Harlequin Historical July 2020 - Box Set 1 of 2

by Virginia Heath

  Because staring at the touching scene felt voyeuristic, she stared at her tea instead, until she felt the weight of a small pair of eyes on her as Randolph’s eldest daughter edged ever closer.

  * * *

  ‘Are you my new auntie?’

  Owen held his breath as he awaited Lydia’s answer. For her sake, he wanted her to be part of his effusive and irrepressible adopted family. She was going to feel very isolated if she wasn’t and the last thing he wanted was for Gertie to ever feel awkward.

  ‘I am indeed.’ She beamed at the child. ‘Your Auntie Lydia. And you are…?’

  ‘Lottie,’ said her mother with an indulgent smile. ‘And that one there is Harry and the littlest is Eliza.’

  ‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintances, Lottie, Harry and Eliza.’ As she smiled at them, the shyer two came forward and hovered behind their sister while they debated whether or not to be brave.

  ‘Can you read, Auntie Lydia?’

  ‘I can.’ She reached her hand out and brushed a wayward curl out of Lottie’s eyes, which warmed Owen’s heart, before taking the proffered picture book. ‘Can you?’

  ‘Very well. Papa says I am a child genius.’

  Instead of laughing at the child or scoffing at her claim, Lydia nodded, smiling. ‘I can tell that already. This looks like a very complicated book for a young lady of your age. Certainly a much more advanced and weighty tome than I was capable of reading at eight.’

  ‘I am still only seven.’

  ‘Only seven? Gracious! You must be a very clever and grown-up young lady indeed. Exactly as I suspected. But not so grown up as to not enjoy being read to, I hope? We aunties like to read to our nieces and nephews, you know. Alongside spoiling them rotten, of course.’

  And all at once Owen felt ashamed of himself for momentarily doubting her when it had been her friendliness and lack of aristocratic disdain which had drawn him to her so completely all those years ago. Lydia had been the only family member at the Barton house who not only remembered the servants’ names, but the people behind them.

  ‘Can you read to us now?’ All three stared up expectantly.

  ‘Let the poor dear have her breakfast first, children.’ Gertie spirited them away. ‘And then perhaps you can have a story.’

  With perfect timing, Slugger appeared at the door with his customary scowl. ‘Food’s in. Best get it down you before it goes cold.’

  As was typical, breakfast was a chaotic affair. The children always ate their first meal of the day with the adults, which inevitably meant more mess and noise than his new wife was used to. Although to her credit, she took it all in her stride and in remarkably good spirits, even cutting up Harry’s sausage for him while his mother saw to Eliza and Randolph waxed lyrical, enjoying playing the host and making everyone laugh—usually at Owen’s expense.

  * * *

  Once the meal was done, Gertie insisted on prolonging his agony by having another cup of tea in the living room so they could discuss the best furniture merchants for Lydia to visit before she embarked upon the decorating. A task which had been a hasty stroke of genius on his part. He was ridiculously relieved to have given her something substantial to occupy herself with while he worked out how they could politely co-exist without him descending into lunacy and inevitably being committed to Bedlam where he probably belonged.

  ‘The pair of you must still be exhausted.’ Gertie was pouring tea out of the best teapot. ‘Slugger said you arrived in the small hours.’

  ‘It was nearly three.’ Lydia took the cup and slanted Owen a chastising glance over the rim. ‘And we had started out at barely eight that morning.’

  ‘Oh, Owen!’ Gertie was appalled. ‘What were you thinking? Your poor wife must have been in agony after all that time in the carriage.’

  ‘It’s a very comfortable carriage.’ The best defence he could think of without admitting he couldn’t bear the thought of another night at an inn. ‘I’ll wager her suffering was nothing compared to mine. It rained all the way home and I was soaked to the skin.’

  ‘You could have ridden in the carriage.’ Lydia couldn’t resist the dig. ‘I repeatedly suggested it.’

  ‘Somebody had to keep an eye out for footpads.’

  Gertie rolled her eyes at the flimsy excuse. ‘You wouldn’t have needed to keep an eye out for them if you’d avoided travelling at night in the first place! Where was your common sense? And you did it in a downpour to boot, you silly man. You’re lucky you haven’t caught your death of cold!’

  ‘Or more likely pneumonia, Gertie.’ Lydia was clearly enjoying her new ally. ‘It rained solidly for three days and it was freezing, yet he stubbornly sat in the saddle for all of it.’

  ‘It would take more than a drop of rain to beat me. I have the constitution of an ox.’

  ‘That he does.’ For the first time this morning, Randolph came to his defence. ‘Owen is never ill. Besides, Lydia, hell would have to freeze over before he ever rode in a carriage. He hates confined spaces.’

  Owen was going to strangle his friend! In case Randolph felt the urge to embellish, he shot him a subtle warning look, not at all happy with the uncomfortable turn the conversation had suddenly taken.

  ‘He does?’

  ‘He’s been funny about them since The Portland.’

  ‘The Portland?’

  ‘The prison hulk I met him on.’ Owen was now shooting daggers at his oblivious friend. So was his wife. But Randolph neglected to notice either in his eagerness to tell another convoluted story to the suddenly rapt Lydia. ‘We spent eight months on the thing before we were shipped off. Dreadful place it was—and probably still is. It’s still anchored in the Thames by Woolwich.’ Randolph shuddered and Lydia blinked back at him, appalled.

  Owen, on the other hand, felt his heart begin to race.

  ‘No matter what time of the day, it was always dark and constantly damp. Rats everywhere. Especially at night. The blighters would walk all over you as you lay in your bed.’ Their sharp-pinned claws would scratch the skin, the chains around his ankles preventing him from kicking them off. ‘And those bunks were a disgrace…’ Like a coffin. The lid nailed in place. Unable to escape for hours on end. ‘I frankly struggled with the size of them! Poor Owen is nearly twice my height and probably thrice my width. You just can’t chain a man of six foot three to a bunk that’s barely five foot ten! It’s inhuman!’

  Lydia’s eyes sought Owen’s—he could feel them boring into the top of his head as he resolutely stared into his cup and tried not to appear thoroughly traumatised by the unwelcome memories which were being dredged up.

  ‘Owen hated the chains…’

  Because he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. The stagnant air had choked him then, just as it was choking him now. The constant rocking of the hulk had made him sick. And the chains had robbed him of all power. Rendered him helpless and entirely at the mercy of others.

  ‘Randolph, dearest…’ Gertie must have seen his discomfort because she was shooting her blabber-mouthed husband daggers. ‘Don’t you and Owen have work to do?’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After Owen and Randolph hastily deserted them straight after breakfast, Gertie had taken the trouble to show her around her new home and introduce her to the staff who worked there. That, and more tea, had killed at least two hours, but as her lovely new friend had three lively children to contend with and was heavily pregnant with another, it did not seem fair to occupy all her time, especially as Gertie had insisted she eat all her meals with them at least until Lydia bought a table.

  Seeing as the carriage was standing idle, and Gertie had given her a list of furniture merchants to visit, she had commandeered it to begin her shopping. Only this time without the single lady’s requisite chaperon—which felt both liberating and daunting in equal measure. Liberating, because she had never had such freedom be
fore, and daunting, because of the enormous scandal waiting for her outside.

  As all the recommended merchants were in Cheapside, she was spared the ordeal of the familiar society haunts of Bond Street and St James’s, and spent a fascinating and blissfully anonymous few hours leafing through catalogues and discussing possibilities. Yet as interesting and exciting as it was to discuss the particulars of wallpapers, brocade sofas and curtain fabrics for her very own living room, her mind kept wandering back to this morning, trying and failing to put the image of the eighteen-year-old boy she had once thought the sun rose and set with, clapped in irons and covered with rats, out of her thoughts. A near-impossible task now it was seared indelibly on to her mind.

  She had read about the hulks.

  Everyone had.

  They were notorious and a complete national scandal considered by almost everyone to be horrifically inhumane. To think of Owen stuck on one for eight whole months, yards away from the city he had always called home, didn’t bear thinking about.

  But he had lived it. Survived it. What strength had that taken?

  More than she possessed that was for sure. Especially as she had spent most of the afternoon between merchants diligently hiding from anyone who might possibly recognise her inside the carriage, when she could have easily walked the short distances, pathetically trying to avoid the scandal.

  Not for the first time during her impromptu little outing, she found her attention drawn to the silk-lined walls of his carriage and wondering about the conditions he had suffered. Understandably, perhaps, she had focused on her outrage at his crimes for years, purposefully blotting out all thoughts about where he was and what he might be doing. He hadn’t hanged for them. That was what she consoled herself with in those grim early days when her heart had keenly mourned him. Something she had been dreading could have happened when they had caught him red-handed.

  The utter relief of the verdict after the turbulent lead-up and ordeal of the trial had left her a slumped and weeping mess on her bedchamber floor moments after her outraged father had returned from the courthouse. He had been furious at the leniency shown. She had been both ridiculously grateful and disgusted at herself for still caring when Owen clearly hadn’t cared enough about her to do what he had done.

  After that, she had vowed to harden her heart and refused to entertain any of the lingering and niggling concerns about his welfare, reminding herself he had made his bed. If he hadn’t stolen her mother’s jewellery, then he would not have been transported. It hadn’t worked, of course, and she had still worried about him and yearned for him regardless, right up until the day he had turned up in Mayfair again like a bad penny.

  Once she had got over the shock of that reunion, when once again time shuddered to a grinding halt simply because he was there, she had hardened her foolish heart to focus on loathing him properly as she was supposed to.

  But now, burdened with the fresh and unsettling knowledge of him languishing shackled and hopeless in a fetid, vermin-infested hulk for eight months, she could not help but wonder what else he had endured in the seven interminable years he had been away. What was the long and difficult story Owen had neglected to tell her? What had happened on the hulk to make him fear confined spaces? And did those horrendous conditions continue during the voyage and beyond?

  All she knew about the penal colonies at the ends of the earth were what the newspapers told her. That it was a barren and desolate place which nobody in their right mind would wish to inhabit, which in turn made it the perfect place to send the very dregs of society to pay for their heinous crimes through hard work. However, if the hulks were the precursor to a worse fate, or merely a taste of what the future of a transported convict had to endure, then she suspected Owen might well have mourned being spared the hangman in those seven years away.

  Which didn’t bear thinking about. Yet she couldn’t seem to stop.

  ‘We’re here, my lady.’ The coachman’s shout dragged her back to the present and she tentatively pulled back the comforting veil of the carriage curtain in time to see Berkeley Square as they turned into it.

  Thankfully, he pulled up directly outside, which meant she only had to navigate a few feet of pavement and four white steps before she could disappear behind the safety of her father’s front door. She did both briskly, staring straight ahead in case a neighbour saw her and wanted to engage in conversation, and felt her tense muscles relax when her knock was answered promptly by the same butler who had been with the family for all the years Lydia had been alive.

  ‘Hello, Maybury. How are you?’

  His usual cheerful smile was gone, replaced by strangely darting eyes which did not want to meet hers and a distinctly ashen face. Both made her nervous. ‘I am…well, my lady. You?’

  ‘Well, too.’ At this point, she would have usually continued the pleasantries inside while he relieved her of her bonnet, gloves and coat, but Maybury was yet to step aside.

  ‘I have come to visit my father.’ That she had to clarify her intention was a worry—one which set her pulse jumping as unease settled like too much porridge in her tummy.

  ‘I shall see if he is in, my lady.’ He tried to shut the door on her and she only just managed to stop it with her foot.

  In? What was that about?

  ‘We both know he hasn’t left the house in months, Maybury.’ His heart was too weak and his chest too bad. ‘What is going on?’

  The darting eyes began to blink rapidly before they dropped to a spot on the step before her and his shoulders slumped. ‘We are under strict instructions to announce you, my lady…’ When his gaze finally found the courage to lift to hers, it was filled with regret. ‘It is more than my job’s worth to…’

  Lydia held up her hand, fighting for calm herself, but keen not to create more of a scene than she was conscious was already being created. She did not need to see the curtains twitch all around the square to know they were. Such delicious gossip was the lifeblood of Mayfair.

  ‘I understand, Maybury.’ Her father was a harsh and unforgiving employer. Always had been. One day staff were there, the next gone and usually with absolutely no explanation. The butler was one of the few who had stuck it out beyond a year and doubtless the only one who had remained for over five. Heaven only knew where he drew his resilience from. ‘I am nought but a visitor now and, as such, you are quite right to follow the correct protocols. I shall wait.’

  ‘Very good, my lady.’ His relief was palpable as he gently closed the door.

  Stood all alone on the steps, she momentarily considered rummaging in her reticule for a handkerchief to give herself something to do which might hint to the nosy neighbours she was nonplussed, before she abandoned the idea. Nobody would be fooled by it and if Papa was intent on sending them a message, then she would hold her head high while he did it. Especially as she had done absolutely nothing wrong.

  One painful minute ticked by, followed by two more. Out of the corners of her eyes, she could tell more than a few people had suddenly felt the overwhelming need for some fresh air and were taking a hasty walk, yet still she stared resolutely straight ahead. The temptation to dive back into the sanctuary of Owen’s shiny carriage was overwhelming and she was on the cusp of giving in to that urge when the front door finally opened again. Only this time, there was no sign of Maybury. It was Justin who had come to greet her. And by the sight of his attire, the buttoned greatcoat, the tall beaver hat and his favourite ivory-tipped walking cane, they weren’t staying.

  ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.’ His smile was feeble as he bent to kiss her cheek. ‘Shall we?’ He offered her his arm and, to save face and give credence to the charade, she took it and allowed him to lead her back to her conveyance and follow her inside—but not before he instructed her driver to take them to Hyde Park.

  The coach jerked forward and they sat opposite one another smiling as if nothing whatsoe
ver was wrong until it left Berkeley Square.

  ‘What is going on?’

  Her brother’s face was pale, his expression distraught. ‘Our father has decided to disown you.’

  ‘What do you mean disown me?’ The very idea was preposterous. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because you married beneath you. Because you eloped and embarrassed him in front of Kelvedon. Because you married Wolfe…’

  ‘All three at his express instruction!’

  ‘I know, poppet.’ He took her hand and shook his head, huffing out an exasperated breath. ‘I’ve tried to reason with him. Lord knows I’ve tried to reason with him—but you know Papa. He’s a callous bastard who only cares about himself!’

  ‘But I’ve paid his debts. Saved him from eviction…’ Her head began to spin at the blatant unfairness of it all. ‘I married my enemy for him! And now I am to be disowned for simply doing my duty?’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t last long. You know Father…he’s all about saving face and putting on a front. As he sees it, if he had flung open the door to you and welcomed you with open arms, it might be construed as forgiveness…’

  ‘I have nothing to be forgiven for! Nothing!’

  Always the frustrating fence sitter, her brother’s tone was placating. ‘I know that, too, poppet. But Wolfe expressly forbade him from rubbishing you publicly and had it written into the contracts, so in our father’s head, cutting you out of his life and leaving you stood on the doorstep clearly sends everyone the same message.’