Scandalous Brides

by Annette Blair

  He damn near laughed with her. “What a whisker.”

  “Oh, no, not at all. Telling falsehoods would set a bad example.”

  “And stealing children would not?” He winced at her gasp. “Pardon my lack of faith in your mothering,” he added by way of reparation.

  “Kitty ain’t our mother.”

  “Hush, Luke.” She ran a hand through the rag-mannered lad’s hair and brought him close for a quick hug—not the action Reed expected of a reprimand.

  Even if he managed to peel away her hood, as he itched to do, dawn was still too far away to make a glimpse worthwhile. Yet something about her, with her odd accent, and odder notions, called to him, which he liked not a whit. “Where are you bound?” he asked.

  “What difference does that make?”

  “None, make no mistake, but it will matter to someone before long. You have money, of course.”

  She hesitated a fraction too long. “Of course.”

  Reed shook his head. “Of course not!” He took her hand and slapped a guinea into it. “Feed them. If you scuttle down back alleys, you’ll get pinched, but if you stroll hand in hand, as if you haven’t a care in the world, no one will notice you.”

  They would not come looking, Chastity knew. Fewer mouths to feed would trouble no one, not in that hellhole. “Why should I take your advice, and why would you give a perfect stranger money?”

  “Perfect, no. Daft, more like, stealing children in the middle of the night. Damned if I know why I bother, or you should listen, except that you seem to care about them.”

  “While you care about nothing.”

  “I care if I get tossed into Newgate with you. Nevertheless, if you can keep from getting pinched, I think you might do right by the brats. Good-bye,” he said, “and good luck.” Reed saluted, grabbed Stealth’s reins, and walked away.

  “Come along, children,” he heard the daft woman say.

  That their footsteps kept time with his, Reed found alarming. He stopped.

  They stopped.

  Shaking his head, he turned. “Are you following me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Yes we are, Kitty.”

  “Hush, Luke. Which way are you going?” she asked. “Toward Eastgate or the Island?”

  “Which way are you going?” he countered.

  “Eastgate.”

  “Ah, well then, I am going toward The Island.” In truth—as directed in his odd, anonymous note—he was returning to see Mr. Sennett, the solicitor whose office sat diagonally across from the workhouse. “Good day to you.”

  “God go with you,” the woman said, “whoever you are.”

  Reed stopped and turned with a laugh. “Sorry, Kitten, God and I do not keep company.”

  A moment of dismay held Chastity as the stranger’s chuckle faded, and she resisted an urge to call him back. An enigma was he, that faceless man who professed to dislike children but would foster a lad rather than abandon him.

  Chastity watched until dawn broke over the horizon, and he disappeared from sight, his benevolent guinea warming her palm.

  With her four exuberant charges, she began the seven-mile trek from Gloucester to Sunnyledge in Painswick.

  As they walked, Chastity thought back to certain aspects of her previous day’s meeting with the solicitor to whom William had been directed by his anonymous note.

  “Where did you get this?” Mr. Sennett had asked after he finished reading the note.

  “It was sent to my husband, William,” she said. “And it prompted him to travel here. He wanted to settle an injustice, which I assumed amounted to claiming his heritage, except that he was taken by a wave in a channel storm and drowned on the way.”

  “Please accept my condolences, Mrs. Somers.” Mr. Sennett shook his head in dismay. “While I am the executor of the Barrington Estate, I have no idea what this note means.”

  “I had hoped it meant that Sunnyledge belonged to my husband, and now to me.”

  “Even if your husband was the Barrington heir, which I doubt, the claim would now be that of his son. Is there a son?”

  “No.” Chastity sighed. “I wanted the estate for a children’s home, Mr. Sennett.” If she had remained a nun and taken vows, she would have opened such a home at the Abbey. Now, for the sake of William’s young cousins—the children God had surely placed in her keeping—she must make it happen. She must, for after three short weeks, she loved them already.

  Chastity raised her chin. “Though an inheritance would have helped, I will open a home for orphans. Workhouses are a disgrace, you see, and no child should be raised without love. Perhaps you can direct me to someone with a philanthropic nature? The sisters who raised me care for the sick with such contributions. Or perhaps one of your clients has a house…”

  Mr. Sennett frowned as if startled. “Fancy Barrington’s estate coming to light now, and fancy you having the one argument in the kingdom could move me. According to Barrington’s will, if no heir is found, twenty years from the date of his death, which is three months from now, I am to award the estate to a charity of my choice.” The solicitor settled into his big leather chair. “Tell me about your children’s home, Mrs. Somers, every detail.”

  And so she had, then seeing his interest, she was encouraged to elaborate. “The opportunity to love, and have that love accepted and returned, is essential to all of us. My home will be special, as my children will feel wanted, they will feel a sense of belonging by working toward its upkeep. The older will care for the younger. In that way, they will become close.”

  “Family members are not always close, my dear. As a solicitor, I have seen many a family rift.”

  “Do you not think that abandoned children would be more inclined to appreciate familial relationships?”

  At his approving smile, Chastity opened her reticule. “I listed the cost per child, per week, month, and year for food and clothing. I have added a bit for dolls and— I do not know what little boys play with.”

  “Tin horns, toy drums.” He smiled. “Boys are noisy.”

  “I—” She almost said she knew—she had learned as much at finding the children in William’s aunt’s cellar. “I imagine so.”

  “Your ideals make me fear for your practicality in this matter,” Mr. Sennett said. “You have listed nothing for a caretaker, a housekeeper, nursemaids, tutors.”

  “I will do what must be done. The children will help.”

  “I haven’t seen a child yet who could run a house. Listen to me in this. If I allow you to have Sunnyledge…”

  Chastity thought her heart would leap from her chest.

  “On a trial basis,” the solicitor cautioned. “You must hire the necessary help. The caretaker left about a fortnight ago; you will hire another. As you will no doubt set the house to rights, I will pay you a housekeeper’s wages and give you a monthly allowance for upkeep and maintenance. You will need supplies, though the house should provide much in the way of necessities.

  “I cannot believe you would— Are you a philanthropist?”

  Mr. Sennett chuckled. “Hardly, my dear, but there is little likelihood that an heir to Sunnyledge will be found. I must find a worthy charity soon, and who knows, your children’s home might prove to be the very one. As a boy whose mother drowned in gin, I met the worst and best of men. A children’s home may be the way for me to repay the gentleman who took me in and raised me.”

  The solicitor sat forward. “In asylums, in workhouses, everywhere, there is greed, cruelty, evils I will not name; I doubt you know of their existence. But every once in a while, I come across a person of caring and compassion. The man who raised me was such a man. I believe that you are such a woman.”

  He held her gaze. “But you must understand what I want, nay, demand of you, and why. You must know, clearly, right from wrong, and teach those precepts to the children. Only in that way can you nurture them properly.”

  Chastity considered the workhouse, where children died daily. Sh
e did know right from wrong, and leaving Matt, Mark, Luke and Bekah in the workhouse would be wrong.

  “If I find that you have acted in other than a moral, conscientious, or lawful manner,” Mr. Sennett had continued, “you will lose Sunnyledge, and I will see that you never open a home for children, anywhere, ever.”

  Chastity’s heart had raced then; it raced now. She had acted conscientiously and morally by telling the parish she would raise the children. Taking them would have been legal, but for a corrupt church elder who had sent them to the workhouse because she would not pay his price.

  All would be well, she reassured herself now as they continued their trek. No man, save one, knew what she had done, and that man, she would never see, again.

  Chastity told herself, over and over again, that she had done the right thing, as they continued on and the landscape changed. Clustered cottages gave way to sprawling farms. Grasslands, divided by dry stone walls, became hilly uplands. Hillocks grew forested; roads narrowed.

  By the time the valley before them revealed the jaunty jumble of structures, requisite to bustling village life, dusk streaked the sky with lavender. “This is it,” Chastity said her sense of destiny so intense, a frisson of alarm stepped on its heels. “Painswick.”

  By virtue of the steep cobbled track descending into the village, the children gamboled headlong hand in hand, Luke laughing all the way.

  Amid hawkers’ songs and hot, spicy scents, Chastity admired a bonnet placed in a shop window by a barrel-bellied, frock-coated merchant. “Two pounds, three? That’s highway robbery,” she said.

  Luke shifted the bag containing their clothes and William’s medical supplies and tugged at her sleeve. “I’m gonna buy that for you someday, Kitty.” As she bent to kiss his cheek, he ruffled her hair, freeing the powder she had used to drear its chestnut hue, which made her sneeze.

  After buying food and supplies, she bought her giggling band each a ha-penny pie and a peppermint stick for less than a thruppence. They ate while they watched the village children roll misshapen hoops in the wheelwright’s dooryard.

  Afterward, Chastity sought directions to Sunnyledge.

  “Oh my, no,” said a buxom matron, all agog. “Not that God-forsaken place. It’s haunted, don’cha know. Many’s the night they’ve heard her pitiful wail, that lost soul searching for her missing babes. They died with her, some say, but their wee bodies were never buried.”

  Chastity held Bekah closer. “If you could direct us.”

  The matron shook her head. “If you insist.” She pointed. “There it is, top o’ the hill.”

  A honey-gold manse stood guarding the valley, its chimneystacks straight as parade soldiers at full attention. Mullioned windows—as tall as the first floor, and wide as they were tall—reflected the sun as bright as that off the stone itself.

  “It’s a bloomin’ castle,” Matt said.

  “Magic,” whispered Luke.

  Mark snorted. “Where our dreams will come true.”

  “Splendid,” Chastity said, “as if it’s made of gold.”

  “That’s the sun on the stone—Painswick stone. The old earl’s dead. That’s his house. You kin?”

  “If you could tell me how to get there.”

  “Go left at the row of yews and take the hill straight up. Been abandoned for years. Except for a daft caretaker, now and again, most won’t go near the place.”

  Chastity gave her thanks and they went on their way, but the villager followed. “It’s farther than you think. You got a key? Can’t get in, if you don’t have a key.”

  Chastity kept walking.

  “You’re braver than I would be,” the tenacious woman called from a distance a moment later.

  Luke blew his shepherd’s horn that Chastity had saved for him. WARRONNK!

  Mr. Sennett was right. Boys were noisy. She would never be able to thank the solicitor for giving her the use of Sunnyledge—though if he ever found out that she rescued the children after he set down his rules… The possible consequences of her actions made Chastity shudder, even as Rebekah began to wail.

  “How old is Bekah?” Chastity asked.

  “Three ’cept we dunno when we’re gonna be the next number,” Luke said.

  “Don’t mind that noise she makes,” Matt said. “She does that lots. Wish she would talk, though.”

  “She’s dumb.”

  “That will be enough, Mark,” Chastity said, coming to a faltering stop. Sunnyledge may have looked warm and inviting from the vale, but up close, after dark, it looked decidedly bleak, forsaken, and forbidding.

  The key was useless. A mere nudge opened the door, the wind taking it the rest of the way. With the children attached to her skirts, Chastity stepped inside, stifling a nervous urge to giggle. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  WARRONNNK!

  Chastity shrieked and fell against the door, her hand to her fast-pumping heart. “That will be enough horn-blowing for now, Luke. Anyone here has expired from fright by now.”

  Chastity tried to lock the door, but the keyhole turned with the key, so she pushed a chair against it, cutting off the last sliver of moonlight. “Bother, I am such an idiot. I do not even have a candle.”

  “I can see in the dark,” Matt said. “We hid in Aunt Anna’s cellar so long after she died, we never saw the sun.”

  “Do you think you can find the kitchen?”

  “I’m good at finding things. Be right back.”

  Chastity sat on the floor, Bekah, Mark, and Luke, cozy and warm, nesting in her black wool skirts. For once, she was glad William had not seen fit to replace her religious habits during their short marriage. She had, however, removed all symbols of her religious life, so that her gowns looked like proper widow’s weeds.

  “Found the kitchen, Kitty. And candles,” Matt called.

  A short while later, the children ate some of the bread and cheese she’d bought, as exhaustion overtook them, and a sense of destiny, profound and peaceful, enveloped Chastity.

  Settled for the night with Zeke, their lame rabbit, on a mattress plumped with Chastity’s aprons and nightshifts, one old habit and one Sunday best, Luke said they hadn’t been so comfy since Mum left.

  “I was worried,” Matt said with a yawn, “that you wouldn’t come for us at the workhouse, like you promised.”

  Mark scoffed and rolled to his side, presenting his rigid back. “We would never have gone to that horrid old place, if you hadn’t turned us in.”

  If she failed to breach that barrier Mark kept erected around his heart, Chastity worried that it would become as hard as the stone in these Cotswold Hills.

  How could he be so angry, yet cuddle his baby sister so lovingly? Perhaps this child, who professed to need no one, needed her even more than his brothers and sister did. One thing was certain: Mark would never forgive her for trying to gain their custody through the proper channels first.

  After she buried William, Chastity had gone on to Aunt Anna’s without him. There, she found that his aunt had died, leaving his young cousins, abandoned at her passing, hiding in her cellar to keep from getting separated or going to the workhouse.

  Chastity had marched them to the vicar to say she would take them. The vicar passed her to the curate, the curate to the beadle.

  Chastity shuddered remembering the beadle’s lustful suggestion as to how she could purchase them. Since she refused to pay his price, however, the beadle had relegated the children to the parish workhouse with nary a blink.

  So much for following the rules, Chastity thought, unable to forget Mr. Sennett’s words, “If I find that you have acted in other than a moral, conscientious or lawful manner, you will lose Sunnyledge, and I will see that you never open a refuge for children anywhere, ever.”

  Chastity thought of the workhouse, where children younger than hers, died. She remembered the baby girl born the week she worked there trying to get hers back, how much she’d wanted to take the babe as well. She thought of Matt’s protectiveness, Ma
rk’s anger, Luke’s trust, and Bekah’s cough…

  In taking them, she had acted conscientiously and morally. Except for the beadle’s lust, her guardianship would be lawful as well.

  Mr. Sennett had told her that he tried to bring the conditions of asylums and workhouses to the notice of people who could improve them, but their lack of response angered him.

  “Do you never get so incensed,” Chastity had dared to ask, knowing she planned to rescue William’s cousins the next day, “that you wish to take matters into your own hands?”

  “We cannot give in to such,” he said. “To have lasting effect, reform must be undertaken in a lawful, orderly manner. There is never an excuse to breach rules.”

  Chastity sighed. Having been an orphan, the solicitor lauded her wish to open a home where children without parents would be loved. She only hoped that he would come to understand that taking these few had been necessary.

  She bent to them now—warm, safe, unafraid, bellies full—covered a shoulder, stroked a brow, and prayed, for their sakes, that all would be well.

  Then she sat to take down her hair, as she examined the kitchen, aglow from a fire in the old stone hearth.

  Sunnyledge—a haven—someday perhaps, a home.

  The hell of it was, Reed Gilbride thought, rubbing the back of his neck, looking up at Sunnyledge, the house was so damned big, he could search for years and never find the truth of his birth. As for secrets, the place fairly reeked of them.

  Even the cryptic note he had received added to Sunnyledge’s aura of mystery—the note that roused in him an anger, tempered oddly by hope. Such anger, he usually reserved for the people who gave him life and threw him away. And the hope? Well, that just made him madder, until Sennett killed expectation by saying that the note must be a hoax. The solicitor said that he had seen more than one, worded exactly the same way. He also suggested that a Barrington by-blow had no claim here.

  Still, Reed could not give up. As a child, he would have settled for knowing who his parents might have been. Now he bloody well wanted to know why he had not been good enough for them to keep. Who gave away a child at its birth to the Gilbrides, of all people?