by Esther Hatch
“Lord Bryant doesn’t do anything small,” Mr. Woodsworth said. “If he ever did start a fire, it would probably burn down half of London.”
Patience nearly missed her step. “Mr. Woodsworth, I believe you just made a joke.”
“Yes, well, Lord Bryant makes it easy. He is more caricature than person.” Mr. Woodsworth’s shoulders relaxed slightly, and the muscles in his arm loosened. “I admit you also make it easy. Perhaps I should surround myself with maids more often. I feel no need to impress you.”
“And yet you just did.”
“With that little joke?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there is one more reason I should spend time with you. You are easily impressed.”
They had gone far enough that they needed to turn around to stay within sight of their party. Mr. Woodsworth turned around, and they walked back in silence. The trees were tall in this part of the park, and several birds chirped as they flew across their path. She enjoyed the moment of calm before she would be back to hiding her face behind a serviette for the rest of the afternoon.
Two carriages were making their way down the path in front of them. Mr. Woodsworth pulled her arm closer to his chest, making it so that they were crushed together once again. He leaned his head down until his lips were close to her ear. “We are supposed to be causing talk that would reach back to the Morgans. I think it is best if we walk a bit closer to each other.”
The sound of birds seemed less cheerful, and the sunlight not quite as bright. Of course Mr. Woodsworth’s actions earlier had nothing to do with her beauty spot or even herself as a person. This was an act. She was his maid. And above all, he was Mr. Woodsworth, executing a plan to his utmost ability.
She pressed closer to him, but he no longer felt as warm. She had no desire to face Lord Bryant back at the picnic, yet she no longer wanted to remain on this walk either. She had forgotten for a moment that she was playing a part. She should have remembered once Mr. Woodsworth had called her a lady. She lowered her head as they neared their group.
Lord Bryant was laughing with Miss Paynter while Miss Morgan sat with her arms folded and a frown upon her face. When Patience and Mr. Woodsworth were only a few feet away, Miss Morgan stood. “Finally, you are back. I’ve decided I would like to take a turn around the park as well if you don’t mind, Mr. Woodsworth.”
Mr. Woodsworth dropped Patience’s arm. “I would be honored.” His serious demeanor was back. Patience didn’t know how long it would be until she saw him smile again, but she hoped it wouldn’t be an excessive amount of time. She assumed that before this bargain was made, Mr. Woodsworth and Miss Morgan must have been happy in each other’s company. But from what she had seen today, Mr. Woodsworth didn’t come alive when he was around her. Not like he did when he was pretending to be interested in Patience. Not all couples were the same though. Perhaps Mr. Woodsworth was happier not being happy.
Even if it made no sense whatsoever.
Patience sighed and stepped over to the side of the blanket where Miss Barton sat. Miss Barton seemed to be a pleasant woman. Why couldn’t Mr. Woodsworth have chosen someone more like her? Her brother was in the railroad industry, which was probably not a connection Mr. Woodsworth was looking for, but why did he have to be quite so logical about it? The more she knew of Miss Morgan, the more she felt that she wasn’t a planner and an organizer like Mr. Woodsworth; she was a schemer. And scheming women didn’t seem to leave a trail of happiness in their wake, no matter who their cousins were.
“If you please, Miss Smith, don’t sit down just yet.” Lord Bryant’s slow drawl made her stomach drop. She didn’t turn, but Mr. Woodsworth, who was already a few feet down the path, did. “You did say your name was Miss Smith, didn’t you? I’m not mistaken . . .”
Chapter 12
The wig was hot and stifling on her head. He knew. Lord Bryant knew.
“Miss Smith is most likely done stretching her legs,” Mr. Woodsworth said from his place on the path. “Perhaps Mrs. Cuthbert or my sister would like to walk with you.”
Patience noticed he didn’t volunteer Miss Barton—just the two married women. But if Patience was right and Lord Bryant knew who she was, she needed to talk to him desperately, before he let anyone know. But how to convince him? What she was doing was foolish. Acting as a maid. Doubly foolish, for she was also acting as another woman. She didn’t even know what to say to Lord Bryant. Most likely she would be back in her home tonight with no letter of recommendation and only just two weeks of service to tout to her brother.
“I would be pleased to walk with you, Lord Bryant.” She finally turned and gave him a dazzling smile. For the first time since seeing him across the ballroom, she got a decent look at him. He was older than she remembered but still just as handsome, if not more so. Age had hollowed out his cheekbones and given him bulk in his chest and shoulders. He was at least as tall as Mr. Woodsworth but not quite as broad. In his youth he had been quite slender. Now he was built like a Roman god. “Where shall we go?”
“Join us,” Miss Morgan suggested. Gone was her frown and sulking attitude. Instead she looked like spring as she smiled at Lord Bryant.
“Yes,” Mr. Woodsworth agreed. “The more the merrier. Would anyone else care to join us?”
Miss Barton stood. “I would love to take a walk. What about you, Mrs. Cuthbert?”
Mrs. Cuthbert shook her head no. Miss Paynter and Mrs. Jorgensen did the same.
“Just the five of us then,” Mr. Woodsworth said. “Shall we head toward Constitution Hill?”
“Oh let’s,” said Miss Morgan. “I always get such a thrill seeing the road the Queen was nearly assassinated on.”
“I saw that as I rode in.” Lord Bryant stood next to Patience and held out his arm. “Miss Smith and I will investigate that copse of trees on the right. I can just see it from here, so we will never be out of the sight of those who remain.”
“Now you are particular about protecting a woman’s reputation?” Mr. Woodsworth’s voice was biting and low.
“Yes, well, it depends on the lady.” Lord Bryant held out his arm to her. “And this one happens to have a reputation I would like to protect.” The last remaining hope that he hadn’t recognized her fled. Lord Bryant knew exactly who she was.
Miss Paynter looked up at the two of them, surprise mirrored in her eyes. When Patience glanced over at Mr. Woodsworth, he was staring at her, as if he had been waiting for her to look at him. “Well then,” he said, “I believe it is up to the lady to decide if she would like to go with you.” His chin was held high and his gaze intense. “Or not.” Patience knew if she were to refuse Lord Bryant’s offer, Mr. Woodsworth would make certain he stayed away from her.
Patience gave Mr. Woodsworth a slight smile. She didn’t want to worry him. But her smile only caused the lines between his eyebrows to deepen. “I will walk with Lord Bryant. It isn’t every day a lady is invited to take a stroll with a baron.” She wrapped her arm around his, ignoring the deep sickness inside the pit of her stomach. She had nothing of value at the Woodsworth home. If Lord Bryant wanted to march her home this afternoon, she would be back to her old life within hours. This whole fiasco would remain a dream. She would probably hear of Mr. Woodsworth’s marriage through her brother but perhaps not. She smiled more broadly at Mr. Woodsworth. This could be goodbye, and he didn’t even know it. She wanted him to remember her smiling. “Don’t worry, Mr. Woodsworth. We shan’t start any fires. Not even little ones.”
“Definitely not,” said Lord Bryant. “I probably couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
Patience raised an eyebrow in triumph, but Mr. Woodsworth didn’t react.
“You are certain?” Mr. Woodsworth’s size had never been more apparent. In his home and while walking, he never seemed intimidating. Now she saw hints of the general in him.
She kept her chin high. “Of cours
e.”
He nodded, and then with one last glance, he led his group away.
Lord Bryant led Patience in the opposite direction.
Patience closed her eyes and followed the movement of Lord Bryant. Just as she suspected, as soon as they were out of earshot, he pulled her closer to his side and put one hand over hers. “So, Lady Patience, what has brought you to Green Park looking so . . .” His eyes travelled up and down her borrowed dress. The last time they had been together, he had been married, and she had been very young. He definitely hadn’t looked at her like he was looking now. “Blonde?”
They didn’t stop walking, and Patience struggled to keep one foot in front of the other. “I barely looked at you,” she hissed. “How did you know it was me?”
“I suspected something right away. Believe it or not, there are not many women in London who ignore me when I am introduced. And even though I hadn’t gotten a solid look at your face, no one laughs like you, Lady Patience. That laugh hasn’t changed since you were a young girl. At the Simpsons’ ball, I had thought perhaps I had imagined it, but hearing it again today?”
When had she laughed? Not while they sat on the blanket. Her laughter must have carried as she walked with Mr. Woodsworth. Why hadn’t she been more careful? “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“It looked to me as if you didn’t want me to.”
She relaxed a bit at that. The Lord Bryant she had known would have helped her. She didn’t know this hardened Lord Bryant, but at least he was perceptive, and it seemed as though he didn’t have plans to out her at the moment. “I didn’t want you to.”
He raised his eyebrows and lifted her hand. Cocking his head to one side, he gave her a rakish smile. “Well then, it seems like a beautiful young lady owes me a favor.”
“Oh please.” Lord Bryant had to be in jest. “You are old enough to be my father.”
He dropped her hand and placed one of his over his heart. “You wound me, and besides, you know that isn’t true.”
“Well, old enough to be my uncle, anyway.”
“I can’t be more than three or four years Woodsworth’s senior, and you seem quite taken with him.” He shrugged in the direction the other group had walked.
“I’m supposed to seem taken with him.”
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” He stopped walking and turned to her, quirking his eyebrows. “Are you in some sort of trouble?”
Patience shook her head. How exactly was she supposed to explain this? “Only the kind I put myself into, and I am not looking for someone to rescue me.”
He scoffed. “You don’t need to worry about that. I’m not the rescuing type.”
Somehow she doubted that. Memories of him jumping to his wife’s aid every time she carried a tray or alighted from a carriage popped into her mind. At one time, Lord Bryant had definitely been the rescuing type.
“That isn’t how I remember you from my time at Cravenhurst. What is all of this talk of you being a rake?”
“It isn’t talk. I am a changed man and most definitely a rake.” His smile seemed too broad for someone who had just made that admission.
But she hadn’t known many rakes. Perhaps they were all just as proud of their status. “Should I be afraid for my person?” she asked.
Lord Bryant’s eyes stared at her feet and then travelled up her checkered dress. He paused a moment at her waistline. She had spent a late night taking in the waist, and it fit over her corset perfectly. She dropped his arm and stepped a few inches away from him. His first cursory glance of her she had considered bold. This slow digestion of her figure was positively indecent.
Despite her stepping away from him, he leaned in and brought his face close to her own. Glancing up at her hair, he raised a solitary eyebrow. “In that wig,” he said, “never.”
Gone was the devilishly intense gaze from a moment ago. In its place was a playful gleam of consolidarity.
She shook her head and placed her arm back around his. This Lord Bryant would take some getting used to. He was neither the man she remembered him to be nor the man London took him for. At least as far as she could tell. “Well, if you want to help . . .”
“I don’t believe I said I wanted to help.”
She ignored his protest. “You can keep Miss Morgan entertained.”
“The only way I’m planning on helping is marching you home. And Miss Morgan?” He stepped back and away from her. “I have spent more time with her than I had planned to already. She is a sticky one.”
“She is rather insipid, isn’t she?”
“Rather.”
Patience snapped her fingers. “I knew it!” What did Mr. Woodsworth see in her?
“You knew it, and yet you would banish your old friend to spend time with her?”
“Just for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks?” His head rolled back, and he looked heavenward. “How long has this charade been going on? And what do you hope to accomplish? Where are you staying? Does Harrington know what you are doing?” He stopped to breathe. “Of course he doesn’t. Your brother would never allow it. You must tell me, or I will figure it out on my own. You know it won’t be hard.”
Which question to answer first? And how? Patience rubbed the back of her neck. She bumped the bottom of the wig, and it moved slightly. Lord Bryant’s eyes widened, and she quickly fixed her hair. “Nicholas doesn’t know, but he isn’t worried. He thinks me at home with Mama, and she thinks I am in Bath with him.”
“That can’t last forever.”
“It doesn’t need to—just for another two weeks, and then I will return home and tell him all about it. He trusts the Woodsworth family completely, so his anger should subside before too long.”
“You are living with the Woodsworths?” He looked behind them in the direction Mr. Woodsworth had taken. “Is the general there?”
“He is in Brighton with his men.”
Lord Bryant stiffened, and a muscle in his jaw worked back and forth.
“But Mrs. Jorgensen is there.”
The muscle in Lord Bryant’s cheek relaxed at that. “Even still, give me one good reason I should allow you to stay there. It is folly. If anyone in London catches wind of this, your reputation will be ruined.”
One good reason. She needed one good reason. She had a lot of reasons. She wanted to prove to her brother she could do hard things, just as he had. She wanted to be a better maid. She was slowly learning, and she found she actually enjoyed some of her duties. Others she detested, but still, there was a sense of accomplishment at the end of each day that she had never had as Lady Patience.
“Because I need this chance before I am to be married off to some man of only partly my choosing. I want an opportunity to breathe for a moment before the rest of my life is planned by another person. I want to be the person I choose for another few weeks before I have to go back to being Lady Patience and then Lady Whomever-I-Marry. And on top of all that, I would like to feel useful. And in that household, I do.” She sighed. Lord Bryant did exactly what he wanted anytime he wanted to. He was the last person on earth to know what it felt like to have no choices in life. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
Lord Bryant was quiet. Gone was his mocking air and jaunty grin. His eyes dulled, and he looked down at the ground. There was no possible way he would allow her to continue living this lie. He shouldn’t, and she knew it. What’s more, he knew it.
Lord Bryant took a deep breath, and then his smile returned. “How long did you say this will last?”
A lightness entered her chest, and the sun sharpened every leaf in the suddenly detailed trees around her. “You are going to let me stay?”
Lord Bryant shook his head and then chuckled softly. “I’ve always had a hard time saying no to women. Why else do you think I get into so many scandals?”
“Oh, they are never your fault?”
“Me?” His face was pure innocence. “Never. You’ve seen how Miss Morgan is. I deal with that all the time.”
“And Miss Paynter?” she asked.
Lord Bryant’s face softened. “Miss Paynter is different.”
Patience glanced back to the blanket where Miss Paynter was chatting happily with Miss Barton and Mrs. Cuthbert. She was no Miss Morgan. She was quiet and delicate, just as his first wife had been. Perhaps Lord Bryant had finally met his match.
“How long, Lady Patience? You can’t expect me to keep this from your brother indefinitely. He is bound to find you missing at some point.”
“Two more weeks. I just need to make it two more weeks, and then I will happily return to my brother.”
He sighed. “I will allow it on one condition. If you need my help . . . if you are ever put into a situation that you are uncomfortable with, you will summon me.”
She didn’t answer that. She was uncomfortable all of the time, and she could hardly call on him when it was her turn to empty the chamber pots. “Ah, and you said you weren’t the rescuing type.”
“I’m not. But your brother would call me out if something happened to you and he knew we had spoken. And for some strange reason, I still find myself wanting to live.”
“I will return home in one piece, Lord Bryant. You were the one person I have been concerned about, and now that I have leapt over that obstacle, what else could go wrong?”
“We shall see about that.”
“And you will converse and dance with Miss Morgan when you get the chance?”
“You do know that I am actively pursuing Miss Paynter at the moment.”
“And you don’t think you can handle two women?”
A slow smile spread over Lord Bryant’s face. “Actually, that is the type of challenge I am very willing to accept. All right, Lady Patience.” He reached for her hand and slowly brought it to his lips. He paused just before kissing her knuckles to give her a wink. “We have a deal.”
