The girl grinned at her. “I brought snacks.”
“Oh!” Thea widened the door and pulled Lucy in by the arm. A quick glance behind into her empty bedroom convinced Thea Lucy had come alone.
“I thought you might be getting hungry. Papa won’t allow the servants to answer the bell.”
It would be rude to snatch the basket in Lucy’s arms, so Thea controlled herself. “I’m starving. What do you have in there?”
“Biscuits, a few sandwiches from tea, and lemonade.” Lucy beamed.
“Oh marvelous.” Thea cast about the room for a table to take her repast, but finding nothing, sat on the floor, tailor style, and unpacked the basket of goodies. “So your father won’t let anyone in? That explains so much. I was wondering what tack he’d take.” She took a hearty bite of a turkey sandwich. Mmmm, delicious. She watched Lucy who sat opposite her on the rug. “Why did you risk it?”
Lucy shrugged. “I wanted to talk with you, and I suspected you’d be starving by now. A bribe, I suppose.”
“Why would you think I wouldn’t want to talk with you? You could have come without the food, you know.” Ooh, there was an apple in there, too.
“Really? I thought …”
“I don’t hate you, sweetie.” Thea swallowed a chewed lump of sandwich. “I didn’t leave because of you. Do you know that?”
Lucy shrugged with one shoulder but she did look relieved. “I guess so.”
Thea put her sandwich on a napkin and took Lucy’s hand. “None of this is your fault.” Again, Lucy nodded, but Thea wasn’t convinced the child believed her. Why should she? How could she? If the situations were reversed, Thea would assume it was her fault. All the evidence led directly to the arrival of the girl. What a mess.
“Papa was upset when you left.”
“As was I.” Thea let go of Lucy’s hand and popped the last of the turkey in her mouth. Perhaps the conversation would be less awkward if they shared chocolate biscuits.
“He seemed … I don’t know … confident you loved him while you were still here. Then you left and he … well, he didn’t get out of that bed for a while.”
“Really?” That was interesting. The great lothario brought low by a simple old Thea.
The girl’s blonde head bobbed. “I couldn’t let him run off after you all by himself.”
“How did you manage it?” Thea liked her stepdaughter. She was spunky and brave and she liked to gossip. So long as she is only gossiping to her and not about her.
Lucy leaned forward and whispered, “I dressed like a boy and sneaked on the ship.” She sat back with a self-satisfied grin. “I left Grand and Miss Honeysett a note because I didn’t want them to worry about me. I really thought Papa shouldn’t be alone.”
Thea offered another biscuit. “How did your father take it when he discovered you?”
She nibbled on her cookie and wrinkled her nose. “He was upset at first but I expected that. The cabin was really small so he had the sailors string up a hammock. It was an old merchant ship, but I had a grand time. I learned how to repair the sails and do the cooper’s job, and I helped the cook and fed the goats.”
Amazing. “And what did your father do?”
Lucy shrugged. She was really an accomplished shrugger. “Mope mostly. I helped him write a song to woo you with.”
Thea barked out a laugh. “I can’t imagine that.”
“It’s true. He insisted he wasn’t going to sing you a love song, which is ridiculous. I told him I’d write it and everything. I promised you’d love it.”
“I might at that.” The idea of Christian crooning to her. How delightfully entertaining.
“Instead, you two got into another fight.” Lucy visibly deflated.
She grasped Lucy’s hands in hers again. “I love your father,” she began, “but don’t tell him that.” Lucy nodded, solemn, so Thea continued, “I was angry not because you were born. I was angry at him because he never told me about you.”
“Well, he never saw me before that day.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. That’s reprehensible. Don’t you see?” Lucy looked away. “My father was an important man. A Viscount. He didn’t like me much because I was a girl, you understand, but he made sure I was educated and he expected me to marry well. What he really wanted was boys. The irony was, he had three of them, all illegitimate like you, and he never, ever cared about them. He never saw them or did anything for them. His sons deserve as much as I ever did — an education and a chance to live a fulfilling life with all the advantages, and so do you.”
Lucy’s tone was defensive. “Papa is sending me to school.”
Thea already knew that. She was certain Christian couldn’t wait to get Lucy packed off to a nice boarding school, far away. She also noticed no one in London seemed to know about the girl. Yes, a school far, far away and he’d never have to deal with her and what society thought of the situation. Damn him. What a fool she’d been.
“Is school what you really want?” Thea asked Lucy.
“Oh, yes. I want to study philosophy and literature. Not mathematics as much, but maybe botany or astronomy.”
Thea nodded her head, hoping that was really what would make the girl happy. They nibbled the chocolate pastries in silence for several moments.
Finally Lucy asked a tentative question. “Are you going to stay here with my Papa and be his wife?”
The turkey and bread and biscuits made a heavy ball in Thea’s stomach. “I don’t know,” she said in truth. “I’m not sure we suit each other. We have different philosophies about family, and I can’t change mine. I don’t even want to change it, no matter how much I love your father.”
The girl packed the picnic remains back in the basket leaving Thea with the apple and a carafe of lemonade.
“The next time I bring something for you to eat, I’m going to bring some Shakespeare. Taming of the Shrew, I think. Will you read it?”
Thea grinned at the child, amused by the abrupt change in topic. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
Chapter Thirty
His wife managed two days in her self-imposed exile without food and drink. Suspicious, that.
He was certain she was still in the bedroom, for several reasons. During the evening, he took to sitting in the hall outside the door. When she stuck her head out that first night, she slammed the door again when she saw him there. He had a footman visible in the garden cutting off the escape route there as well. It certainly wasn’t that he intended to keep her captive in there. On the contrary, he wanted her to come out, but he’d been burned by her once on this score. He wasn’t about to let her get away from him again. At least with a footman outside and him in the hall, he’d know when she left the room.
He’d sent Alexios to talk some sense into her that first evening, but he’d come back and she had not.
“She was surprised to see me, especially since I’d refused to come back with her and the boys,” Alexios reported back. When pressed about how long Alexios thought she’d be up there, he replied, “Who knows? No one in this world is as stubborn as my sister. Once she gets something in her head …” He shrugged with ominous portent.
It all circled back to the fact she hadn’t eaten in two days. He suspected there were traitors in the ranks. During breakfast the third morning — a rather rowdy meal considering his household went from three rather staid adults to include three rambunctious children seemingly overnight — he quizzed the family.
“I’ve slid several invitations under the door to parties I suspected she’d enjoy, hoping she’d come out,” his mother admitted, “but no food.”
“I am not answering that ridiculous question,” Anna protested. “And I don’t like your implications.” A statement that reeked of guilt, in Christian’s opinion.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m not implying anything. I’m saying someone is sneaking her food.”
Hektor raised his hand. Something he’d picked up from the lessons
with Miss Honeysett, Christian assumed. “I didn’t.”
Georgios didn’t answer, simply shook his head when Christian turned to him.
Alexios was reading the paper and merely grunted a negative reply.
Lucy avoided his gaze.
Christian sat back in his chair, his eggs and kippers ignored for the time being. “Well, that’s all rather interesting. Either you’re all excellent liars or we have house elves.”
Hektor lit up. “House elves? What are house elves? Can we see them? I’d like to capture one and keep it in the bug house.” Christian took a sip of coffee and scalded his lip in an attempt to hold back a laugh. Apparently, Miss Honeysett had shown the boys how to build a little box out of wood and netting to hold insects. As part of their lessons, she and the three children had been in the garden capturing grasshoppers and God knows what else to study in their homemade laboratories.
“He’s being sarcastic, dear,” his mother explained to the boy. “There’s no such thing as house elves.” Hektor seemed crestfallen. “Perhaps it’s the servants bringing her food,” she suggested.
Christian looked to a footman who shook his head vigorously in defense of the household staff. He directed his comments back to his family. “Whoever of you is superseding my wishes, I hope you understand that all you’re doing is prolonging the end of this standoff.” Six pairs of blank expressions stared back at him over sausages and toast points. This was ridiculous. “Stop it. I insist.”
“Perhaps you should sing the song.” Lucy made the suggestion with a hopeful smile and an eager nod, her long, blonde braids bobbing against her back.
Anna eyed him from over her tea cup with a sardonic twist of her brow. “There’s a song?”
“No.” Christian was adamant.
Sadly, nothing could pull Anna’s focus away when there was an opportunity to embarrass him. “Can I hear it?”
“No.”
The grin Anna flashed was maniacal. And unsettling.
“There is no song,” he insisted, then shot his daughter a look she correctly interpreted, and she kept quiet.
Tensions were high in the family dining room. Christian glared at the family, hoping at the very least, to intimidate the one providing Thea food to cease doing so. Anna was humming in a way he found almost unbearably irritating, and his mother was making a pointed effort to avoid eye contact with him. The children were giggling to themselves, and he paid them no mind.
Alexios folded the Times and drained his coffee. “I’d like to go out to the farm today.”
Christian pushed back his chair and tossed his napkin on the table. “If you get your sister out of that room, then we can. Otherwise, I’m not leaving here until I have my wife back.”
“Your Grace?” Riley stood in the open doorway. “There are several … gentlemen here for you who refuse to leave without an audience. Shall I show them to the front parlor?”
He rolled his eyes. Harrington and Dalton were never announced; they simply showed themselves in. Hell, Harrington would have filled a plate and taken a seat. “Who could possibly be here this early in the morning?”
“They wouldn’t say, Your Grace.” Riley lowered his voice. “I do believe they are inebriated.”
Oh, this is ripe. “No. Leave them in the hall. I’ll be right there.”
One last look at his assembled, extended family and he warned them as he strode from the room, “I’ll be watching you.” He distinctly heard Anna’s tinkling laugh as he rounded the corner. Christian smelled the alcohol and stale smoke before he made the foyer. Three drunken young men, barely out of university by the looks of them, were arguing. Their hats were off-kilter and their clothes dusty and askew. The one who appeared to be the ringleader was actually missing his boots.
Christian was in no mood for nonsense. He used his most intimidating ducal voice. “What are you doing in my hall at this hour?”
The men whirled around to face him. The tallest fellow’s hat toppled from his head. While the drunken fool stared at it on the floor, it made a lazy circle on the brim. He leaned forward to scoop it up, but over calculated his stability, and he tumbled to the floor. The others laughed uproariously as he scrambled to his feet. Christian was not amused.
“Good morning, Your Grace,” the shoeless one said, attempting a bow that predicated grabbing hold of the third man. The two of them swayed but managed to remain upright. “We’re here from White’s.”
“You belong to White’s?” Christian asked, incredulous. “I’m going to have to reconsider my membership if this —” he waved his hand in their direction “— is the way things are headed.” Two drunken guffaws, a snort, and a stale wave of alcohol breath met his disdain. “You have until I count five to state your business before I throw you out myself. One …”
“Right-o. You see Baldwin here,” the ringleader said, poking the arm of the most inebriated of the three, the one whose hat still lay on the floor, “has wagered his entire month’s allowance that you have a peg leg.”
The third man broke in with a flourish. Leaning precariously forward, he emphasized his words. “Ridiculous, I said.”
The first continued. “Indeed. Sherry and I –”
The third man stuck out his hand in formal greeting. “Viscount Sheridan at your service.” He slurred the words into one long sibilant sentence. Christian looked at the proffered hand as if it had leprosy. Eventually it was withdrawn only to have the palm rubbed vigorously against the owner’s soiled pants leg. Christian shifted his attention back to the man with no shoes.
“Yes, anyway, Sherry and I said, ‘Certainly not.’.” He imitated himself with a great deal of drunken dignity. “We’ve come to satisfy the wager since no one at White’s knew the answer solid.”
Christian took in the three weaving sots who blinked back at him with various levels of clarity. The man identified as Baldwin grinned like a fool. “Baldwin you say?”
Baldwin nodded, belched, then added, “Exactly.”
“How much is your allowance?”
“One hundred.”
“Can you believe it?” Sherry asked with enthusiasm.
“Why in God’s name would you bet one hundred pounds on whether I have a peg leg?” Christian asked the idiot.
Baldwin nudged his fallen hat with his toe before pulling his attention back to the question of the moment. He flung his arm to the right and hit No Shoes in the stomach to which his friend grunted heartily but maintained his feet. “Those rogues called me an idiot.”
Christian cocked an eyebrow. “Why would I have a peg leg?” This might be the stupidest conversation he’d have all year, but it was interesting. That was indisputable.
The drunks looked at each other before they said in chorus, “The pirates, of course.”
“Oh, blast,” Christian thundered and the other gentlemen flinched. “There were no bloody pirates. This is too much.”
“So you’re sayin’ you don’t have a peg leg, then?” Sherry posed the question with soggy glee.
“No!” Christian roared, fists settled at his hips. “Nor an eye patch. Not even tentacle marks or scurvy.”
“Pay up, man,” Shoe-less said with an outstretched hand.
Baldwin went from a ruddy drunken hue to deathly pale. “I’ma need proof.” He settled gingerly on his hands and knees and crawled towards Christian’s trouser leg.
Christian held his ground. “If you touch my leg, I promise I’ll kill you in my own front hall.”
Baldwin’s forward movement, wobbly as it was, ceased. No Shoes and Sheridan plucked at their friend’s jacket and yanked on his arms. “Come,” Sherry said. “I trust we can take the duke at his word.”
“Unequivocally,” No Shoes agreed with an impressive word considering the man was teetering. “Good day, Your Grace.”
Christian ignored the rest of their boozy apologies and fawning, turned on his heel. “Get them out of my house,” he told Riley as he passed.
The men didn’t seem to be givin
g the butler any difficulty, as he ushered them towards the door like a flock of sauced ducks until the great knocker banged on the door once again. Christian ignored it. Surely whoever was at the door would only bring annoyance, and he had control of his temper by the barest margin. Best to keep moving away from the circus in his front hall.
“Oh ho!”
“I say!”
“Right smashing!”
Don’t look. Still, the excited voices of the drunken horde were too intriguing and he ignored his own advice.
He was right. He never should have looked and now he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen her. Besides, Veronica was never a woman to be ignored. She’d never burned down a centuries-old oak tree, but he wouldn’t put an epic scene past her either, especially when she had an adoring audience of foxed young men to fawn over her. He could almost write the gossip column himself.
What peg-legged duke has been seen entertaining a famous actress in the same house with his runaway bride? A story told by three eye-witnesses!
“Aren’t you Veronica Clarke?” No Shoes asked.
“Of course she is, are you blind?” Sherry stuck out his hand to Christian’s ex-mistress. “Gregson here and I saw you play in The Devil to Pay thirteen times.”
Veronica extended her glove clad arm in a slow, elegant gesture, playing the part of famous actress to the hilt. It was her favorite part and one she excelled at. “Isn’t that the sweetest thing to say.” She said as Sherry kissed her hand in a sloppy gesture of adoration.
“What a lark,” Gregson added.
“I sent you flowers, tulips,” Baldwin interjected. He blushed — which Christian would have thought impossible considering how ruddy from drink his face already was — when Veronica gave him her full attention.
“Yes, I received them. Thank you so much. They were lovely.”
Christian rolled his eyes. He’d been in her dressing room back in the days when they’d been together. She received dozens of bouquets after every performance. It was part of what was so exciting about having landed the celebrated Beauty, she was in such demand by young and old alike. There was no way she remembered any particular tulips from anyone such as Baldwin, but now he’d be forever a devoted admirer since she fooled him into believing she thought him important.
The Duke of Morewether’s Secret Page 24
