Ah, Dominic Ransleigh, you are so dangerous to my peace of mind, she thought, struggling to keep from reaching for him. Good thing you’re going away, before I blurt out how much I want you to stay.
Finally, losing the battle, she let herself take his hand, almost sighing at the jolt that tingled through her. ‘Best of luck.’
He held her fingers a few moments longer than was strictly necessary. ‘I won’t be ready to leave for a week or so. If you’ll permit, I’ll check with you when I return and let you know how it went.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said, even as the protective voice within protested she mustn’t see him again. ‘I shall be interested in your plans for the improvement of the estate,’ she answered it back.
Liar, it whispered.
Ignoring it, she said, ‘I must get back. I owe the children a story and Miss Andrews a break.’
‘What are you offering them? Not Bowdlerised Shakespeare, I hope.’
‘Never!’ she said with a laugh. ‘I was delighted to find in your library an edition of Galland’s Les Milles et Une Nuit. I’d seen the English Arabian Nights translation, but the original French is so much better. What child could resist stories of sorcerers and jins?’
‘So you will be their Scheherazade. They will love it.’
‘I expect they will clamour for more. Good thing there were one thousand and one nights.’ And could there be anything in those Far Eastern stories more outlandish or shocking than the tale she didn’t finish telling Ransleigh?
By her omission, she’d managed to retain his good opinion. Keeping it gave her an even more compelling reason to hold him at arm’s length.
* * *
Two weeks later, Theo sat at the desk in her study at Thornfield Place, looking over the replies to her advertisement for a tutor for Charles. Though he’d continued accompanying her to the school and shared in the lessons, she brought him back to Thornfield Place every night, despite his protests that he’d rather sleep in the dormitory with Georgie and Jemmie. Soon he must start preparing for the more rigorous academics required of the gentlemen who sojourned at Oxford or Cambridge before taking up the management of their acreage. Though, she thought, envious of the men who could pursue study forbidden to women, most of the scions of the aristocracy devoted more of their time at university to entertainment and developing friendships among their peers than pursuing scholarship.
Once the time came, she’d not renew the leases and instead turn several of the properties she’d inherited over to Charles. She was idly wondering how soon they ought to visit the estates to decide which were the most promising, when a knock sounded at the door.
‘Miss Branwell, there’s a lady to see you,’ Franklin said.
‘Did she not give her name?’ Theo asked, curious. She’d been graciously introduced to several local ladies by Lady Wentworth, but having assured them she was seldom at Thornfield during calling hours, none had ventured out.
‘She said you’d not recognise her name, but that she had heard much of you and was very interested to meet you.’
Which told her exactly nothing, Theo thought, a little uneasily. Had Tremaine managed to drop a few words in some interested ears before he’d taken himself out of Suffolk?
If so, there’d be nothing for it but to face down the rumours. Fortunately, her dress and manner were so far from brazen or seductive, she had a good chance of successfully refuting whatever he’d insinuated.
‘I put her in the Green Room, miss,’ Franklin recalled her.
Conveying the visitor to the most formal receiving room, with its Wedgwood plasterwork and Adamesque ceiling, told Theo that the butler considered the caller a lady of rank and position. Not that the fact helped her narrow down the identity of her unexpected guest.
Glad she owned no gowns that weren’t modest in the extreme, and already thinking about tactics to counter any initial hostility and engage the woman’s sympathy, Theo girded herself for the fray and headed for the Green Room.
Normally, she paid little attention to the rituals of greeting, but if this were to be a subtle dance of step and counter-step, she meant to begin with every advantage. ‘You’d better announce me,’ she told Franklin, to his surprise.
Start from strength, Papa always said. So she’d play Lady of the Manor.
Walking in as the butler intoned, ‘Miss Branwell’, she sank into a curtsy. Her visitor, a woman some years her senior whose fashionable, obviously expensive gown and dashing bonnet justified the butler’s estimation of her status, rose to return it.
‘Miss Branwell, I am so delighted to meet you at last.’
Puzzled, Theo gazed down into earnest green eyes that looked vaguely familiar. The visitor was not any of the ladies she’d met after church, nor could she recall Mr Scarsdale informing her about any other family in the county with the wealth and status to dress its matriarch in such prime fashion.
‘As am I, I’m sure,’ she murmured. ‘Although you must excuse my ignorance. My butler did not give me your name.’
‘My subterfuge, I’m afraid. Shall we sit? It’s a bit of a strain on my neck, looking up.’ The woman smiled. ‘Marshall wrote me about how tall you were.’
Recognition knifed through her in a stab of horror. Those green eyes—that soft blonde hair waving out from under the stylish bonnet. No wonder they looked so familiar.
This woman had to be Lady Hazlett. Her dead fiancé’s mother.
For a moment, Theo thought she might faint, before the primal instinct for self-preservation kicked in and rushed her brain back into action.
Too late to worry about what the woman had gleaned from her initial response. Lady Hazlett might not know anything at all. Her unexpected visit could be just a pleasant coincidence.
Theo could still pull this off, if she went about it cleverly.
Belatedly putting a smile on her face while touching a hand to her heart, Theo said, ‘You’re Lady Hazlett, of course! I’m sorry, it was such a shock. I’d always hoped to meet you some day...under much happier circumstances.’ Trying to make her motions smooth instead of jerky with panic, Theo motioned her guest to a chair and took one herself.
‘By the way,’ she added belatedly, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss. I intended to send you and Lord Hazlett a note. But I was...ill for some time afterwards, and putting anything in writing would make it too...final. It took me a very long time to face the fact that Marshall was gone for ever.’
Grief shadowed Lady Hazlett’s face. ‘I miss him dreadfully still. Yet, I know that your loss was greater.’
Marshall’s mother’s words ripped open the lid on the box in which she tried to keep all the anguished memories contained. Hammered by a blow of desolation, Theo couldn’t get any words to form, all her energy concentrated on holding back the sobs.
Lady Hazlett poured a cup of tea and handed it to her. Grateful, Theo gulped down a sip, the scalding liquid shocking her back to the present.
‘Thank you,’ she said after a moment. ‘Goodness, where are my manners? I should have served you. Are you staying long in the area? Not that I’m not delighted to meet you at last, but how did you know I was at Thornfield Place?’
Annihilating Theo’s last hope of brazening through, Lady Hazlett said quietly, ‘I think you know why I’m here.’
After a moment of agonised silence, Theo said dully, ‘Audley Tremaine visited you.’
‘Yes. And now, may I see my grandson?’
Chapter Fourteen
Through the roaring in her ears, Theo dimly heard the clatter of her teacup as it dropped back into the saucer. She found herself on her feet, chest so tight she could scarcely breathe, desperately trying to decide what to do next.
She could laugh, look puzzled, tell Lady Hazlett she had no idea what she meant—though her obvious distress would
make such a denial rather unbelievable.
She could walk out, order her butler to show Lady Hazlett the door, and hope that was an end to it.
Lady Hazlett had risen, too, and looked up at Theo, an anguished appeal on her face. ‘Marshall was my only remaining child, you know. I lost two little boys as infants and one dear daughter, and then, two years ago, our eldest and heir, Edward, died after a hunting fall. When Tremaine told me Marshall had a son, I had to come. Your precious child is all I have left. Surely, you won’t be so cruel as to keep him from me!’
‘I never set out to hide him,’ Theo said softly. ‘I didn’t know if you and Lord Hazlett would want to acknowledge him, since Marshall and I never married, but I had planned to contact you. But then, when I arrived back at the army with him, and everyone assumed he was Alicia and Everly’s child whom Everly’s family refused to acknowledge, I saw a way of keeping him that would avoid shaming my father. That would avoid having Charles branded a bastard.’
‘Good heavens, girl, what were you going to do if the Marquess of Wareton changed his mind and wanted the boy back?’
‘I would have told him then about Charles’s true parentage. It’s all recorded in the register at the convent, so there would be proof. But unless and until that happened, Charles could remain legitimate in the eyes of the world, and free from the true scandal of his birth.’
‘As could you,’ Lady Hazlett said tartly.
‘As could I. For what it’s worth, I cared very little what happened to me. I couldn’t imagine ever loving anyone again as I had Marshall, so being ruined and unable to marry didn’t matter to me. I would have grieved at the loss of my father’s respect, but protecting my father from embarrassment and Charles from the stigma of bastardy were my primary motivations. Which you can believe, or not.’
‘Oh, child, I didn’t come here to harangue you! Only to reclaim a part of myself I thought lost for ever. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh.’
Furious determination boiled up from the depths of her soul. ‘You can’t have him. He’s all I have left of Marshall, too! I’ve cherished him and nurtured him since the sisters placed him in my arms after he drew his first breath. Besides, how could you claim him, without the facts of his birth coming out?’
Lady Hazlett shrugged. ‘Why could we not continue the fiction you’ve already promulgated? All my friends know how devastated I was by Marshall’s death. We can put it about that, after your return to England, I called on my son’s former fiancé, to meet her and commiserate over our common loss. While there, I met this noble orphan whose family didn’t wish to claim him. Delighted by the child, I took him up in place of the boy I’d lost. It would make as much sense as the version you’ve told thus far.’
‘He’d be much more visible then. Much more likely that the Marquess would hear about him, and perhaps change his mind about acknowledging him.’
Lady Hazlett laughed. ‘That old miser? I’ve known Wareton since my come-out, and a more selfish, clutch-fisted man would be impossible to find. If he didn’t want the boy years ago, he’ll not claim him now. If he thought at all about my taking Charles on, he’d look upon it as a fine joke that someone else was paying the bills for one of his son’s by-blows. As for the girl’s family, I understand they are of slender means, and would doubtless be happy to have the boy recognised by someone of more wealth and influence.’
‘Which,’ she continued, rounding on Theo, ‘is why you should give him up, if it’s truly his welfare that concerns you. What can you do for him, compared to what Lord Hazlett and I can offer? Yes, I know you are well funded, but you can’t claim to have the influence in society of a viscount, nor can you promote Charles’s career through a long association with other landed gentlemen in their colleges, clubs, and Parliament. Would you deny Marshall’s son all those advantages? Besides, I understand you’ve started a school for soldier’s orphans. I can’t imagine how you can run that and give proper attention to Charles’s upbringing, nor is it right that he grow up associating solely with orphans much below his station. How is he to learn to become a gentleman in an orphanage for paupers?’
It didn’t help the panic roiling through her that Lady Hazlett was echoing all the arguments Aunt Amelia had always given her about securing Charles’s future. And then it came to her.
A battle never went as you’d envisioned, Papa always said, the attack often coming from an unexpected foe or an unforeseen direction. One must fall back into a more defensible position.
And there was only one defensible position in this battle. If she wanted to keep Charles, she would have to find a stepfather for him who could offer the same advantages as his grandfather.
‘I can’t refute those arguments. I’ve agonised over them myself from time to time, but never could bring myself to consider marriage. Threatened with Charles’s loss, though, I’m prepared to act. So I propose a bargain.’
‘A bargain?’ Lady Hazlett echoed. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘We’re agreed that we both love Charles and want what is best for him. I believe that remaining with me, who has cared for him since birth, is better for him than being sent away with strangers. But I also understand your desire to claim a child who, but for unfortunate circumstances, would have been a grandson you could have loved and acknowledged openly. I propose to marry a gentleman of standing and substance, who can be the mentor, teacher and example your husband would be, while allowing Charles to remain here, with those he knows and loves. But we will also adopt your story of visiting me, being charmed by the orphan, and wanting to take him under your wing. I’ll accompany him on visits to you and Lord Hazlett several times a year, and when he’s older and knows you better, will let him come alone. It was never my aim to deny him the love of his grandparents.’
Lady Hazlett sat thoughtfully silent. ‘Who do you propose to marry?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ Theo said frankly. ‘I’ll have to consult with my aunt, Lady Coghlane, and see what’s possible. I do promise that whoever I agree to wed would be of sufficient stature and wealth to secure Charles’s future. In the meantime, you will keep our secret.’
‘Will your...potential husband know?’
‘I would never deceive a gentleman about something so important. Of course, I would not reveal his true parentage until I was certain of a suitor’s esteem, superior character, and willingness to act as Charles’s mentor.’
‘Finding such a paragon may be difficult,’ Lady Hazlett said sceptically. ‘And if I do not agree to your terms?’
‘I understand there is much fine property available in Belgium, now that the war that killed so many of its owners is finally over. And I have a good deal of ready income.’
The two women faced each other for a long moment.
‘I didn’t come here to be your enemy,’ Lady Hazlett said at last. ‘For all I knew, you’d be happy to give up the boy. But I understand only too well what it is like to lose a beloved child; I wouldn’t be the means of parting a son from his mother. If he can be raised, not in an orphanage, but with a mentor who can offer him all the advantages due his station, and if we have assurance Hazlett and I can make him a part of our lives.’
‘Then we are agreed?’
Lady Hazlett reached out her hand and Theo shook it.
‘Now that that unpleasantness is settled, may I see my grandson?’
‘Why don’t you follow me up to the nursery?’
A little lightheaded, her hands still trembling in the wake of the confrontation, Theo led Lady Hazlett from the Green Parlour up the stairs. As they got closer to the nursery, she could hear Charles singing a Portuguese folk song with Constancia, his piping voice slightly off-key.
Nausea crawled up her throat and a wave of panic crashed over her. Should she have sent Lady Hazlett away and barred the door? If she mustered her forces poorly, would she lose the pers
on who meant most to her in the world?
Don’t concede the field after the first skirmish, she steadied herself. Lady Hazlett wanted what would make Charles happy, and he wouldn’t be happy parted from his friends and the woman who had cared for him his entire life. She needn’t figure out every bit of strategy this very moment; she would have time to plan.
Plan to marry.
She swallowed another wave of nausea.
Then Charles heard her footsteps, and rushed to the nursery door. ‘Miss Theo!’ he cried, popping out. ‘Did you hear us? Constancia taught me a new song! Shall I teach it to you?’
‘In a minute, Charles. Right now, there’s a lady I’d like you to meet. She was a...a good friend of your papa’s.’
She led Lady Hazlett into the nursery, where Constancia curtsied and Charles made a fine proper bow. As he looked up, his bright green eyes fixing on a lady whose similar green eyes stared back at him, Lady Hazlett gasped.
‘He’s so like Marshall at that age,’ she whispered. ‘May I?’ At Theo’s nod, she reached out to brush a lock of golden hair off his brow.
Theo felt her heart constrict. How could she deny Marshall’s mother the chance to know and love his son?
She couldn’t. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight sword, pistol and whip, take him abroad if necessary, to have him remain with her. He was her son, too.
‘Why don’t you show Lady Hazlett your soldiers before we have some nuncheon?’
‘Then can we go to the school?’
‘Then we can go to the school.’
‘Why can’t I stay at the school with my friends? Why do I have to have a—a too door?’
With an anxious glance at Lady Hazlett, Theo said, ‘Because you’re going to grow up to be a great gentleman, like my father the colonel, and your papa. And to do that, you must go to university. The tutor will help you get ready.’
The Rake to Reveal Her Page 15
