Lady Lyte's Little Secret

by Deborah Hale

  “Take as long as you like.” Felicity gathered up her wrap, gloves and reticule as she made her way to the door. “I shall wait in the carriage for ten minutes. If Oliver does not join me by then, I will return to Bath without him and instruct my solicitor to write him out of my will.”

  While she issued her ultimatum, Felicity kept her gaze averted from Thorn, fearful of the power he wielded over her heart, power he might not scruple to use.

  As Lady Lyte shut the door behind her with firm finality, Thorn struggled to rally his wits. He felt almost as if he’d been thrown, once again, from a fast-moving horse into a cold, dark river.

  He had been galloping toward a happy future with everything coming neatly into place. Felicity had agreed to marry him. They had succeeded in recovering Ivy and Oliver. Then, without any kind of warning, it had all shattered around him.

  With cold loathing in her eyes, Felicity had accused him of conspiring with his sister to trick her into marriage. That the woman he loved could believe him capable of such infamous conduct stung Thorn Greenwood to the depths of his dutiful heart.

  Looking from his sister to Oliver Armitage, he struggled to find words that might make sense of what had just happened, for they appeared as bewildered as he. Part of him wanted to thank Ivy for what she had tried to do for him, while another part could not help wishing she had minded her own sweet, meddlesome business.

  He was too stunned by this sudden reversal to say anything coherent, Thorn decided. He’d already wasted one minute of the ten Lady Lyte had granted her nephew. Once Oliver made his decision, there would be time for Thorn and his sister to talk, if either of them could bear it.

  With a sigh and a rueful shake of his head, Thorn left the room and wandered downstairs, muffled in a thick daze of regret.

  As he paused on the landing just out of sight of the posting room, he overheard Lady Lyte settling her bill with the innkeeper.

  “Have my servants summoned at once,” she ordered, “and have my luggage brought down. Instruct the hostlers to ready my carriage for the road. I must leave without delay.”

  A tidy sum must have changed hands, above the usual reckoning, for Thorn heard the innkeeper bellow Lady Lyte’s instructions, followed by the sound of scurrying feet.

  He told himself to stay put or to steal out the front door and go wander the market square until Felicity had departed Carlisle. He told himself pleading with her would do no good, only further erode his self-respect.

  Unfortunately, his feet were not well under control. Before Thorn knew what was happening, they bore him down the final dozen steps and face to face with the woman he had hoped to wed in a few hours’ time.

  One stern glance from Thorn sent the innkeeper bustling off, issuing orders left and right.

  “Please, Felicity.” As he spoke, Thorn felt his knees stiffen. He’d gone down on them to this woman once before. He would never do it again. “Won’t you take a few minutes to reconsider? You stand to lose as much by this as any of us. More, perhaps.”

  He tried to convince himself that he would not lose anything that had ever truly been his. Nor anything he truly wanted.

  But when he looked in her eyes and saw beauty unmarred by the anger and anguish that haunted them, Thorn remembered every ray of sunshine Felicity had brought into his life. Every glitter of starlight, every blush of candle glow.

  Suddenly, it was all he could do not to bow his head and weep for that loss.

  Felicity shrank from him, as if she feared he might strike her. In doing so, she struck him a far more grievous blow.

  “Leave me be, Mr. Greenwood.” She spoke through clenched teeth. Indeed, every part of her seemed clenched tight against him.

  Her heart tightest of all.

  “Have you and your sister not done me enough harm, today?”

  “I would never harm you!” Prudence and propriety cautioned Thorn to keep his voice down, but he refused to heed them. “And my sister is guilty of nothing worse than a generous impulse taken to ill-considered lengths. I told you she fancies herself a matchmaker.”

  “Ah yes, Lady Cupid.” A subtle venom tipped Felicity’s words. “If I recall my schoolbooks correctly, Cupid made all sorts of mischief among gods and mortals. I wish your sister had saved her arrows for some other quarry.”

  “No one made us fall in love, Felicity.” Why could he not make her see? “Or perhaps I should amend that. You made me love you. And until a short time ago, I believed I had made you love me. All Ivy and Oliver did was throw us together when we would rather have run away from one another.”

  At that moment Felicity’s driver and footman burst into the entry hall. Ned had misbuttoned his livery, and he was rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

  Mr. Hixon looked from Thorn to his mistress in some alarm. “Is it true, ma’am? That we’re to leave at once? Is something wrong?”

  “A great deal is wrong,” replied Felicity, “though none of it that you need fret about. We will return south as soon as the horses can be harnessed.”

  Without a further word to Thorn, she swept out of the room, a pair of baffled servants following in her wake.

  Ned paused at the door. “Are you not coming with us, Mr. Greenwood?”

  Thorn shook his head. Though he hadn’t meant to speak, he heard himself say, “Take care of her for me.”

  “I’ll try, sir,” replied the lad. “Lady Lyte doesn’t make it easy.”

  The ghost of a smile tugged at Thorn’s lips as he gave a knowing nod.

  From off in the distance came the sound of Mr. Hixon calling the young footman.

  Still Ned hesitated. “Whatever happened, I’m sorry, sir. For you…and for her.”

  With that, he hurried away, rebuttoning his coat as he went.

  Though Thorn had no intention of doing so, he found himself following. Perhaps at the last instant Felicity would realize precisely what she stood to lose. Particularly if Oliver Armitage held his ground.

  If the sight of Thorn served to drive that vital knowledge home, he would do it. Pride be damned.

  He strode from the inn, around to the narrow alley that led back to the stables. In that courtyard, beside the watering trough, stood Lady Lyte’s fine carriage. The hostlers had just finished harnessing the horses, in record time, no doubt. Another servant came down a flight of outside stairs bearing Lady Lyte’s luggage, which he hoisted up to Ned in the boot.

  Thorn trained his gaze on Felicity, who sat stiff and still as a wax statue inside the box. Staring straight ahead of her, she gave not the slightest sign that she was aware of Thorn’s presence.

  Silently he willed her not to let her troubled past destroy her future…and his.

  Behind him the bells of Carlisle Cathedral chimed the half hour. Lady Lyte’s coachman bid the horses to get moving, and the carriage began to roll.

  As it came toward him, Thorn stepped out of the way. Yet he still stood close enough to mark a pair of tears that rolled slowly down Felicity’s ivory-sculpted cheeks.

  She knew what she was giving up, those tears assured Thorn. But to hold on to it would have cost his lady of fortune more than even she could afford to pay.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Felicity cursed the two mutinous tears that betrayed her weakness. Not for anything in the world would she expose further vulnerability by letting Thorn see her wipe them away. So she stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge either his nearness or the distressing effect he had on her.

  But when her carriage passed beyond the old walled town that lay at the heart of Carlisle, and she was certain Thorn could no longer catch a glimpse of her, Felicity’s brittle composure crumpled tear by tear.

  She tried to convince herself she was weeping for Oliver.

  That her nephew would abandon her after all the years of their acquaintance and all she had done for him grieved her sorely. And to have turned his back on her for the sake of a young woman he’d known such a short time spoke ill of Felicity’s ability to inspire and
hold the loyalty of those she cared for.

  Percy. Thorn. Oliver. Would everyone she loved end up hurting her?

  “Not my baby!” Felicity vowed, wrapping her arms around her body in a fierce, protective embrace.

  Not unless she’d been foolish enough to tell Thorn the truth while he’d held her in his thrall. Then her poor child would have become the rope in a tug of war between its mother and father. Thank heaven she’d had the sense to hold her tongue!

  The day wore on as Lady Lyte’s carriage rolled south, through a narrow valley nestled between the Rivers Eden and Petteril, both of which cut a swath through the old Forest of Inglewood.

  On either side of the road, lines of gray drystone walls separated absurdly small plots of farmland. At intervals, a group of tidy white houses, a small church and sometimes a posting inn would cluster together in a village. Off to the east stretched the crooked gray hump of England’s backbone, the Pennines.

  It had been too dark to see any of this on the previous night when she and Thorn had driven the final stretch into Carlisle. Now, the peaceful, remote charm of the place settled over Felicity, soothing the turbulent outrage that battered her spirit.

  The interior of her carriage suddenly felt so large and still and empty without Thorn’s presence.

  Not that he had a presence, as such. At least not in the vivid, high-flown, effusive style of his friend Weston St. Just. Thorn Greenwood had a character not unlike the Cumberland countryside. Quiet, steady and unassuming, yet rich in true worth, gentle strength and durable virtue. Or so Felicity had come to believe.

  How could she have misjudged him so?

  Had she misjudged him?

  In her solitude, Felicity could not hide from the truth. Perhaps she had not been mistaken in Thorn’s character during the long, sweet days and nights they had shared on the journey north. More likely she had judged wrong in those brief anguished moments when old fears had overwhelmed her and a lifetime of bitterly cultivated suspicion had blighted the vulnerable bud of her trust in him.

  Though there was no one to see her, Felicity hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with mute, dry sobs that the gentle moisture of tears might have eased. Except she had squandered all her tears in an unworthy cause.

  She had believed there could be no worse heartache than to suffer domination or betrayal by those closest to her. But in that, too, she’d been wrong.

  It was a far more cruel blow to see her few admirable qualities governed by her faults. And to live with the bitter certainty that she had betrayed her own happiness out of blind, selfish pride.

  A sharp pain gripped Felicity deep in the belly, making her cry out. Mr. Hixon must have heard it, for the carriage slowed to a halt almost at once.

  Barely a moment later, the carriage door flew open and the young footman peered inside. “What’s the matter, Lady Lyte?”

  The pain had loosened its clutches on her, leaving her weak and shaken.

  “Nothing of consequence, Ned.” Felicity tried to sound a good deal better than she felt.

  She couldn’t be taken ill now. Not so far from home, with no one to care for her but a couple of servants—menservants at that. “Once we reach Trentwell, I shall be right as rain, again. Now be a good fellow and tell Mr. Hixon to drive on.”

  The boy did not obey her order with the alacrity Lady Lyte expected from her servants. “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but you don’t look well.”

  “Of course I don’t look well,” Felicity snapped. She could feel another wave of pain beginning to build, and she did not want the young footman to witness it. “Neither do you, to be frank. Who would expect us to after such a long journey in such haste? I order you to leave off pestering me and instruct Mr. Hixon to make haste for Trentwell.”

  When he continued to hesitate, staring at her with an anxious countenance, she cried, “Now!”

  Before Ned could obey, the pain swept her up again like a rat in the powerful jaws of a terrier. Determined not to cry out this time, Felicity bit into her lower lip until she tasted blood, warm and salty.

  To her surprise and vast relief, Ned slammed the carriage door shut, and the carriage soon began to move again.

  But not for long.

  The pain had tamed to a constant, almost bearable pitch when her carriage drew up in front of a red brick coaching inn.

  “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded through clenched teeth when her driver and footman edged open the carriage door.

  Ned stared at his boots, as if expecting to find the answer to his mistress’s question written on the toes. “You’re not well, ma’am. You need rest, or a physician, or…something. Mr. Greenwood asked me to look after you, and I don’t mean to let him down.”

  Perhaps the knowledge that Thorn had cared enough for her to bid her servants so should have eased Felicity, but it did not. After the things she had said to him and to his sister, she did not merit such consideration.

  Her coachman appeared even more troubled than the young footman at the prospect of disobeying orders. Yet Mr. Hixon supported young Ned in his well-meant mutiny.

  “What you don’t need, ma’am, is another long drive. You may dismiss the pair of us without character when you’re well again, but until then, we won’t budge another mile.”

  “Very well.” She was too sore and spent to argue with them just then. The prospect of resting on a bed, even a hired one far from home, appealed to her.

  Felicity managed to pull herself out of the carriage box, but then her strength deserted her and she collapsed into Mr. Hixon’s muscular arms.

  She must be losing her baby. There could be no other explanation for the location and intensity of the pain.

  Yet even as her heart quailed with grief at this final loss, she had to concede it might not be unjust. After the way she had so recently bullied the young man she claimed to love like a son, how she had questioned his choices, threatened his happiness and tried to control his actions, Lady Lyte was forced to acknowledge that she might be too selfish a creature ever to make a satisfactory mother.

  “I wish Mother could have seen you today, my dear.” Thorn pressed his lips to his sister’s brow as they prepared to enter the small parish church in Gretna Green. “I believe she would have been as proud of you as I am.”

  Ivy’s delicate chin trembled, and her usual bright smile crumpled until she looked half her present age. Like a mischievous little girl whose latest prank had gone dangerously awry.

  “Dear brother, you mustn’t make me blubber right before my wedding, though I’m sure I deserve it.”

  Thorn fished out a handkerchief and passed it to her, just in case.

  Ivy dabbed her nose. “To think I fancied myself a matchmaker! Match-wrecker, more like. After the way I spoilt everything between you and Lady Lyte, you’d have been well within your rights to bundle me home to Barnhill and lock me in the attic until I grew some sense.”

  “Now, now.” With the crook of his finger, Thorn tilted her pert little chin up to its customary cheerful angle. “Locked in the attic at Barnhill? That sounds rather harsh to me. Why not just transport you to Botany Bay and be done with it?”

  Ivy rewarded his clumsy jest with a crooked smile. “You really mustn’t pretend to take it so well. You’ll make me feel far worse than if you lit into me.”

  “I’ll own I’m not pleased over how things fell out between Felicity and me,” Thorn admitted, “but that’s hardly your fault. I know you had the best intentions for our happiness. If she could believe that you and I plotted this whole scheme as a means to entrap her and her nephew, then perhaps I am well rid of Lady Lyte.”

  And perhaps if he repeated those words to himself often enough, he might come to believe them.

  The spring breeze ruffled Ivy’s curls and the Scottish sunshine anointed them with a deep golden lustre. Her blue-green eyes seemed to see past Thorn’s proud protest and into his turbulent heart.

  “I don’t believe that now any more than
I did when Oliver and I left Bath. And I feel certain that in her heart of hearts Lady Lyte doesn’t believe any of those dreadful things she said about all of us.”

  Shaking his head, Thorn treated his sister to an indulgent half smile. “I wish I could share your boundless optimism, my dear.”

  “This is more than just me hoping for the best, Thorn.” Ivy clasped his hand and looked deep into his eyes, as if willing him to partake of her own ardent conviction. “Remember how Merritt accused Rosemary of entrapping him when he found out we’d lost our fortune?”

  “I’m not likely to forget, am I?” It had all but torn him in two, watching his beloved sister and his dear friend make each other so unhappy.

  “They’d probably never have reconciled if it hadn’t been for you,” Ivy said, “though I know you’ll never own to playing matchmaker.”

  Thorn affected his most stern brotherly tone. “If you have any notions of interceding for me with Lady Lyte, you may put them out of your mind, young lady. I will not have it. Do you hear?”

  “I hadn’t any thought of the kind!” Ivy protested. “You and Lady Lyte must serve as your own match-makers, Thorn. I know you can if you will only try.”

  She nodded toward the sanctuary where her bridegroom awaited her. “I’ve done a good deal of growing up this past week, you know. After some of the things Oliver told me about he and his aunt, I feel quite sorry for anyone with a large fortune. How are they to trust that anyone cares for them?”

  Felicity had once believed he had no designs on her fortune. Thorn remembered how her admission had touched him.

  Ivy gripped his hand harder. Thorn had never seen his blithe, flighty little sister so passionately earnest. “When Lady Lyte said those things, what she meant was that she doesn’t believe she deserves to be loved for herself alone. It’s not you she mistrusts—but herself.”

  He opened his mouth to tell Ivy that she’d let the romantic fancies of her wedding day get the better of her. But before he could get the words out, a swarm of memories unfolded in his mind. The most vivid was less than a day old, as they’d been driving into Carlisle. Thorn could hear Felicity’s wistful murmur as clearly as if he’d been holding her in his arms.