For years, he had regretted the heedless ways of his youth, fully aware he’d been very lucky not to have ruined any of the girls he’d been with. Unlike Halsbury, he’d have done the honorable thing required of a gentleman, but he was grateful fate had never forced him to that course. He’d also been lucky not to have sired a child because of his thoughtless, pleasure-loving ways. And it suddenly occurred to him that his luck regarding the latter may have at last run out because of last night.
“Marry me,” he said.
Her head came up, and she stared at him in shock. “What?” she whispered.
His gaze slid to her belly, then back up. “Marry me,” he said again. “Let me do right by you as Halsbury would not.”
The shock in her face softened, then vanished, replaced by a tender, sad smile. “Oh, Jamie,” she said with a sigh, “you don’t want to marry me. You don’t want to marry anyone. No one can ever replace Pat in your heart, and that’s been clear from the beginning. And anyway, I couldn’t bear to be a second-rate substitute for her.”
He grimaced at having his own words from that day in the newspaper office quoted back to him at such a moment as this. “I said that before I knew you. You’re not a second-rate anything, Amanda. Not to me.”
“No? You say that—you may even mean it—but what about the rest of the world? To them, I’m something far worse than a second-rate substitute. I’m a first-rate slut.”
He winced at the brutal language, but it didn’t deter him. “Who cares what the world thinks?”
“You do, Jamie.”
“I don’t. I’ve never given a damn what people think of me.”
“Not in your wilder days, no. But now?” Her smile widened a fraction, turning sweet, and she looked so poignantly beautiful, it took his breath away. “You’re in politics, Jamie. You have to care what people think. And I am ruined beyond amendment. Do you think any of your constituents would vote for you again if you married me? Do you think your own political party, or any of the others, would support you with a notorious woman like me as your wife? You have a brilliant career ahead of you. Marrying me would ruin it. I can’t let that happen to you.”
“Hang my career.”
“And the boys?” she asked softly. “Would you taint their future with a stepmother who is notorious?”
He sucked in his breath, feeling the impact of that question like a blow to the chest. It was a pain so great, he couldn’t think, and he said the first thing that came into his head.
“Be my mistress, then.” The words were barely out of his mouth before he saw the hurt in her eyes, but he was too desperate to care, too driven to keep her here with him. “I’ll provide you a house, an income. No one will judge me for having a mistress, and the boys won’t suffer because of it. Even my constituents wouldn’t care.”
“But I would,” she said, and with that soft, simple declaration, she defeated him utterly. “I would care, Jamie.”
The door opened, and William came in, somewhat out of breath. “I got your taxi, Mrs. Seton. I had to go all the way up to New Oxford Street, but I got it. It’s at the curb.”
“Thank you, William. Take my trunk and portmanteau, will you?”
He did, opening the door, then hefting the truck onto his back. He grasped the end strap to hold it steady, took up her suitcase with his free hand, and carried both pieces of luggage out to the waiting hansom cab, kicking the door shut behind him.
Amanda turned to Jamie, and her lips parted for what he knew was good-bye, but he couldn’t let her go, not yet, not this way. “Stay. Keep your post here. I won’t—”
He stopped, unable to make the same promise he’d broken twice already. What had happened last night would happen again if she stayed. He knew it, because even now, as she was leaving him, he wanted her.
She seemed to know it, too, for she lifted her hand to cup his cheek, and in her face was a tenderness that nearly annihilated him.
“The months I’ve been here have been the happiest of my life,” she whispered, “but I can’t stay. We both know what would happen if I did. And even if last night hadn’t happened, or we both made every effort to ensure it never happened a second time, your family and your acquaintances will eventually find out about me, discover who and what I am, and that will only hurt you and the boys.”
She rose up on her toes and kissed him, and with the touch of her lips, Jamie felt as if he’d just had his last chance at heaven snatched away and smashed to bits.
And then, she was opening the door and walking away, and he couldn’t bear it. “Amanda, wait.”
She stopped, but only long enough to pull the hood of her cloak over her head to protect her hat against the rain. She walked on, going down the steps to the waiting taxi without a backward glance.
He started to follow her, but then he stopped, remembering that he wasn’t even dressed. He could hardly go chasing a taxi up one of London’s most elegant and prestigious streets wearing nothing but a pair of trousers and a dressing robe. And what good would it do anyway? She’d been right in everything she’d said. Going after her would only prolong the pain for both of them.
The taxi jerked into motion, and he shut the door, but he couldn’t walk away. Instead, he ran into Torquil’s study, flung up the sash of the nearest window, and stuck his head out. Heedless of the rain pouring down, he watched in silent agony as the cab rolled away along Upper Brook Street, taking her out of his life.
Only after the cab had turned onto Park Lane and disappeared did he pull back from the window. He closed the sash, turned around, and leaned his back against the glass, then slowly, he lowered his face into his hands.
The clattering of footsteps coming down the stairs roused him before he could give in to anything as maudlin as self-pity. He straightened, raked his fingers through his now-wet hair, and returned to the foyer.
“I hope it’s all right I brought the boys down,” Samuel said as they paused at the bottom of the stairs. “We saw her go from the nursery window.”
“You didn’t stop her,” Colin said, and when Jamie looked at his son and saw the tears on his face and the condemnation in his eyes, he almost came apart.
“No,” he said as gently as he could. “I didn’t.”
“Why didn’t you stop her?” the boy burst out furiously, his hands balling into fists. “You should have stopped her.”
He whirled around without waiting for an answer and ran back up the stairs, his brother on his heels.
“She’s gone for good, then?” Samuel asked, and when Jamie nodded, he gave a deep sigh. “What do we do now, my lord?”
Jamie looked up the stairs, watching as his sons turned on the landing and vanished. “We carry on,” he said dully. “We get through the days, one at a time.”
Even as he spoke, he felt his heart crumbling to dust in his chest, leaving the black emptiness he knew so well. “What else is there?”
Chapter 17
Like most London newspapers, the premises of Deverill Publishing, Ltd. were located in Fleet Street. Surrounded by the opulent, granite-faced, marble-tiled offices of literary giants such as the London Times and the Daily Telegraph, the new headquarters of Deverill Publishing were much more modest, consisting of a plain limestone facade, two floors, four printing presses, and twenty-four employees.
On the ground floor, several young ladies in severe white blouses and neckties sat behind desks, pecking away at typewriting machines, and clerks with ink-stained cuffs and pince-nez perched on their noses scribbled in accounting journals. A harried-looking youth with a laden tray moved among them depositing cups of lukewarm tea and hot cross buns, for those people employed by an evening paper had no time to break for a proper tea, not at half past four o’clock.
Behind them, a doorway led to the production room, where the printing presses hummed, churning out copies of the evening edition of the London Daily Standard at an efficient clip and strong young men with ink-stained hands bundled the papers with twine and stacked
them by the back for the delivery boys, who would begin taking them to the various newspaper sellers around the city in less than an hour.
A haughty receptionist, dressed in a well-cut tailor-made suit of dark gray and a white blouse with a lace jabot, sat at the front of this controlled chaos, her blond hair rolled into a tidy bun at the back of her neck.
As receptionist, Miss Pitman’s primary duty was to greet anyone coming through the tall glass doors, determine the intent of each new arrival, and where he or she ought to be sent. Customers wishing to place an advertisement were taken at once through a baize door to their right and into a nice, quiet room where polite young secretaries took down their words and accepted their money. Anyone with a story to tell was guided to the journalists’ press room upstairs. Any tradesmen with the temerity to enter through the front doors were summarily directed back outside to the tradesman’s entrance on the left.
The latest arrivals at the offices of Deverill Publishing, however, did not fit into any of these categories. Miss Pitman, who had only been employed by the newspaper company for six weeks, stared in some surprise at the pair of boys with identical freckled faces, bright red hair, and short pants who stood in front of her.
“May I help you?” she asked, sounding doubtful, thinking perhaps they were part of a contingent of schoolchildren on an outing who’d gotten separated from their group. They were not wearing uniforms, but still—
“We want to see Lady Truelove,” one of them said, his voice surprisingly decisive for one so young. “Would you take us to her, please?”
Miss Pitman relaxed a fraction, surer of her ground now. Lady Truelove was rather a legend in London nowadays, having been the city’s most popular advice columnist for over two years. Many people of all sorts called wishing to see her, and Miss Pitman was already quite accustomed to dealing with that sort of thing.
“I’m sorry, but Lady Truelove is not in at present.” Her elegant hands moved to reach for pencil and paper. “May I take a message for her?”
The two boys looked at each other. This news was clearly unexpected.
“No,” the second boy said after a moment, his voice a bit less assertive than that of his twin. “Could we see Lady Galbraith?”
“Lady Galbraith is also out, I’m afraid.” She looked past the children, wondering what to do with them. What did one do with lost schoolchildren? Call the police? Her bourgeois mind was appalled by the prospect. Surely not the police.
“Lord Galbraith then,” the second boy suggested, interrupting Miss Pitman’s speculations.
“Lord Galbraith does not see anyone without an appointment.”
“He’ll see us,” the first boy said with a confidence that ruffled Miss Pitman’s sense of self-importance a little bit. “We’re his nephews.”
“Oh.” That put the situation in an entirely new light, and she stood up, glad to have found a course of action appropriate to the situation. “I will take you to Lord and Lady Galbraith’s secretary, Miss Huish.”
She led them to an electric lift and escorted them upstairs to the first floor, where she deposited them in the capable hands of Miss Evelyn Huish and hurried away with profound relief.
Miss Huish, the boys discovered, was much friendlier and less haughty than her predecessor. Prettier, too, with hair of a darker red than theirs and nice brown eyes. “So, you two are Lady Galbraith’s nephews?” She grinned. “Pleasure to meet you.”
She looked past them, and her grin faded, replaced by a little frown. “Isn’t anyone with you?”
The boys looked at each other, unsure what to say that wouldn’t get them into trouble. Fearing it might be too late for considerations of that sort, they looked at Miss Huish and shook their heads, deciding quite wisely to refrain from explanations. The more one explained, after all, the more trouble one usually got into.
Miss Huish rose. “Well, then,” she said briskly, “it’s clear you must see your uncle at once. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
She turned and walked to one of the two doors behind her, tapped on it, then opened it, and went inside. Her voice floated to the boys through the open doorway.
“My lord, your nephews are here and would like to see you.”
“The twins are here?” Uncle Rex sounded understandably surprised. “Is their father with them? Or their tutor?”
“Neither. They are alone.”
“Alone? Good lord.” He groaned. “They came all the way across London by themselves?”
The two boys grinned at each other, rather proud of their accomplishment. Good thing Mrs. Seton had shown them how to use the trains during the journey home from Westminster.
“Send them in.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Miss Huish reemerged, pushing the door wide invitingly. “You may go in, gentlemen.”
The boys ran past her and into Uncle Rex’s private office, where he rose from behind his desk and gave a nod to Miss Huish, who departed and closed the door behind her.
“Good afternoon, boys,” he greeted them. “What on earth are you doing here? And where is your tutor?”
“Nanny,” Owen corrected at once. “Mrs. Seton’s our nanny. Or she was.” He gave a mournful sigh. “She’s left us.”
“Left you?” Rex eyed them with worrisome severity. “What do you mean? Left you where?”
“She quit two days ago.”
“You drove another nanny away? What did you do?”
“Nothing!” Colin cried. “We didn’t do anything. At least,” he amended as his uncle’s brows rose, “we don’t think we did. She said we didn’t. She said it wasn’t us.”
“But we must have done something,” Owen put in. “Why else would she leave?”
“Maybe it was because of that man, after all, and she was lying to us about it.”
“Man?” Rex inquired, but occupied with their own speculations, the boys paid no heed.
“I don’t think she lied,” Owen said slowly. “Not about that. It was plain as a pikestaff she didn’t like him. Why would she go to work for him when she has a smashing post with us?”
“Then I think it was Papa. Otherwise, why would she insist on telling him her reasons for going without letting us be there? Or,” Colin added at once, “why didn’t she just leave a note and slink away before dawn, like most of them do when they go?”
“That’s easy,” his brother said. “She likes us, and she didn’t want to leave us without saying good-bye. But—”
“Where is your father?” Uncle Rex asked, his voice cutting into these speculations.
Both boys looked at him in surprise.
“At Westminster, of course,” Colin said. “Where else would he be?”
“No one is watching you?”
“Samuel. He’s Papa’s valet now.”
“And yet, he is not here, apparently.”
The boys looked at each other, then at their uncle. “We snuck out,” Owen said reluctantly. “When he wasn’t looking.”
“We left him a note,” Colin added as Uncle Rex gave a groan. “We told him not to worry and that we’d be back soon.”
“The note was my idea,” Owen said proudly, but much to both boys’ chagrin, Uncle Rex did not seem impressed by this display of consideration and responsibility on their part.
“If Samuel is supposed to be watching you,” he said, frowning like thunder, “then how did you manage to sneak out? And why did you come all the way across town by yourselves to see me?”
“We didn’t come here to see you, Uncle Rex,” Colin told him.
“Your Auntie Clara, then? Well, who?” he added as they shook their heads.
The boys looked at each other, then back at him, and with the uncanny talent of twins for being in complete accord, they said simultaneously, “We came to see Lady Truelove.”
Jamie was in the Chamber, trying his best to pay attention to Mr. Fortescue, the member from Welsham, for he was in desperate need of distraction. Unfortunately, his colleague had no tal
ent for oratory, and as his speech droned on and on in one long, ceaseless stream of pontification, Jamie occasionally came out of his daze to wonder with weary forbearance how anyone in Welsham had stayed awake long enough to hear the man’s views, much less be inspired enough by those views to elect him to public service.
Still, even if Mr. Fortescue were the greatest public speaker since Pericles, Jamie suspected it wouldn’t have made a difference to his own state of mind. Ever since Amanda had walked out his door two days ago, he felt as if he’d been moving through fog. He could see nothing, no present and no future. Everything around him seemed drab, gray, and curiously devoid of substance.
Despite the dampening of his other senses, Jamie did not feel numb. Quite the contrary. He ached with pain. In a strange way, he relished the feeling, for pain meant he was alive, and if he was alive, he could surely find a solution to this conundrum. Couldn’t he?
I am the notorious and wanton schoolteacher caught fornicating with an earl’s son . . .
Some men, he supposed, would be repelled by such a confession. But then, some men were blatantly hypocritical about that sort of thing.
I am ruined beyond amendment. Do you think any of your constituents would vote for you again if you married me?
He’d meant what he’d told her—he didn’t care about that. But he also knew what he cared about wasn’t the only consideration.
And the boys? Would you taint their future with a stepmother who is notorious?
He knew he would suffer a thousand years in hell rather than cause them a moment’s pain. He leaned back in his seat, despair washing over him. And because of that, there was no solution. How could there be?
Suddenly, all around him, gentlemen were standing up, and he came out of his reverie with a start, appreciating the dinner break had come.
Governess Gone Rogue Page 27
