, my lady. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“It is no matter,” she said with a regal wave of her hand. “I am aware of my son’s … interests.”
Ethan strode to Lady Rosalind. “Here, Mother. You hold her.”
Laughing, she shook her head. “You need the chance to meet your new daughter.”
“She is not my daughter,” he ground out.
Even as he spoke, Ethan wished to God he could be certain of his claim. Loath to look at the child, he aimed his most lordly scowl at Lady Rosalind. She only smiled sweetly and crossed her arms when he would have passed her the baby.
All three women assumed an identical pose, arms folded across their bosoms. His mother beamed like a proud grandmama. In the chair by the fire, Wilhelmina waved a handkerchief at her florid face. Standing between the two of them, Jane returned his scowl. Wisps of loose brown hair lent a curious softness to her obstinate features. Her expression glowed with zeal. She wanted to punish him, to force him to ac
cept this child.
Damned self-rightous spinster.
Gritting his teeth against panic, Ethan looked for a safe place to lay down the screeching infant. Not on the table; she might roll off. Nor any of the other countertops. The wood box? Too hard. Upstairs, then.
Yes. In one of the bedrooms.
She squirmed like a trout caught in a net. Fearing he might drop her, he gingerly tucked the baby into the crook of his arm. She felt sturdier than he would have expected of so small a creature. Still, she was better left to someone qualified in child-rearing, someone who could abide this caterwauling. Then, just as he pivoted toward the door, something remarkable happened.
Marianne ceased crying.
She took a few shuddering breaths and fell silent. Egads, had he given her the coup de grace?
Alarmed, he frowned down to find her watery blue eyes intent on him, a faintly quizzical expression on her dainty face. Tears spiked her fine dark lashes. The noonday light played over her pert nose, the damp rosy cheeks, the quivering mouth. Her milky scent drifted to him. She looked helpless and trusting, utterly innocent.
An inexplicable tenderness clenched his chest. Without thinking, he stroked his finger over her smooth skin, and the satiny texture of it awed him. He felt the disturbing urge to protect her, a feeling he resisted with all the force of suspicion.
Marianne.
Who had named her? Who had abandoned this little girl on a neighbor’s doorstep? More importantly, was Marianne truly his?
The baby awkwardly worked one tiny fist into her mouth. She sucked noisily for a moment; then she wriggled against him and resumed crying.
Powerless as he’d never been with any female, he swung toward the three watching women. “There must be a nursing mother somewhere in the district.”
“Oh, this is horrid,” Wilhelmina cried out. “The poor thing will die!”