by Liz Carlyle
Alasdair looked at the butler incredulously. “Tell me, Wellings, is my brother not rich as Croesus?”
The butler inclined his head. “I believe so, sir.”
“Then tell him to build himself a house, and hire a bloody cook,” Alasdair suggested, slapping his hat on his head. “Damned clutch-fisted Scot! If there’s an emergency, I’ll be in Oxford Street shopping.”
Wellings’ brows flew aloft. “Shopping, sir?”
Alasdair gave him a twisted grin. “Some things, Wellings, cannot wait.”
It was a miracle. Or at least, it felt so to Esmée. By half past nine, Sorcha was wide-awake, raising the rafters and much of the staff. A little frantically, Esmée dandled the child on her knee, mindful of Sorcha’s arm. It was not enough. Sorcha screwed up her small, pink face, and drew another deep breath.
“Porridge!” said Esmée to Lydia over the ensuing din.
“Porridge?” Lydia lifted the cover on the breakfast tray which Hawes had brought up, then hastened toward them with a spoon and bowl.
Esmée lifted the spoon, and the silence was instantaneous.
“Bite!” said the child, opening her mouth.
Esmée and Lydia sighed in unison.
“Spoilt!” grunted the doctor, who was dropping clanking bits of metal into his black leather satchel.
Lydia rolled her eyes.
“Now, nothing but that porridge and a bit of broth today!” Dr. Reid went on, shutting his bag with an efficient snap. “No running. No climbing. And for God’s sake, no bathing. I’ll be back first thing tomorrow. Until then, if she gets fretful, give her two drops of the tincture in that brown bottle, then let her sleep.”
Esmée managed a weak smile. “Thank you, Dr. Reid,” she said. “Lydia will show you out when you’re ready.”
But when the door closed behind them, leaving Esmée with nothing but her remorse and her sister to bear her company, the guilt set in anew. She thought of the ugly sutures in her sister’s scalp, and for a moment, panic seized her breath. An instant’s distraction, and now this! She was lucky the child wasn’t dead.
Still, the knee-weakening sense of relief she’d felt this morning when Sorcha’s eyes fluttered open had never fully overcome her dread. Apparently, it wasn’t enough she’d been a fool where her sister’s welfare was concerned. She’d been a fool over Sir Alasdair MacLachlan, too. She had allowed terror—and some nameless emotion she could not comprehend—to get a grip on her heart.
And what now was she to do? How did one go on after such a thing? There was no pretending it hadn’t happened—and no pretending it wouldn’t happen again if she remained here. She had all but begged him to take her to bed. And in so doing, Esmée had been a bigger fool than her mother had been. MacLachlan hadn’t even needed to whisper sweet lies in her ear. She had just clung to him and begged him. What man would have said no?
Well, at least he had learned from his past mistakes. At least she would not be left carrying his child, like Mrs. Crosby and her own mother. For that small mercy, she ought to be grateful. He had also been amazingly tender toward her. He had made her feel desirable, and…almost loved. Those perhaps, were the greater dangers. She was too vulnerable. Too alone.
Oh, she should never have agreed to stay here! Yesterday, she’d proven worse than useless. Lydia was a far more competent caretaker than she would ever be. Lydia would never have let a child go running into the path of a flying phaeton.
It was time, perhaps, that Esmée accepted the awful truth—that she had stayed here with Sorcha out of pure selfishness. She was not qualified to be a nurse or a governess. And as soon as Sorcha recovered from this horrific accident, then…well, Esmée could not quite bear to think of that just now.
As if to remind her of more immediate concerns, Sorcha began to squirm. Esmée bent her head, and gingerly kissed the child’s bruised brow. “Och, my wee trootie!” she whispered. “’Tis a sad, sairie mother I’ve made you!”
Sorcha looked up at her solemnly, and said, “Bite!”
Somehow, Esmée found it inside her to laugh. She dipped the spoon in the porridge, and resumed her task. But almost at once, Lydia returned, her eyes wide.
“Miss, I think you’d best go downstairs,” she said. “There’s a big black coach and four drawn up at the door, and a lady downstairs reading Wellings the riot act.”
Esmée kissed Sorcha again, and passed her to the maid. “Who can it be?”
“No one as I ever saw before,” said the girl, taking up the porridge spoon. “But I heard your name mentioned, miss, and Wellings is as white a shade of pale as ever a man could be.”
“As I was saying, madam,” Wellings voice echoed up the stairs, “Sir Alasdair is not at home. If you can but wait—”
“I certainly will not!” said an affronted female voice. “I have not traveled half the night to wait! Fetch me Miss Hamilton at once! I’ll know the meaning of this scurrilous behavior!”
Esmée stood on the last step, frozen in shock. “Aunt Rowena?”
The lady’s head swiveled round so fast her lavishly befeathered hat almost took flight. “Esmée!” she cried, rushing toward her. “Oh, Esmée! Dear child! What in God’s name?”
Esmée embraced her aunt tightly. “You have come home!” she said breathlessly. “Oh, I’d begun to fear you never would.”
“Oh, child!” said her ladyship. “Your letter was slow in reaching me, but I left as soon as Anne was well enough. Surely you did not think I would forsake you?”
“No, ma’am, but I did not know if you could come, nor how long it might take. And I wrote twice to you in Australia.”
“Oh, the mail is so abysmally slow!” Lips pursed, Lady Tatton set her sharply away. “And I have been just sick with worry. Finch brought your last letter to meet me at Southampton, and I came straight here. Dear girl, we must talk. Tell this odious man to go away!”
Esmée looked at the butler. “Och, Aunt Rowena,” she said. “You mustn’t scold Wellings. He has been so very kind to me, and none of this is his fault.”
“No, no!” said Lady Tatton. “I’ve every notion it is all your mother’s fault! If good sense was weighed out in ha’pennies, Rosamund couldn’t have bought herself a hair ribbon.”
Esmée felt her face flush with color. “Come into the parlor, please,” she said, going to the door and opening it. “Wellings, may I impose on you for coffee? Lady Tatton, you may have guessed, is my aunt, newly returned from abroad.”
They were sequestered in the parlor for half an hour, most of that time spent in trying to bring Lady Tatton up to date on the disarray that had been her late sister’s life. Lady Tatton cried most affectedly at the details of Lady Achanalt’s death, but it was clear that her exasperation far exceeded her grief.
Rowena had been ten years her sister Rosamund’s senior, and it had often fallen to her to extract her younger sibling from all manner of ill-thought scrapes. And after burning the candle at both ends through four marriages and twice as many affaires, it was not, Lady Tatton said, to be wondered at that the poor woman had succumbed to a fever.
Then Esmée tried to explain what happened afterward. The part about Lord Achanalt was not difficult, for her anger was still raw. But when she tried to explain why she had come to Sir Alasdair MacLachlan for help, and why she had remained in his home, it sounded perilously like one of her mother’s ill-thought scrapes.
Her aunt was kind enough not to mention it. “Oh, my dear child!” she said, drawing out her handkerchief and dabbing at her eyes. “How could Rosamund have let it come to this?”
“I don’t think she meant to, Aunt Rowena.”
Lady Tatton sniffled pathetically. “I begged her, Esmée, to send you to me when you turned seventeen. But she refused me. She cried, and said you were too young. But you could have been married with a family by now. You could have had a dependable husband to take care of this mess, and dear Papa’s money to ease your path through life. Instead, we have this!” She lifted her han
ds expansively. “Oh, it breaks my heart to think of you cast out of your home and left to live by your wits.”
Esmée wasn’t sure she had any wits, but she held her tongue.
Lady Tatton let her gaze roam over the small parlor, the very room in which Esmée had struck her devil’s bargain with MacLachlan. She thought of how he had looked that night; haggard, bruised, and unshaven, yet startlingly handsome just the same. She wondered now which of them had been in a greater state of panic. If the memory had not pulled so hard at her heartstrings, she might have been able to laugh.
Her aunt jolted her from her reverie. “Oh, I cannot believe you have been living in this den of iniquity,” she said sharply. “Child, whatever were you thinking? And whatever was Alasdair MacLachlan thinking? Oh, that disgraceful scoundrel! An innocent young woman living under this roof? He assuredly knows better, even if you do not!”
“Well, I do know better,” Esmée admitted. Particularly after last night. “But what else was I to do? I could think of nothing. And Sir Alasdair is Sorcha’s father.”
Lady Tatton sniffed a little pitifully. “Well, we don’t really know that, do we, my dear?”
Esmée shook her head. “I heard Mamma throw it in Achanalt’s face,” she said for the second time. “She caught him in bed with one of the maids and flew into an awful rage. Why would she lie?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” said Lady Tatton. “In any case, surely MacLachlan has no wish to raise the poor wee thing? Surely he can be persuaded to give her up? No one would think twice about Achanalt’s having sent his daughter to be brought up by her aunt.”
Esmée thought of the will MacLachlan had had drawn up, and of how he had looked at Sorcha in the schoolroom the afternoon they were bent so intently over his coin collection. And she thought of how he had bowed his head over Sorcha’s limp body in the park, tears streaming down his face. Esmée had seen them, even through her own. Perhaps he was a disgraceful scoundrel. But even scoundrels could love their children, could they not?
“I am not at all sure he can be persuaded, Aunt,” she finally answered. “Or even that he should be. He has grown rather attached to Sorcha.”
Lady Tatton’s visage darkened. “Well, I hope he hasn’t grown rather attached to you!” she said tartly. “Your remaining here is out of the question. Indeed, we’ll be hard-pressed to explain what you were doing here if rumors start to fly.”
Aunt Rowena meant her to leave?
Well, of course she did! Esmée’s last three letters had all but begged for Rowena’s help, had they not? And what reason had Esmée to remain, other than her affection for Sorcha? Still, a small, silly part of her wanted to cry out that she couldn’t go; that this was her home. But it wasn’t. Indeed, it was the last place on earth she needed to be. And she was hopeless as a mother.
Worse, she seemed to have inherited her own mother’s lack of common sense where men were concerned. And so she clasped her hands in her lap until her fingers went numb. “I was working here as a governess,” she finally said. “That is the truth, and that is what I shall say.”
“Oh, my dear, naive child!” said Lady Tatton. “Sir Alasdair is so shockingly outré. He is the worst sort of womanizer imaginable—when he isn’t stripping young men of their fortunes.”
“Perhaps the young men who are fool enough to sit down with him deserve what they get,” said Esmée quietly, “if his reputation is so widely known.”
Lady Tatton’s shrewd gaze narrowed.
“Besides,” Esmée quickly went on, “I really don’t think anyone will ask, for Sir Alasdair does not go about in society very much, and we are quite some distance from Mayfair here. Moreover, I believe his servants are very discreet.”
Lady Tatton sniffed again. “Yes, well, working in a house like this, they are probably required to be,” she remarked. “How long, my dear, will it take you to pack your things? Mr. and Mrs. Finch are airing a suite of rooms for you in Grosvenor Square. I’ve told them to expect you, and the wee child, if Sir Alasdair agrees—which I think he will. And I hope you will own that I am just a tad more experienced than you in the ways of such gentlemen, using that term loosely, of course.”
Esmée smiled a little weakly. She had forgotten how much her aunt talked. “Are you sure, ma’am, that this is what you want?” she asked. “I should not wish you to be embarrassed in any way by my presence.”
“Nonsense!” said Lady Tatton. “You are my niece, Esmée, and much loved, as I hope you are aware. We’ll just brazen out any gossip—my reputation is unassailable, you know—and you shall give me something to do in the spring.”
“Shall I?” asked Esmée. “What?”
Lady Tatton’s eyes widened. “Why, I shall bring you out, goose!” she said. “What else have I to do with Anne away, and her children all settled? You’ll be in half-mourning, of course, so we can’t cut such a spectacular dash, which, given your looks, we otherwise might have done. And you really are too old to be a debutant, in any traditional sense. But many gentlemen prefer older, more sensible girls.”
“I—I beg your pardon?”
Lady Tatton patted her arm. “I’m trying to tell you we shall find you a good, staid husband nonetheless,” she said. “Indeed, now I think on it, perhaps we oughtn’t wait until spring.”
“Oh,” said Esmée softly. “No, I don’t think—”
“Nonsense!” interjected Lady Tatton. “The sooner the better, before the gossip about Sorcha’s situation leaks out.”
Esmée pursed her lips a moment. “No, I am not at all sure I shall marry, Aunt Rowena.”
“Not marry? But what of that generous dowry dear Papa left you?”
Esmée was beginning to wish Cousin Anne had had a few more children to occupy Lady Tatton. “I’m to have it anyway when I turn thirty, am I not?” she said. “I shan’t need a husband then. Perhaps I shall become a bluestocking and retire to the country with a pack of hounds and a dozen cats.”
Lady Tatton seized her hand and kissed it. “I can see I mustn’t rush you!” she cried. “So we are agreed, then. We shall have quiet entertainments from now until spring—dinner parties and small, informal gatherings. You’ll have a lovely time, I promise you. In no time at all, you’ll have forgotten about this dreadful entanglement with Sir Alasdair MacLachlan. And if you should see him in town, my dear, you must at all cost turn your head and refuse to acknowledge him.”
“Why, I cannot do that,” she said. “He is Sorcha’s father.”
Lady Tatton pursed her lips again. “But he is not the sort of gentleman an unattached female knows, dear girl.”
Esmée stiffened. “I cannot be cut off from Sorcha,” she insisted. “Indeed, I won’t be. Really, Aunt, that is too cruel.”
Lady Tatton considered it but a moment. “Very well,” she said. “The child has a nurse, I daresay? Perhaps she can bring her to visit in the mornings. Sir Alasdair, I collect, doesn’t rise—perhaps doesn’t even return—until well past noon, so it isn’t as if he’d miss her. Trust me to think of something, Esmée. I would not for the world wish you or Sorcha unhappy.”
They concluded their bittersweet reunion with Lady Tatton going up to meet Sorcha, whom she declared a charming child. After clucking and cooing at the girl’s wound, and vowing it would be her unalloyed delight to take the child in as her own, Lady Tatton finally rose and kissed her nieces’ cheeks. She did not wish to leave Esmée behind, but finally bowed to Esmée’s wishes in that regard and promised to return for her in the late afternoon.
Lydia showed her ladyship out.
Esmée sat down, and began to cry.
Unaware that his matutinal habits were being impugned by none other than that high stickler of the haut monde, Lady Tatton, Sir Alasdair MacLachlan walked briskly up his front steps but a scant three hours after going down them, feeling much more in charity with the world. His spirits had been buoyed by two vastly dissimilar circumstances. He had just passed Hawes, his second footman, out on an errand, and learned of
Sorcha’s demands for breakfast.
As to the second, he carried in his coat pocket two small jeweler’s boxes, the contents of which he’d spent the morning choosing, and if the indulgences had left his purse several thousand pounds lighter, so be it. In the full light of morning, it seemed a small price to pay.
Wellings greeted him at the door.
“I hear we’ve good news upstairs,” said Alasdair, cheerfully passing his hat and stick.
But Wellings looked instead as if someone had died.
“What?” cried Alasdair. “Good God, man! Is it the child? What?”
“We’ve trouble afoot, sir,” he said gloomily. “There is a lady come to—”
“You!” cried a sharp voice from the foot of his stairs. “Sir Alasdair MacLachlan!”
Alasdair turned at once to see Lydia escorting a well-dressed lady. “Good God!” he said again. “Lady Tatton? Ma’am, is that you?”
Her ladyship bore down on him like a seventy-four-gun man-o’-war. “You may well ask!” she declared. “And now that you’ve done so, I wish a moment of your time.”
Having already learned that women who invaded the sanctity of his home demanding a moment of his time rarely brought good news, Alasdair balked. “You have the advantage of me, ma’am,” he said. “Especially since you are already in my house.”
Lady Tatton put her nose in the air and marched into the parlor as if it were her own. Alasdair glanced at Wellings, who looked as though he were trying to swallow a boiled lemon. What the devil was going on? Alasdair passed his two packages to his butler, enjoining him to lock them in the study desk.
“And what may I do for you, ma’am?” he asked Lady Tatton, stripping off his gloves as he came into the parlor. “I take it you are here on a matter of some urgency since we scarce know one another.”
“I don’t know you, sir,” she said with asperity. “But this is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into, and I have come to sort it out.”
Alasdair stopped in his tracks. “I beg your pardon?”
