Annie Burrows

by Reforming the Viscount

  Eventually the woman slumped in exhaustion against Robert, though her shoulders still heaved through the force of her sobbing. Only then did he allow her to approach the coach. He pulled the door open and Lydia stepped out. The sobbing woman tottered over to her, they flung their arms round each other, and then, because the wild woman was much larger than Lydia, the pair of them collapsed in a froth of petticoats on the gravel beside the coach steps.

  The woman’s weeping grew less noisy as Lydia stroked her tangled hair, so that when Lord Rothersthorpe’s horse pawed at the gravel, impatient at being obliged to stand so long in the heat when it could smell a stable close by, Robert’s head flew up.

  He scowled, then stalked back down the drive towards him.

  ‘Best come straight round to the stables,’ he growled. ‘This way.’

  He turned and strode away. Rothersthorpe followed, though it wasn’t easy to tear his eyes from Lydia, who was crooning something softly to the wild woman, whilst somehow managing to rock her rhythmically. As he passed the stationary coach, he glimpsed another girl, a little boy and a dog clustered together just inside the front door of the house, as though undecided whether it was yet safe to approach the heap of tangled skirts and splayed limbs that was Lydia and the sobbing female.

  The boy had a look of Lydia, somehow. Rothersthorpe supposed it was something about the shape of his face, and his flaxen hair.

  For a moment, it felt as though the sun had gone behind a dark cloud. He shook his head, impatient with himself. He’d known she had a child by the Colonel. Somebody had told him, not long after the event. So the sight of the boy should not have come as a shock.

  He didn’t care that Lydia had a child by another man. Why should he? She was nothing to him now.

  ‘I hope,’ said Robert as they entered the stable yard, ‘that I may rely on your discretion about the incident you just witnessed.’

  Rothersthorpe dismounted and saw his horse led into the shady stable by a capable-looking groom while he puzzled over Robert’s peculiar choice of words. But curiosity got the better of him. Raising one eyebrow, he turned to Robert, and said, ‘My discretion?’

  Unabashed, Robert looked him straight in the eye, and said, ‘Fact is, this is a bit of a tricky situation. Cissy will calm down soon enough now Mama Lyddy is home to care for her, but if Rose were ever to find out about the state she was in just now, she might take it into her head never to leave again. And I won’t have her tied here. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘You don’t wish Rose to become distressed,’ he echoed. What the hell was going on here? And who was that screaming, violent woman that Robert had left Lydia alone with?

  ‘I don’t want Cissy distressed either,’ said Robert with a scowl. ‘Dammit, I should have paid more attention to what Lydia tried to tell me. She has not travelled so far from Westdene for years, so I didn’t realise...’ He struck at his boot with his riding crop a couple of times, his frown deepening. ‘Her problems, you see, were nowhere near so obvious when she was younger.’

  ‘Your sister Cissy is—’

  ‘Careful what you say,’ snapped Robert. ‘I won’t have her described as a lunatic, whatever appearances to the contrary might indicate. And if you cannot deal with that, perhaps you had better leave right now!’

  Rothersthorpe raised both eyebrows. ‘No need to take that tone with me, Morgan. I merely wished to understand the situation.’

  ‘Beg pardon,’ said Robert, though his scowl did not abate one whit. ‘Fact is, having Cissy throw a tantrum like that has rattled me. This whole house party I wanted to throw for Rose is going to be a damned sight more difficult than I’d thought if she doesn’t take to the guests. We’ve always sheltered her from strangers, do you see, so this is going to be a monumental challenge for her.’

  Something flickered in the back of his memory. Robert telling his guests on that long-ago picnic that they could have the run of the grounds, but that the house was out of bounds. He’d made some jest about his father having a nasty temper and warning his guests to avoid him if they didn’t want to feel the lash of his tongue. He’d taken that statement at face value, but if Cissy had been so easily disturbed, perhaps there was another reason why strangers were not welcomed within doors.

  And perhaps that was why all Robert’s parties had ceased. He’d known that Robert had fallen out with his father over his marriage to such a young woman and had avoided Westdene for some time. But he’d assumed, when he did not resume throwing parties, and inviting people for picnics in the grounds, after the Colonel’s death, that Lydia had somehow been the cause. Now it looked as though it might have had more to do with the strange woman—Cissy—who was, apparently, not quite right in the head.

  Not right in the head, and very, very dependant upon Lydia.

  His vision of her lifestyle wavered and shifted. He’d always wondered why she had not returned to town sooner after her husband’s demise. With the amount of money she must have at her disposal as the widow of a nabob, anyone would have thought she would make frequent trips to town, for shopping sprees.

  But she hadn’t.

  Robert sighed. ‘I wanted Rose to have the freedom to choose a husband, without having to worry about how it would all affect Cissy. But I should have thought how the disruption to her routine would affect her.’

  Rothersthorpe’s eyes narrowed. Robert had expressed concern for Rose’s freedom, and Cissy’s welfare, but none at all for Lydia. He seemed to assume it was Lydia’s place to look after them both.

  It was damned peculiar for the old man to have kept a child like that within his household at all, let alone have his young wife become the creature’s nurse. If ever anyone in his own circle had a child that was abnormal in some way, they paid someone to take them off their hands. Someone trained to deal with that kind of infirmity. And they would keep them at a safe distance from the whole members of the family, in order to prevent disturbances of the kind he’d just witnessed.

  Instead of which, he seethed, Colonel Morgan had married a girl with no family to protect her and given her the job of looking after his unbalanced daughter. For some mysterious reason, she had not balked at the task. And she’d somehow slipped in to the role of being the poor creature’s security. Well, perhaps he could see how that might have happened. Lydia might have many faults, but he’d seen with his own eyes that she had a way with the poor demented creature.

  Maybe he could understand why Lydia felt entitled to take a lover. It sounded as though she’d been virtually incarcerated down here, caring for Colonel Morgan’s children by all his previous wives, and the unbalanced one in particular.

  It struck him as supremely ironical that as he’d been making his way along the driveway, he’d imagined her reigning over it all like a queen. Colonel Morgan, he could see, was something of a collector and he’d assumed the man had installed his pretty young bride in this lush setting like the jewel in his crown.

  Instead, it looked very much as though she’d earned every penny the old man had spent on her. Ah, poor Lydia, he thought, with a cynical smile.

  And it hadn’t ended with the Colonel’s death. It sounded as though Robert permitted her no personal freedom at all. No wonder she’d snatched at the chance of getting him down here, while she could.

  He eyed Robert with curiosity. His words indicated an attitude of putting everyone’s needs before Lydia’s. In public, in London, he had presented a façade of friendliness with his very young stepmama. But how deep did it really go?

  He remembered the hostility he’d displayed on the announcement of his father’s latest marriage and the names he’d called Lydia. And the way he’d stood guard over both women in his charge, at that ball, his hand clenched on the back of his sister’s chair. He had not deferred to Lydia in the matter of his sister’s possible dance partners. Why had he not picked up on that marked lack of respect before?

  Because he’d been too busy dwelling on his own resentments, that was why.

&nb
sp; ‘Look, I’d better show you up to your room,’ said Robert, ‘where you can freshen up. I shall have to go and reassess the situation before I risk introducing Cissy to any of our guests.’ Shoulders squared, he began to march towards the rear of the property.

  ‘Do you plan,’ asked Rothersthorpe, setting off behind him, ‘to keep the girl hidden away then?’

  ‘Plan?’ Robert snorted. ‘No, that was not the plan. Damned if I know what will happen now. Rose swore she’d send everyone packing if Cissy got upset, so the whole party might have to be abandoned, for neither she nor Lydia would countenance shutting Cissy out of sight.’

  Robert shot him a level look as they reached the back door. ‘You must do as you please. You have seen her at her very worst. If you’ve a mind to stay, and you have it in you to be kind to her, we need say no more about it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied, without making the slightest attempt to disguise the sarcasm.

  ‘If you decide to grace us with your presence,’ Robert replied, with an equal measure of sarcasm, ‘send me word and I will have you collected from your room in about an hour. The others will have arrived by boat by then and will be picnicking down by the Persian Pools. We will walk down and join them.’

  Lord Rothersthorpe remained silent while Robert led him through the house and up some backstairs to a corridor that led to a guest wing.

  But there was no question of him leaving. For good or ill, he’d made the decision to come down here and lay his first love to rest. Even though now it appeared there was more to Lydia’s subsequent lifestyle than met the eye, it made little difference. He was going to be her lover. Purge her out of his system so he could get on with his life, mad stepdaughters and vengeful stepsons notwithstanding.

  So, as Robert flung open the door to a small, rather Spartan room, he said, ‘There is no need to send word. Just come and get me in an hour.’

  Robert’s expression eased into something approaching a smile. He made no comment, but the way he clapped Rothersthorpe on the back expressed his approval clearly enough.

  Rothersthorpe shucked off his riding jacket and tossed it on to a chest that sat at the foot of a rather narrow bed, feeling as though he’d just passed some kind of test.

  Not that it mattered. He neither needed nor wanted Robert’s approval.

  He wanted to wash off the dust of travel and change out of his sweat-dampened shirt. He went across to the marble-topped washstand, which stood next to the window. There was a pitcher full of water ready for his use, though since his valet had not yet arrived, there was no chance of changing his shirt. He poured water from the pitcher into the basin, knowing he would have to make do with just washing his face and hands. Then he ran his wet fingers through his hair, in lieu of a comb, which he devoutly hoped his man would remember to pack, and inspected himself in the mirror.

  He saw an idiot looking back at him. An idiot who’d come haring down to Surrey the minute Lydia had crooked her finger at him. An idiot without so much as a change of clothes, so eager had he been to get here. An idiot who’d spent the entire journey reminding himself of all Lydia’s numerous faults. Who had not been on the premises five minutes before he’d started to see her as a victim of circumstances, rather than a woman getting her just deserts.

  An idiot, who had listened with mounting anger as Robert revealed what her life here must be like, and who had actually started to sympathise with her.

  What difference, he admonished his reflection, did it make if Robert was holding Lydia prisoner down here? This was a luxurious prison. She’d walked into her marriage with her eyes wide open, and if she’d subsequently found that caring for Robert, Cissy and Rose was no sinecure, it was none of his business.

  And if he could see why she might want to conduct a secret affair, right under the nose of her tyrannical stepson, that made no difference either.

  Whatever her reasons for inviting him down here, his had not changed.

  He simply had to get over her.

  Chapter Six

  ‘How is she?’

  The moment Lydia entered what had once been his father’s study, Robert strode across the room and took her hands. It was all she could do not to snatch them away.

  Except, for once, he really did look contrite.

  ‘I had no idea she would have become so upset whilst parted from you, Mama Lyddy. I would not have acted as I had...’

  ‘You mean,’ she replied coldly, ‘in keeping all news about her tantrums from me whilst I was chaperoning Rose to balls and parties?’ Since arriving home she’d found that not only Marigold, but also Mrs Broome, had written to Robert expressing concern.

  ‘Yes. Unforgivable of me, I can see that now, but you must believe me...’

  ‘No, Robert, you should have believed me. Did you really think anyone could know her better than I?’

  ‘No.’ He had the grace to look a bit shamefaced. ‘It was just that I thought you were being over-protective. You...well, you and the girls...you all fuss over her in a way that seems totally unnecessary.’

  ‘Unnecessary.’ Lydia blinked, once, then nodded her head. It was pointless staying angry with him when his repentance was so genuine. He loved Cissy and she knew he would never do anything to hurt her, not deliberately. It was just he had this irritating tendency to think he knew best. About everything.

  ‘You can only say that,’ she pondered aloud, ‘because you were not here when she first came to live at Westdene. By the time you forgave your father for marrying me and came to visit, she had settled down.’

  Now that she was not so angry with him, it became possible to withdraw her hands from his, go across to the window and hitch her hip on to the broad sill.

  ‘But Marigold or Rose could have told you about her,’ she said.

  A tide of guilty colour swept across his cheeks. She sighed.

  ‘You are so like your father.’

  His brows drew down into a sharp frown.

  ‘You never actually ask what those who depend upon you want. You assume you know best and just expect to have your orders obeyed without question.’

  He flung himself into his father’s chair and scowled at her, silenced, for once, by the accuracy of her observation.

  ‘But no matter. I understand that, like him, you are trying to do your best for us all.’

  ‘I...’ He looked down at a pile of papers, stacked neatly on the desk, and moved them fractionally to one side. ‘We are getting away from the point,’ he growled. ‘Which is Cissy and why she went so completely to pieces, just because you were not here.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Perhaps I should begin with the nightmares she used to have when she first came to live here. Nightmares from which she used to wake up screaming, night after night. Or perhaps we should talk about the way she would not let either me, or your father, out of her sight for one moment during the daytime.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was her fear that broke through both Rose and Marigold’s tendency to resent having another mother foisted on them.’ She smiled wryly. ‘They are, at bottom, good girls. And so it wasn’t long before they threw their hearts into coaxing Cissy out of her tendency to cling to me all day.’

  ‘I have to admit,’ said Robert gruffly, ‘that I was surprised that they had finally started to think about someone other than themselves. Surprised and impressed. For when they were very little, they both seemed rather spoiled. Father’s little hothouse flowers,’ he said with a bitter twist to his lips. ‘I suppose,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘Cissy is the sort of girl who brings out the best in people.’

  ‘In this family, that has been true,’ she corrected him. ‘But I have discovered that she can also bring out the worst in people. My guardian, for example. When my parents died and I met the new holder of my father’s title for the first time, he seemed like a decent sort of man. He said he was willing to be quite generous to me, in respect of franking me for a Season. But he flatly refused to give Cissy house room. He said he had no int
ention of being saddled with what he termed a halfwit. He would not listen to my explanations of her condition, but packed her straight off to an asylum.’

  ‘Yes. I know that...’

  ‘What you do not know is what she suffered there.’ Lydia paused, steeling herself to speak of a time that had been so horrific she didn’t even like to think about it.

  ‘When we went to collect her, we found her locked in a room no bigger than a cupboard, manacled to her bed. When your father remonstrated with the governor of the place, he said it was for her own good. That he did not want her to accidentally hurt herself, when she was in a wild state. That he found patients learned to behave with more docility if he had them strapped down when they rebelled against his regime. And then he began to expound the scientific basis for the methods he employed to effect a cure for what he termed the feeble minded.’ Lydia screwed up her face in revulsion. ‘It involved strapping his patients to a chair and repeatedly plunging them into baths of freezing water to stimulate blood flow to the brain. Or turning them upside down, and suspending them thus, for hours at a time.’

  ‘Good God...’

  ‘And all the time he was boasting about his scientific methods,’ Lydia went on as though she had not heard his shocked utterance, ‘she was lying there, in her own filth, crying and straining towards us. And then your father...well, you know how terrifying he could be when he got into one of his rages. That first time I saw him lose his temper it was just like how I would imagine it would feel to witness a volcano erupting.

  ‘But I felt like cheering him as he reduced Cissy’s tormentors to quivering, apologetic jellies. And from that moment on, your father was her hero. When I told her he was to be her new father, she flung her arms round him and kissed his cheek. In all her filth.’

  At that point, Lydia had to rub at her eyes with the cuff of her long-sleeved gown. A lesser man would have repulsed her. But he had not. He had not even wrinkled his nose as he’d hugged her back.

  ‘And it was Cissy’s total adoration of him that made all the difference to the way your sisters behaved towards me after that,’ she said. ‘Her face lit up whenever he walked into the room. Because I’d told her he was her father now, she treated him exactly as she had done our own father. When he sat down, she would just climb into his lap and cuddle him.’