Surrender Becomes Her

by Shirlee Busbee

  “Yes. I dismissed Mrs. Wesson and substituted Roseanne in her place. I ordered Mr. Babb to make the necessary arrangements and to buy the extra items we would need.” She looked down at her robe, unconsciously pleating and unpleating a section of it. “The trip to Bombay was ghastly. Our quarters were cramped, the food toward the end nearly uneatable. It took over four months and Roseanne was sick through most of it. Her constitution was not robust and I feared she might die or lose the baby. I was terrified the whole time.”

  “I assume you kept Mr. Akridge in the dark?”

  “Oh, definitely. We hardly ever left our cabin.” Isabel looked guilty. “I suppose even then I was thinking of a way to protect Roseanne and her child, and the idea of passing the child off as mine with Roseanne acting as his nursemaid had already crossed my mind. There were several difficulties but none that I didn’t think we could overcome. I was certain that Hugh would agree to it. The main problem would be the timing of the baby’s birth.” She glanced at Marcus. “Edmund is actually six weeks older than everybody believes.”

  “I’d already worked that out.” He took a long swallow of his brandy. Seeing his snifter was empty, he poured himself another and, standing by the fire, his arm resting on the mantel, he looked across at Isabel and asked, “So how did Hugh react when the pair of you showed up on his doorstep?”

  “Oh, Marcus!” she breathed, her eyes sparkling. “You should have seen his face when he saw Roseanne. It was as if the brightest light in the universe had illuminated it. And the love ...” She choked back a sob. “His whole face, his entire being radiated his love for her. He was overjoyed to see her.” Her voice thickened. “And then his gaze fell upon me... . It was dreadful. The worst moment of my life.”

  “Good God! The bastard surely didn’t blame you?” Marcus exclaimed, outraged at the notion.

  Isabel shook her head. “No. Never! It was just that one moment his dearest dream appeared to have come true and the next he realized what a nightmare we were all in.”

  “One of his making,” Marcus snapped.

  “Perhaps,” Isabel agreed, not wanting to argue with him. “And despite the difficulties that lay before us, he was beside himself with joy at the news that Roseanne was carrying his child.”

  “I suppose none of you considered an annulment?” he demanded sarcastically.

  “Yes, Hugh did. But time was not our friend. Obtaining an annulment in India was out of the question. By the time I could return to England and the annulment could be secured, the child would have been born.” She stared off into space. “If Roseanne had lived, I’m certain that we would have faced the scandal and found a way to end the marriage—provided the child could have been protected.” She looked up at him, pleading for understanding. “All three of us were determined to save the child—and Roseanne, too—from a life of disgrace and shame. We hadn’t thought out all of the ramifications, but we all agreed that as far as the world was concerned I was the one who was pregnant. Within days of our arrival in Bombay, I wrote the letter to the baron telling him that I was with child.”

  “Yes, I know,” Marcus said tightly, remembering too well the fury and pain he had felt at the news. The baron had been so happy, laughing and constantly talking about his coming grandchild, and Marcus had walked around wanting to smash his fist through a stone wall. He took a deep breath. “He even chided Robert for being a laggard in producing an heir.”

  “You do understand,” Isabel said earnestly, “that at the time we had no idea that Edmund would end up being the heir? We all assumed that Robert and his wife, Georgine, would have children. Even after Hugh died and Edmund and I returned to England, though they had been married for several years, everyone, myself included, still expected Robert and Georgine to have children.” She smiled in memory. “I remember how excited we all were when Georgine announced that she was pregnant. Edmund was looking forward to having a cousin to play with and, of course, the baron was delighted at the prospect of another grandchild and hoped for a boy, Robert’s son and one day, his heir.” She sighed and shook her head. “No one ever expected that Robert and Georgine, along with their unborn child, would die in that yachting accident, leaving Edmund next in line for the title.”

  Considering everything, Marcus suspected that—God forbid!—if he had ever found himself in Hugh’s position he would probably have done the same; done everything within his power to see that his son didn’t suffer for his father’s mistake. Or that the woman he loved was not shamed before the world. He didn’t blame Hugh for wanting to protect Roseanne and to ensure his son’s position in the world. As for Edmund becoming the next Lord Manning? Isabel was right: none of them had been prepared for the deaths of Robert and Georgine. Scowling, he stared down at his bare feet showing beneath the hem of his robe. He wanted to rage against someone; wanted to vilify Hugh, for all the lost years, but he could not. Isabel might have lived a lie, might have passed off another woman’s son as her own, but had any real wrong been done? Roseanne Halford would have been an eminently acceptable bride for Hugh, and if they had been married, Edmund would have been Lord Manning’s legitimate grandson, the legitimate heir to the barony. Was anyone going to be harmed by allowing the lie to continue?

  For a moment, he considered the implications for Garrett Manning, then shrugged. Garrett was wealthy enough on his own; he didn’t need Lord Manning’s estate or money. And while Garrett might have enjoyed a title, from what he knew of the man, Marcus imagined that it didn’t matter much one way or another to him.

  He took a swallow of brandy. There wasn’t much of a decision for him to make, he realized. He’d already made his choice the moment he had destroyed all evidence of Isabel’s virginity. He smiled wryly. Besides, he was hardly going to complain that his wife had been a virgin.

  Her gaze fixed painfully on his face, Isabel asked, “What are you going to do?”

  He smiled gently at her. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. As far as the world—and myself included—is concerned, Edmund is your son.”

  Isabel burst into tears. “Oh, Marcus! Thank you! You cannot know how I have feared ...” Her voice suspended by tears, she could only stare at him, relief from the terror of discovery that she had lived with all these years suddenly overwhelming.

  Marcus bit back a curse and setting down his snifter, jerked her into his arms. “Hush,” he murmured. “Hush.” He shook her gently. “You little goose! How could you believe that I would ever do anything that would harm you or Edmund?” He caught a tear on one fingertip. “I love him, too. I would never want him to suffer the stigma of being labeled Hugh’s bastard, or watch the joy die in the old man’s eyes.”

  Gulping back sobs, Isabel buried her head against his chest. In a muffled voice, she sniffed, “I did trust you, you know. It was just that it had been my secret for so long that I d-d-didn’t know what to do. Everyone else was dead and there was no one I could talk to about it.” With tear-drenched eyes she looked up at him. “I promised Hugh and Roseanne,” she said thickly. “On the day Roseanne died, we swore together that no one would ever know the truth. And Hugh and I vowed that as far as the world knew, Edmund was our child.”

  Marcus kissed her on the forehead and, settling down with her in his arms in one of the chairs by the fire, he asked quietly, “Roseanne died in childbirth?”

  He felt rather than saw the nod of her head. “It was a difficult, difficult birth.” She trembled and his arms tightened around her. “There was so much blood and she was in such pain and so frightened. There was a physician, Mr. Evans, but he could do nothing. It was a long, hard labor and she was exhausted by the time Edmund was born. We laid him in her arms and she kissed him, begged me to swear that I would never reveal the truth, and then just slipped away from us.”

  “How did you manage to hide what was going on? Surely you met Hugh’s friends and colleagues, such as our friend Major Whitley?”

  Isabel shook her head. “No, not until after Edmund was born. Once we all agreed tha
t Edmund was to be my son, within days of our arrival in Bombay, Hugh removed us to the high country where we would have more privacy and not have to worry about the British residents in the city. During those first months, Hugh discouraged visitors, giving out that I was sickly and unable to receive visitors, but that as soon as the baby arrived, I’d be back in Bombay and eager to meet everyone.” The worst of her tears over, she nestled her head on his shoulder and said, “Roseanne’s death devastated Hugh. We buried her very quietly near the house where we lived; Hugh owned several hundred acres there. After she died Hugh informed everyone in Bombay that my companion that had accompanied me from England had died from one of the fevers. It was horrible for him. He had lost the love of his life, yet he had to pretend that everything was wonderful and that he was joyfully anticipating the birth of his first child.” Her gaze far away, she murmured, “When we buried her, his grief was so new and raw, I was terrified that he would throw himself into the grave with her. I know that only the fact that Edmund was alive kept him from doing so.” She sat up a little straighter and brushed the tears from her eyes. In a stronger voice she went on, “Evans’s knowledge that the baby’s mother had died terrified us, but we could do nothing about it. He was a taciturn man and kept to himself and seldom left the area where we were. Even if he spoke out, it would be our word against his and why would I claim as my son another woman’s child?” She sighed. “His knowledge gnawed at us, but we didn’t want to make the situation worse by offering him money to keep his mouth shut. We just had to trust that fate would help us.”

  “Rather risky, wasn’t it?”

  “Terribly. But at the time we could think of no way to lessen the risk.”

  “You don’t think that Whitley talked to him? And what he learned from Evans isn’t what set him on your trail?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m almost positive it could not be. Evans drowned the following year during the rainy season trying to cross a river, and to my knowledge Whitley and Evans never met each other.”

  Evans’s knowledge of the truth bothered Marcus, but he suspected that if Whitley had actually talked to the man and knew that it was the companion who had given birth and not Hugh’s wife, he would have been bolder in his attempts to blackmail Isabel. His actions smacked of a man without a very strong hand.

  Breaking into his thoughts, Isabel said, “We kept Edmund’s birth a secret for nearly six weeks and then Hugh had to pretend that his son had just been born, all the while mourning Roseanne’s loss. And because Edmund was supposedly born six weeks later than he really had been, I had to remain in seclusion for several more weeks before I could return to Bombay with my one-month-old child.” She smiled reminiscently. “For the first year of his life everyone marveled at how big he was for his age.”

  “You didn’t resent the position you were put in?” Marcus asked with a lifted brow.

  Isabel shook her head. “I loved Edmund from the moment he was born and I loved his mother. I made a promise to her to always protect him, but it was an easy promise to keep.”

  “I notice you said that you loved Edmund and Roseanne, but you didn’t mention that you loved Hugh. Didn’t you?” As he waited for her answer, jealousy clawed in his chest and he was ashamed of his emotions.

  “I did love Hugh,” Isabel admitted, “but more as a big brother. He was always kind and considerate of me.” She looked at the fire, her thoughts far away. “I can’t say what might have happened if he had lived. I would never have been the love of his life and he would never have been mine, but we might have managed to make a pleasant life together and make our marriage real eventually.”

  Marcus didn’t like the empty hole in his gut that her words caused. He might have studiously avoided her this past decade but there had always been a part of him that had been glad that she had been living at Manning Court, a part of him that had been tantalizingly aware that she had no husband... .

  “What about the locket?” he asked abruptly.

  “It was Roseanne’s. If you study the face of it, you can see in the midst of all the filigree work, her initials, RH.” She frowned. “I have no idea how Whitley came across it. I can only assume that Hugh had kept it, unable to destroy it as we did everything else of hers, and that Whitley, with his constant snooping around, found it.”

  Marcus nodded. “That would make sense.” He glanced down at her. “Are you ever going to let me see what is in the locket?”

  She flushed. “Of course! Would you like me to get it for you?”

  “Yes.”

  Isabel scrambled from his lap and, trailed by Marcus, walked quickly into her bedroom. She walked up to a dainty desk that had come with her from Manning Court. Opening one of the drawers, she removed it and, reaching into the back of the desk, found the spring that opened the secret compartment. Reaching into the compartment, her fingers found the locket and she brought it forth.

  Looking at Marcus, she said, “I thought of just putting it in my jewelry box and having Lord Manning keep it in his safe, but I feared ...” She shrugged helplessly. “This was the safest place I could think of to hide it.”

  She handed him the locket and, for a moment, Marcus just held it, staring at the filigree work. Isabel was right. If one looked hard enough and, he thought wryly, knew what to look for, one could make out the entwined initials of RH. With a flick of his finger, he opened the locket. On each side of the locket was a beautifully painted miniature; one of a man, the other a woman. He recognized Hugh Manning immediately. The woman, he assumed, was Roseanne Halford.

  He glanced at Isabel. “Hugh and Roseanne?”

  “Yes. Hugh had the portraits commissioned and bought the locket just before her father denied his suit. He had meant the locket to be a betrothal gift—one of many. When Roseanne’s father rejected him, Hugh gave her the locket anyway, hoping that ...” She sighed. “I don’t know what he hoped, but he gave it to her just before he returned to Manning Court and prepared to sail to India.”

  Marcus studied the portrait, thinking that Roseanne had been a pretty girl and he understood now how strangers could mistake Isabel and Roseanne for each other. Like Isabel, Roseanne had red hair; it was not the vivid red of Isabel’s glossy locks, but a lighter shade of auburn. Someone who knew the two women would be unlikely to mistake one of them for the other, but they shared enough similarities to fool the unfamiliar. Roseanne’s eyes were blue and her features lacked the vitality and verve that characterized Isabel’s, but again, a passing acquaintance could be forgiven for mistaking the two. Marcus smiled to himself. Of course, he was probably prejudiced—never in a million years could he have mistaken Roseanne for Isabel.

  He looked at Isabel and asked, “Was she similarly built?”

  Isabel nodded. “She was perhaps an inch or two taller than I am, but you wouldn’t notice it unless we were standing side by side.” Reluctantly, she admitted, “Roseanne was also more, er, rounded than I am.”

  Marcus walked across to her. Tipping her chin up, he said huskily, “My sweet, you are round enough to please any man.” He brushed his lips across hers. “Your, er, roundness certainly pleases me.”

  Isabel blushed, but it was one of delight. “Th-th-thank you,” she stammered.

  Marcus laughed and pulled her into his arms. “No, don’t thank me. You have an enticing little body and visions of you naked in my bed have bedeviled me for days.”

  Isabel would have preferred to continue this very gratifying conversation, but the locket and what Marcus intended to do with it preyed on her mind. Stepping away from him, she asked, “Now that you have seen the locket and what it holds, what do you propose to do with it?”

  He, too, would have preferred to dwell on her charms and their effect on him—this was, after all, their wedding night—but the existence of the locket and what it represented pushed ideas of further dalliance with his bride away for the time being.

  Frowning, Marcus stared down at the locket still clasped in his fingers. “The locket
proves nothing but that Hugh had been enamored of Roseanne prior to his marriage to you, but its very existence in the wrong hands could raise all sorts of doubts about Edmund’s parentage.”

  “Especially if someone like Whitley started gossiping,” Isabel said unhappily, “about how I and my companion disappeared almost immediately upon our arrival in Bombay to Hugh’s estate in the high lands.” An expression of fright crossed her face. “The whole tale hangs together as long as no one looks closely at the facts. Several of the servants that were at the Manning townhouse in London are still alive. Roseanne and I were very careful to hide her pregnancy and she was in the early days then, so I don’t think any of them even suspected,” she admitted. “But they did know of her unexpected arrival and the fact that I dismissed Mrs. Wesson and substituted Roseanne in her place.” She sighed. “As for Mrs. Wesson or the physician who first examined Roseanne or any others who might be able to remember those days before we sailed for Bombay, I know nothing of them or their whereabouts. And the servants in India ... we tried to keep them at a distance, but I’m sure some knew or guessed the truth. If Whitley talked to one of them—or more horrifying still, actually brought that person to England—the consequences would be horrible.”

  “I don’t think we have to fear anyone from India appearing on our doorstep. If Whitley had someone who was actually there at the event, it would have given him a powerful hand, but from what you’ve told me, he never did more than imply he knew more and threatened you.” He glanced down at the locket. “I think this was all he had—besides the fact that you went into seclusion from the moment you landed in Bombay until you appeared with your son, which on the face of it is not unusual. Women of your station are always retiring to await the birth of their child.”