The Scandalous Deal of the Scarred Lady: A Historical Regency Romance Novel

by Hamilton, Hanna

  “You are on your deathbed, and you wish to hear the gossip of the ton?” James asked, sitting up a little to take a good look at her, noticing the pale flush of color coming back into her cheeks.

  “I might not be so near to death as you imagine,” Lucy muttered, plucking at the coverlet. “Help me sit up, for I cannot stand laying here like this for another minute.”

  “Are you sure it is wise?” James asked, rising to stand uncertainly over her. “I wish a doctor were here…I imagine it would be best for you to stay quiet…”

  “Hardly! If I am dying anyway then what does it matter whether I am lying down or sitting up? The end result would be very much the same.” Lucy struggled to rise, and James found himself bending to ease her forward for him to place another pillow behind her back.

  “You cannot even die obediently I suppose,” he muttered, the pressure within his heart easing a little, for there was that old look in her eyes that he knew well.

  “Perhaps I will not die at all. Tell me what has happened with that Phoebe Barlowe,” she snapped at him waspishly and glanced at the table near his hand. “You could give me some water too while you are up and about.”

  James had only just sat down but rose and poured a glass of water for her all the same. “I wonder sometimes whether you are the true mistress of the household and I the servant,” he said, guiding the glass to her lips.

  “I wonder that myself,” she said and lay back again, pale and wan. As much as she’d rallied, she’d spent that energy and had nothing left to give. He smoothed the coverlet over her again and resumed his seat.

  “Besides, if I tell you what happened, you will go ahead and die and where would that leave me? No, ’tis best I keep my own adventures to myself, if only to ensure your long life,” James said, crossing his arms and staring her down, the very picture of one not about to be moved.

  “Are you always so harsh with those who are dying around you?”

  “Do you intend to be all night about this? I daresay I could get some sleep if you are, for I am rather exhausted, having come through the storm to get here,” James retorted, though a smile tugged at his lips.

  “Do not tease me,” Lucy said, and struggled to sit up again. “You must tell me. What has Phoebe done?”

  James frowned. “I am unsure why she bothers you so. Though I can understand your worry. Miss Barlowe is not what she seems, is she? Her arrangement tonight could well have ruined her…and myself, as well, if things had gone according to her plan. It is most odd though. I have as yet to ascertain why—”

  “Why?” Lucy exploded, and threw the coverlet back entirely. “Help me dress. We must put an end to this.”

  “I thought you were dying?” he countered, throwing the blanket back over her before she got a chill.

  “I do not have time for such nonsense. Besides, it is but a small injury upon my head. I am fine. Heaven only knows why I did not wake up sooner.” She shoved the blanket back and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  “What about your heart? Your dead parents?”

  She waved that off. “My parents died in a carriage accident when I was seven.”

  “You are lying then about everything?” he asked, stepping back in a rather stunned disbelief as Lucy stood wobbly for a moment next to the bed.

  Her face was still pale, with a certain greyness to her countenance. “In truth, my heart troubles me, but I have not time for dying. You do not understand Phoebe, or you would not be standing there like this. She has set her sights upon you and made her move, but I am guessing you frustrated her somehow. She will hurt that girl next, mark my words.”

  “What girl? Do you mean Helena?” he asked sharply, draping his own robe around Lucy, for her nightdress was not warm enough for her to wander about the house. He reached for her arm as she marched past him, chin high, heading straight for the door and the house beyond. “Stay, tell me what you mean!”

  “I mean that she is a cat who is not to be trusted!” she cried out, whirling on him, eyes blazing.

  “How would you know that?” James shouted back, furious and frantic. “She only tried to arrange a tryst. There is hardly a crime or even a threat in that? On the whole I felt rather sorry for her…Yet you tell me Helena is in danger?”

  “Oh, I do not know! She may be. Or not. I only know that Phoebe must be desperate indeed if she made such a move.” Lucy gripped his arm so tight that her fingers dig painfully into his flesh. “Tell me what happened, and do not mince your words.”

  James winced and eased his arm from her grasp, only partially reassured, dismissing his panic. He had gotten caught up in the ravings of a sick woman. “Only if you return to bed, where it is warm,” he said, trying to coax her back where she belonged.

  “Confound it, James, I am not in the mood to play games. Tell me!”

  “Why?” James threw up his hands. “Tell me why. Make me understand!”

  “Because Phoebe Barlowe has been blackmailing me for years with the expectation that someday she would be able to put you under her thumb. Do you not realize that the loss of your funds was in equal parts at the hands of your business partner — and myself? I have been robbing this household for years, giving her more coin than you can imagine.”

  “Blackmailing.” James stared at her, feeling himself withdrawing, backing until he felt the chair against his legs and sat heavily. His business partner had all but ruined him, borrowing against the holdings James had inherited against his father. It had taken every coin he’d had to pay against those notes and keep from having to sell off parts of his estate.

  But Lucy had been giving away more than trinkets and baubles. Suddenly the loss of many pounds he had been unable to account for was explained. What little cash they’d had to pay the staff and handle the day to day operations of the estate had been disappearing much faster than he had supposed.

  “Why…? Why would you steal…from me?” He could not breathe. His heart felt crushed within his chest, the betrayal so sore, so deep that it hurt beyond any pain he had known until that moment. Even the loss of her would have been better than this.

  “Because you…because the world could not know,” Lucy said, stepping toward him and stopping, one hand outstretched in his direction then falling away to her side.

  “Know what? Lucy. Tell me.” The words felt thick in his mouth, hard to force out. “What have you hidden that is so important that you would ruin me to keep it silent?”

  Lucy’s face was streaked with tears, her eyes red-rimmed and terrible to see. “You have to understand. I did it for you….”

  “What have you DONE?” he shouted, leaping to his feet, and grabbing her by the arms. “TELL ME!”

  “She knew…” Lucy gasped, going limp in his grasp. “She knew…that you are my son!”

  Chapter 40

  “Your…son.” James sank back down into his chair and stared at her.

  Lucy looked from him to the door, clearly impatient to be off. “I shall need to explain, I suppose.”

  “That would help,” James said faintly, rising and guiding her to a chair. Her expression was likely as shocked as his own, for his face felt so still and stiff, it might have been carved from wood. And hers held such a look of shock, it’s a wonder she didn’t fall over where she stood.

  She sank into the seat, not seeming to notice the blanket he dragged from the bed and tucked around her. “I should not have said that,” she said, as she lifted her head to gaze at him.

  When had she gone so grey and become so old? Her blue eyes glistened in the firelight, her hands in her lap, knobby and deeply veined. She aged before his eyes — even her hair seemed paler, silver strands falling about her face in a soft halo.

  “Tell me this is an untruth, brought about by the injury to your head. I know you were unconscious for a long time.” He sank into his own chair, drawn close enough to hers that he might take her hand in his.

  She shook her head once, still staring at him in that terrible si
lence, a single tear trailing down her cheek.

  “No. No.” James buried his face in his hands, too many things coming together at once. He thought of the times he had fought for the attention of his mother — a woman who had little affection for the boy, who would, more often than not, turn her back on him. She’d left one day, leaving him behind. He had not understood why.

  “I have thought a hundred…nay, a thousand…times how to tell you,” Lucy said softly, her hand coming up to touch his cheek, coming to rest upon the top of his head, holding him the way she had as a child when she’d found him sorrowing over some small thing or another.

  “It cannot be true. Father…”

  “…was a good man, do not mistake that.” Lucy’s voice was so fierce that James looked at her sharply.

  “But if he…and you…” He could not speak the words.

  Her hand fell away. “You do not understand the situation.”

  “Then make me understand,” James cried. “You knew! You knew how it made me feel when she…left. I suffered…for years. I suffered from the knowledge that my mother would care so little for us that she cared nothing for the scandal of running away. Becoming the lover of…that man.”

  “Your mother and her lover paid for their mistakes,” Lucy said softly. “They died not long after. She was a lovely woman, and it was a great tragedy that she should fall ill, so far from home…”

  “I will NOT pity them,” James snarled, jumping to his feet, unable to sit still.

  “No, you never have given your mother pity. You have been consumed by fury for so long. She was foolish and very young. I have told you before—”

  “How could you? How could you defend her then? And still defend her now? Explain. Explain to me how it came to be that she was raising a child not her own? And Father…! To do such a thing…!”

  Lucy stared at him, pale and solemn from her nest of blankets.

  “I will tell you nothing until you sit down and promise to listen to me without interrupting me. Perhaps it was wrong to keep this secret for so long, but there are things you do not understand,” she said, gazing at him so steadily he wondered how it was that he’d never recognized her eyes as his own before this moment.

  James swallowed hard and sat gingerly in the chair, ready to bolt again at a moment’s notice. He choked back a laugh when he realized it was because he was afraid — afraid of what she might say, as though words could rend him further apart when he already felt as though he lay in pieces at her feet.

  “Proceed,” he said, his chin coming up, as he forced himself to sit normally, drawing his shoulders up, and bringing his gaze to meet her own.

  Lucy tilted her head to the side to regard him with a certain amusement. “Sometimes when I look at you, I see your father.”

  “Do not tell me about my father. I want…I want to understand what you are saying. Why are you telling me these things?”

  “Because you cannot be hurt by what you already know. She can do no damage to you if you know. Or at least not more than what the scandal of your mother leaving brought upon you. Pray, let me speak, and you will perhaps see why the matter is so urgent.” Lucy took a breath, and added almost in a whisper, “And hopefully then you will find it in your heart to be forgiving.”

  Lucy sank into the blankets and began.

  “When your father married Amelia Allen, theirs was not a love match but one arranged by their families for the sake of combining two rather large properties. They were amiable enough, but Amelia proved to be unable to give your father an heir. After the loss of several infants who never so much as took a breath on this side of heaven, Amelia sank into a deep depression. It was obvious to all that to bear a child again would send the poor thing into madness.”

  Lucy raised her head a little, to look at James somberly. “Many solutions were bandied about. But it was Amelia herself who had the idea of it first. In the Bible there was the story of Rachel, who could bear no sons to her husband, and so, in desperation to provide an heir, she gave her maid to him, that a child might be born through that union.”

  Lucy hesitated here, swallowing hard before continuing. “I was her maid.”

  James shook his head, feeling sick to his stomach. “No…No…Father would not have…”

  Lucy smiled a little, her face somber and sad. “Do not think it was a terrible solution. For Amelia knew well my feelings for your father. I had never been able to school my expression, and it was plain to see, perhaps to all of us, how much I cared for him. I went eagerly to him but reckoned little on how much I would come to love him.”

  She reached to touch James’s hand, her fingers cold and shaking from the effort. “And the baby that grew within my womb.”

  James choked back a sob. “No. Tell me they did not…” But he knew the answer, for had he not been raised as their son? He had clung to Lucy as his governess when she had in fact been his mother.

  Lucy’s hand tightened on his own. “I was sent away until after my lying in. Then after the birth, a solicitor was brought in, and you were adopted legally as their son. Your title is secure if that’s what you are worried about.”

  He wrenched his hand away, staggering to his feet. “None of this can be true. You have been injured, a bump to your head. All of this is a flight of fancy, nothing more.”

  “There is proof,” she said quietly, “In the chest that lays at the foot of my bed. Have them bring the blue bag to me, and I will show you the documents, and you will know.”

  Numb and still very much in shock, James stumbled to the door and gave the order to those who hovered outside to find the bag and bring it to him. He stayed for a moment there, long after he closed the door, unable to face her, not wanting to believe a word of what she had just confessed.

  But deep down hadn’t he always known? Had he not already noted many times over the sameness of Lucy’s eyes and his own? Had he not witnessed the affection his father had held for the governess, the extra kindnesses he’d shown her?

  Had he not seen the bitterness and resentment in Amelia’s eyes when she gazed upon them. The desperation and bitterness of her fights with his father? Did it not all make a wicked, terrible sense now when put into this context? It was no wonder then that Amelia would leave, running away with the young man who had eyes only for her.

  Had her own husband not betrayed her, by loving this woman here, who crouched by the fire, looking at him with such terrible, anguished eyes? And was Lucy really to blame for any of this? Perhaps the true villain of this particular piece was James’s own father, long dead now.

  “How does Miss Barlowe fit in any of this?” he asked as he thought through all these things, feeling that his mind was in such a terrible muddle, that it would be a miracle if he could ever sort any of this out.

  “Your father and Harcourt Barrington were very close friends. Your father went to him with this decision for he agonized greatly overtaking such a step, though it was not unheard of for a man who was childless to adopt an heir. You are not the only adopted heir born on the wrong side of the sheets but legitimized later. I can only surmise that Phoebe found out about it somehow.”

  “She came to you then?” James demanded, not liking the turn this conversation was taking.

  “You were but a child, and her little more than one herself, still a girl of one and twenty when she appeared. She had found some proof, a letter, which she showed to me. Your mother had only just left, and your family was still reeling from the scandal. To have such a thing bandied about by the ton at such a time…your father would not have recovered from it.”

  Lucy stared at her hands, clasped in her lap. “Nor would I. I would have been forced to leave your side. Your father could not have kept me in his household if it were to come to light that I was your true mother. And to leave you…and him…it was impossible.”

  She smiled tenderly at him. “Oh, do not think it was easy. I wish I could have married him, but by the time your mother left, it was too well known that
I was but a servant in this household. He asked me, but I would not allow the scandal. But even then, I could not leave. It was then I discovered how selfish I was, and how far I would go to keep that secret.”

  Lucy sighed a little. “It was easy to comply. Phoebe wanted only some small trinket from the house, and I acquiesced thinking none would miss such a tiny item, for it was only a snuffbox, never used. ‘Twas only a gift given to your father, but pretty enough. I think she only asked for it to test me. And when she discovered I would give her that…”

  “She knew she could ask for more. That is why you were out in that storm then,” he said, wondering how many such trips he had not known about, likely made on days when she had asked to be free for a personal errand.