Reckless Angel

by Jane Feather

  Henrietta glanced over his shoulder to where Daniel stood in the parlor door making no attempt to intervene in this illicit display of affection. She rather suspected that Will had had an uncomfortable hour of it before she and Julie had arrived, but she also knew that Daniel would credit Will for coming to him alone.

  “Come into the parlor,” Daniel said, stepping aside to let the three of them pass. He closed the door quietly and stood regarding the trio in silence for a minute. “Well,” he said finally, “just what are we going to do about this scandalous pickle?”

  Julia abruptly sat down on a stool and burst into sobs. “Oh, if ’twas only that!”

  “Whatever d’ye mean, Julie?” Henrietta dropped onto her knees beside the weeping girl.

  “Oh, I have been so anxious, but I kept hoping…I did not wish to trouble Will, but just yesterday morning, Harry, I was so sick…and again this morning…Oh, I think I am with child!” Julie gasped through her sobs and buried her head in her hands.

  “But…but how could that poss—” Henrietta broke off in confusion. Her task had been simply to arrange the lovers’ trysts. What went on during them was nothing to do with her. She had somehow not thought…

  This further complication did not surprise Daniel; the intensity of Will’s love for Julie had been made clear to him in the conversation they had just had. “I hope you realize how much of this trouble falls to your hand, Henrietta,” he declared, shaking his head wearily.

  She sprang to her feet. “’Tis hardly my fault that Julie is with child. That is Will’s doing.”

  Julie’s sobs became great wrenching gasps, and Will flushed crimson. He enfolded his weeping mistress in his arms and glared furiously at Henrietta. “D’ye have to be so indelicate?”

  “Well, I hardly think ’tis a delicate matter,” she retorted. “I do not know why ye could not have—” Again she stopped as it occurred to her that Will had probably been as virgin as Julia, and the simple pre caution Daniel took to avert conception would not have occurred to him in his ardor and innocence. Her eyes darted self-consciously toward her husband.

  “Exactly so,” he said, dryly comprehending. “I suggest you keep such thoughts to yourself. They are hardly helpful.”

  “I do not know what you must think of me, sir,” Julia wailed, burying her head in Will’s shoulder.

  Daniel’s eyebrows shot up. “What I think of your behavior, my child, is of little relevance. That is your parents’ province, not mine. And I have said what I have to to both Will and Henrietta, so I suggest we turn our attention to finding a way out of this morass.”

  “I will take Julie to my mother in Oxfordshire,” Will said shakily. “As Harry suggested—”

  “Oh, did she?” Daniel broke in. “We all know that Henrietta is a hive of brilliant and invariably questionable ideas. Ye’d be well advised, Will, for once to look for a more straightforward solution.”

  “Like what?” Will appeared confused, even while he continued stroking Julie’s hair and murmuring soft nonsense words of reassurance and comfort.

  “What Daniel means is that you should try telling the truth,” Henrietta informed him, her greater experience of her husband leaving her in no doubt as to his meaning.

  “Y’are learning, it would seem,” Daniel observed on an arid note.

  “Tell madam, my mother, that I have spoiled my maidenhead?” gasped Julia. “Tell her that I am breeding a bastard? Oh, sir, she would kill me!”

  “But she would not stop ye from marrying Will,” Henrietta said practically. “She’d be only too happy in such an instance for the child to be born in wedlock.”

  “I will go and speak with them,” Will said with sudden resolution. “You must stay here, love, with Harry and Sir Daniel. I will go to your parents.”

  “Whilst I commend your courage, Will, I think we might be able to spare Lady Morris the shock of the whole truth and thus Julia the full extent of her mother’s wrath.” Daniel bent to poke a slipping log back into place. “Let us keep the secret of your pregnancy amongst ourselves for the present, Julia. If y’are wed without delay, before your parents leave for Scotland, no one will question the arrival of a child a few weeks short of the nine months. We will see if we cannot gain your parents’ consent without the implication of coercion. If ye must play that card, then so be it.” He brushed off his hands vigorously. “But let us try without, first.”

  “You will lend your support, Daniel?” Henrietta asked as her husband’s intent became clear.

  He nodded, saying with great deliberation, “And would have done so at the outset, if anyone had cared to take me into his confidence.”

  The silence in the room was profound. Even Julia’s sobs had ceased. “A little too ordinary a solution was it, Henrietta?” Daniel inquired in a tone of mild curiosity.

  She was for the moment tongue-tied, wondering why on earth she had not thought to enlist Daniel’s voice on Will’s behalf. Julia’s parents held him in great esteem and would assuredly have listened to him. He could have vouched for Will’s family, estate, and character in the most persuasive fashion.

  “It was a grave error,” she said with some difficulty. “I ask your pardon.”

  His eyebrows lifted infinitesimally, and he turned from her to Julia. “Go and wash your face, Julie. When y’are composed, we will see what we can do to make all right.”

  They walked to the Morrises’ lodging in silence, and when they were admitted to the house, Daniel took charge smoothly, forestalling the parents’ angry questions as to Will’s presence in company with their daughter.

  He, Will, and Lord Morris disappeared into his lordship’s private sanctum. Lady Morris, who at this point had no reason to accuse her daughter of wrongdoing, demanded what was happening, and when Julia burst into renewed sobs, her ladyship marched into the sanctum after the gentlemen, leaving Henrietta to do what she could for her distraught friend.

  After one of the longest hours Henrietta could ever remember spending, they were joined in the parlor by the others. Will’s freckles stood out prominently against the extreme pallor of his complexion, Daniel was expressionless, Lady Morris tearful, her husband grim-faced.

  “So ye would be wed, would ye?” he demanded of his daughter. “And a fine way you’d go about it. I’ve heard the whole disgraceful story from Sir Daniel.”

  Henrietta’s eyes shot in questioning alarm to Daniel, but he shook his head very slightly and she breathed again. “I bear the greatest responsibility, Lord Morris,” she said firmly. “It would never have occurred to Julie to act in such shameful fashion had I not suggested it.”

  “That may be so,” Morris said gruffly. “But your behavior is a matter for your husband, Lady Drummond.”

  “And I do not condone it, as I have said,” Daniel put in. “But I do understand why Henrietta felt impelled to act as she did.” He walked to the hearth, where the coals glowed brightly. He began to speak in a voice resonant with feeling, one that held the attention of everyone in the room. “Love is a most precious thing. And I believe it to be a rare thing, particularly in wedlock. It is, after all, in general not a consideration in the arrangement of marriages.” Daniel’s bright black eyes rested for a second on his wife’s rapt countenance. “I have been blessed twice. There was great love between myself and my first wife, shattered only by her death.” He glanced at Lady Morris, noting with satisfaction that his words were having the desired effect. A certain softness had entered her eyes.

  “I did not expect,” he went on with quiet deliberation, “ever to experience such joy again…ever to share in that way again. I did expect to wed again, but assumed that I must be satisfied with a helpmeet and a mother for my children. I certainly have that. But there is more…much more.”

  Henrietta was aware that she was looking at him with painful intensity, that her cheeks were warm, that tears were pricking her eyes. She was also aware of Will’s gaze fixed upon her.

  “If anything,” Daniel was continuing in
the same steady voice, “the love I have found this second time is even greater than the first. I would never have believed it possible, but it is so.” He turned to Julia’s parents. “I would never deny a child of mine the possibility of such happiness…particularly when her heart has gone to such a one as Will Osbert. I would not hesitate to bestow the hand of a daughter upon him, and I know his parents will welcome his bride.”

  He pursed his lips for a second in thought, and no one broke the moment of silence. “I would ask you also to consider this one other thing. Will is committed to the king’s cause, as are we, Morris. He will fight for that cause, and he may die for it, as may we. This is not a time to delay the pursuit of happiness when ’tis offered.”

  He moved away from the hearth. “Come, Henrietta, let us leave these good people now to manage their own business as they see fit.”

  She shook herself free of the cobwebby daze enfolding her. Daniel had stood in front of these near strangers and exposed his innermost feelings to aid Will and Julia. He had declared his love for his wife in the most public fashion. And she had not even thought to confide in him and ask his help. It was a dismaying reflection.

  Out in the street, she skipped a little to keep pace with his long-legged stride, and he slowed instantly. “I do not know why I did not think to tell you,” she said.

  “’Twas certainly a grave oversight,” he returned evenly.

  “It was not that I do not trust you.”

  “Nay, I am aware.”

  They walked in silence for a few more minutes, then Henrietta asked hesitantly, “Did you truly mean what you said, Daniel, about…about loving me in that manner?”

  “Aye, I meant it, every word. Just as I mean this: if you ever implicate me in such a disgraceful imbroglio again, all the love in the world will not protect you!”

  An appropriate response failing to come to mind, she kept silent, but after a few minutes a small hand crept warmly into his.

  Daniel looked down at her upturned face. Her brown eyes were laughing up at him, her soft mouth curved in that irresistibly sensual appeal. “Ramshackle creature!” he said. “I wonder if you’ll ever change.” He shook his head. “I wonder if I wish you to. Somehow, I do not think I do.” He shook his head again at this perverse but undeniable admission.

  Chapter 20

  It was a night of unrelieved dark when the French fishing boat nudged the sandy shore of the little bay on the Kentish coast. Its six passengers disembarked in near silence, barely a whisper interrupting the steady slurp as waves fell and receded in rhythmic motion against the shore, causing the small craft to rock unsteadily.

  “I wet my foot!” A plaintive cry rustled in the air. “There’s sea in my shoe.”

  “Hush, Lizzie.” Daniel’s urgent instruction was whispered as he lifted her swiftly, swinging her away from the water’s edge. “Harry, take them into the shelter of the cliff while Will and I see to the unloading.”

  Henrietta took the children by the hand. “Come, Julia.” She moved up the beach, followed by the other woman, who walked more slowly, impeded by the bulk of her pregnant belly.

  “Take your shoe off, Lizzie.” In the lee of the cliff, Harry bent to unfasten the child’s shoe. “Your stocking is soaked. When Daddy brings the luggage, we will find you a clean one.”

  “’Tis cold,” Nan whimpered. “And I am afeared.”

  Julia hugged the little girl reassuringly. “There’s no need to be afeared, Nan.” But they all knew there was.

  “There, that is everything.” Daniel placed his burdens on the sand, his voice still a whisper. “The boat will be beyond the headland again within half an hour.”

  “I wonder which one has the children’s clothes in it,” Henrietta muttered, peering at the oblong shapes of the leather portmanteaux. “Lizzie must change her stocking or she will catch cold.”

  “I want to go home,” Nan whimpered again. “’Tis dark and cold and I’m awearied.”

  “Why could we not stay in The Hague with Mistress Kierston?” Lizzie demanded, forgetting, as scared and exhausted children are wont to do, the delight with which she and Nan had greeted the news that this time they were not to be left behind. She sat on the sand to pull on the stocking Henrietta handed her.

  “But then ye’d have had to go to church four times a day,” Henrietta said in rallying tones. “Now that Mistress Kierston is enamoured of the pastor. Be of good cheer, now. Ye’ll be in bed soon.”

  “If the messenger was able to get to Tom.” Daniel stared worriedly into the darkness.

  “I’ll go to the cliff top,” Will offered. “Perchance I’ll find him above.”

  “Be careful, Will.” Julia’s voice shook slightly, and her hand cupped the mound of her belly.

  Her husband turned and kissed her. “As careful as ’tis possible to be,” he said simply, and loped off into the darkness.

  Daniel uncorked a flask and handed it to Julia. “Take a sip; ’twill put warmth into you.” She swallowed once and he handed the flask to Henrietta.

  She shook her head ruefully. “Nay, ’twill only make me sick again.”

  He nodded, attempting to conceal his anxiety. The svelte shape showed little sign as yet of the life it carried, but her pregnancy so far was not an easy one and she had been wretchedly unwell in the tiny tossing fishing boat during the Channel crossing. Her big eyes were sunken in pale cheeks, dark circles beneath them, yet she held herself upright and her voice was cheerful, revealing nothing of the fatigue he knew she must be suffering.

  She had turned to the girls and was talking to them about the shells she found on the sand, just as if this were an everyday excursion and she was imparting her knowledge of the outdoors in accustomed fashion.

  “Ah, Sir Daniel, thank God y’are safe.”

  At the familiar gruff voice coming out of the darkness, Daniel swung around with a sigh of relief. “Tom, it does me more good than I can say to hear ye. The message got through, then?”

  “Aye, the man reached me two days since, and Master Will arrived at the cliff top just as I did,” Tom whispered back, clasping Sir Daniel’s hand. He looked at the huddled group. “Eh, little maids, there’s no need for such long faces.” He patted the girls’ cheeks with the familiarity of one who had known them all their lives.

  “They’re cold and awearied, Tom,” Henrietta said.

  Tom accorded Lady Drummond a long look. “Ye don’t look too fit, yerself,” he commented gruffly.

  Henrietta smiled slightly. Tom’s acceptance of Daniel’s marriage to that hoity maid had been a long time coming. “Y’are not acquainted with Mistress Osbert, Tom,” she said, drawing Julia forward.

  Tom bobbed his head in greeting. “Seems ye’ve all been rather busy these past months.”

  Julia blushed, but the other three adults chuckled, quite used to Tom’s manner.

  “Let’s be out of here, Tom,” Daniel whispered briskly. “Ye’ve a cart waiting?”

  “Aye.” Tom hoisted Nan onto his shoulders, picked up one of the portmanteaux, and turned to the cliff path. “’Twill take the maids and the ladies. Us’d best use our legs for now, but I’ve three good horses for tomorrow.”

  Daniel swung Lizzie onto his shoulders and took up his own share of the luggage. Will took his and gave Julia his arm. Henrietta gathered up her skirts and marched up the steep path. Daniel smiled. Four months with child, queasy and dreadfully weary, she might be, but she could manage quite well without a helping hand.

  The dray and its two horses stood in the deep shadow of a bramble hedge. “The cottage is but a mile,” Tom whispered, depositing his burdens on the floor of the vehicle. “I’ll lead the horses.”

  Despite the pitchy dark, the horses moved without stumbling, heads lowered as they hauled their burden along the narrow cart track, where the mud was ridged, hard and dry after the long summer. A yellow gleam showed faint, and the beasts’ step seemed to quicken as if they sensed the closeness of stable and feed.

  H
enrietta was sitting on the cart floor, leaning against the hard wooden side, Nan asleep in her lap, Lizzie curled against her shoulder.

  “Are we here?” Julia whispered wearily. “The jolting is quite dreadful.”

  “Aye, ’tis so,” Harry agreed, trying to adjust her stiff limbs without waking the children. “But I think that must be it.” She twisted her head over the side of the cart. “Daniel?”

  He came up with her immediately. “Is aught amiss, love?”

  “Nay.” She shook her head. “But are we close?”

  “The light up yonder,” he said softly. “Are ye sadly jolted?”

  She grinned wearily at him. “I think you have the best of it, walking.”

  This was his own indomitable Harry. Ramshackle, hoity, impulsive, unscrupulous, but always courageous and ineffably lovable. He brushed a lock of hair from her forehead and smiled. “Not long now.”

  The cottage was bare and earthen floored, its tiny windows unglazed, but there was a fire and blankets, and a cauldron of vegetable soup over the fire. The girls barely stirred as they were tucked into blankets, and slept upon the floor as if it was the softest feather bed.

  “Eat, Harry.” Daniel filled a bowl with soup. She shook her head. “You need nourishment,” he insisted, quiet but firm. “Ye’ve nothing left inside you after that voyage.”

  She shuddered slightly at the memory. “My stomach feels bruised and my throat aches. I don’t think I could swallow.”

  “Y’are going to, nevertheless.” He sat down on the bench beside her, dipped a spoon into the soup, and held it to her lips. “Come, do not make me annoyed, sweetheart.”

  She smiled faintly at that. “You wouldn’t be so unkind.”

  “I just might. Now, open your mouth.”

  She did so obediently, swallowed, and felt the warmth trickle soothingly down her raw throat to curl in her stomach. She moved to take the spoon from him. “I do not need to be fed, Daniel.”

  “Finish every last drop.”

  He watched her gravely until the bowl was empty. “There, now you can sleep.” Unresisting, she allowed him to wrap her in blankets, roll another one under her head for a pillow, and tuck her into a shadowy corner of the room.