“She is,” Brian replied without hesitation.
“Robert,” Lord Liverpool said to his secretary, “see that a dinner with Lord and Lady Wright is placed on my schedule. Make the arrangements with my wife.”
“Yes, my lord,” the secretary said dutifully.
Liverpool turned to Brian. “I’m glad our paths crossed, Wright. I shall give consideration to your request to be considered for a place on my staff.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Brian said with feeling.
“Now, if you will excuse us?” Liverpool started to a table set up for his party.
Brian moved out of the way with a short bow. He’d thought himself done when Liverpool looked back at him. “Holland truly is a fascinating country.”
“I have no doubt, my lord,” Brian answered.
The cabinet minister smiled, and Brian knew he was dismissed. He left the dining room but took a moment in the club’s vestibule to almost collapse. He’d done it. He’d stormed the War Office and had gained ground.
Of course there was no guarantee that Liverpool would name him to his staff, but over dinner Brian would do his best to convince him.
He went outside a happy man. The earlier threat of rain had turned out to be nothing. The wind was cold but nothing could dampen Brian’s spirits. He couldn’t wait to see Gillian and tell her what had happened. Together, they would make plans for the dinner party.
Brian had traveled about a half dozen steps when a small town coach pulled up at the curb beside him. He recognized the polished, burled wood vehicle without having to glance at the coat of arms proudly displayed on the door.
The door swung open and his father leaned out. “Climb in,” he ordered.
Chapter Thirteen
Brian stood his ground. His father didn’t respect anyone who jumped to his bidding.
His father frowned. At five and sixty, the marquess of Atherton was as tall and lean as Brian but with short cropped gray hair and an imperial attitude. They both shared the same light blue eyes. In fact, of any of his three sons, Brian was the one who resembled him the closest.
With a world-weary sigh, his father said, “Very well, would you do me the honor of joining me in this coach?” His words dripped irony.
Brian did so, shutting the door behind him.
The coach had bench seats on both sides of the cab so they could face each other. His father knocked on the side of the coach with the gold head of his walking stick, a signal for the driver. The vehicle jerked forward.
His father turned to him. It had been well over two months since they’d last seen each other. He stood his walking stick on the floor, resting his hands on top of it. “The last time we met in such a manner you refused to obey my wishes,” his father said without a trace of humor. “Now I see you are still defying me.”
“I’m not defying you, Father. I’m living my life. I’m doing what the future earl of Wright should do.”
“And what is that?”
“Following my conscience.”
“I did not want that child here.”
Brian tapped down a surge of temper. His voice carefully neutral, he said, “Don’t worry. You’ll have nothing to do with him.”
His father’s lips curled into a sneer. “Why do you give a damn?”
“Because it is the right thing to do. The honorable thing.”
“I see,” his father said with the awareness of discovery. “You always were the stickler. Thinking to correct my wrongs?” He snorted his opinion. “Or do you imagine you can play the game better than I? You can’t. My influence reaches every corner of this realm. Every rookery, every street, every cabinet office.”
For a second, Brian wondered if he knew of the meeting he’d just had with Liverpool. He couldn’t. It had been a spontaneous meeting. Happenstance created from careful planning. In time he would know, but not yet.
“You are debating whether or not I know of your meeting with Liverpool inside White’s,” his father surmised. He laughed quietly at Brian’s startled expression. “You believe you can defy me. I know everything you are doing. I receive reports before you can return home and take off your coat.”
“What is the reason for this visit?” Brian asked, tired of being baited.
His father turned serious. “I am giving you another chance. I understand you are angry I sent the babe away. It was the expedient thing for me to do at the time. Perhaps it was hasty of me. Then again, I did not know you had such a soft heart.”
“Expedient?” Brian shook his head. “He almost died. He still could die.”
“Children die all the time,” his father said without feeling.
“Especially when they are discarded as if they were baggage no longer wanted.”
“Brian, this is becoming a tiresome argument. What do you wish me to do? Take the child in? Very well, I shall see it is fostered by a very good and reliable family. I didn’t set up the matter anyway. Jess did.”
“She wouldn’t do that to her own child,” Brian said. Even though Brian blamed Jess for her role in Anthony’s abandonment, he’d assumed she’d done so at his father’s insistence.
“She did do that to her own child. When I said I found children under foot tiresome, she took care of the matter. My son, she has played you for a fool since the day you laid eyes on her. All she had to do was heave her bosoms at you and you’d believe any story she told you.”
The charge was true.
“What I find interesting,” his father continued, “is the dogged perseverance of yours to always play the hero. You’ve always been this way—full of noble intentions and short on common sense.”
“You are growing offensive, Father,” Brian said, his temper starting to bubble.
“Of course I am, because I speak the truth.”
Brian turned away from him, finding the air in the coach too close for this conversation.
“I did you a favor,” his father said, changing the tone of his voice. “I know you thought you were in love but you had to see Jess for what she was.”
“When did you climb into her bed, Father? How soon after I left for the war?”
His father shook his head as if it shouldn’t matter. “She came after me—”
“How soon?” Brian repeated.
“A week, perhaps two.”
“And in showing me what she was, the two of you have been together for how long…while I paid her bills?”
“You didn’t pay all of them. She may have been born in a stable but she is an expensive piece of muslin. I paid more than my share.”
Brian shook his head. “She wasn’t that way until you put your hands on her.”
“Damnation, son. She’s a sly fox. She knew what she had and she wanted more. Still does. But what she didn’t want was a brat.” He leaned close to Brian. “Do you know why she had him? She was hoping to play on your sympathies again. The laugh’s on her. You took the baby and tossed her away.”
There was an element of truth in his words, a truth Brian didn’t like. He’d loved Jess, been faithful to her…trusted her.
“I know it hurts,” his father said with a definite lack of commiseration in his words. “But you had to be taught a lesson. You can’t assume a title like mine and continue to be so naïve.”
“Who is naïve, Father? You are still dancing to Jess’s tune, aren’t you?”
His father sat back. “She means nothing to me.”
“But you haven’t given her up, have you? You can’t.”
“I like her figure, her youth. Why should I give her up? You don’t want her back, do you?”
There it was, what he’d spent his childhood combating—a twist of words, a nudge or a push. His father would bludgeon everyone into letting him have his way. His mother wasn’t much better. No wonder his brothers had been so aimless. They had been told when to think, what to believe, how to behave.
Brian would be eternally thankful that his parents’ attitudes toward him had been one of benign negle
ct. It had allowed him to grow into a man.
“So, is this what you wanted to say to me?” Brian asked, wanting to bring the interview to a close.
“I hear you went to Huntleigh and brought back your wife.”
Brian wasn’t surprised he knew. It wasn’t a secret. “Of course I have her with me.”
His father’s tone turned conciliatory. “Gillian has a practical head on her shoulders. Her father has been invaluable to me on several occasions since your marriage. Keep her with you. The rift between you served no purpose.” He made his heavy sighs before concluding, “However, I would give up the baby.”
“Because?”
“He’s a loose end. A messy one. You can’t expect Gillian to raise another woman’s child. She’ll leave again and then where will you be?”
Brian sat back in stunned silence to hear his deepest fears spoken aloud.
“You like Gillian, don’t you?” his father said, accurately reading his silence. “You’ve discovered you didn’t make such a bad choice in a wife. She’s a much better choice than Jess. I warned you time would tell, and so it has.”
Brian found his voice. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” his father asked, brushing an imaginary piece of lint from his coat sleeve.
“Know exactly your opponent’s darkest doubts. How do you go unerringly to point?”
“I know my opponent,” his father admitted, smiling freely.
Brian longed to wipe that smile from his face. “Well, you misjudged your mark this time,” he said. “Gillian is very happy. I’m happy. The only person unhappy is you. You can’t control me and it annoys you, doesn’t it? You keep thinking there must be a way to bring me under your thumb, to make me vote your way, dance to your tune. There isn’t, Father. I might have done it out of respect at one time, but you killed that loyalty. You should have left Jess alone. She didn’t have the strength to fight a man like yourself or the knowledge of the cost. You played with her like a cat does a mouse.”
“No mouse, son. Women never lack resources, and most times they are the cat. That is what makes them so interesting. As for Gillian being happy, we shall see. What do you have? Thirty days and then she will be gone?”
How did he know that?
Brian smiled. “She is my wife. She’ll not be gone in thirty days.”
“Don’t be so certain of that,” his father advised him. “And you’d also best start to see to your attire. Your neck cloth needs more starch. Hammond has been doing a wonderful job for me.”
“So he is in your employ,” Brian observed, trying to sound disinterested. He and the valet had been together for well over a decade.
“He’s always been in my employ,” his father informed him.
The news shocked Brian. Hammond had been the one person he’d trusted.
“I’ve always known what you were doing. I’ve almost known what you were thinking. No matter where you were or how far you were from me.”
Brian reached up and knocked on the roof of the coach. It was wiser than using his fist on his father’s smiling mouth. “We’d best part company here,” he said.
His father bowed his head. “As you wish, Wright.” However as Brian opened the door, he couldn’t resist one last salvo. “The ambassadorship to Holland will be offered to you, I suspect, within two weeks’ time. I expect you to take it.”
“I expect you will be disappointed.” Brian smiled. “You see, Father, I won’t be controlled. You may cut off funds, block invitations to soirees, toss babies aside, and I’ll still be my own lead. Because, after everything is said and done, I’m still your heir. Not even the marquess of Atherton has the power to overturn the rules of noble succession. In the end, no matter what games you play, I will win.”
The smile faded from his father’s face. His expression could have been set in stone. Reminding him of his mortality always had that impact. “You may leave now,” his father said. “But don’t forget, I always keep my aces close. There will come a day you will beg my forgiveness.”
“I doubt that.” Brian climbed out of the coach and shut the door. He watched the vehicle pull away before letting his temper consume him.
Mrs. Vickery was reporting to his father. There was no doubt in his mind. Why else would she be adamant about staying on as Cook when Gillian would have let her go?
Spying was a despicable act. Brian would not tolerate it. He couldn’t wait to turn Mrs. Vickery out of his house and let his father know he’d found him out. With that thought in mind, he started for home.
Sitting in the back room that overlooked the garden, Gillian set her sewing aside. The hour had to be close to half past four. Kate usually brought Anthony to her by now, fresh from his nap and awake. This time of the day was becoming Gillian’s favorite because usually she had him all to herself.
It was becoming far too easy to think of Anthony as hers. He was a delightful baby. Now that he’d figured out how it was done he was full of smiles…and there were times she could almost dream she and Wright were a family. It was a forbidden dream. She’d always talk sense into herself almost immediately—and yet, she couldn’t stop the yearning.
She must also write Andres. She had yet to do so and she knew it wasn’t fair to him. It’s just that she wasn’t certain what she should write although she was becoming more certain that it would not be what he wanted to hear.
Gillian didn’t know if she would stay with Wright, but her confused feelings were signal enough that she could not give Andres what he wanted. It broke her heart to think she might hurt him, and yet, she had to be honest—
“My lady, my lady,” Kate’s shrill voice cried from the hall.
Gillian reached the doorway, just as Kate came running up, her face so pale her freckles seemed to float on her skin. “It’s Master Anthony,” the maid managed to gasp out.
Not waiting for further explanation, Gillian picked up her skirts and went running down the hall for the stairs. For once she was thankful this was a small house. It took her less than a minute to bound up the staircase and charge into the baby’s room—where she pulled up short.
She had anticipated that Anthony was ill or choking or a dozen other terrible things that could happen to babies.
Instead, he was being held by the most gorgeous, elegant woman Gillian had ever laid eyes on—and she knew immediately that this was Jess, her husband’s former mistress.
She was a brunette and shorter than Gillian by a head but her figure was absolute perfection. Every curve seemed to have been designed by God to show other women what they should look like. Her eyes were a deep, indigo blue and her lashes dark and full. Her skin was the color of cream and she smelled of June roses.
It was hard to believe this woman had ever been a milk maid. Gillian felt practically a drab cow patty in comparison. She wore her serviceable loden-green day dress, the one she threw on for seeing to household chores. And she hadn’t bothered to style her hair other than to twist it into a chignon at the nape of her neck.
Uncaring of any damage to her soft blue muslin gown trimmed in rows of expensive lace, Jess held Anthony for Gillian to see. “Isn’t he amazing?” she said. “So alive and alert.”
Anthony reached for the white feathers in Jess’s confection of a hat, trying to pull one out and stuff it into his mouth. She laughed, the sound light and airy and gratingly attractive. “No, no, no,” she whispered and Anthony laughed, as charmed by his mother as every other man would be who crossed Jess’s path.
No wonder Wright had been so enamored of her.
Jess’s smile revealed she wasn’t completely flawless. There was a gap between her two front teeth. However, instead of marring her looks, it made her appear charmingly appealing.
“This is my son,” she said proudly to Gillian. “Isn’t he handsome?” Her voice was surprising. It was cultured and almost musical. She had worked very hard to create a voice like that.
“What are you doing here?” Gillian demanded. “How did you
enter this house?”
Finely arched eyebrows rose in offense at her tone. “I had to see him,” Jess explained. “Brian won’t mind. Brian doesn’t deny me anything.”
If the woman had found a lance and stabbed it straight into Gillian’s heart, the pain could not be greater. Gillian placed a hand on the doorframe, willing herself to be strong. She was Wright’s wife…although she was alarmingly aware of her own imperfections. For that alone she could summon up enough anger for the woman to toss her into the street.
“I’m not Brian,” Gillian said, proud that her voice was strong. “And I don’t entertain women who toss their children aside. I consider them unfit to be referred to as mothers.”
A bright spot of color appeared on each of Jess’s cheeks. “I was warned you would be mean.”
“Who warned you?” Gillian demanded, annoyed at being referred to as mean.
Jess smiled, pressing her lips closed and refusing to answer.
Forget the expensive clothes, the beauty, and the elegance. What Gillian could have hated the woman for, what raised jealousy’s ugly head inside her, was that smile. Gillian didn’t want to believe Wright had let her in…but she wasn’t certain.
“Brian sleeps here, doesn’t he?” Jess said, nodding her head to Wright’s clothes hanging neatly on a peg. “He’s not in your bed.” She smiled again, pleased. “Of course he wouldn’t be. He didn’t want to marry you. He was displeased his father forced him.”
Any sympathy Gillian might have felt for the other woman’s circumstances in life evaporated. Jess was a she-devil. Her words were poisoned-tipped barbs and knew exactly where to go for best effect.
“And now he’s lost Hammond, too,” Jess said. “Such a pity. Did you come between them?”
“I did not,” Gillian denied, a bit too quickly.
Jess tilted her head in thought as if they were two good friends having a cozy chat. “Let me warn you, a man such as Brian can’t go long without a woman. It’s not in his nature. I’d be cautious if I were you.”
The Earl Claims His Wife Page 15