by Louise Allen
* * *
‘You are thinking,’ Caroline said much later, as she lay with Gabriel watching the light fade out of the sky. ‘I can hear the wheels turning.’
‘So are you. A guinea for them?’
‘You may have them for free. I was wondering what you wanted to do with Edenvale.’
‘Turn it into a home,’ Gabriel said without hesitation. ‘I won’t let my life be ruled by memories and secrets any more and I certainly won’t allow my father’s ghost to drive me out of what should be our family home. And we’ll have my brothers and yours to stay, often, and Alex, Cris and Grant and their children and make so much noise that not a single spectre dare linger.’
‘I do like the idea of ghosts and ghouls fleeing gibbering in the face of a house full of happiness. And what was on your mind?’
‘What you wanted to do about your father. Louis wants to sue the boots off him, I favour leaving him to stew in his own juice.’
‘I will write to Lucas. I do not want to be estranged from him and I suspect if he and Anthony encourage my father to start a new building project he will soon retreat from reality into that. And perhaps one day he will be...stable enough to want to see his grandchild.’
‘So we have put the world to rights between us.’ Gabriel stretched, languorous as a big cat.
‘We have put our corner of it to rights at least,’ Caroline leant over to kiss his smiling lips.
‘Our new world,’ her husband said. ‘And it will take us a lifetime to explore it, my love. Beginning now.’
Epilogue
Half Moon Street, London—February 14th, 1821
‘We are definitely going to have to move house. We cannot even hold a christening party without it resembling the crush at a royal Drawing Room and Alex’s valet is becoming fretful over the dressing room becoming a nursery.’
Tess sank down on the end of the sofa in the window alcove, the only available seat left in the drawing room, and tucked Dominic Alexander Hugh Tempest and all his yards of christening robe snuggly into the crook of her arm.
‘Perhaps this fashion for huge skirts and ridiculous puffed sleeves will subside.’ Kate, the Countess of Allundale, squashed her own skirts up to make more room. ‘Although that will only help with parties, not bedchambers. I worry that our new house in Brook Street isn’t big enough.’ She laid one hand over the spot where a myriad of heaped ruffles concealed the third of the Rivers’ brood, due to make an appearance in July. ‘Grant has become so enthusiastic over suffrage reform that he keeps throwing political receptions and dinners so the downstairs guest bedchamber must be sacrificed to extend the drawing room.’
‘You don’t mind London life and parties any more? No, don’t move, I’ll just slide round and prop myself up on the back of the sofa which is inelegant, but does wonders for my back.’ Caroline sighed with relief. ‘Don’t say anything, but I have just taken off my slippers.’
‘What a good idea,’ Kate said. There was some surreptitious rustling and two more sighs. ‘How we suffer for fashion. And parties. But, no, I enjoy them now. I’ve even become used to being a countess. Almost. I still keep thinking people are going to point at me and cry “Imposter”, but it hasn’t happened yet. I can hardly believe how much my life has changed. Do you know, I even found myself arguing with the Prime Minister about married women’s property rights the other evening?’
‘Goodness. What did he say?’ Tamsyn arrived, set a footstool in front of the sofa and sank down in a cloud of amber silk and blonde gauze, careless of what anyone might think of a marchioness virtually sitting on the floor.
‘He huffed and puffed and called me dear lady and escaped as soon as he could, but I’ll corner him yet. We’ve all taken our slippers off,’ she added in a whisper to Tamsyn who promptly did the same.
‘My ankles are swelling,’ she grumbled. ‘No one tells you these things.’
‘You— You’re not expecting, too?’ Caroline managed to keep her voice down to a muted shriek.
‘Shh! Yes, but I haven’t told Cris yet. I saw how Alex fussed and Gabriel and Grant seem almost as bad. But today is St Valentine’s Day, so I have ordered a special supper and I am going to tell him then.’
‘You are looking smug,’ Kate observed. ‘I assume a new negligée is to hand?’
‘Definitely. Sea-green silk. That should keep his mind off fussing.’
‘So the four Lords of Disgrace are going to be the proud and respectable fathers of four babies within a year,’ Tess mused. ‘Just think, if one of you has a boy and two have girls, perhaps in twenty years’ time we could be sitting down and planning two weddings.’
‘Tess, you are a hopeless romantic,’ Caroline teased. ‘But what a wonderful thought. We all had such a rocky path to finding our true love and the men were there for each other...’
‘Here they are.’ Tamsyn waved to Cris, who stood with his friends, the four of them making the room seem crowded with masculine energy.
‘And so beautiful, all of them,’ Kate said with a sigh as their husbands crossed the room to them. ‘And not looking in the slightest bit respectable, thank goodness.’
‘What are up to, my ladies?’ Cris asked, stooping to kiss his wife.
‘We were just saying how handsome you all were.’ Kate batted her eyelashes at Grant as he stretched out a hand to her.
‘And what else?’ Alex demanded. ‘You are scheming, I can tell. I’ve come to claim my son for five minutes,’ he added as he took the sleeping baby from Tess.
‘Yes, we are,’ Caroline agreed. ‘But you can all relax. You will not need to worry for, oh...twenty years at least.’
Gabriel looked from his wife to his friends. ‘Gentlemen, I suggest we retreat to the study and take young Dominic with us. I have no idea what our wives are up to, but he is going to need all the advice we can give him if he is to end up as happy as we are.’
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, make sure you don’t miss
the other three books in Louise Allen’s
LORDS OF DISGRACE quartet:
HIS HOUSEKEEPER’S CHRISTMAS WISH
HIS CHRISTMAS COUNTESS
THE MANY SINS OF CRIS DE FEAUX
Keep reading for an excerpt from UNBUTTONING THE INNOCENT MISS by Bronwyn Scott.
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Unbuttoning the Innocent Miss
by Bronwyn Scott
Chapter One
London—May 1821
It all started with two words. ‘I’m pregnant.’ The phrase jerked Claire rudely out of her own admittedly rather self-centred thoughts and thrust her into the horrifying present of someone else’s reality. Had Beatrice truly said she was pregnant? Claire stared at her friend in abject confusion as the words settled. Pregnant, as in going to have a baby. Enceinte. Her brain switched to its fail-safe coping mechanism, French. In a crisis, everything always sounded better in French.
Then the shock came, waves of it. Having a baby implied certain other things had taken place prior unless one was the Virgin Mary. Beatrice, one of her best friends since childhood, whom she had played with as a girl, whom she’d come out with, whom she’d not thought kept any secrets from her, had taken a lover and hadn’t told her. Hadn’t told any of them if the looks on the faces of Evie and May were anything to go on. They looked much like she suspected her face did—all pale emotion and bewilderment, while their brains picked through all responses possible for such a situation.
All the while Bea sat still, equally pale, waiting for an answer, watching each of them expectantly and patiently while their emotions rolled. This was not at all what Claire had been anticipating today. Today’s meeting in the tiny attic garret of Evie Milham’s town house was supposed to be like all the other meetings: secret and commiserative. They would bemoan the lack of male attention and/or intelligence, eat some cake and go home, only to meet the following week and do it all over again. It was a comforting ritual they’d sustained over the last three years since they’d come out, when hopes had been, if not high, certainly higher than they’d become after three years on the marriage mart and no takers.
Someone had to say something. Even May with her ever-ready comments couldn’t seem to mount an adequate response. For the first time, Claire noticed how tightly Beatrice’s hands were clenched in her lap, two hard, pale fists while she waited for their...verdict.
Suddenly Claire understood. Beatrice was waiting for them to pass judgement on her, against her, no doubt wondering right now which of her friends would move away first. They wouldn’t be the first to know. Beatrice had already been through this with her family. Apparently, she thought she knew what to expect: rejection of the very worst sort. Exile. The social death of anonymity. It certainly made Claire’s own problems pale by comparison. She’d been selfishly absorbed in her own concerns while Beatrice grappled with something much larger. Beatrice shouldn’t have to do it alone.
She would help, if only she knew how. She needed information and that gave her a voice again. The questions came out in a rush. ‘How? When? More importantly, who?’
Beatrice swallowed hard, the questions no doubt discomforting, but it was too late to take them back. Quiet Evie shot her a quelling look in scolding and leaned forward to take Beatrice’s hand. ‘Bea, you don’t have to tell us.’
Bea shook her dark head. ‘Yes, I do. You have a right to know. I owe you all this much. You will have decisions to make.’ She looked at each of them in turn and drew a fortifying breath. Claire’s heart broke for her friend. She wanted to tell Bea it would be all right, but she couldn’t. Things might never be ‘all right’ for Beatrice Penrose again.
Beatrice began to speak. ‘Over the winter, I became acquainted with the friend of a neighbour who had come for an extended visit. In hindsight, the term “repairing lease” might be more appropriate. There were likely “reasons” he was in the countryside of Sussex instead of London or somewhere far more interesting.
‘I did not look past his handsome face, his manners and the acceptance he’d been afforded by local gentry because of those attributes. Others easily accepted him without question and I did, too.’ Beatrice’s fingers pleated her skirt absently. ‘The country in winter is as dull as the weather and he was exciting, new. No one had ever been interested in me the way he was.’
Claire nodded in sympathy. She felt guilty for being absent. Her family had spent the holidays in the Lake District. She’d not been there to steer Beatrice away from danger. Neither had May, whose family had stayed in town, nor Evie, who had gone to one of her sisters’. Beatrice had been entirely on her own. Alone and lonely.
Claire had plenty of experience, they all did, when it came to being overlooked by gentlemen of society for one reason or another; She was too smart with her acumen for languages when most gentlemen could barely master one; Evie was too discreet as to become anonymous and May was just too well informed, too sharp tongued. May had a talent for eavesdropping. She knew everything about everyone and that made her positively frightening to men who preferred to hide their secrets.
‘He and I would take long walks and discuss everything: plant life, wildlife, the latest findings from the Royal Academy of Sciences. He listened to my opinions.’ Beatrice’s gaze grew misty with remembrance. Claire heard the wistfulness there even now with ruin facing Beatrice and it surprised her, knowing the perfidy this lover was capable of. Then she saw the dilemma in Beatrice’s eyes. Bea wanted to hate him but she couldn’t, didn’t. It was not a dilemma Claire could understand. The cad had left her pregnant. Ruined her. Destroyed her, in fact, and Beatrice could not bring herself to hate him, not quite, not yet.
‘Listening turned out to be far more seductive than I could ever have imagined, especially when that listening was accompanied by a pair of grey eyes the colour of a winter storm. I was convinced he valued me in the most important of ways.’
Claire put a hand over her mouth and suppressed a sad sigh. In return for that false respect, Beatrice had given him the most important thing she possessed: she’d trusted him with her reputation. To her detriment, it turned out.
Beatrice looked down at her lap, a wry half-smile on her mouth, her tone part self-reassurance, part self-deprecation. ‘The awful thing is, I tell myself surely it wasn’t all illusion. Surely he found me interesting to some extent. Even now, with disaster staring me hard in the face, I’m not convinced he’d felt nothing for me. Surely one can’t fake that depth of emotion. I guess I’ll never know.’ Instinctively, her hand moved to the flat of her stomach.
Claire’s eyes caught the motion. ‘How far gone are you, Bea?’
‘Eight weeks.’ Two months. Long enough to be sure. Long enough for the announcement not to be a mistake. Then again, Claire had never known Bea to make mistakes. Unlike her, Bea was always certain, always sure of her direction.
‘And the father? How far gone is he?’ May asked, characteristically honing in on the heart of the issue. Clare exchanged a nervous look with Evie. May might have gone too far. But May would not be deterred. ‘Well, we have to know,’ she said resolutely. ‘Will you be marrying him?’
Bea gave a pretty shrug. ‘The question is hypothetical only. Perhaps I would, if he was here, if our affaire hadn’t been a pretence to him.’
Claire’s heart swelled with admiration for her brave friend. Even with a baby on the way, Beatrice would not stoop to marry a man if it had all been a game and nothing more. As always, Beatrice’s ethical compass faced true north and would not be compromised. It was an enviable commodity, one that Claire had once possessed herself: to be herself even in the face of great social odds, but somewhere in the last three years she’d lost it, ironically perhaps in an attempt to protect it. It was hard to say when it had started to slide. Maybe it had begun with Rufus Sheriden and refusing his proposal on the principle that she was a unique individual and as such deserved his unique regard, or perhaps it had been the Cecilia Northam incident. It had certainly been a slippery slope since then. She was no longer sure who she was, or what she was capable of.
May’s cheeks were in high colour, her quick temper ri
sing on behalf of their friend. ‘The gall of the man to leave you pregnant and alone, unwilling to do right by you!’
Beatrice shook her head, her tone a soft contrast to May’s outrage. ‘He doesn’t know, May. He left before...well, before I knew. Please do not despise him out of hand.’ She took in the whole group with her gaze, perhaps guessing the direction of their thoughts. It was easy to vilify the absent father. ‘It was the most delicious, exquisite week of my life. He brought me flowers, he smiled at me in a way that wiped away all reason. He did not seduce me, I went willingly into this folly. We had a winter of long walks in the cold and a week of illicit loving in abandoned cottages and warm haylofts. He told me he had business in a town a day’s ride away. He didn’t come back.’ But he would always be among them. With a baby on the way, he’d never truly leave them. Ever.
‘We have some time. That is good,’ Evie said encouragingly, still holding Bea’s hand. Thank goodness for Evie, always willing to put a cheerful outlook on things. ‘It will be a Christmas baby. You shouldn’t be showing until the very end of the Season. Fashions are fuller this year. I can start altering gowns right away.’ Evie was at her best when she had a needle in her hand and fabric to transform. But her words spoke for them all. They would not desert their friend. Claire glanced around the circle. They were all smiling at Beatrice now; smiling their support, their approval.
Tears prickled obviously in Beatrice’s eyes. She swiped helplessly at them. ‘Dash it all! I wasn’t going to cry. All I’ve done this past week is sob. Thank you, thank you, all of you. I didn’t expect this.’
‘What did you expect?’ Claire couldn’t keep the sense of betrayal out of her voice. ‘Did you think we’d desert you at the first sign of trouble? After all we’ve been through, certainly you know we’re made of sterner stuff.’
