Tangled Destinies

by Bancroft, Blair

  Indeed. The thought of traveling anywhere in a carriage, no matter how smooth the road, fair turned my stomach. I proffered a wan smile. “You are quite right, Mrs. Randall. Thank you. But the drawing room—I expect I cannot get out of that?”

  “Ah no, miss. The men have gone to a horse fair in the next village, but his lordship left strict orders for me to see that you met the other ladies as soon as you were up and about.”

  I hated him. The beast.

  Wrong. I was grateful. Thornbury was giving me the push I needed to force me back into society. Just because it was going to be painful didn’t mean I should not do it. I fixed a smile on my face, nodded to Mrs. Randall, and we were off.

  To say I negotiated the stairs down to the drawing room with extreme caution would be an understatement. The main staircase loomed before me like a drop into Hell. I gritted my teeth. I was Lucinda Nellwyn Neville. If I could deliver a baby, I could walk down two flights of broad, well-lit, carpeted stairs. So there! Clinging to the banister on one side, and with Mrs. Randall hovering on the other, I made it, though I paused at the bottom for a huff of relief.

  “Hopefully, that’s the worst of it, miss.”

  Clearly, Mrs. Randall did not believe the stairs would be more intimidating than the ladies I was about to meet. And I feared she was right. I was the morning’s entertainment, the tender morsel being fed to a roomful of predators.

  Aunt Trevor. Emilia. I would not be alone.

  Meekly, I followed Mrs. Randall to the drawing room, a magnificently appointed space with cherubs dancing on the ceiling, the walls hung with imposing works of art by some of the world’s greatest painters, and seemingly acres of silk, satin, and gilt acting as backdrop for priceless objets d’art. Mrs. Randall led me inexorably forward until I was face to face with Lady Winterbourne, who was seated on a sofa upholstered in an elaborately woven oriental design.

  “Miss Neville, my lady.” And with that, Mrs. Randall deserted me so swiftly I suspected she did not care to bear witness to what happened next.

  It was quite like a tableau staged as after-dinner entertainment. Everyone in the room paused what they were doing to look at me—bodies frozen, conversations stopped in mid-sentence. Despite my lingering aches and pains, I managed a deep curtsy. “My lady,” I murmured. Should I thank her for deigning to accept me as a companion? Somehow this did not seem the right moment.

  I was saved by Aunt Trevor and Emilia, both rushing to flank me and exclaim how happy they were to see me up and about. Grateful, I kept them close as Lady Winterbourne proceeded to introduce me to the remainder of the guests. Lady Ariana and Lady Cynthia accepted their introductions with smirks at me and knowing glances at each other. Smirks that clearly said they were not ready to forgive me for masquerading as a nurse. Nor for adding my presence to a household where the matrimonial stakes were so high. A third contestant, Lady Pamela Hamilton, made no effort to conceal the fact that her sentiments matched theirs.

  In fact, the only genuinely friendly face among the young ladies was that of the very young and winsome blonde I had seen from the fourth floor window. Lady Melinda Dabney, daughter of the Duke of Rockingham, was not at all the haughty creature one would expect, but a charming, if shy, seventeen-year-old who, I was certain, would never even think of eloping with a penniless line officer. Nor, I suspected, would she censor anyone who had the temerity to do so. I liked her.

  I could not say the same for the other young ladies vying for Thornbury’s hand. Nor their mothers. All seemed firmly united in their horror at being asked to be civil to a fallen woman. Particularly a female whose striking face and voluptuous figure looked as if she were born for the bedroom, not the drawing room. Ah well, I had expected nothing more.

  Though I had hoped . . .

  Somehow I survived the interrogations, the snide remarks, the barbed arrows that passed as conversation until Lady Winterbourne announced it was time to exit the house and enjoy luncheon al fresco. Relief swept over me. Until I discovered I was placed between Lady Ariana and Lady Dalrymple, Lady Pamela’s mother, who had long since gone beyond being known as a “town tabbie,” earning the title of “tigress” instead. Our conversation devolved into an interrogation that reminded me of tales I had heard of the Spanish Inquisition, interspersed with stinging barbs delivered with the practiced thrusts of a so-called lady who had honed her expertise over a quarter-century of stripping the dignity from anyone “not quite one of us.”

  I endured. Other than bolting from my chair and making a mad dash for my bedchamber, what choice did I have?

  I think it must have been a lovely day—the sun was shining, as I recall. We dined on the terrace, with the entire panoply of gardens stretched out before us, the maze and pond in the distance, the sheep beyond. That one glimpse before we were seated, however, is all I remember before the verbal flaying began. After that, I recall only my relief when Lady Winterbourne announced it was time to freshen up, the carriages for the sketching party would be ready to leave in thirty minutes.

  I made a valiant effort to walk back into the house with stately grace, but it was not easy. I hurt, inside and out. Only pride kept my feet from rushing toward the staircase and the shelter of my room. With each step I conjured a vision of the young ladies at the sketching party, posed in their pastel gowns against the lush landscape, looking as if they were the subjects of a panorama by Mr. Turner instead of shredding my character with every stroke of their pencils.

  “Miss Scarlett—beg pardon—Miss Neville,” one of the footmen said just as I had almost reached the stairs. “Mr. Metcalfe asks if you would kindly join him in his office. If you would follow me?”

  Now? Mr. Metcalfe wished to see me now?

  But of course. The promised wages. With only a small sigh over the interruption of my retreat, I turned and followed the footman.

  The gold-rimmed eyeglasses flashed at me as the footman departed, leaving me alone with the earl’s secretary. “Please be seated, Miss Neville.” I noted he was careful not to sit down until I was settled into the chair in front of his desk, a definite improvement on our initial meeting. “The new nurse arrived an hour since, and Lord Thornbury has asked me to deliver the wages that were agreed upon when you came here. I trust this will be sufficient.” With that, he proffered a leather pouch whose weight astonished me.

  “This is too much,” I protested. “Far more than I have had time to earn.”

  “Lord Thornbury wishes you to have a full quarter’s wages, Miss Neville,” he returned smoothly. “You have, I believe, given exemplary satisfaction.”

  I gasped, I couldn’t help it. On top of the quite horrid insinuations at luncheon, this was the outside of enough! Even Mr. Metcalfe thought . . . And was making no secret of what he assumed the money was for.

  “One more thing,” said the narrow lips beneath the sharp nose and obfuscation of the gold-rimmed spectacles, “Lord Winterbourne wishes to meet you. I—”

  “Winterbourne!” I exclaimed. “The marquess? I thought . . .” I snapped my mouth closed before I could make myself even more foolish. Never take assumptions as gospel, my inner voice jeered.

  “As I was saying,” Mr. Metcalfe declared, his tone putting me firmly in my place, baron’s daughter or no, “I have arranged an appointment with his lordship at three o’clock. You will be expected to arrive promptly. Any footman may show you the way.” He stood, indicating our interview was at an end.

  He’s a secretary, Luce, my inner voice snapped. Do not let him intimidate you.

  But he did. Or rather the thought of meeting the Marquess of Winterbourne did. My first day back in society, and I’d run a gauntlet of female harpies, been dragooned into Mr. Metcalfe’s office, and now a meeting with Winterbourne.

  Anthony’s father. Who did not know he was Nick’s grandfather.

  Heaven help me. Because it was beginning to look like no one else would.

  Chapter 17

  Everard Kingsley Truesdale Deverell, Marquess of Wi
nterbourne. The names would not stop running through my head. Some days ago I had looked him up in Debrett’s, and I murmured his name like a litany as I followed one of the footmen through the labyrinthine corridors that led to the family apartments on the far side of the house. Everard Kingsley . . . Marquess. Everard Kingsley . . . Winterbourne. Everard . . .

  The footman’s firm knock was answered by an impeccably garbed gentleman’s gentleman, so stooped and wrinkled I could only assume he had been with the marquess since his school days. The valet was, in fact, so ancient I feared he might topple over as he proffered a bow and said, “Miss Neville, please follow me.”

  With stately tread, he led me toward the most imposing bed I had ever seen—a towering monstrosity of dark wood, every inch carved in the grotesqueries of some fanciful artist of centuries gone by. No wonder the marquess was ill! How anyone could sleep in such—

  A slight gasp escaped me as I noticed a man standing, back to the wall, near the head of the bed. A man of perhaps thirty—tall, burly, and stern-faced, a total contrast to the valet. Silly twit, my inner voice chided as a frisson of unease shot through me. “’Tis plain the old man could never do for an invalid by himself. I steadied my nerves and turned my attention to the man lying in the oversize bed.

  “My lord,” the valet intoned, “Miss Neville has arrived.”

  I’m not sure what I expected, but not a man who looked neither frail nor withered. Lord Winterbourne’s hair might be gray, but shrewd eyes shone from the face Anthony would likely have three decades into the future. His gaze swept over me, taking in, I was sure, every stray wisp that had escaped my coiffure, the out-of-fashion cut of my most severe gown, the slight tremble of the fingers clasped in front of me. “So, you are Neville’s youngest,” he said. “And a far cry from the rest of the family, I must say. Did your mother play your father false?”

  “My lord!”

  “No need to fly up into the boughs. Surely you’ve had the question before.”

  I hung on to my temper only by telling myself that, clearly, the marquess’s infirmity was in his head, not his body. “My lord,” I managed, “my mother’s virtue is unquestionable. I am told the fault lies with an ancestor a century or more gone by, who made the family fortune as a privateer. And, well . . . shall we say, he had the temerity to marry as he pleased. I am told I am a prime example of “bad blood will out.”

  The marquess barked a laugh, before sobering and turning his gaze toward a window heavily shrouded in burgundy velvet draperies. After a few moments of silence, he said, “Tell me about the baby.”

  “My lord?”

  “The baby,” he repeated, his tone brooking no opposition. “The one they think I don’t know about.”

  There was no way I could lie; it wasn’t in me. Even if Anthony feared the news might kill him. The marquess was very likely Nick’s grandfather, and he had a right to know.

  While my thoughts chased themselves through my head, Winterbourne snapped, “Beck! A chair for the lady.” The intimidatingly beefy man came off the wall, a straight-back chair whisked into place before he returned to playing statue.

  For the next twenty minutes I sat there, recounting the entire tale, not sparing my brother-in-law’s part at the start of it all. I told the marquess of my meeting with Adara, of delivering the baby she’d named Hartley “after his father.” My discovery of her marriage lines, my conversations with Thornbury. My decision to stay with the baby. The attempts on both our lives. The decision for Nell Scarlett to return to the life of Lucinda Neville. “And that is where we are now, my lord,” I concluded. “I made my debut with your guests this morning, and I cannot say it was a success. All I ask is to be allowed to stay on until the matter of the baby’s legitimacy is decided. I promised his mother, you see. And if he is not wanted . . . ?” I shrugged, suddenly aware this was moment the decision simmering inside me must be spoken aloud. “My lord, I lost my opportunity for marriage and a family of my own some time ago. If it is decided the babe is not a Deverell, then I should like to take him. He is likely the only child I shall ever have.”

  Winterbourne stared at me. “You are a most odd female, Miss Neville. Most odd. Women who look like you—”

  “Indeed,” I murmured, cutting off the inevitable comparison to a courtesan.

  “I want to see him.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The boy. I want to see him.”

  Well, of course he did. Did Nick look like Hartley Deverell as a babe? Or perhaps like Anthony? What a boon that would be. But being sired by a Deverell did not mean he was legitimate. I must not forget that.

  “You will arrange it,” the marquess decreed. His head dropped back on his pillow. “But not today.” He waved me away, his strength clearly spent.

  I dropped a deep curtsy and fled as fast as my shaking legs could carry me.

  Anthony was going to kill me. Not literally, of course. At least I didn’t think so. But at the moment I was so confused it seemed anything was possible. If it hadn’t been for the footman waiting patiently outside the door, I likely would have wandered the corridors for hours, not having the slightest idea how to get back to the peaches and cream room assigned to Miss Lucinda Neville of Neville Manor in Nether Westcote.

  Unlikely as it seemed, it is possible that Lady Winterbourne, after witnessing my ordeal during luncheon on the terrace, took pity on me. At dinner that night I was seated between the sweet-natured Lady Melinda and Mr. Philip Draycott, a charming and silver-tongued young man about town I had met during my ill-fated comeout when I had eyes only for Brant. By the time the ladies retired to the drawing room, leaving the gentlemen to their port, I had regained a good deal of my customary confidence. One look, however, at the array of hatchet faces waiting to pounce and I devolved into an arrant coward, claiming the right of the recently injured to retire early to bed. One bout of female fisticuffs in one day was quite enough.

  My exhaustion was not a lie. Nonetheless, when I reached the third floor I kept on going, though some rather nasty shivers skittered up my spine as I made that final climb on stairs so similar to those I had tumbled down such a short time ago. I paused at the top, my fingers trembling as I touched the latch. Worthless idiot! Will you let fear keep you from Nick?

  Not fear. Abject terror.

  My inner voice hooted in derision.

  I huffed a breath and opened the door. The only sign of life was the footman standing by the nursery door, his colorful garb and curled white wig looking decidedly out of place in the austerely plain fourth floor corridor. He proffered a solemn nod as I strode to the nursery door and sounded the pattern of knocks the nursery staff and I had agreed upon.

  I was soon seated by the cradle, feasting my eyes on Nick, who was peacefully asleep and totally unaware of the drama caused by his advent into the world. Looking back, I think I must have sat there a full hour without moving—just staring, wondering, castigating myself for falling in love with a small scrap of flesh I had no means to support, if worse came to worst. The only way a young woman of my background could support herself was as a governess or companion. A position open only to unmarried, unencumbered young ladies. And if I tried to bring Nick home to my family, they would disown me. About that I had no doubt.

  Which left living as the courtesan so many people thought I had already become.

  It’s late, you’re exhausted. No wonder you’re feeling sorry for yourself.

  Oh dear, things were truly disastrous if even my caustic inner self felt the need to be kind.

  Conscious that I was keeping Ivy up past her bedtime, I kissed Nick goodnight and made my way back to my room. I had sent Josie off to bed before visiting the nursery, and my sore body vigorously protested the contortions necessary to get out my gown, chemise, and most particularly, my stays. For some reason—defiance, perhaps?—I pulled from the chest of drawers a frothy confection I had secretly purchased for my elopement. Made of the finest white lawn and nearly transparent, it was adorned
with a double layer of lace-edged flounces at the hem and a ruffle of lace at the bottom of each capped sleeve. A band of embroidered flowers in rose silk edged the neckline and formed a matching band just above the lower flounces.

  It was the most shocking garment I had ever purchased. A painful reminder of when the world was wondrous and I thought nothing could go wrong. I had never worn it. Yet someone had packed it. Perhaps at this low moment in my life, this is what I needed. I dropped it over my head, and it slithered into place as if it had come home at last. I peered into the drawer . . . there had been a matching robe, almost equally revealing, as I recalled. Ah yes, there it was. I shook it out, held it at arm’s length. The fabric was indeed transparent, but there was considerably more of it—billowing three-quarter sleeves, clouds of misty white falling to my toes as I slipped it on. And still failing to hide my body, particularly as there was no sign of a belt to hold it closed. Did I dare look in the mirror? After all, in the wavering light of but three candles, how shocking could it be?

  Just as I was maneuvering into a position where I could view myself head to toe in the pier glass, the door flew open so hard it banged against the wall. A voice roared, “How could you, Nell? How dare you tell my father about—” Thornbury’s voice broke off. For several long moments we simply stared at each other, mouths agape.

  I recovered first. Clutching the robe around me as if it actually concealed my assets, I declared, “Your father already knew. He told me your mother imparted the whole of it while sobbing all over his chest. I merely filled in a few details.”

  But Thornbury did not seem to be listening. “For whom,” he asked, enunciating each word with care, “are you playing the courtesan?”

  My chin came up. “For myself,” I said. “This ensemble was intended for my honeymoon, but I have never actually worn it. Yet here it was in my drawer, and I could not resist trying it on.”