Heart's Temptation Series Box Set: Books 1-3: A Steamy Historical Romance Collection (Heart's Temptation Box Set)

by Scarlett Scott

  “Miss Whitney,” Bella greeted with as much warmth as she could muster with worry swirling through her. Her stays seemed suddenly tighter. It was surreal meeting Jesse’s daughter.

  The girl gave her a haughty stare. “My surname is Jones, miss, if you please.”

  The correction would undoubtedly provoke questions from the dowager, who had not been made privy to the exact circumstances of the girl’s birth. Thornton had deemed it best to avoid complete disclosure, given their mother’s disapproval of the union in the first place. Now Jesse’s daughter had quite ruined their chance to keep the truth a secret.

  Bella had to admit too that she was taken aback by the frosty reception. So was her mother who, bless her heart, could never hold her tongue.

  “My dear girl,” the dowager clucked, looking appalled. “If you are to remain on in England, you must learn how to address your betters.”

  Jesse bowed, his expression one of embarrassment. “I apologize, my ladies, for my daughter. As a newcomer to this country, she is still acquainting herself with your customs.”

  Miss Jones, as she would be called, appeared unmoved. Her face was a stiff mask of feigned politeness. She seated herself on a settee opposite Bella, holding herself with a regal air that belied her youth. Bella had to give her credit for her gumption, if nothing else. Jesse seated himself at her side and the interview commenced with an awkward silence.

  Bella decided she would have to try her hardest to avoid further insults from the dowager. She began pouring the tea and looked to the girl. “Miss Jones, I’m delighted to finally be meeting you. Tell us, how do you find England?”

  “I think it dreary and cold,” the girl responded, her drawl rather pronounced. “I told Mr. Whitney I desire to return to Virginia as soon as possible.”

  Jesse exchanged a meaningful glance with Bella as he accepted a teacup and saucer from her. “I informed Clara she would be well advised to avoid making hasty decisions.”

  “Indeed,” the dowager drawled in a wintry accent. “In this matter, I would defer to your father, Miss Whittlesby. England will, I feel quite certain, be incredibly improving upon your character.”

  Oh dear. Maman was still insisting upon mispronouncing Jesse’s surname, never mind that Jesse’s daughter was determined to go by a different name entirely. She feared her mother would call her Mrs. Whittlesby after the wedding, so stubborn was the old bird. Bella cleared her throat, wondering if the awful heaviness of the interview weighing down upon her would break her back.

  “Miss Jones, we must take you shopping,” she tried. “I’m certain you shall find our shops and dressmakers to your liking. I would very much enjoy showing you the finer aspects of London, once we return there.”

  “You are kind,” Miss Jones said, her tone rather disingenuous, even to Bella’s ears.

  “Indeed.” Bella grew impatient with pretense and decided upon a different tactic entirely. “Miss Jones, would you like to take a turn in the gardens with me?” She sent Jesse a sympathetic glance, hoping he wouldn’t be too displeased to be left at the mercy of her mother. “Mr. Whitney, I should like to have a moment alone with your daughter, if you don’t mind.”

  Jesse didn’t appear pleased, nor did the dowager, but both politely accepted her sudden change in plans. Miss Jones looked as if she’d swallowed a bite of rancid mutton but she allowed Bella to lead her away nonetheless. Outside, it was a gray day, the weather having turned damp and oppressing. They collected their wraps before venturing out into the cool afternoon.

  Bella waited until they were beyond earshot of servants to begin her conversation. She still wasn’t entirely certain what she wished to say. She knew frighteningly little about girls of an age with Miss Jones other than having been one herself. She decided tact was in order.

  “Miss Jones, I do admire your dolman,” she said of the fashionable cloak, noting that it was finer than the dress Miss Jones wore. “The trim is especially lovely.”

  “Thank you,” said Jesse’s daughter with obvious reluctance. “It is arctic fox, I believe. It belonged to my mother. I wouldn’t wear it now, but Mr. Whitney has not seen fit to procure me a proper mourning wardrobe.”

  It was likely that Jesse didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with a fifteen-year-old girl who required mourning dress. But Miss Jones was not precisely accommodating, either. Indeed, if she’d thought she and the girl would readily develop a relationship, she was rapidly rethinking her supposition. Miss Jones was neither kind nor gentle.

  “Let us be candid with one another.” Bella slowly led her deeper into the formal gardens. “I am very sorry for your loss, my dear. I feel it quite important for you to know that I don’t wish to ever take your mother’s place in your affections.”

  “That is best, for you never could,” the girl said coolly.

  “Just so,” she agreed. “But you are now your father’s ward, and I am to become his wife. We shall be forever linked inextricably. I understand you’ve seen a great deal of change in the past few weeks, but that is no reason to be ill-mannered to those who only wish to help you.”

  Miss Jones looked taken aback by her bluntness. She opened her mouth, then closed it, twice, before finally speaking. “I haven’t been ill-mannered.”

  “Yes you have.” Bella patted her arm, if not affectionately, then with a consoling air. “There is to be no nonsense between us. As you’ve seen, my mother is quite the dragon and I am made in her mold.”

  The girl stiffened. “I’m not afraid of your mother or you, my lady.”

  In her ire, her Virginia drawl was all the more pronounced. She very much looked like Jesse in that moment, all stubborn fire. She was so much his image that it gave Bella pause. No, there was no doubt the girl was his daughter.

  Bella stopped and considered Miss Jones more fully. “My dear, you ought to fear both of us. We are in possession of your future. With our aid, you will see the proper dressmakers, meet the right members of society, and make a fine match one day. But if we are to be enemies…” She shrugged, allowing the girl to make her own inference.

  “Do you dare to threaten me, my lady?” Miss Jones adopted a perplexed tone.

  “I am not governed by spoiled children,” she informed her. “I have no patience for insolence and nor does your father, I expect. As I said, I sympathize with your plight, but that doesn’t mean I’ll allow you to treat me with disrespect.”

  Miss Jones, it seemed, was not ready to bend. Her face darkened. “I am his daughter. You are not even yet his wife. You cannot dictate to me. I don’t care if you’re the queen.”

  The little imp certainly possessed a great deal of foolish bravery. Bella pinned her with a hard stare. “You mistake me, Miss Jones. I am not allowing you the opportunity to plead your case. I’m telling you how it will be between us from this day on. I will very soon be your father’s wife, and you will be beneath my rule every bit as much as if I were Queen Victoria herself.”

  They eyed one another warily, each testing the other’s mettle. Bella wasn’t concerned. She was every bit as determined as a spiteful fifteen-year-old. She was well aware who would win this particular war, and it wasn’t the blonde spitfire before her.

  “I don’t like you,” Miss Jones growled.

  “To be perfectly frank, my dear Miss Jones, the sentiment is mutual.” Bella raised a brow.

  Miss Jones tightened her lips, looking quite sour. It would seem she realized she’d happened upon a well-matched opponent. Poor Jesse, tasked with raising this minx on his own. He never would have stood a chance.

  “Now then,” Bella said brightly, confident the matter had been mostly settled. “Why don’t we join your father and the dowager to enjoy the remainder of tea?”

  Bella didn’t have much time to savor her minor triumph. Before the drawing room door had even closed upon Miss Jones’ black skirts, the dowager turned on her, demanding answers.

  “Is she the product of a divorce or is she a bastard?” Either prospect, it
appeared, suited the dowager as well as a dinner of spoiled mackerel.

  “The girl has chosen to take her mother’s surname,” Bella tried to evade. She disliked such labels very much. After all, her own babe, had she not lost it, very well could have been born a bastard. Of course, she didn’t know whether or not Miss Jones’ mother had been married to Mr. Jones or not at the time of her birth. Oh heavens, life could be incredibly complicated.

  “Nonsense.” The dowager’s gaze narrowed. “Do I have the look about me of someone who was born yesterday?”

  “Maman.” Bella frowned.

  “Quite so.” Her mother’s tone was triumphant. “The girl is a bastard, isn’t she?”

  She faltered, not wanting to dissemble but not wanting her mother to go into high dudgeon just the same. “Miss Jones is his daughter, and that can be all that truly matters.”

  “Oh, my poor heart.” The dowager’s hands fluttered over her breast as if she were experiencing difficulty breathing. “I knew no good could come of this match. Surely Thornton was influenced by drink when he gave that dreadful American permission to wed you. We cannot introduce the girl to society as his bastard. Blessed angels’ sakes, we’ll be ruined.”

  Bella hadn’t contemplated the matter in that way. She’d been too preoccupied with becoming a maternal figure to the girl. Her mother did have a valid argument on that score. Questions would be asked, whether behind fans or drawing room doors, and they would need to present the answers in the most advantageous light possible.

  “Perhaps she must be introduced merely as his ward,” she suggested.

  “Dear me. I daresay we shall be inundated with all manner of ugly insinuations. Tell me something, Bella.” She pierced Bella with an intense, searching glare. “Have I utterly failed as a mother?”

  She hadn’t many soft feelings toward the dowager, but the termagant was still her mother, after all. Empathy flitted through her. “Of course not, Maman. Why would you ask such a silly thing?”

  “I suppose I was so absorbed with the commotion your brother caused at that cursed house party, I never knew you’d fallen in love until it was too late.” She startled Bella by reaching out and patting her hand in a rare show of affection. “You do imagine yourself in love with him, do you not? Ah, how I wish now to never have attended Lady Cosgrove’s country house party.”

  She contemplated her mother’s words. “You cannot fault Lady Cosgrove for hosting a country house party.”

  “I most certainly can.” The dowager sniffed. “That woman is proof that society is going to the dogs.”

  “I hardly think so.” She paused, still concerned by the potential storm of scandal on the horizon. “Will you agree that we must call Miss Jones a ward? The truth is that she was raised by her mother’s husband and her existence was only recently made known to Mr. Whitney.”

  “Oh pish.” The dowager swatted the air as if a persistent fly were buzzing around her head. “I know Mr. Whittlesby’s sordid tale of the discovery of his daughter’s existence already. You know how I deplore provocation.”

  Bella raised a brow. “I believe you meant to say prevarication, Maman. And you must cease referring to Mr. Whitney by the incorrect surname. It shall soon be my own.”

  Her mother pressed her lips into a ferocious frown. “Just so, precisely what I said. You are forever mishearing me.”

  “Indeed.” She summoned her patience, knowing that today had cost her mother dearly. “Will you prevaricate for the greater good of the family? If we all stand together in this, no questions shall be asked.”

  “I suppose I may try,” the dowager conceded. “But I’ll not escort her about London if she can’t be bothered to learn how to address her betters with proper care.”

  “Thank you.” Something occurred to her then. “Maman, you said you already knew Mr. Whitney just learned of his daughter’s existence recently. How could you have known, when I only discovered the news yesterday?”

  “I said no such thing.” The dowager rose from her chair. “Now if you’ll excuse me, all this nonsense has made me positively bilious. I daresay I require a nap.”

  Bella watched her mother disappear from the drawing room with uncharacteristic speed. She couldn’t shake the sudden suspicion that something was not quite right. She and Thornton had mutually agreed that the less their mother knew, the better off they’d all collectively be. How then would the dowager have known about Miss Jones? It was a question she was determined to answer.

  The answer to Bella’s question, as it turned out, was procured fairly easily. With a little help from Smith, she’d discovered that the manservant assigned to Jesse during his original stay at Marleigh Manor was none other than a cousin of Hollins, the dowager’s lady’s maid. This suspicious information, coupled with the dowager’s recent admission that she’d read Bella’s private correspondence with the duke, was enough to have Bella marching into her mother’s chamber.

  The dowager was being helped out of her gown by Hollins. She cast a horrified look in Bella’s direction as the door closed soundly behind her.

  “Arabella, good heavens! You cannot simply go barging about my chamber. This is unheard of. Can’t you see I’m preparing for a nap?” The dowager’s expression was startled, and unless Bella was mistaken, just a trifle guilty.

  “Maman, I should like a word alone with you,” Bella announced, her tone one of steel.

  Hollins stopped in her ministrations, leaving the dowager’s bodice hanging around her waist, her arms still bedecked in lacy white undersleeves. “My lady?”

  “Whatever you’d like to discuss can wait, my dear.” The dowager harrumphed, but the result was rather comical given that she was half-dressed.

  “It cannot.” Bella crossed her arms over her bosom and stared down her mother. “I require a dialogue with you, and I don’t want an audience.” She pinned the dowager’s lady’s maid with a meaningful glare. “Hollins, you may go.”

  But the dowager was ever stubborn. “Hollins, you may stay. I have no wish to speak just now as I am extraordinarily fatigued.”

  “I suppose she may as well stay,” Bella said at last, losing her tenuous grasp on her patience, “seeing as how she aided you in your hideous campaign of stealing my correspondence.”

  The dowager’s brows snapped together. “I am not a thief. I merely read a few of your letters from the duke to ascertain his intentions. Who can blame a mother for being protective of her daughter?”

  “It isn’t those letters I’m speaking of, and you know it,” she countered, unmoved. “Mr. Whitney told me that he left a letter with his manservant for me explaining his abrupt departure. He also claims he sent me dozens of letters during his time in Virginia, and yet I never received a single line from him.”

  Her mother’s face went pale. “If that no-account American is deceiving you regarding correspondence he didn’t bother to write you, I fail to see how I may be involved.”

  “He isn’t deceiving me. You are.”

  The dowager sniffed. “I am horridly offended by your unfair accusation. Apologize at once.”

  “It is you who owes me an apology.” Bella shook her head, still shocked that her mother could stoop to such a cruel level of interference in her life. “You also owe one to Mr. Whitney, as your tampering with his letters has led to a grave misunderstanding between us.”

  “I didn’t tamper with a single letter,” the dowager declared. “I won’t offer an apology where none is due.”

  But Bella wasn’t about to be swayed. “His manservant at Marleigh Manor happens to be a cousin to Hollins. He told me he gave the man a letter for me, a letter that I never received. It doesn’t require much thought to draw a conclusion as to why he would withhold the letter. You gave yourself away in the drawing room.”

  At last, the dowager’s façade cracked, giving way to a hint of worry beneath. “What business did Whittlesby have sending you secret messages? I was merely doing my duty as your mother and trying to protect you from m
aking the greatest mistake of your life. Don’t you see how disastrous a match this is for you?”

  Bella’s shoulders sagged. She had wanted, despite her conviction that her mother was at the heart of the missing letters, to be wrong. “What you have done is disastrous,” she said, the fight seeping out of her. “I don’t know if I can forgive you for this.”

  “I have done nothing which requires forgiveness,” the dowager insisted, appearing incredibly ridiculous in her undergarments and skirts. “You could have been a duchess, but you, like your brother, refused to be governed by your head. I had to do something. If that wretched American hadn’t returned when he did, I daresay you would be betrothed to the duke now instead.”

  While she understood that her mother thought her actions had been justified, Bella couldn’t absolve her so easily. She had suffered for months, not knowing if Jesse would return, thinking he’d abandoned her without a word, and all that time, the dowager had been secreting his letters. All that time, all that pain and anguish, and the dowager had known.

  “I suppose I ought not to be surprised by what you’ve done,” she murmured at last. “But I am thoroughly disappointed in you.”

  “You’re my only daughter,” the dowager snapped back, her gray eyes flashing with anger. “A mother must know what is right when her daughter does not.”

  “It was not for you to decide.” Sadness overtook her then. “I’m going to speak with Thornton. I would like Cleo to oversee my trousseau instead. I can’t bear to look at you just now.”

  Her mother became red as a beet root. “You cannot! I’ll not have that woman taking my place!”

  Bella inclined her head. “I’m afraid I can. It seems you’re fated to hate both of the spouses your children have chosen. I can only hope that in time, you will soften and see reason.”

  With that, she quit the chamber, leaving the dowager to sputter behind her.