by Erica Ridley
Faith presumed the orchestra was still playing, but the music was far too difficult to detect over the delighted screams of the crowd.
They watched and watched until they could no longer discern the wave of the pilot’s flag from inside the cage, and the balloon was nothing more than a red and blue dot disappearing toward the horizon.
“What did you think?” Faith’s mother asked her granddaughter.
“It was wonderful.” Christina gaped down at them from Hawkridge’s shoulders in openmouthed delight. “When can we see another one?”
Hawkridge laughed and lifted her back down to the ground. “We can return for as many as you like.”
“Hawkridge, is that you?” A grating laugh accompanied the disbelieving voice. “What the deuce are you about?”
Faith spun around in horror. Her heart sank.
If she had spent the past ten years dreaming of being reunited with Hawkridge, she had spent an equal amount of time praying never again to have the misfortune of running into Phineas Mapleton.
He had been the worst of the bullies when she was younger, capable of turning even the few friendly faces against her.
Her hopes that Mapleton had moved elsewhere had clearly proved fruitless. All she could hope now was that enough time had passed that he no longer recognized her.
“Spending an afternoon with my family,” Hawkridge replied evenly. “Don’t you have more important people to rub shoulders with?”
“Don’t you?” Mapleton’s laugh was ugly. “Not one, but two dukes are eagerly awaiting my company, and here you are with…” His eyes widened and he chortled with glee. “Dear Lord, never say you’re still dallying with that Digby chit, after all this time.”
Faith’s hand tightened around her daughter.
“We were wed this past fortnight,” Hawkridge said coldly. He took a menacing step forward. “And I shall thank you not to speak ill of my marchioness and her family, because you will not like my reaction.”
“I would never speak ill,” Mapleton protested, then frowned in Christina’s direction. “Whose moppet is this?” His jaw dropped open. “Never say the Digby chit allowed you to sire a bastard back when we were children!”
The blood drained from Faith’s countenance and she swayed, light-headed with fear. Hawkridge’s horror-struck, wide-eyed countenance could only mirror her own.
Their first true public outing, and already their greatest secret had been exposed within minutes.
“Oh, posh,” Mapleton slapped Hawkridge on the shoulder and let out another braying laugh. “I am only bamming you. Back then, you weren’t desperate enough to risk being forced to wed the daughter of a textile monger. Come to think of it, I heard about some charity school she and Dahlia Grenville had put together.” Mapleton turned his sardonic gaze toward Faith. “Is this creature one of the unfortunates you girls rescued from the streets?”
“That’s my Aunt Faith,” Christina shouted hotly. “She’s not a girl. She’s a lady!”
“And that’s quite enough from you, Mapleton” Hawkridge said icily, stepping forward with his hands clenched into tight fists. “Leave while you still can. I am perilously close to meeting you at dawn.”
“Over a pipsqueak of a poor relation?” Mapleton spluttered in disbelief. “I never thought you’d be so sensitive in your old age. Very well then, esteemed Hawkridge family and dubious distant relations. I bid you farewell.”
Hawkridge’s cold gaze did not waver. “May our paths never cross again. Your life now depends upon it.”
Chapter 28
Hawk gazed across the candlelit supper table at Faith and Christina. Despite Phineas Mapleton’s best attempts to ruin everyone’s day, the family outing to the pleasure gardens had been a huge success. Hawk looked forward to countless more days with his wife and daughter at his side.
This one, however, appeared to have come to a close. Hawk gave a wistful smile. It was now half eight in the evening, and he had just caught his ten-year-old trying valiantly to stifle a yawn.
He turned to Faith and lowered his voice to a murmur. “I’m afraid I have kept Christina up later than is her wont.”
“No, Uncle Hawkridge,” Christina said from the other side of the table. “I’m not tired at all.”
His heart flipped.
Faith grinned at Hawk. “I’ll take her.”
Hawk hesitated. “Would it be all right if we did it together? Like a family ritual?”
Her gaze softened and she gave his hand a squeeze beneath the table.
“Let’s ask her.” Faith turned to their daughter. “Chris, would you like to pick out two books tonight so Lord Hawkridge and I can both read to you?”
Christina squealed and launched herself from her chair. She was halfway to the open doorway before she returned to the table and climbed back up in her seat with a dutiful sigh. “May I be excused from the table?”
“You may.” Faith rose to her feet. “We’ll be right behind you.”
Hawk leapt up and offered Faith his arm. They took the stairs together, well in the wake of Christina’s scampering footfalls.
“I swear she’ll have a proper library the very instant I am able,” he said to Faith.
She gave him a half smile. “In the meantime, she has borrowed more than her body weight in books from her grandparents’ library. And besides, it makes going to visit them even more special. Instead of having everything at our fingertips, Chris must choose only as much as she can carry to bring back home.”
Home. As much as it warmed him to hear Faith refer to his townhouse with such a term, he very much wished he were in a position to provide both of them everything they wanted.
If he spoiled them, so be it. Hawk would far rather his women take his largesse for granted than to lie awake despondent over advantages they no longer had.
Soon, he promised himself. One year.
Once the port was finally open, the marquessate would finally be out of debt.
From that moment on, every penny he raised would be for his family, his tenants, his estate. Not the overdue accounts created long before he had ever inherited the title. If all went according to plan, Christina would have every advantage available to her long before the time came for her come-out.
A shiver went down his spine. He was not at all prepared to think of his daughter as a debutante.
She was ten years old, and part of him hoped she would remain so indefinitely. He loved watching her run up and down the winding walks of the tea-garden. The way her bonnet flopped backwards when she tilted her face up at the many statues decorating the paths.
He loved her round little cheeks and her big hazel eyes. Her delight when a butterfly had landed on her shoulder, and that her immediate reaction had been to look at him and whisper, remember our book?
Hawk did remember. He wanted a thousand more such memories, a million more shared moments. He wanted days like today to be special not because they were so few and far between, but because his family was special, and their lives were always this full of happiness.
“Which books have you chosen?” Faith asked as they entered Christina’s bedchamber.
Chris held two aloft and pointed at her pillow-strewn bed.
“Sit,” she demanded. “I wish to snuggle against you as we read.”
“It’s a trick,” Faith stage-whispered to Hawk. “We cannot leave her at bedtime if we are trapped beneath her.”
It sounded perfectly lovely to Hawk, who immediately positioned himself in the center of the bed with both arms outstretched. “Well?”
Christina launched herself on top of him and rolled to the other side. She nuzzled her head against his chest and curled against him.
With an exaggerated, long-suffering sigh, Faith made a production out of daintily mincing toward the bed, gathering her skirts, wiggling her hips up onto the mattress, and ethereally floating backward until she curled into the other side of Hawk’s embrace.
Christina giggled uncontrollably. “Do it
again.”
“Minx,” Faith said with a laugh. “Now where are these books?”
Chris propped the first one on Hawk’s waistcoat. “Help me hold it.”
Faith obediently steadied the other side.
Hawk could not have helped with the book if he wanted to. Both of his arms were busy holding his women close.
“Chapter One,” Faith began in a calm, smooth reading voice. “Nelson and his puppy set forth one afternoon for a brisk walk to his grandmother’s house.”
“‘It’s too sunny,’ said Nelson when the clouds parted above in the sky.” Hawk interrupted, giving a whiny falsetto to the character’s dialogue. “‘Grandmother will never recognize me, should I become brown as a nut.’”
Christina hiccupped with laughter and joined in the fun. “‘Woof-woof,’ said the puppy, which is dog language for human boys are very stupid.”
“That’s not what it says it all!” Faith gasped in mock outrage. “A puppy would never speak ill of its master.”
“A smart puppy would,” Hawk protested innocently. “Especially if his master was a very stupid human boy.”
Christina giggled and read the next line, changing the words to make the boy even more insipid and his puppy the beleaguered voice of reason.
It took twice as long as it should have to read both bedtime books aloud, but Hawk couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much fun or laughed for so long.
Today they had felt like a family, but tonight Hawk truly felt like a father.
Moments like these were not mundane, but even more precious than he had imagined. The soft warmth of his girls snuggled against him, Christina’s peals of laughter as he and Faith tried to outdo each other with ridiculous dialogue and outlandish accents.
Hawk was not at all certain whether it was he or Christina who was more disappointed when story time ended, and it was time for her to go to sleep.
Out in the corridor, he paused with Faith outside the master bedchamber. This was where he and his wife always parted for the night. Where reality sliced through his lingering euphoria and reminded him just how far they had left to go.
She relinquished his arm but did not immediately remove herself to the sanctity of her bedchamber.
Hawk was glad. He did not want her to go. Not after a day like today.
“Today was wonderful,” she said softly. “And tonight was truly special. Thank you for being so kind to Christina.”
Hawk’s heart twisted. He answered gruffly, “I am not being kind to her. I am treating her as she deserves to be treated. She will never lack for love and respect under my roof or anywhere her feet should take her.”
“Thank you,” Faith repeated, her whisper even softer than before.
He was not certain he deserved it.
Despite the magic of tucking his daughter into bed, he was still simmering with anger just below the surface.
The lion’s share of his ire was rightfully directed at Phineas Mapleton, a self-important pompous arse who lacked the good breeding to realize when his efforts to make himself seem bigger than others resulted in the exact opposite.
But as intolerable as the loudmouth gossip had been for as long as Hawk had known him, Mapleton was a small part of a bigger picture. Nor was Phineas Mapleton the only villain.
Hawk’s original hurt and anger at the discovery Faith had kept his daughter from him had been perfectly understandable. He had not been in the right, however, to judge her so harshly for maintaining the secrecy once it had begun.
The only reason disaster had been narrowly avoided today when Mapleton had quite correctly determined that Christina’s approximate age would correspond with the time of Hawk and Faith’s ill-advised dalliance, was because Mapleton’s prejudice against the lower classes blinded him to the idea that such an unlikely union was even possible.
Had Hawk not been present, had he not been in the picture at all or anywhere near it, and Faith had been but an unwed mother daring to show her face as a fallen woman with her unwanted bastard in tow, a run-in with Mapleton would not have ended nearly as well.
Hawk had vastly underestimated the risk involved for the lies Faith had told Christina. The sacrifice of denying her parentage and pretending to be an aunt instead. The agony every time Christina inquired about a mother or father she could never know the truth about. The fear of the daily possibility that despite Faith’s best efforts, the ruse would be discovered anyway.
He had thought earning Faith’s forgiveness would be the end of it.
He had been wrong.
Now that they were out of earshot of Christina’s bedchamber, out of earshot from his mother’s sick quarters, out of earshot from the footman out at the rented mews with the horses or the maid banging pots somewhere inside the scullery, Hawk took Faith’s hand and dropped to one knee.
“How could you forgive me?” The words clawed their way out of his swollen throat. “I judged you for your part in a situation that was far outside your control. I see that now. No matter how hard you tried, Christina’s future must never have seemed secure. Perhaps to you it still does not, even now.”
“Is this about Mapleton?” Faith’s shoulders caved, her tone lifeless. “He made my life miserable when we were younger, and many others have stepped forward to fill his void in the years since. I am used to people disregarding me because I was not born to a title or a legacy. I am used to them belittling my parents, criticizing the hard choices they made that created a better world for Christina and me.” Her voice broke. “But no matter how hard I tried to steel myself against the barbed words of their mockery, I can never get used to hearing them spew filth about my daughter.”
“Nor should you ever have to,” Hawk growled. He rose to his feet and pulled her into his embrace. “Neither you nor Christina nor your parents will hear vitriol like that ever again. I will ensure it.”
Faith laughed humorlessly into his cravat. “What can you possibly do to stop it?”
“Tomorrow, I pay Mapleton a visit he will not soon forget,” Hawk said between clenched teeth.
“And then what?” Faith asked. “If I have learned anything in my seven-and-twenty years, it is that there is always another Mapleton. Always someone else to gleefully step in to make someone else feel small.”
“You do not deserve such treatment,” Hawk said firmly. He led her across the parlor and seated her next on a chaise longue. “I have not had much reason to throw my title and influence about these past several years, but I have never had greater motivation to do so than now. It will be nothing for me to make it unfashionable for an unwise word to be spoken about my wife or my ward.” His muscles shook with anger. “Indeed, I shall relish the opportunity to teach arrogant pups like Mapleton how deeply words can cut.”
Faith lifted glazed, hopeless eyes toward his face. “Do you truly have the power to ensure terrifying moments like today never happen again?”
“I do.” He took her hand into his with determination. “And I will. You need never again fear being humiliated or disparaged. Not by any of them, and certainly never again by me.”
Faith’s breath hitched as hope returned to her eyes.
“You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” Hawk said gruffly. “We’re together now. In every way that matters.”
The sole sconce down the hallway was not bright enough to fully distinguish her features, but the faint glitter of candlelight reflected in her eyes as she turned to gaze up at him.
“Almost every way,” she whispered.
Hawk lifted his hand to her face and rubbed the pad of his thumb against her cheek. They were at a precipice, he realized. Teetering on the brink of two possible futures. One option in which they remained strangers who treated each other with politesse for the sake of a child.
The other possibility was infinitely better and commensurately more terrifying a risk. Truly becoming husband and wife. Treating each other not with polite manners, but with trust and honesty. Sharing an intimacy far deeper tha
n the physical.
It would take both of them working together to create a marriage in more than mere name.
He stroked her cheek. She had accepted all the duties and responsibilities of being a marchioness without question. A new home with strange surroundings, a prickly new husband mired in the past, a mother-in-law who had been determined not to like her at all costs.
His wife had handled it all with grace and brisk efficiency, despite continuing to maintain a staggering quantity of outside responsibilities, such as two dozen dependents counting on her at the St. Giles School for Girls.
With Faith, nothing got in the way of anything else. There was time for everything. Everyone was important.
Even a rash fool like Hawk.
“If you need something,” he said, his voice urgent. “If you want anything at all and it is within my power to give, you need only say so and it shall be yours at once.”
“In that case…” She covered his hand with hers and pulled it away from her cheek.
Hawk’s heart sank. Of course she wouldn’t want him. She had learned that lesson long before.
But rather than let go of his hand, she laced her fingers with his. “Would you like to sleep in here tonight?”
Surprise surged through Hawk’s veins, then hope, then desire. There was nothing he wanted more.
Blood rushed through him so quickly that he had no memory of crossing the threshold and stumbling to the bed. Somehow, the door was latched behind them and they were rolling across the mattress, limbs tangled, mouths barely parting long enough to gasp for air.
This was nothing at all how he dreamed it would be, nothing at all like the old bittersweet memories, but immeasurably better. Sweeter. Hotter.
Hers were not the tentative kisses of a girl afraid to seem too forward, but those of a grown woman who knew full well what she desired and was not ashamed to take it. Faith wanted him. His body grew even harder with desire. She was everything he had been waiting for.
Her skin was as soft as he remembered, but now boasted the most tantalizing curves. Her breasts were larger than before, her hips shapelier, the curve of her derrière tantalizing enough to steal his breath. His heart beat so quickly he was afraid she could feel each pulse.