Her sharp brown gaze strayed toward Dain’s door. “A joke. Well, that would explain. I discerned a resemblance—that remarkable stare—but I thought my imagination had run away with me.” Her attention returned to Bertie. “It’s been a most exciting day. And this makes a splendid conclusion, do you not think? That Miss Grenville—that is to say, Her Grace—turns out to be a relative of the duke’s good friend.”
“Best of friends,” Bertie corrected. “Which is why I were so surprised when Dain said I was to be groomsman, not him, and told Ainswood we drew straws, when we never did. It were Dain who decided he’d give away the bride, and no one argues with him usually—except Ainswood, but he weren’t there at the moment.”
Behind the spectacles, Miss Price’s enormous eyes glistened ominously. “I thought she hadn’t anyone and was quite alone in the world, but she wasn’t, was she? Her kinsman gave her away.” She blinked a few times and swallowed. “I’m glad I didn’t know. I should have made a watering pot of myself. It is so…affecting. Such a kind gesture, to give her away. And she deserves it, you know. She is the kindest, m-most generous…” Her voice broke.
“Oh, I say.” Bertie gazed at her in alarm.
She withdrew a scrap of a handkerchief from somewhere in the voluminous froth of her wrapper and hastily wiped her tears away. “I beg your pardon,” she said shakily. “It is simply that I am happy for her. And…relieved.”
Bertie was also relieved—that she’d stopped short of waterworks. “Yes, well, like you say, it were an exciting day and I reckon you could do with some rest. Not to mention there’s a draft, and even if there wasn’t no danger of you takin’ a chill you oughtn’t be wandering about in your unmentionables at this hour. Most of the fellows’re half-seas over at the very least, and no tellin’ what ideas they could take into their heads.”
She stared at him for a moment, then her mouth turned up and parted and a soft laugh came out. “Oh, you are so droll, Sir Bertram. Ideas in their heads. Those tipsy fellows should grow faint with exhaustion trying to find me in all these yards and yards of…unmentionables,” she finished with another small chuckle.
Bertie wasn’t tipsy, and he was sure he could find her easily enough, considering she stood well within easy reach. Her eyes were sparkling with humor now, as though he were the wittiest fellow on earth, and a pink glow was forming in her cheeks, and he thought she was the prettiest girl on earth. Then, realizing he was the one with ideas in his head, he told himself to make a bolt for it.
Only he moved in the wrong direction and somehow there was a great deal of white froth in his arms and a soft mouth touching his and then colored lights were dancing about his head.
At this same moment, Lydia was strongly tempted to make her cousin see stars. He had flummoxed her utterly.
“Dain could lecture on family history for weeks,” Lady Dain was saying. She and Lydia sat in chairs by the fire, glasses recently filled with champagne in their hands. “He pretends to find it boring or makes a joke of it, but it is one of his hobbyhorses.”
“It isn’t as though I can escape it,” said Dain. “We’ve rows upon rows of books, boxes of documents. The Ballisters never could bear to discard anything of the slightest historical value. Even my father could not bring himself to wipe your mama’s existence altogether from the records. Still, Jess and I wouldn’t have known to look if Sellowby hadn’t whetted our curiosity. He’d spotted you after our wedding and noted the resemblance to my sire and his ancestors. It wasn’t until after your Vinegar Yard encounter with Ainswood made the gossip rounds, though, that Sellowby wrote to us. Everything he’d heard, coupled with his occasional glimpses of Grenville of the Argus, inclined him to suspect a Ballister connection.”
“If you only knew how careful I was to avoid Sellowby,” Lydia said. “And all for naught. I vow, he must be part bloodhound.”
“By gad, Grenville, was that why you climbed up to the first floor of Helena’s house instead of going in by the door, like a normal person?” Ainswood said in soft incredulity. “You risked your neck to avoid Sellowby?”
“I didn’t want the past raked up,” Lydia said.
Their keenly alert expressions told her they expected more of an explanation, but she couldn’t bear to say more. Those who’d known about her mother’s elopement and its sordid consequences were dead and buried. Anne Ballister’s was a lowly cadet branch of the family tree. To the Great World, they were virtually unknown. Her sad story had commenced and ended out of the glare of the Beau Monde’s stage, where more sensational dramas with more important principals—most notably, the Prince of Wales—riveted attention.
Lydia had kept the secret, determinedly, because she did not want her mother’s folly thrust upon that stage, her degradation the topic of tea table conversations.
“Some of it must come out now,” Ainswood said. “I’m amazed Sellowby held his tongue for this long. We can’t expect him to keep quiet forever.”
“He doesn’t know the details,” said Dain. “Grenville is hardly an uncommon surname. It’s enough to say her parents quarreled with the family, and no one knew what had become of them or had the least idea they’d produced a daughter until now. Even that is more explanation than the world deserves.”
“I should like something explained,” said Lady Dain to Lydia. “We still haven’t learned how His Grace made his amazing discovery.”
“It followed directly upon his discovering my birthmark,” Lydia said.
Her Ladyship’s lips quivered. She looked up at Dain, who had gone very still.
“It isn’t possible,” he said.
“That’s what I told myself,” said Ainswood. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Dain’s dark glance darted from his cousin to his friend. “You’re sure?”
“I should know that mark from a furlong away,” Ainswood said. “The ‘mark of the Ballisters,’ you told us at school—the one incontrovertible proof that your mother did not play your father false. And when Charity Graves started pestering you about the brat Dominick, I was the one who went down to Athton to make sure he was yours, not mine. There it was in the same place, the same little brown crossbow.”
He glowered at Dain.
“I had no idea my cousin bore that mark, I assure you,” said Dain. “I was under the impression that it appeared only in males of the family.” He smiled faintly. “A pity my dear papa didn’t know. The holy badge of the Ballisters appearing on a female—product of the union between a nobody and a young woman he doubtless assisted in permanently ejecting from the family. He’d have gone off in an apoplexy the instant he heard—and I should have been one delighted young orphan.”
He turned to the duke. “Well, then, are you done working yourself into a lather over my little joke? Or are you appalled to find yourself connected with me? If you don’t want a Ballister for your wife, we shall be happy to take her.”
“The devil you will.” Ainswood drained his glass and set it down. “I haven’t endured five weeks of trials unimaginable in their horror only to turn her over to you, long lost family or not. As to you, Grenville,” he added irritably, “I’d like to know why you haven’t offered to break his big nose. He played you for a fool as well—and you were upset enough a while ago about your peasant blood contaminating mine. You’re taking this precious calmly.”
“I can take a joke,” she said. “I’ve married you, haven’t I?” She set down her nearly empty glass and rose. “We must not keep Lady Dain up all night. Mothers-to-be require a reasonable amount of sleep.”
Lady Dain rose. “We’ve scarcely had a chance to talk. Not that one could hope to carry on an intelligent conversation with a pair of noisy males at close hand, competing for precedence. You must return to Athcourt with us tomorrow.”
“Certainly you must,” said Dain. “It’s the ancestral home, after all.”
“I have an ancestral home as well.” Ainswood advanced to place a possessive arm about Lydia’s shoulders. “She’s on
ly your cousin, Dain, and a distant one at that. And she’s a Mallory now, not a Ballister, no matter what’s stamped upon her—”
“Another time, perhaps,” Lydia cut in smoothly. “Ainswood and I have a great deal to sort out—and I have work to complete for the Argus, which—”
“Yes, as you said, a great deal to sort out,” her spouse said, his voice tight.
He made quick work of the good nights, and they’d started down the hall when Lady Dain called to them. They paused. She hurried up to them, pressed a small oblong package into Lydia’s hand, kissed her cheek, then hurried away.
Lydia waited until they’d reentered their own room to unwrap the parcel.
Then a small, startled sob escaped her.
She heard Ainswood’s voice, alarmed. “Good God, what have they—”
She turned in his arms, felt them close, warm, and strong about her. “My mother’s diary.” The words were muffled in the folds of his dressing gown. “They’ve given me back Mama’s d-diary.”
Her voice broke, and with it, the composure she’d so determinedly maintained with her newfound family.
Pressing her face to his chest, she wept.
Chapter 14
Anne Ballister’s Diary
I can scarcely believe it is my nineteenth birthday. It seems twenty years since I left my father’s house, rather than twenty months.
Does my father remember what day this is, I wonder? He and his cousin, Lord Dain, have between them obliterated my existence by all means available, short of actual murder. But memory is not so easily blotted out as a name in a family Bible. It is easy enough to rule that a daughter never again be mentioned; yet memory submits to no will, even a Ballister’s, and the name and image persist long after death, literal or figurative.
I am alive, Father, and well, though your wish almost came true when my dear baby girl was born. I had no expensive London accoucheur to preside over my labor, merely a woman no older than I who has borne three children already, and is in a family way again. When Alice Martin’s time comes, I shall return the favor and play midwife.
It was a miracle I survived the childbed fever, all the wise matrons of this humble neighborhood agree. I know it was no miracle, but an act of will. I could not submit to Death, however much he insisted. I could not abandon my infant daughter to the false, selfish man I married.
John is sorry now, I don’t doubt, that both I and Lydia survived. He has been obliged to take whatever minor roles come his way, and exert himself to study his handful of lines. I have arranged for his wages to be put directly in my hands. Otherwise, every farthing of the little he earns would go to drink and women and gaming, and my Lydia would starve. He complains, bitterly, that I make his life hardly worth living, and rues the day he set out to win my heart.
For my part, I am heartily ashamed that he succeeded, that I had been such an utter fool. Still, I was a green girl when I ran away from home. Though ours is merely an insignificant cadet branch of the Ballister tree, I had been pampered and sheltered as much as any duke’s daughter, and was, as a result, no less naive. For a handsome, silver-tongued rogue like John Grenville, I was all too easy a mark. How was I to realize his stirring speeches and tear-filled declarations of love were merely…acting?
He was not so wise, either. He viewed me as a ticket to a life of wealth and ease. He believed he understood the English aristocracy because he’d played noblemen upon the stage. It was inconceivable to him that so proud a family as the Ballisters would abandon to penury and degradation a daughter who’d never known a day of hardship in all her seventeen and a half years. He truly believed they would accept him: a man who could not by any stretch of definition claim the title “gentleman,” and compounded his infamy by belonging to that subhuman species labeled “actor.”
Had I been aware of John’s delusions, I should have enlightened him, confused and ignorant though I was. But I assumed he understood, as I did, that my elopement severed all ties to the Ballisters, reconciliation was out of the question, and we must make our way on our own.
I should live contentedly with him in a hovel, so long as we were of the same mind, and would strive together to better our lot. But striving is alien to his nature. How I regret that I was never taught a profitable trade. My neighbors pay me to write letters for them—there’s scarcely one who can write his own name. I do some sewing. But I’m no artist with the needle, and who hereabouts can afford, let alone see the value of, a private tutor? Except for the odd penny I earn here and there, I must depend upon John.
I must stop—and in good time, too, for I see I’ve done little but complain. My Lydia stirs from her nap, and will soon grow bored with babbling to herself in her comical baby language. I should have written instead of her, how beautiful and clever and good-natured she is—a prodigy and paragon among infants. How can I complain of anything, when I have her?
Yes, sweet, I hear you. Mama comes.
Lydia paused at the end of the first diary entry because her control was slipping again, her voice too high and quavering. She sat upon the bed, pillows heaped behind her. Ainswood had arranged them. He’d also drawn up to the bed a small table whereupon he’d collected most of the room’s candles, so that she’d have better light to read by.
He had started out standing at the window, looking down into the courtyard. He had looked back, surprised, toward her, when she began to read aloud. She was surprised, too, when she realized she was doing it.
She had started reading hurriedly, silently, turning and skimming pages, hungry for the words she’d read so long ago, so poorly understood then and so faintly remembered since. Phrases stood out, not because she remembered the words but because they captured her mother’s way of speaking. She began to hear Mama’s voice, so clearly, in the same way others’ voices seem to sound in her ears, even when the speaker wasn’t there. She had only to open her mouth, and her voice became someone else’s. It wasn’t something she consciously tried to do. It simply happened.
And so she must have forgotten Ainswood for a time or been too much immersed in the past to think of the present. Calmed, reassured it was all there, the little story, Lydia had returned to the first page, and read in the voice lost for so many years, and now returned to her—an unexpected gift, the recovery of a treasure she’d believed forever lost.
Yes, sweet, I hear you. Mama comes.
She had always heard, always come, Lydia remembered vividly, palpably, now. She’d understood what Mary Bartles felt for her baby: pure, fierce, unshakable love. Lydia knew there was such a thing. She had lived within that securest of all havens, her mother’s love, for ten years.
Her throat ached. She couldn’t make out the words through the mist in her eyes.
She heard him move, felt the mattress shift as he climbed onto the bed.
“Lud, what a way to spend your w-wedding night,” she said shakily. “Listening to me b-blubber.”
“You might be human now and then,” he said. “Or is there a Ballister law against it?”
A warm wall of male moved into place beside her, and a muscular arm slid behind her back, to draw her close. She knew this wasn’t the securest of havens, yet for the moment it seemed so, and she saw no great harm in pretending it was.
“She doted upon me,” Lydia told him, her blurry gaze still upon the page.
“Why shouldn’t she?” he said. “In your own dreadful way, you can be adorable. Furthermore, being a Ballister, she could appreciate the more appalling of your personality traits as an outsider couldn’t. As Dain does. He doesn’t seem to believe there’s anything wrong with you.” He uttered this last in sorrowful amazement, as though his friend must henceforth be considered certifiably insane.
“There’s nothing wrong with me.” She pointed to the page. “Here it is in black and white: I am ‘a prodigy and paragon.’”
“Yes, well, I should like to hear what else she has to say,” he answered. “Perhaps she’ll proffer valuable advice on how to manage
such a paragon and prodigy.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “Read on, Grenville. If that’s her voice, it’s a most soothing one.”
It had been, Lydia recalled. She was soothed, too, by his nearness, and his teasing, and the strong arm holding her.
She read on.
A wavery morning light was mingling with the room’s shadows when Grenville finally closed the book and sleepily returned his share of the pillows before sinking down onto hers. She didn’t turn to him, yet she didn’t object, either, when Vere made more comfortable adjustments, drawing her up close against him, spoon fashion. By the time he had her snugly tucked up as he wanted her, she was breathing evenly, sound asleep.
Though he customarily took to his bed at the time respectable citizens were waking, if not already up and at their work, he was aware of fatigue weighing upon him more heavily than usual. Even for a man accustomed to live hard, who craved excitement and danger and all their accompanying batterings upon his mind and body, this long day and night had proved a strain.
Now, while there was silence and what should have been peace, he felt as though he’d been both captain and crew on a vessel tossed upon the rocks after a day and night of battling a furious tempest.
He might have managed to put into a safe harbor, if it hadn’t been for the little book.
Its contents were the rocks he seemed to have foundered upon.
At least a dozen times while he’d listened to the voice—his wife’s, yet not his wife’s—he’d wanted to tear the book from her hands and throw it in the fire.
It was horrible, hearing the cool courage and irony with which Anne Grenville described the hell her life was. No woman ought to need such courage and detachment; no woman ought to live a life that demanded so much. She lived from day to day, never knowing when she might be evicted or see her few shabby possessions borne away by the broker’s man, or whether this night’s supper would be the last. Yet she made jokes of the privations, converted her husband’s infamies into satiric anecdotes, as though to mock at Fate, which dealt so brutally with her.
The Last Hellion Page 24
