WidowsWickedWish

by Lynne Barron

  “I’m not giving up, you know.” Jack stared down into Olivia’s upturned face wanting to be certain she understood him.

  “Oh, Jack,” she replied with a chuckle. “I’ve told you that you needn’t wed me to bed me.”

  Jack shook his head. “Cheeky girl.”

  “You like me cheeky.”

  It was true. His perfect regal lady was surprisingly cheeky. The things she said.

  They had spent three days and two nights together and she had continually surprised him with her saucy mouth and honest curiosity.

  Christ, the things she said, the irreverent questions she asked, the uninhibited way she’d taken to his lovemaking. It about knocked him sideways just thinking about all the ways he’d divested her of her innocence and rewarded her curiosity. And all the ways that lay ahead.

  “You’ll be in London by mid-March?” he asked.

  “Or early April,” she replied.

  They stood together in the circular drive before Idyllwild Cottage. Mary, Molly and Tom had already made their goodbyes and disappeared into the house, taking Charlie with them. Fanny was standing with Justine giving her last-minute instructions on just what to tell her Aunt Beatrice when the jerseys, scarves and mittens were delivered.

  “I won’t give you up,” Jack promised.

  “Nobody is asking you to,” Olivia said, her eyes bright in the morning sun.

  Jack looked over at their children, assured himself they were paying their parents no mind, and leaned down to press a hard kiss upon her waiting lips.

  “Be careful,” she murmured against his mouth.

  “You too.”

  “It’s only a month or two, three at the most,” she reminded him.

  “I’ll have the marriage settlement prepared and waiting,” he whispered.

  “Oh Jack, don’t you dare.”

  “All that will be lacking is your signature.”

  “I won’t sign.”

  “You might be carrying my child,” he told her even as he sent up a prayer that it was true.

  “I’m not,” Olivia disentangled her hands from around his neck.

  “You could be,” he answered. “We took no precautions.”

  “Jack, I am not carrying your child,” she told him firmly.

  “If you are, you’ll marry me.”

  Olivia looked away, her eyes sweeping the countryside, a frown puckering her forehead and pulling at her lips.

  “Olivia?” he said when it seemed she would not agree.

  “If I am carrying your child, I will marry you,” she finally said without looking at him.

  “As I said, I will have the marriage settlements drawn up and waiting. Just in case you are wrong.”

  “You are stubborn.” She turned to face him with a smile that seemed strained.

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  And she didn’t. She couldn’t possibly know how stubborn he would be in this, he thought as he and Justine cantered down the long drive.

  “Are you going to marry Lady Olivia?” his daughter asked as they turned onto the London Road.

  “Yes.”

  “I like her.”

  “So do I,” Jack agreed.

  “It would be nice to have Fanny and Charlie for sister and brother.”

  “I’m thinking of giving you a few more sisters and brothers.” Jack couldn’t wait to begin the process, hoped that perhaps Olivia was already increasing, never mind what she’d said. She would marry him then.

  They met up with Jack’s father and stepmother, Lucille, at her sister’s sprawling estate half a day’s journey from Idyllwild. There they languished two days while the sisters gossiped and made their plans for the coming Season.

  Jack spent the journey to Town reviewing and altering his plan to marry the Countess of Palmerton.

  When he’d first learned of Palmerton’s death and begun to plot his impending courtship, he’d imagined he would have to woo Olivia, play the adoring swain for all of London to see. He’d cringed at the idea of toadying to her shrew of a mother, befriending her rather bumbling brother and pushing his way through the crowd of gentlemen that would have set their gazes, not to mention their depleted coffers, on the woman who would certainly be the catch of the Season.

  Finding the lady rusticating in the north had been a surprise. An exceedingly welcome surprise. Discovering that her husband had left her with a pile of debts, left her to fend for herself to dig her way out from under them, had only sweetened the surprise.

  Her mother might not oppose the match, after all. Jack wasn’t titled, but he was quite wealthy, something that any mother would recognize as more important given her daughter’s situation, not to mention that of her grandson, the young Earl of Palmerton.

  Her brother would likely require very little encouragement to see the wisdom of the match. Jack didn’t know the young Earl of Hastings well. He’d been away at Eton for most of the years Jack had visited with Easton at his uncle’s country estate and stately town house. But surely Hastings had no desire to support his sister and her children forever. He’d want to start a family of his own soon, to fill his nursery and continue his line.

  Jack appreciated the notion.

  He was in a hurry to marry and set about producing an heir. He had only to win the lady’s hand and get her with child. He was not opposed to reversing the order if necessary.

  One way or the other, Olivia would marry him. She would give him what she’d so blithely taken from him more than a decade before. She would not only give him an heir, she would give him a house full of children that would never know the lonely isolation with which he’d been raised.

  Olivia would give Justine and all their future children the entrée into society that he had been denied. She would ensure that when his sons went off to school they would not be taunted for their humble origins, that when they attended university it would be their due as gentlemen, not as the result of a debt their father had called in from a dean with a secret.

  As he rode ahead of the carriage conveying his small family into London, Jack sifted through his previous plan to win the hand of the Countess of Palmerton. It had seemed a good plan, daunting though certainly not impossible.

  He’d thought to begin by allaying any worries the lady might have regarding her role in forcing him into an unwanted marriage. But if Olivia felt any guilt, any worry that he might hold a grudge, she certainly hadn’t shown it.

  Jack wondered if she knew that his marriage had been a living hell. She was likely blissfully unaware of that fact. He and Elizabeth had spent little time in London, and even less time in the august company in which the countess moved about. Likely the ton had all but forgotten Mr. and Mrs. Bentley but for a few whispers at the haste with which they’d wed and the tragedy that had ended the lady’s life. Without the need to alleviate Olivia’s guilty conscious and assure her she was forgiven, Jack could move on to the next phase of his plan: the public courtship, seduction and eventual capitulation.

  Except he’d already seduced the lady, with little or no courting required. She’d all but fallen into his arms, there to spend every stolen moment she could for three days and two nights.

  Capitulation could not be far behind.

  Jack didn’t give much credence to her declarations she would not marry again. She only needed a bit of time to forget her sorry treatment at Palmerton’s hands, a bit of persuasion that marriage to him would not be more of the same.

  Jack did not doubt he could persuade her, nor did he doubt that he could do it quickly, certainly before the end of the Season.

  And if he could not make her see reason, he would swive her silly until his seed took in her womb.

  She’d marry him then.

  Chapter Ten

  Spring rolled into the north of England early that year. Not four weeks after Jack and Justine road down the long drive surrounded by melting snow, the temperature soared, the sun shone bright in the cloudless blue sky and the first crocuses br
oke through the dark soil.

  In the first week of March, Mr. and Mrs. Porter and their daughter and son-in-law arrived from the village to assist with the plowing and planting of the sprawling vegetable garden behind the Cottage.

  Idyllwild in the spring was a time of renewal and rebirth. Mirabel dropped a gangly legged foal in late March much to Fanny and Charlie’s delight. The barn cat Sheba birthed a litter of seven mewling kittens in the hay loft, two of which were claimed by the children as pets and mousers for the house. Finches and magpies soared across the sky, building nests in the stately old oaks until the air was filled with the sound of baby birds chirping.

  When Olivia awoke before the dawn one morning to discover she’d begun her courses she was not surprised. Of course there would be no baby. She’d known it, had not allowed herself to hope. Even so, she buried her face in her hands and allowed her tears to wash away the heartache that overwhelmed her.

  “Mama, why are you crying?” Charlie asked as he toddled across her room, his big gray eyes wide.

  “Come here and cuddle with your mother, Bonny Prince Charlie,” she whispered, holding her arms open to embrace his warm body. She pulled him into her arms and carried him to the window seat, settled him onto her lap, and brushed her tear-damp cheek against his soft curls.

  “We’re not going to ‘ondon today, are we?” he asked, his pudgy fingers fiddling with the buttons on her night gown. “Fanny says we has to go soon.”

  “Have to go,” she corrected distractedly.

  “We don’t,” he replied.

  “No, Charlie, we don’t,” she agreed. “Not today.”

  “Not never, Mama.”

  “Never is an awfully long time,” she said with a smile.

  “Longer than a day?” he asked, leaning back in her arms to peer up at her.

  “Much longer.” She kissed his pert little nose.

  “Longer than a week?”

  “Longer than a week, a month or a year.”

  “Yay!” her son cried as he scrambled off her lap and ran for the door, nearly falling as his bad foot slipped on the polished boards.

  “Charlie,” she called.

  “Fanny! Fanny! We gets to stay a year!”

  Olivia shook her head and laughed as he took off down the hall. She was in trouble now.

  In early April the first of many letters from the Countess of Hastings arrived insisting that Olivia return to London as the Season was soon to begin. Olivia ignored the first two letters, replied to the third to assure her mother she would arrive in Town soon. By the seventh letter, Lady Hastings had ceased insisting and moved on to demanding. Still Olivia did not begin packing until the final day of the month and then she dragged the chore out for nearly two weeks.

  “I don’t want to go!” Fanny screamed from across the nursery, hands on hips, tears streaming down her pink cheeks. “You said we could stay a year!”

  “I said no such thing,” Olivia replied in exasperation. She was kneeling on the floor carefully folding the last of her daughter’s dresses and storing them away in the huge trunk that had been dragged down from the attic.

  “Charlie said you said we could stay a year. Are you calling my baby brother a liar?” Fanny demanded, one tiny slippered foot tapping on the wood floor.

  “Fanny, you know perfectly well Charlie misunderstood me.”

  “I hate London!” Fanny cried.

  “Yes, so you’ve told me countless times,” Olivia said.

  “I want to stay with Mary and Molly!” Fanny marched across the room, grabbed the pink dress her mother was folding, and threw it down at her feet. “I won’t go and you can’t make me.”

  “That’s enough. We are leaving in the morning and you had better make up your mind to it, young lady.” Olivia calmly gathered up the dress and refolded it, placing it in the trunk. She reached for another but Fanny got there first. She grabbed armfuls of clothing and ran to the window. Before Olivia could jump to her feet, the entire pile of clothing went sailing out the open window.

  “Frances Marie!” she screamed.

  Fanny turned and ran from the room howling.

  And so it continued the rest of the day and long into the night. But in the morning Olivia and her children settled into the old traveling coach, one of two conveyances that had not been sold the previous year, and began the two-day journey south.

  It was the longest two days of Olivia’s life. Fanny alternately screamed like a banshee and wept piteously into her hands. She threw tantrums in inn yards and public dining rooms and sobbed out her story to any stranger who would listen.

  Charlie, never a comfortable traveler, lost his breakfast before they had reached the end of the long winding drive from Idyllwild. After their first stop to change horses and stretch their legs, he crawled onto Olivia’s lap for a nap and woke up long enough to lose his lunch down the front of her lilac traveling dress.

  By the time the weary travelers arrived at Palmerton House as the sun was setting the next day, Olivia was more tired than she’d been after a long day of plowing and planting. Her shoulders hurt from holding a restless Charlie the last five miles, her head was pounding from Fanny’s wailing that had increased in volume with each mile they traveled nearer to London. Olivia was hot and dirty and as irritable as she could ever remember being when she stumbled from the coach with Charlie in her arms and Fanny sniffling behind her.

  “My lady,” Johnston, the stoop-shouldered butler who’d served the Earls of Palmerton for half a century, greeted as he opened the massive front door to allow the motley trio to clamber inside. “Welcome home.”

  The fourteen servants that remained of the original twenty-nine were lined up in the immense foyer to greet the young earl, his mother the countess, and little Lady Frances.

  Olivia smiled weakly, shifted a sleeping Charlie on her hip and ushered Fanny in with a hand on her back.

  “Thank you, Johnston,” she murmured.

  “May I take the lord?” Nurse Radcliffe asked as she approached. She was a tall, formidable lady with steel-gray hair and sharp hazel eyes. She’d been Palmerton’s nurse, so of course she’d been chosen to stand as nurse for his children. Olivia found her cold and condescending.

  “He’ll only awaken,” Olivia answered tiredly. “I’ll take him up. Perhaps you can help Fanny to bathe and have a bite to eat.”

  “Oh, but dinner is not served until eight o’clock,” the nurse replied with a sniff.

  “Fanny is tired, she’ll not be awake that long, surely you can ask Cook to fix her a tray of meat and cheese.”

  “Muffins,” Fanny said. “I want muffins and milk.”

  Mrs. Radcliffe looked down at her charge with a frown. “Little ladies do not eat muffins for dinner.”

  “Oh, for the love of God,” Olivia ground out between clenched teeth. “Get her bath ready and I’ll feed her myself.”

  When Mrs. Radcliffe continued to stand in front of her glaring, Olivia growled, “Kindly move before I knock you out of my way.”

  She heard the collective gasp of the assembled servants, but the nurse stepped aside and Olivia marched up the stairs with her son in her arms and her daughter clinging to her skirts.

  “Would you really have knocked her out of the way?” Fanny asked an hour later. She was sprawled against the pillows on her mother’s big bed, a nearly empty glass of milk in one hand and a lemon muffin in the other.

  “I just might have,” Olivia answered with a sigh.

  “That’s funny,” Charlie mumbled around a mouthful of bread and cheese.

  “We should sack Nurse Radcliffe,” Fanny announced and Charlie agreed with a decisive nod.

  “We cannot sack your nurse,” Olivia replied automatically. Then she stopped and thought about it and decided she could and would. “Not until we find another.”

  “Pardon me, my lady, but my sister’s looking for a position.”

  Olivia looked across the room to her maid Celeste who was busily unpacking one of the tr
aveling trunks.

  “Has she experience with children?” Olivia asked. She quite liked Celeste, found her to be a cheerful young woman with a seemingly unlimited supply of energy.

  “Sophie’s the oldest of us, and there were eight,” Celeste answered, her big blue eyes twinkling. “She had a hand in the raising of the younger ones, what with my mother taking in laundry after our father passed on.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Eight and twenty, my lady.”

  “And she’s looking for work?”

  “Her husband, a baker he was, passed on some months ago,” Celeste replied. “He didn’t have anything to leave her, so she’s been looking for work but without a character she’s had no luck.”

  “She has no children of her own?” Olivia asked.

  “She has a daughter, Meg, who’s five, but my mother can keep her.”

  Olivia thought about that, about separating mother and daughter, and shook her head.

  “She’ll have to leave her with Mum whatever work she finds,” Celeste hurried to explain. “Domestics always do live away from their families. And mum’s house is only in Bloomsbury. She’d be able to visit on her half day.”

  “That’s so sad,” Fanny whispered. “Poor Meg.”

  “Poor Meg,” Charlie echoed his sister sleepily. He curled up against Olivia’s side with his head resting on her leg and his thumb in his mouth.

  “Will you ask her to come see me tomorrow?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  An hour later, as Olivia blew out the candle on the small table beside her bed and snuggled under the covers between her children, she thought about Celeste’s words.

  Domestics always do live away from their families.

  She was ashamed to realize she’d never thought about servants and their families. She had no idea if any of her servants had children, husbands, wives, elderly parents. She knew Celeste was unmarried, but did she have a sweetheart? Did she dream of marriage and babies? How on earth did working women leave their children for days on end, only spending half a day with them once a week?

  She thought about the last year at Idyllwild. There were no servants at Idyllwild. Mary and Molly kept the house, hiring a few women from the village to help out now and then, and Tom, with the help of Mr. Porter and his son-in-law, cared for the grounds and horses. Of course, Idyllwild was a small estate, the manor house little more than a cottage.