Henry slumped back against the pillows. “Oh. Damn.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said. “I don’t want to pass, not for always.”
He took her hand and kissed her palm, desperately. “But you can’t go. You’re my wife. You’re carrying my child.”
“I know. But I didn’t want this.”
“Well, neither did I! But it’s what we have now, and we might as well learn to live with it. It’s not like we have a choice in the matter.” Abruptly he dropped her hand and rolled onto his side with his back to her. “You need to rest.”
They’d never slept with their backs to each other before. Thérèse sighed, blew out the candle and curled up on her side. She wanted to argue, but she doubted it would help.
Chapter Twenty-One
Henry awoke full of remorse. Why had he picked a quarrel with Thérèse when he ought to be soothing her, consoling her, convincing her that she was eminently suited to be his baroness?
He rolled over, put his arm around her and nuzzled the back of her neck. She made a sleepy, contented noise and snuggled in closer to him.
“Thérèse?” he murmured.
“Mmm?”
“I’m sorry about last night.”
She sighed and stiffened, but didn’t pull away. “It’s all right. I forgot that this is just as hard for you.”
“We’ll manage somehow. We’ve survived far worse, after all.”
That drew a weary chuckle, and she relaxed against him again.
“Today I think I’ll go for that special license. And I was thinking—the family doesn’t need to know. The beauty of a special license is you can marry anywhere, at any time, as long as you have a Church of England clergyman and two witnesses. We can marry at Colonel Dryhurst’s house, with him and the Camerons for witnesses.” Matters were fraught enough between his old family and his new one that he didn’t particularly feel like involving Mama or Edward in this problem.
Thérèse twisted to face him. “Does it have to be tomorrow?” she asked. “I don’t want to be married in rags, and the modiste should have a suitable dress ready by next week.”
“Your dresses aren’t rags.” They were simple gowns she’d purchased from a soldier’s wife in Canada, but she’d altered them to fit perfectly. And she always looked beautiful and elegant to him. “Besides, this will be a completely private ceremony. It isn’t as though I’m asking you to stand up in St. George’s, Hanover Square in brown wool.” She was making excuses, and it made him nervous. Surely she wouldn’t run away from him, after all they shared, especially not now that she was pregnant. But Mama had all unknowingly made her feel so dreadfully unwelcome.
“But this will be such a beautiful dress,” she said in an uncharacteristically wheedling tone. “White silk covered with black lace. I know it’s vanity, but since I have a second chance to have my wedding, I’d like to do it wearing something lovely, and made just for me.”
Henry relaxed. She’d been brought up to be a modiste herself. While she might be practical and not at all vain, it was only natural that she loved beautiful dresses and wanted to be married in one. He chuckled. “I suppose you’ll want me to see a tailor, too.”
“By all means,” she said. “Lord Farlow cannot continue to go about in his little brother’s coats.”
All would be well. She would marry him, after all. “Well, then. I’ll see about the license today—it’s good for a few weeks, I think—and I’ll visit a tailor. We’ll marry once your dress is ready, and everything will be safe. That’s good enough for me.”
* * *
Henry found his days completely consumed by the accumulated business of returning to England after an absence of six years—for the last nine months of which he had been presumed dead—and assuming his new rank. He met again with his banker, spent hours closeted with the family solicitor and had one last meeting with his regimental agent, who’d found a subaltern eager to purchase his commission.
He visited the tailor Charles had always used and ordered the beginnings of a wardrobe suitable for civilian life. After questioning his banker closely on the subject, he found a shipbuilder who was going into steamboats and spent a few hours discussing the possibility of investing once his affairs were thoroughly in order. And, just four days before they were scheduled to depart for the north, Colonel Dryhurst brought a young man from the 95th, mentioning that Elijah Cameron had told him Lord Farlow was looking for a reliable, clever man who might serve as his private secretary, and Michael Tipton was in need of just such work.
Tipton had lost a leg at Waterloo, and he was of a class of officer more common—in both senses of the word—than aristocratic younger sons like Henry. He’d been born into the large family of a vicar who’d given his children a good education but hadn’t had the means to launch them all into the world. Now that the army was closed to him, he needed a new way to support himself. Henry, taking his measure and deciding to trust him, confided his struggles with the written word. Tipton was amazed, but he didn’t seem inclined to judge him for it, and he readily agreed to keep the secret.
Each evening Henry dined with the family and tried to judge how Thérèse and Jeannette were faring. Jeannette, as far as he could tell, was adjusting well, with the boundless energy and flexibility of youth. Despite the four-year disparity in their ages, she and Felicity were as thick as thieves. Felicity, he judged, enjoyed playing wise mentor to the younger girl. As the last of four children, she hadn’t had the chance to be the expert before, so a thirteen-year-old girl new to England made a delightful companion. And as for Jeannette, she had her own store of experiences to offer. Felicity might know this island, but Jeannette had ridden and walked across a continent and sailed over the ocean. Their differences in race and rank didn’t seem to impact their budding friendship, and they made a striking pair as they bent their dark and blonde heads over the same book or strolled together in the park.
He wished he thought Thérèse was as happy. He knew pregnancy was making her exhausted, ill and out of sorts and felt guiltily responsible for her condition. Though when he tried to apologize, she only laughed and said she’d participated in the activities that had engendered this condition, too. It wasn’t his fault that the burden of peopling the world fell more heavily upon women.
But he couldn’t shake the impression that she was deeply unhappy. He caught her looking wistful when Jeannette was describing the settlements they’d seen in Canada to Felicity, and when he came upon her alone she was often sitting at a window, staring out at the London street with an empty expression in her beautiful eyes. Still, she claimed nothing was amiss—or at least nothing more than what he was already aware of. Yes, they would still marry before they left, and, yes, she loved him very much.
It would be easier, he hoped, once they were at home in the Lakes. There Mama would return to the dower cottage she had retired to upon Charles’s marriage, and while they would still see her almost every day, Thérèse would be the undisputed mistress of Farlow Hall. Surely that would help her feel like a resident instead of a guest. Edward, too, would have his own home at the vicarage.
Yes, it would be a blessing to escape all the tensions of being crowded into close proximity with a brother who on some level must resent Henry for living and a mother who’d however inadvertently exposed her bigotry and contempt for his wife’s ancestry.
He had his own quarrels with Mama, too. She’d barely been civil to Tipton when Henry introduced him to the family. “You are no longer in the army, Henry,” she’d said once Tipton had gone into the study to begin reviewing the accumulated correspondence and ledgers there. “I wish you’d hired Deschamps as I asked. I’d all but promised him the position.”
Henry sighed. Had Mama managed Charles in this way? Somehow he doubted it. “And I will be glad to recommend him to a similar post. I know you wish to hel
p émigrés, but I wish to help soldiers. So many have been turned out of work with injuries or simply with the peace. Now that I have the power to employ some few of them, I mean to do so. Tipton is perfect for my situation in a way your Deschamps could not have been. His father was tutor to Samuel Rodenhurst, the MP, and the families are closely acquainted. So he knows the ways of Parliament and has valuable connections for me.”
“Why do you persist in this determination to set yourself up as a politician like Charles and your father?”
As Mama’s voice rose, Thérèse’s head flew up where she’d been seated in a corner of the parlor quietly altering a dress for Jeannette. She met Henry’s eyes but did not speak.
“I see it as my duty to live out the role to the best of my abilities,” he said, “even if they are less than my predecessor’s were. Tipton will help me.”
“I’m advising you for your own good, my son. I do not wish you to embarrass yourself or your family.”
Henry bit his lip, searching for a response, but Thérèse was too quick for him. “I beg your pardon, madame, but I don’t know where you acquired the mistaken impression that your own son is a fool! So he doesn’t read well. That might be a grave handicap if he meant to set up as a tutor or an author or a poet, but I don’t see a single duty of a baron he can’t fulfill.”
“You’ve been in the country less than a fortnight, my dear,” Mama said with a patronizing smile.
“But Louisiana is not the wilderness and New Orleans is not some savage encampment,” Thérèse said, her eyes flashing. “My father had a plantation and dealt with some of the great men in town—”
Henry hid a smile. He supposed the Lafitte pirates were great in some senses of the word.
“—and I’m sure Henry would’ve done a far better job managing his lands and affairs even though Father could read perfectly well, because he is thoughtful and honorable and practical, which my father never was! As for the rest, as long has he has trusted people to read and write for him, and others he trusts to check their work, I don’t see why it’s such a great problem. You cannot convince me your husband and your elder son never relied on such men.”
“I suppose...”
“Trust your son. I do.”
Henry met Thérèse’s bright, dark eyes. She smiled at him with such pride and love he felt his heart would burst with it. He’d never loved her more, and with her at his side he believed he could do anything.
* * *
Thérèse awoke late the next morning knowing she couldn’t delay her choice much longer. Henry had gone off shortly after dawn to see about buying a horse and to visit his tailor for the last time, leaving her to sleep yet a little longer. Her new dresses were to be delivered that day, and tomorrow afternoon Henry had arranged for a curate of his acquaintance to marry them quietly in Colonel Dryhurst’s parlor. The Camerons had returned to their inn, but the young secretary Tipton would provide their second witness.
If she chose to go through with it. Staying here meant passing, living a lie, betraying herself. But leaving meant betraying Henry. How could she do either?
Maybe a walk would clear her head, help her make the choice. She couldn’t go about alone here, not even in the square’s private park, but she’d summon Jeannette—no, better, she’d summon a housemaid or a footman, someone who’d trail behind her for propriety’s sake but not trouble her with conversation.
Hurriedly she dressed in her old brown dress and made her way downstairs. She decided to stop in the dining room for a roll and coffee, since she’d found her nausea was more tolerable if she obeyed Jeannette’s dictate to eat a little food at every opportunity she was given.
On her way there, she heard voices coming from the parlor. She meant to slip quietly past—she had no desire to speak with any of the family just then—but she stopped, arrested, at the sound of her brother-in-law’s voice raised in frustration.
“Mama, I cannot see how I can go home and take up parish duties again as if nothing happened! I cannot bear it.”
Thérèse hissed in a quick breath and busied herself adjusting a flower arrangement that sat on a table near the door, lest any of the servants come in and think young Lady Farlow was listening to gossip—even if it was perfectly true. It was dreadful for Edward that Henry’s reappearance had done him out of an inheritance he’d had two months to believe his own, but whenever she or Henry tried to commiserate with him, he brushed them off angrily. Did they think he wished Henry dead? Of course not. Then he wished they’d leave him alone. And so, provisionally, they had. Thérèse knew she was two years younger than Edward, but somehow he seemed still a boy, petulant and indecisive.
“But what else could you do?” Lady Farlow asked.
They were speaking French, as was the family custom, which certainly allowed them more privacy before servants than most English families could boast of. Thérèse reflected that she would’ve been far more badly off had she been an American girl recently moved to New Orleans and not Louisiana-born. At least she could understand the Farlows.
“Anything,” Edward said. “Buy a commission. Read law. Go to Paris with Cousin Julien.”
All those sounded like excellent notions to Thérèse. It wasn’t fair to Edward to ask him to go on as if nothing had happened.
“But the family living has always gone to a Farlow son.”
“What is it to you, Mama? You aren’t a Farlow born.”
“No, but when I married your father I became part of the family. It isn’t as though I can do anything to uphold the Langevin traditions now,” she added with a twist of bitterness to her voice.
Thérèse blinked. That shed new light on her mother-in-law’s obsession with family and seeing things properly done. She too had been torn from a home she could never return to.
“Now that your great-uncle has retired,” Lady Farlow continued, “the parish belongs to you. There is no one else.”
“Give it to someone who isn’t a Farlow,” Edward said testily. “God knows there are more men seeking a parish than there are livings to go around. Then Henry’s second son can have it in twenty-five or thirty years. Assuming, of course, the boy can read.”
Thérèse tightened her hand into a fist and resisted the urge to storm into the parlor and defend her husband. When else could she learn what the family really thought of them?
“Now, Edward...”
“You’re thinking it, too,” Edward said. “Don’t mistake me, I’m glad Henry didn’t die, but I wish I’d been born second and him third.”
“So I have often wished,” Lady Farlow said gently, “but it cannot be.”
Thérèse slowly released the tension in her hand, not because she was any less angry, but because she was afraid she’d cut her palms with her own fingernails. How dare Lady Farlow?
Edward’s voice rose, continuing his rant, evidently secure in the thought that none of the servants could understand his fluent French. “To have a Lord Farlow who cannot even read, and one who brought those two—those two creatures into the family. Bringing up a slave-born Negro girl like a daughter!”
“Yes, I shudder to think what that child is teaching my daughter, but Henry is so stubborn about her. We’ll simply have to marry Felicity off as soon as we can to get her away from her influence.”
Thérèse bit her lip. It was that or scream.
“And his wife is little better,” Edward added. “A common American nobody for a wife. And she’s as brown as a nut herself. Surely most Spanish ladies aren’t that dark.”
“Yes, she is quite brown,” Lady Farlow said with an audible sigh. “Part Indian, if you please! But with Henry so fair I’m certain it will even out in their children. As for the rest, what’s done is done. He married her, so we must make the best of it. She seems clever, and she has no trouble with her letters, so perhaps the children will be
born with Henry’s complexion and her brains. I’ll take her in hand and train her how to act the lady. She’s pretty enough, you must allow. We’ll simply keep her out of the sun, lest anyone suspect her little sister wasn’t the only one born a slave.”
“So you wonder, too...”
“Not really. I don’t doubt she’s as Spanish as she claims. But one does have certain suspicions of a Creole one knows nothing about, unless they happen to be light-haired and light-eyed. And I do hope Henry will moderate his views on slavery. Abolition is all very well, and I certainly would not wish any of my family to own slaves—if nothing else, one would always worry about them being murdered in their beds as on Saint-Domingue. But he’s turning into a second Wilberforce or Granville Sharp, and I hate to see a Farlow make himself so conspicuous in such a cause.”
“It’s embarrassing,” Edward agreed. “Papa and Charles understood moderation.”
“If nothing else,” Lady Farlow said, “I hope he can be brought to see the folly of bringing up a girl as black as Jeannette to be anything other than a servant.”
Thérèse took a careful step backward, trembling lest the floor creak and betray her presence. She’d heard enough. She slipped into the dining room and methodically ate a roll, and because she hadn’t felt especially sick this morning forced down a slice of cold roast beef. She needed all her strength.
By the time she’d finished, she heard laughing girls’ voices in the entry hall—Jeannette and Felicity returning from their morning walk. Thérèse pasted on her best smile and stepped out to meet them. “May I borrow my sister for a little while?” she asked.
“Of course.” Felicity smiled at her. “Jeannette, we can try chess again when you’re done.”
“You just like chess because you can’t beat me at cards,” Jeannette replied. With that the friends squeezed each other’s arms, and Felicity disappeared into the parlor.
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