by Anne Gracie
Above all, she had never once blamed Lucy for what Papa had done. It would have been so easy for her to have taken her temper out on Lucy, but she hadn’t, and for that more than anything, Lucy was enormously grateful. All her life she’d received some blame, if not all, for her father’s actions. But not from Alice, not once.
Alice had even promised Lucy that she wouldn’t try to force her into marriage, that she wanted her to find a kind man she could love. Reading between the lines, Lucy guessed that Alice hadn’t married that sort of man. In fact, she never talked of her husband at all. Which made her concern for Lucy’s welfare and happiness all the more generous and touching.
She owed it to Alice to find a husband as quickly as possible and stop Papa’s blackmail from hanging over her. That Lord Thornton had decided to help her find one was surprising—more than surprising, really—but Alice had assured her most sincerely that he was trying to help.
Lucy was yet to be convinced.
“Here they are now,” Alice said as Lord Thornton and another young man drove up in a smart black-lacquered phaeton drawn by two high-stepping gray horses. Lucy was impressed. They stopped and Lord Thornton jumped lithely down.
After introductions and a brief conversational exchange, Lord Thornton helped Lucy climb into the phaeton, and she and Mr. Frinton drove off.
Mr. Cornelius Frinton was not a handsome fellow, with his ginger hair, a bony face, and a large, beaky nose. He made up for his lack of looks by dressing immaculately in the very latest fashions; in fact, his shirt points were so high that he had some difficulty turning his head.
At least that was what Lucy assumed at first, when, after several conversational openings, he had failed to look at her once. Nor had he responded with anything other than a choked kind of gurgle, or a murmur of assent and a convulsive twitch of his rather prominent Adam’s apple. And every time she spoke and he failed to respond, he blushed.
He wasn’t deaf. She briefly wondered if he had a speech disorder, but after he’d greeted several masculine acquaintances in perfectly clear English, she finally realized what the matter was: Cornelius Frinton was cripplingly shy with women.
Oh, but she’d like to strangle Lord Thornton.
She set out to put Mr. Frinton at his ease, chattering about his lovely horses, about the weather, about life in London. Noticing that he bowed or nodded or doffed his hat to quite a few people, she said, “You seem to know a lot of society people, Mr. Frinton. I know practically no one in London. Could you point me out some of the more well-known ones?”
That worked a treat, and from time to time he’d indicate someone and say a name, and even, once or twice, give a little more information. “Lady in blue hat. Silence, Lady Jersey. Almack’s patroness. Silence, because she never stops talking.” And then he blushed beetroot.
Lucy laughed. “Not your problem then.”
He turned his head and looked at her, and when he realized she wasn’t being critical, he gave her a shy smile.
They ended up circling the park twice, then drew up to where Alice and Lord Thornton were waiting. Lord Thornton helped her down. “Did you enjoy your drive?”
Lucy wanted to smack his smug face. “Yes, indeed,” she said blithely. “Mr. Frinton and I had a lovely chat, didn’t we Mr. Frinton?”
“Chat?” Lord Thornton looked quite disconcerted.
Mr. Frinton nodded, bowed to Lucy. His Adam’s apple bobbed frantically, and he said in a strangled voice, “Delighted. Take you up anytime, Miss Bamber.”
Lord Thornton gave her a narrow look. She bared her teeth at him in a bright smile. With a set jaw, he climbed back into the phaeton. As the carriage moved off, Lucy called, “Thank you for a delightful drive, Mr. Frinton. Goodbye, Lord Thornbottom.”
He didn’t even bother to correct her.
“How did it go?” Alice asked. “I must say, I’m a little surprised by Gerald’s choice. Mr. Frinton is hardly the most prepossessing of men.”
“Yes, not blessed by the looks fairy, and dreadfully shy, poor boy, but perfectly sweet all the same.” Alice might believe that Lord Thornton was trying to help Lucy find a husband. Lucy knew better.
As if she needed his help anyway.
Chapter Eight
Twilight was fading into darkness as James rang the doorbell of his in-laws’ country home. He’d been traveling all day, only stopping to change his horses, and was glad to have reached his final destination. He couldn’t wait to see his daughters.
The butler opened the door and said in surprise, “Colonel—” He broke off. “I beg your pardon, it’s Lord Tarrant now, isn’t it? My condolences on the loss of your brother, my lord.”
James nodded brusquely. “Thank you, Sutton.”
“Welcome back to England, my lord. I didn’t realize we were expecting you.”
“You weren’t. Lord and Lady Fenwick are in, I presume? But it’s the girls I’ve come for.” He glanced up the stairs. “In the nursery, are they?”
James took several steps forward, but the butler stepped in his way, his expression troubled. “I will let Lady Fenwick know you have arrived. If you would care to wait in the drawing room, my lord, I will have refreshments brought in.” He gestured.
“I don’t need to wait, I just want to see—” But the butler had gone. Damned formality. He was half tempted to run up the stairs to the nursery anyway, but he supposed a few extra minutes wouldn’t hurt. It wasn’t as if the girls were expecting him.
He ran his hand over his stubbled chin. He probably should have stopped at an inn and shaved and changed his clothes, but dammit, he wanted to see his daughters. They wouldn’t care if he was rumpled and unshaven. They’d seen him in worse condition than that. At least, Judy and Lina had.
Little Deborah. He wondered what she’d look like, whether she’d take after her mother or him.
“Tarrant.” His mother-in-law greeted him from the doorway. He rose and would have bowed over her hand, but she waved him back to his seat. His father-in-law followed her in and gave James a curt nod as a greeting. James nodded back.
“You didn’t tell us you were coming.” His mother-in-law wasn’t smiling, but some things never changed.
“I apologize for any inconvenience, Lady Fenwick.” He’d tried once, as a newly married man, to call her mama-in-law, but she’d frozen him out so severely that he’d never tried again.
His in-laws had never approved of him. They hadn’t wanted him—a younger son, and a soldier in time of war!—for their daughter, but Selina only gave the appearance of being gentle and biddable. She’d stood firm until her parents had no choice but to give in. And then she’d insisted on going to war with him, following the drum, sharing the discomfort and the difficulties and the danger. She’d loved every moment of it, and he’d loved having her with him.
She’d born him two healthy children under unimaginable conditions. The two little girls had relished army life as much as their mother did.
But four years ago Selina had been experiencing a difficult third pregnancy and on medical advice had reluctantly agreed to return to London, taking the two little girls with her.
The baby had lived, but Selina had died shortly afterward. Childbed fever, they said. Her parents blamed him, even though he’d been a continent away, risking his life for king and country, and Selina was in London in the care of her parents, with the best medical attention available.
James dragged his thoughts back to the present. He neither wanted nor needed his in-laws’ approval. He was here for one thing only: his daughters. He glanced at the doorway. “Where are the girls?”
“Would you like tea?”
“Later, perhaps, but first I would like to see the girls.”
Lord and Lady Fenwick exchanged glances. “They’re not here at the moment.”
James frowned. They wouldn’t be outside at this time of the eveni
ng. “Where are they?”
There was an awkward silence.
His voice hardened. “Where are my daughters?”
“Attending Miss Coates’s Seminary for Young Ladies. It’s a very genteel establishment—”
“At school? Judy and Lina?” Judy was eleven and Lina only seven. They were far too young to be sent away to school.
James tamped down on his anger. He was here for his girls, not to argue with his in-laws. “Then I’ll just see Deborah.”
His mother-in-law glanced away. “She’s with her sisters, of course.”
He rose to his feet, rage coursing through him. “Deborah? In a boarding school? Dammit, she’s only four years old!”
His mother-in-law shrank from him. His father-in-law bristled with righteous indignation. “Language, sirrah! And you cannot expect a frail, elderly lady like my wife to care for someone else’s children.”
James cast his mother-in-law a scornful look. “Frail and elderly, my foot! As I recall, you turned fifty-four last month. In any case, I haven’t noticed a shortage of servants in this establishment. And they’re not ‘someone else’s children’—they’re your grandchildren!”
Lady Fenwick snorted. “They’re a trio of young hoydens, more like—and no wonder, dragged up in the wake of an army of rough soldiers, living in frightful conditions in close proximity to foreigners instead of being raised as decent Christian young ladies. School was the only possible alternative.”
“And yet Deborah has been entirely in your charge since birth.”
“Yes,” she said disdainfully, “but she carries your blood.”
He clenched his jaw. “I doubt very much whether you had the raising of her anyway. Your own daughter was raised by nursemaids and governesses—oh yes, I know all about her upbringing. But at least you never sent her away to live with strangers.”
She shrugged a thin shoulder. “There was no need. Selina was a quiet, well-behaved, well-bred gel—until she met you.”
He let that pass. The woman knew next to nothing about her own daughter. “There was no need to send the girls away from all they knew, especially since they’d lost their mother.”
She dismissed that with an airy wave. “Children adjust. They’re perfectly happy there.”
He pulled a worn, stained letter from his breast pocket and held it up. “And yet these ‘perfectly happy’ girls wrote to me saying they were miserable and begging me to come and get them.”
Lady Fenwick frowned and sat forward. “They can’t have. They were given—” She broke off.
“Given letters to copy?” He nodded, remembering the short, bland, almost formal letters his daughters had written each week. “I thought as much. They didn’t sound at all like my lively little Judy, and Lina used to draw pictures all the time. I haven’t had a single picture from her in months—until this.” He held up the letter showing a brief letter in childish script and a drawing of three small girls of varying heights, all looking sad.
“Children always complain—” his father-in-law began.
“Enough.” James cut him off with a curt gesture. “I have no interest in your excuses. Just give me the address of that school, and I’ll be gone.”
Lord Fenwick glanced at his wife, then rose and took a pen and paper and ink from the drawer in a nearby table. He scribbled the address and handed the paper to James.
James glanced at the address and almost crushed it in his fist. It was another day’s travel away. He stalked to the door.
Lady Fenwick rose and followed him. “What are you planning to do with my grandchildren?”
James snorted. “It’s too late to pretend any concern for them. You’ve shown your hand. Goodbye. My daughters and I shan’t bother you again.”
She drew herself up indignantly. “You—you can’t mean to deny me their company, surely?” There was a thread of anxiety in her voice.
He knew the real source of her concern: How would it look to outsiders for a grandmother whose only granddaughters had nothing to do with her? He let her stew for a minute, then said evenly, “If the girls want to see their grandparents, of course I will allow it. Despite what you seem to think, children need family.”
* * *
* * *
James gave instructions to his driver, and the coach headed off into the night, the coach lights glowing gold against the darkness. He would stop at the first decent inn he came to; he refused to spend a single night with his in-laws.
Brooding, he stared through the coach window at the shifting shadows of the passing countryside. He thought of his daughters, the last time he’d seen them. Seven-year-old Judy and three-and-a half-year-old Lina, with her shabby, much-loved dolly, standing at the rail of the ship, clinging to their mother’s hands, Selina standing straight, red-eyed but calm, the swell of her pregnancy outlined by the wind pressing her dress against her.
Now Selina was dead, and Ross and his parents, too, drowned in a boating accident. Not to mention all the friends he’d lost during the war. So much death . . .
James’s girls were all he had left. Sending them away at such a young age, when they could have stayed with family—that he couldn’t forgive. Three little girls in a seminary for young ladies, one of them just four years old—still a baby.
Why, why, why had they been sent away? He couldn’t understand it.
He knew his girls weren’t hoydens—or if they were, it was a reaction to their mother’s death. But that was no reason to send them away. Servants could be hired who would care for children with all the warmth their grandparents lacked.
His daughters had been born into a rough and unsettled life, traveling with an army, but they’d thrived. They might have lived in tents and billets and slept on the ground or in the back of a wagon, but between Selina and himself—and his batman and the woman he’d hired to help Selina—they’d had a home, a home made of people and love, not bricks and mortar.
He’d missed them damnably, had thrown himself into his work to ease the ache of loss.
He pulled out the letter and read it for the umpteenth time. Short and to the point, just like Judy. We hate it here, Papa. We miss you. Please come and get us.
Judy’s writing. He settled back in the corner of the carriage, remembering her birth.
He’d been waiting outside the tent, pacing anxiously while Selina labored within, giving birth to their first child. One of the camp followers was acting as midwife. She was a burly, no-nonsense woman who’d birthed six of her own and attended the birth of many more. She’d pushed back the tent flap, saying, “It’s a girl,” and handed him a tiny, blood-smeared bundle wrapped in a towel. Then she disappeared back into the tent, saying, “Stay outside. We ain’t finished yet.”
James stared down at the tiny bundle, the little red scrunched-up face, the impossibly small starfish hand with fingernails like small pink jewels.
Holding her carefully, terrified of dropping such a small, delicate creature, he’d used the end of the towel to clean her face, wiping off smears of blood and some waxy substance. And then she’d opened her eyes.
She’d stared up at him, so intense, like an ancient, wise little soul, and he’d stared back, hardly able to breathe, and it was as if she’d reached her little starfish hand into his chest and squeezed his heart. Emotion swamped him, and he knew he would die to protect this little scrap of newborn humanity, his daughter.
And as she grew and flourished, gave him her first real smile, took her first steps, spoke her first words, the feeling only grew stronger.
He was there too when Lina was born, this time in a tumbledown peasant cottage. He took delivery of the naked, squalling, red-faced, kicking, angry baby, and this time he knew what to do. He’d bathed her, pink and slippery, in a basin of warm water, which, as well as cleaning her, somehow calmed her. And when she’d curled her soft, tiny fist around his big rough-ski
nned finger and stared up at him, he was gone, just as before.
He’d shown the baby, clean and pink and quiet now, to her big four-year-old sister. Judy had gazed at the little face with wonder and said, “She’s awful ugly, isn’t she?”
James smiled recalling it. He’d grown up believing that children belonged to their parents, and that was true of some. But not James: he belonged, heart and soul, to his daughters.
* * *
* * *
Alice was fast losing patience with her nephew. So far he had brought four young gentlemen to meet Lucy, none of them in the least bit suitable. Mr. Frinton—sweet boy or not—could barely get out a word in female company. After him had come Sir Heatherington Bland, a morose fellow who, far from being bland, had a distinctively pungent body odor.
Then there was Mr. Humphrey Ffolliot, who had Opinions, which he shared at the slightest provocation—in fact with no provocation at all. The country was Going to the Dogs! Too Many Blasted Foreigners! As for Women, they’d got completely Out of Hand and no longer Knew Their Place!
Lucy appeared to listen demurely to every word, murmuring a comment every now and then. It seemed to Alice that far from agreeing with him, Lucy was gently mocking him. Not that Mr. Ffolliot noticed. He informed Alice as he was leaving that her goddaughter was a Fine Example of Womanhood.
And yesterday Gerald had introduced his friend Tarquin Grimswade, a very pretty young man dressed in rainbow shades. He claimed to be a poet and an artist, but he was so self-absorbed that Alice thought for all the notice he took of other people, he might as well be performing in front of a mirror.
Lucy had behaved very naughtily and had faintly mirrored his flowing hand movements and facial expressions as they spoke. Mr. Grimswade had found her charming.
And now this evening, they were to meet prospective suitor number five. Gerald had invited Alice and Lucy to Vauxhall Gardens, where there was to be a concert, followed by a gymnastic display and then fireworks. Alice always enjoyed fireworks, and Lucy had never seen them, so they were both looking forward to the outing.