Bertrand left Olivia perched on her marble bench in the bright sunshine. Her expression was one of such fierce concentration, he sent up a small prayer for Vicar Banks’s continued good health.
* * *
Letty watched through her parlor window as Danny clambered aboard Daniel’s back, a barnacle of a little boy, holding fast to the one he loved most in the world.
The pain of that admission was exquisite. Love was unrelenting, irrational, and so damnably unfair.
Two large, anxious men trooped into her parlor moments later. Danny had doubtless been sent upstairs to change his clothes.
“So he fell off his pony,” Letty said by way of greeting to her brother. “You weren’t about to tell me, but I know mud on a boy’s breeches when I see it. Danny seemed hale enough.”
He’d been bursting with the energy and high spirits he’d enjoyed as a smaller child.
“He’s fine, Letty,” Fairly said. “Contrite, but fine. He’ll be down directly and offering us all heartfelt apologies. Shall we ring for tea?”
If Letty were anywhere near a tea service, she’d smash it to bits.
“The tea can wait until Danny joins us. Have a seat, you two. I’m not on the verge of strong hysterics.” She’d passed that point hours ago.
Because neither man moved, Letty set the example by assuming her customary corner of her favorite sofa. Daniel took the armchair at an angle to Letty’s seat. Fairly settled beside her—within handkerchief lending range.
“I will not cry in front of my son,” Letty said. She’d talked to the nursemaids, the tutor, and the stable lads, something she should have been doing regularly.
Then she’d cried at length. The situation wanted a solution, and Letty had none.
“Letty, you mustn’t blame the boy,” Daniel said, while Fairly slipped his hand into hers. “He made poor choices and he’ll atone for them as best he can, but with the best of intentions, we’ve made poor choices too.”
Daniel was close to pleading with her, and as much as Daniel had done to protect Letty, she couldn’t bear his kindness now.
“Danny isn’t happy here,” Letty said. “He’s miserable, in fact, and if my son is miserable, then I can’t be entirely happy, can I?”
Maternal logic was at least hers to claim and always would be.
“And if my dear sister is miserable,” Daniel said, “then I cannot be happy either, for she has been through too much already, little of it her own doing. We have a conundrum. I have a possible solution.”
No, they did not have a conundrum. They had a little boy to look after. One little boy who deserved every happiness in life. Fairly said nothing, but his grip on Letty’s hand was a comfort. Her husband was a physician at heart, a healer, and incapable of ignoring suffering from any quarter.
“Tell me this solution, Daniel, though if you admonish me to prayer, I will ask Fairly to escort you back to the stable.”
They were in such a muddle that Letty was blaspheming to her brother—the kindest, most godly, selfless soul in the realm. Her heart could not ache any more than it did, but a touch of shame crowded in anyway.
“Danny is your son,” Daniel said. “Nothing can change that. I’m asking to borrow him in a sense, to add him temporarily to a household of young boys who will seek instruction from me through the week in my capacity as the Haddondale vicar.”
Letty’s chest was one tight misery, but her ears worked well enough. “Borrow” and “temporarily” were poison darts of grief, but not the armed infantry squares of reason and guilt she’d expected.
“One does not borrow a child,” Letty snapped, while beside her, Fairly had taken on that still, watchful posture that said he was ready to march into the conversation if Letty took offense at Daniel’s words.
“One doesn’t lend a child either,” Daniel said gently, “but you did lend Danny to me for the first five years of his life. Your selflessness and mother-love were without limit then and I believe they’ve only grown greater since.”
Letty’s desperation had been without limit once Danny had been weaned, for Olivia had quietly threatened such trouble, for Danny, for Daniel, and for Letty. Letty should have turned to Daniel then, should have been honest with him.
Should have trusted him.
“Daniel, I can’t let you take him.” More desperation, because whatever plan Daniel had come up with, Letty owed him at least a fair hearing.
“Not take,” Daniel said. “Never take. I propose that Danny be allowed to come to Haddondale as one of my scholars. I’m gathering a collection of a half-dozen small boys, all of whom want preparation for public school. Danny would fit in with them well, and he’d be only a short carriage ride away. Holidays, summers, and special occasions, he’d be home with you.”
“Think about it,” Fairly said. “Banks is only asking you to consider this, Letty.”
“You support the idea,” Letty retorted, silently accusing her husband of petit treason and, worse, common sense.
“You are not happy,” Fairly said. “Danny is miserable. He has made no friends here. His studies are not progressing. He wasn’t running away, Letty, not this time.”
Not yet, in other words.
Daniel said nothing. He sat two feet away, relaxed as only a man in good standing with his Maker could be, nothing but compassion in his gaze. Daniel had risked everything to provide a home for Danny, had acceded to Letty’s plans without hesitation, had never once reproached Letty for what she’d asked of him.
“You would only borrow Danny?” she asked, mentally testing around the edges of the question for shrieking grief, for the death of all her maternal hopes, and finding only…a mother’s normal resistance to a new idea.
Daniel fluffed his cravat, which hadn’t seen starch in at least a sennight, based on the limp drape of the folds.
“I chose the word ‘borrow’ out of diplomacy,” Daniel said, “but I cannot like what the term hides, Letty. What I truly want is to share Danny with you and Fairly. I want the boy to know his family, his whole family, loves him without ceasing. If my ambition in that regard threatens you, I will take myself off to Haddondale, but you’ll see me much more frequently as a visitor here.”
Daniel spoke gently—he always spoke gently—but no force of nature was equal to Daniel Banks once his mind was made up. Their father had called Daniel stubborn, but to Letty, Daniel had simply lived from the courage of his convictions.
If she refused this solution of his, Daniel would be on her doorstep every other day, offering to take Danny riding, quizzing the boy on his sums, and correcting his table manners.
The decision was left to Letty, whether to be a selfish, overprotective ninnyhammer or a mother wise enough to accept that Daniel’s proposal was brilliant. Danny could have them all, plus a good education and friends.
Not quite a miracle, but a solution. Letty would be grateful to Daniel soon, after she’d endured the rest of the conversation.
“On Saturday, we will bring Danny to you,” Letty said, a sense of rightness supplanting her sorrow. “He will resume his life as the vicar’s son, he will call me Aunt Letty, and you shall be his papa.”
“You’re certain?” Daniel asked. “This will be another significant adjustment, more for you than for the boy. Nothing we attempt on Danny’s behalf will work unless it has your wholehearted support, for Danny loves you too and always has.”
Tears did threaten. Letty swallowed them back, for she’d cried enough for one day. Danny loved her too, not her best of all.
“We do what’s best for Danny, and Fairly and I will dote on him shamelessly.”
“You’ll do more than that,” Daniel said, crossing his legs and twitching at his breeches. “I have given some thought to the options, Letty, and if Danny is to resume living with me, I must have your agreement on the following terms.”
Daniel was enormously relieved, that’s what the leg crossing and seam straightening were about. This posturing over terms was a sop to Letty’s dignity—one she very much needed.
“I’ll consider terms, Daniel, but my mind is made up.” As was her heart. Letty’s brother had once again solved a problem not of his making. Danny would thrive on this arrangement, of course he would.
“Weather permitting, you will either visit Danny at Belle Maison or send the coach to fetch him to you at week’s end,” Daniel said in his most assured preacher’s tones. “Titled relations are not something any boy should ignore, particularly not doting titled relations in the very same shire.”
“I’ll fetch him myself,” Fairly said, “and look very titled as I do. My sisters are married to a marquess and an earl, and through them, I can command the accompaniment of a ducal heir, earls, barons—”
Letty put a hand over Fairly’s mouth before he’d called out the Tenth Hussars and Wellington himself to escort one small boy.
“Go on, Daniel,” she said, “for that is not your only condition.”
“Danny will write to you weekly, and you will reply without fail. He will report his progress to you and anything else he cares to pass along. I will not read his correspondence.”
Because one gentleman never read another’s correspondence, and Daniel was a gentleman to his bones.
“What else?”
“If Danny should fall ill, I will send him to you here, lest he spread contagion to the other boys. Fairly is, after all, a physician.”
“Of course.” Oh, of course, of course. Bless Daniel, of course.
“I must tend my flock over the Yuletide holidays,” Daniel said, “so Danny will spend a substantial part of the Christmas season with you. Summer holidays as well, in order that I may have time to immerse myself in ecclesiastical studies.”
Daniel would spend that time charging all around the shire on his flighty black horse—and missing Danny.
“Say yes,” Fairly muttered. “Please, for the love of God, the boy, and my nerves, say yes, Letty. Danny is old enough to attend public school now, to be gone from us for months at a time, but I simply could not—please, say yes. Danny will love you all the more for it.”
Danny loved his mama, but he was also beginning to resent her, and that Letty could not abide.
“Yes,” Letty said. Yes to heartache, but also yes to endless love, for this was what it meant to be a mother. For her son, she could be wise, brave, and fearless. For him, she could rise above the fear that she’d never see him again, the fear that he’d never forgive her for past mistakes.
None of that mattered. Daniel’s smile said as much. All that mattered was the love and the child’s happiness.
“I’ll fetch the boy,” Daniel said, springing to his feet. “By now, his apologies should rival the performances of Mr. Garrick himself. Be suitably impressed, you two. A young man’s dignity depends upon it.”
As did a grown man’s.
“I love you,” Fairly said, taking Letty in his arms when Daniel had departed. “I love you, I love you, I love you. You and Banks are the most ferocious, tenderhearted, kind, brave—I knew this about you, but Banks has surprised me.”
Letty sank into her husband’s embrace, as weak as if she’d run a footrace uphill the entire distance.
“People underestimate Daniel because he’s handsome and sweet. Daniel even underestimates himself.”
Fairly kissed her knuckles. “He came charging over here, ready to sermonize, exhort, orate, and beg for you to relinquish the child to him on any terms imaginable.”
“I suspected as much once he started bargaining with me.” And yet, the terms Daniel had “demanded” had been the very best possible arrangement for Danny going forward. “Daniel has been considering this, would be my guess. My brother is shrewd, but nobody expects shrewdness to align with compassion.”
Daniel popped his head around the door. “Fairly, prepare yourself to be addressed as Uncle David from now on.”
“Right-o,” Fairly said, tightening his embrace. “Dear, doting Uncle David. I’m outrageously fond of my nieces and nephews. Ask my sisters and their husbands.”
The door closed and Letty dropped her forehead to Fairly’s shoulder. “Daniel is so happy, so relieved.”
“While your heart’s breaking.”
Letty considered her husband’s diagnosis and rejected it. “I’m sad but not heartbroken. If I love my son, and I do, then I don’t get to choose what he needs from me. I only get to provide it. The same for my brother, the same for you or the baby. I understand that better now than I did before we married.”
She sat up and yanked the bellpull, for delivering well-rehearsed apologies could be hungry, thirsty work.
“We’ll spoil Danny and his papa rotten,” Fairly said. “Get them a decent conveyance, at the least, and a sedate coach horse, for that black demon Banks rides is likely not trained or to be trusted in the traces.”
“Daniel believes in a classical education for both children and horses, and Zubbie is a perfect gentleman in harness.”
In harness. Unease slid through Letty’s relief at having a decision made and a little boy’s welfare assured.
“What?” Fairly asked, disentangling his arms from Letty’s waist. “You’ve had a thought. Is it the baby? She was napping when I looked in on her, but a mother’s instincts—”
“Fairly, if I asked you to do something for me, something not entirely cricket between gentlemen, would you do it?”
“Of course.”
How Letty loved him, how she loved all her menfolk. “Daniel is shrewd and he loves Danny, but he’s also vulnerable. Olivia threatened to expose the circumstances of Danny’s birth to the church authorities. She can still make trouble for Daniel and for Danny. Serious, rotten trouble.”
“Her again.”
“Yes, her.”
Fairly’s eyes were beautiful but disquieting. For an instant, they shone with lethal intent.
“You mustn’t imperil your mortal soul,” Letty said, for a physician would know poisons and how to make a death look accidental.
“Very well, I’ll only imperil my gentlemanly honor, which matters little compared to your peace of mind.”
“Olivia is supposed to be in the north, visiting relatives, but she was not well liked by her own family. I doubt she’s still biding among them but haven’t a clue where else she might be. We should know.”
“Excellent point, and finding out won’t put the smallest smudge on my honor. I’ve also been meaning to ask you about a few other aspects of your brother’s situation with the fair Olivia.”
The look in Fairly’s eyes now was very fierce. Wonderfully fierce.
“I’ll tell you everything I know,” Letty said. “First we have the ordeal of apologies to endure.”
Letty was still fortifying herself with her husband’s passionate kisses when the parlor door opened and a small boy snickered.
Nine
The Earl of Bellefonte was, by reputation, a genial man who enjoyed children and doted on his grandmother. His lordship’s geniality was nowhere in evidence when Daniel came upon him in his woodworking shop at the back of the stable.
“Out of my light, Banks. I’m making a birdhouse for your vicarage.”
The earl sat, penciling lines onto a slab of oak, at a worktable most people would have found too high.
“You make birdhouses out of oak? Wouldn’t pine be less trouble?”
Another line drawn with a sure, single swipe of the pencil over the wood. “Pine won’t last as long and the bugs get into it. How’s the boy?”
“I wanted to discuss him with you.”
Bellefonte stared at his oak, a durable wood, true, but the very devil to saw or carve.
“You’re about to explain to me that the child’s situa
tion is complicated,” Bellefonte said, “and this has to do with that wife of yours we’ve yet to meet. I don’t like messes, Banks, and you’ve brought one to my doorstep.”
Some lessons could be learned only after ordination. “Your sister Lady Della’s situation is messy. Are you worried about her, my lord?”
Bellefonte’s glower was merely disgruntled, not insulted. “Worried sick, as is my countess. Della has an air about her, a ‘put up your fives’ tone in even the merest civilities, and she’s far too knowledgeable for a girl making her bow. Too many older siblings, too many brothers, I suppose.”
Daniel took a stool, because listening to the worries of his flock was one of the more important aspects of being a vicar.
His own worries could wait. “Have you discussed your concerns with Lady Della? She’s probably not looking forward to the Season either.”
Bellefonte tucked his pencil behind his ear. He had wood shavings in his blond hair and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles on his nose. He looked not like an earl, but like a new father, whose concepts of responsibility and family were undergoing a significant increase in complexity.
“Della should know we have her back. I shouldn’t have to tell my own sister—”
Daniel, having heard the woes of many a sulky boy, interrupted. “Tell her anyway. She grew up trusting her father and mother would be on hand when she had to face the ordeal of her come-out, and now she has neither parent. Moreover, from what I understand, your countess hasn’t exactly thrived on the machinations of Polite Society, so you’re likely concerned for her too.”
Fairly had passed that along at some point when discussing the Haddondale post with Daniel months ago. The earl and countess preferred a country life “for reasons,” Fairly had said.
His lordship drew the pencil from behind his ear and began flipping it through his fingers, over under, over under, back. He had large hands, of course, but they were also dexterous and graceful. The hands of an artisan rather than of a gentleman or a laborer.
“Banks, you have failed absolutely to cheer me. First, you won’t forbid the damned assemblies, now you’re shaking the prospect of a lot of upset females in my face when I’m supposed to spread damned rainbows and moonbeams over my womenfolk.”
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