by Julia Ross
His eyes derisive, the earl stalked back to his chair, where he sat down, legs crossed, and tossed back more wine.
“A charming scene,” he said. “Solomon wasn’t nearly inventive enough!”
Betsy Davy picked up the child and whispered soothingly to him. Berry looked round-eyed around the room, then he smiled and pointed at Sarah.
“Lion!”
The nurse laughed nervously and set him down. The child toddled forward a few steps, then ran straight up to Sarah to grasp hold of her skirts.
“Lion!”
Sarah glanced up at Guy and bit her lip, but the little boy had already turned toward Rachel. He held up both chubby arms and an angelic smile lit up his face.
“Mama! Mama skween! Song! Song! Berry up!”
Meeting his smile with her own, Rachel lifted the toddler onto her lap. As if oblivious to anyone else, she began singing softly in her baby’s ear. His golden curls were exactly the same shade as her own.
Lady Moorefield wavered to her feet, then collapsed back to her chair. “It’s true!” she wailed. “It’s true! I cannot have children of my own. I cannot!” Her face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. “But my maid discovered that Croft’s half brother was married to a midwife—and in a port city, too, where babies often die in the poorhouse. Why shouldn’t I save one of them? So I paid Croft to move here from Barristow Manor. I paid everyone to keep silent—”
The earl was towering over his wife, his face thunderous. “You’ve said quite enough, ma’am!”
“No!” The countess flinched, but she pointed a shaking finger at Berry. “It’s too late for that, sir! Look at them!”
Guy caught Sarah’s gaze and gestured with a quick tilt of his head. She reined in her own emotions, nodded, and spoke quietly in Rachel’s ear.
“Go! Take Berry outside. He doesn’t need to hear any more of this.”
Rachel looked up, her face pale but composed. Still crooning in her baby’s ear, she carried him from the room. The nurse gazed after them, but she bit her lip and stayed.
Lady Moorefield stared up at her husband with a desperate defiance, her eyes swimming with tears. “No, they must understand, sir! If they understand, they’ll see that we’ve been in the right all along, and they’ll leave the boy with us.”
For a moment Sarah thought the earl might strike his wife. Instead, he stalked away and stood in rigid silence, while the countess continued.
“That child’s had everything of the best, Mr. Devoran. Croft kept him happy on the journey with a rag dipped in brandy, until we hired a stout, healthy wet nurse with five sons of her own. I told her that I’d tried to nurse him myself and failed. Imagine my humiliation!” She wrung her hands together. Tears streamed openly down her face. “I even hired that girl—Betsy Davy—to be with him day and night. Don’t you see? He’s had everything a child could want!”
“But he was a helpless infant,” Sarah said, “and you took him from his mother.”
Lady Moorefield dabbed at her eyes. “So? If I hadn’t, he’d have died from neglect. Now he’ll be an earl.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Guy said gently. “He’s going to leave now and go to Wyldshay with his mother. You’ll forgive me, I trust, if I also steal his nursemaid? You will come with us, Betsy?”
Betsy Davy curtsied. She looked shocked to the core, but determined. “Yes, sir, I thank you. I’d not be parted from that little mite for all the tea in China.”
“No,” the countess said. “You must let me keep him!”
The earl brought his fist down on the table. The tray slid to the floor, shattering glasses and plates.
“Keep him now, madam? With the Blackdowns knowing the truth! Are you mad?” He spun about and flung out one arm to point toward the door. “Take him, Devoran, and get out! For God’s sake, it’s obvious the brat’s no son of mine! His blood’s tainted. He was born in squalor. In the end he’d only have disgraced my name and my title. So take your whores and your bastard, sir, and get out of my house!”
Guy nodded to Betsy Davy, who fled the room. He offered Sarah his arm. “You have my word of honor, my lord, that no hint of this incident will ever escape this house. When the Earl of Moorefield tells the world that his little son has died unexpectedly, I can assure you he’ll be the recipient of society’s condolences, not its censure.”
The earl’s mouth twisted in a sneer. “I’m supposed to be grateful for that?”
Guy’s dark eyes held only sorrow, yet his voice was calm and emotionless. “I merely point out what’s in everyone’s best interest. There is, unfortunately, also the potential for a very damaging scandal to leak out about certain gentlemen in this area being a little too deeply involved in the local trade.”
Lord Moorefield scowled and dropped back to his chair. “You also accuse me of smuggling, sir?”
“You and Norris and Whiddon,” Guy replied blandly. “A little embarrassing should that become too widely known—especially when you Tories set such store by the law!”
Lady Moorefield bent down to pick up a china figurine—slightly chipped now—that had been standing on the table. She was crying in soft little hiccups.
“For God’s sake!” the earl snapped. “Don’t pretend a grief you don’t feel, madam! It’s bad enough that I married a barren woman, without her making a spectacle of herself.”
Guy led Sarah toward the door, but he paused with his hand on the latch.
“And one last thing. If, after a decent interval, Lady Moorefield decides to live apart from you, but does so from any cause other than her own whim, my aunt will know about it.”
“You’d also rob me of my wife?” the earl asked.
“No, sir, because that’s not within my power, only yours. However, if you should ever feel bereft of a legitimate heir, you might remember that your brother and his sons also carry your father’s blood.”
The earl’s lip curled and he stretched out his legs. “Then we’ll plan on a family reunion at Wyldshay, when Lady Moorefield and I come to your wedding.”
“Alas,” Guy said. “You forget: You’ll be in mourning for your little son, and I fear that my nuptials are likely to be postponed—”
“No!” Lady Moorefield leaped up. “No! I won’t see Berry raised as a bastard, not after all I’ve done. I won’t! You must marry that poor girl, Mr. Devoran, and at Wyldshay with the whole world to witness it. Otherwise, I’ll renege on everything I just said and I’ll tell everyone that a hysterical madwoman stole my baby. Then she’ll be hanged, and if you breathe a word, the earl will indeed call you out and kill you.”
“Alas,” Guy said. “What a very uncomfortable threat, ma’am! After all, His Lordship is a far better shot than I am.”
Lord Moorefield spun to his feet and snatched the figurine from his wife’s fingers. He crushed it in his fist, tossed aside the pieces, and stalked up to Guy.
“I don’t really believe, Devoran, that you’re any more that by-blow’s father than I am, and I’m damned sure that you cannot prove it.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped a trace of blood from his hand. “As for your charge of smuggling, you may have the backing of Wyldshay, but Fratherham will see you ruined and Blackdown be damned. Thus, you will indeed be pleased to give that child the legal protection of your name, sir, or I swear on my honor I shall recover him—simple enough when his mother is nothing but a harlot—and he may grow old in my pigsties!”
Sick fear enveloped Sarah as she clutched hard at Guy’s arm. He set his palm firmly over her hand.
“Wyldshay has its own pigsties, my lord,” he said. “However, the child is indeed mine to safeguard, so you may look forward to reading next week’s newspapers.”
He bowed his head. The door shut behind them. They were out in the hallway. Guy supported Sarah with an arm around her waist as he led her down the stairs. Whiteness filled her head. Her legs felt flayed.
Sunlight blinded her as they stepped out into the courtyard where Guy’s coach was waiting. Sarah
pulled away from him and leaned against a tall marble pillar beside the grand entrance. The sweet summer day seemed to mock her.
“What have we done?” she asked faintly.
His boots crunched on the gravel as he strode away a few steps. “We have rescued Berry, Sarah.”
“But how could you—? Did you plan for Rachel to do that?”
“Do what? Trap me into offering for her? I’d certainly guessed that she might make whatever wild claims she hoped would foster her cause. She just took it one step further than I expected.”
A frantic fear battled beneath her ribs. “Then how could you risk it?”
“Because we had no real proof, and Moorefield knew it. Mrs. Siskin wouldn’t stand by her story for a moment if she were threatened. Playing on emotions was our only hope.” He stared away into the distance. “You didn’t believe Rachel, did you?”
“That you’re the real father? No! Yet you didn’t deny it.”
Guy slammed his fist into the other side of the pillar. “How the devil could I?”
“But how dare you risk Berry like that?”
His gaze filled with shadows and ghosts. “I don’t believe that I did so any more than was absolutely essential.”
Sarah yanked her bonnet ribbons into a tight bow beneath her chin. The sickness still hammered at her skull, blinding her, but a white dread burned her heart.
“The earl really could make good on his threat?”
He spun about, ignoring his scraped knuckles. “Yes! Yes, of course! The countess rejected my offer of a way out, and the man’s a mortal enemy. He’s a bloody earl, for God’s sake! Even without the aid of his father-in-law, he’d be formidable. With it—simply for political reasons—the Blackdowns would be forced to back down. Wyldshay’s already been weakened by Ryder’s marriage to Miracle.”
The fear intensified, filling her with anger and madness. One of her ribbons tore away in her fingers. Sarah threw it aside.
“Yet in a test of love, not even Solomon chanced the infant,” she insisted. “That’s the whole point of those stories. And your cruel little test could have gone wrong so very easily. Berry’s known Lady Moorefield all of his short life. What if he’d chosen her, instead of Rachel? There was no telling what he might do! He’s just a baby.”
“I am,” Guy said with icy control, “well aware of that. In fact, I thought it was the crux of the whole issue.” He glanced down at his scraped hand. “As it was, it was a risk I simply had to take, though it was less hazardous than you may have feared. Rachel was coming here every chance she could get, ever since she fled Goatstall Lane. She’s been singing to Berry in the gardens, the same song every time. She sang it to me.”
The pain intensified in Sarah’s heart and she closed her eyes. “After I’d gone to bed and left you alone together?”
He seized her arm and forced her to face him. “Yes, Sarah! I told you that Rachel and I had talked. There’s no conspiracy against you.”
She pulled away, holding onto the rage, because if she stopped being angry she might die of grief.
“No, but it was madness to rely on it! Rachel had met Berry only while she was dressed as a man. He was confused and scared. He almost chose me.”
Guy stalked past her to the waiting coach and flung open the door. “Yet he didn’t! What difference would clothes ever make to a child still in short skirts? Fortunately, Rachel always sang the same ditty. She’s crooning it right now.”
Sarah looked around. Rachel and Betsy Davy were hurrying around the house. The nursemaid was carrying a small box, presumably containing her few personal possessions. Berry’s golden head lolled on Rachel’s shoulder. Her baby had fallen asleep in her arms.
The words floated toward them on the breeze:
Hush-a-bye, baby, in cradle of green!
Papa’s a nobleman; mama’s a queen;
Sister’s a lady who wears a gold ring;
And brother’s a drummer who drums for the king.
Berry stirred in his sleep and murmured. “Mama skween.”
Sarah gazed at the child’s golden head, and her anger collapsed into an abyss of grief, inexorable and vast.
“Dammit, Sarah!” Guy’s voice held nothing now of anger, only anguish. “Do you think for one moment that I’m not aware of all the implications of that pretty little scene upstairs?”
“I know, I know,” she said quietly as her heart shattered. “I know we’ll never hear back from d’Alleville, but I agreed—in fact, I insisted—that whatever the price, we must pay it.”
“Even this?”
She glanced into his eyes. “Yes, Guy, even this!”
“Then honor has demanded its due,” he replied with terrifying calm. “And justice, at least, will be satisfied.”
Rachel and Betsy walked up. Berry, fast asleep once again, sagged heavily in his mother’s arms.
“Thank you, Guy,” Rachel said with a quiet new dignity. “You didn’t really mind what I said upstairs, did you? After all, none of that will matter once Claude comes for me. So where are we going now?”
Sarah met Guy’s dark gaze for one stark moment. Like hers, his sorrow had intensified into real pain.
“To Wyldshay,” she said, holding out her arms to take the baby, so that Guy could help Rachel climb into the carriage. “Guy will take you and Berry to stay with Lady Ryderbourne and the duchess, and on the way you’ll leave me in Exeter, where I shall catch the next coach back to Bath.”
FOR the first time in his twenty-eight years, Guy rode up to Birchbrook without unqualified joy.
His father’s rambling brick home fronted onto a courtyard shaded by a stand of tall trees in full, glorious green leaf. At the back of the house the remains of the moat had been filled in long ago by his great-grandfather, a younger son of the first Earl of Yelverton, in order to plant a formal garden and shrubbery. Then his grandfather had added the orangery, where his father and sister now grew their exotic plants.
Meanwhile, the title had passed to the first earl’s eldest son, Thomas Devoran, and then through his second son to the present fourth earl. The third earl had died with no sons, only daughters: the Duchess of Blackdown and Guy’s mother, Lady Bess Devoran.
No one was in the parlor, so Guy strode into the hothouse. Her dark hair dressed in a simple knot, his sister sat surrounded by greenery, reading.
“The latest novel?” he asked. “Dare I interrupt?”
Lucinda tossed aside her book and threw herself laughing into his arms.
Guy kissed her and admired her new frock, then suppressed his burning sense of urgency while she showed him the new additions to her orchid collection. Whatever the state of his heart, he would always give Lucinda his undivided attention.
Why should his troubles be allowed to spoil her pleasure in his unexpected homecoming, or his in being with her?
“Ah, Guy, it’s so good to see you,” she said at last. “But of course you want to see Father. He’s down at the home farm, poking about with Foster and some new spotted pigs. Though unless you fetch some gaiters, you’ll ruin those boots, because it rained yesterday and the Birch Brook overflowed its banks again.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Not to worry, it’s time I gave these boots a taste of the real country. So please tell Cook there’ll be a third at dinner, while I’ll wade down through the mire to marvel at Foster’s latest litter.”
Lucinda giggled and hugged him again, then ran off to see to her duties as lady of the house. Guy stared after her for a moment. Fine-boned, beautiful, and painfully young, she’d be going to London for her first season next Spring and no doubt be engaged within three months.
Henry Devoran was deep in conversation with Mr. Foster, master of the pigsties, but he glanced up at the sound of squelching boots and his face lit up like a lamp. Father and son threw their arms around each other. As Henry pounded Guy heartily on the back, Foster touched his hat, bowed, and walked away.
“Look at this, sir!” With one arm still linke
d in his son’s, Henry waved a hand at the animals rooting about in their pen. “Now, there’s pigs for you!”
Guy laughed. “The handsomest shoats I ever saw in my life, sir.”
“Best in the Home Counties!” His father dragged Guy over to another sty. “Take a look at this sow!”
“A beauty, sir, but I fear that I didn’t come down here to talk about swine, or at least, not directly.”
Henry gave him a shrewd glance. “Very well, sir! Out with it!”
Guy turned his back on the sow to meet his father’s open gaze. “I came to tell you that my engagement to marry at Wyldshay this Christmas will be announced in the newspapers next week.”
“Good God, boy!” The pig grunted as Henry grabbed Guy’s hand and shook it. “Then I must congratulate you! But Wyldshay? Why not right here in your own home? Don’t tell me! The girl’s that high-and-mighty? What d’ye do, sir? Nab a German princess?”
“No. Nothing like that.” Guy guided the older man toward a stone mounting block. “Please sit down, Father, and listen carefully. Miss Rachel Mansard is a gentleman’s daughter from Norfolk. However, it’s my most earnest desire that she will jilt me long before the wedding.”
Henry Devoran sat down with a thump. “Well, sir! If you wished to leave me speechless, you’ve done so. You’d better explain yourself.”
Guy paced the flagstones, telling his father just enough while trying to distress him as little as possible, then stood with his hands locked behind his back.
“So though you never intended marriage or declared yourself, you allowed this young lady to form expectations? You made promises you now feel obliged to keep?”
“Yes, sir. There’s also the child to consider.”
Henry mopped at his brow with a handkerchief. “Though he’s not yours? So you hope to provide grounds for this Miss Mansard to jilt you with no loss of honor to anyone?”
“That’s my sincerest wish, yes.”
Guy’s father slumped into himself, as if he had aged ten years. The pigs snuffled about in their pens.
