The Scoundrel in Her Bed

by Lorraine Heath

  “When did the baby come?” he asked.

  “The first of spring. There was still a brisk chill in the air. It was raining, I remember. It was my birthday, although there was no celebration, of course. I’ve not celebrated it since actually. It was a day wrought with sadness.” The tears came again, burning her eyes. “Mother just took it. I tried to stop her, but I was too weak. Through you, I’d learned of the fate that awaits a child born of an unwed mother. I knew how she would rid our family of my shame.”

  It was as though she’d taken her rapier to his heart.

  Finn needed to hit something, someone. Hard. Over and over, until his knuckles bled, and his bones cracked, and the physical anguish would drown out the pain crushing his heart, the sorrow he heard reflected in her voice, felt in her slight trembling. He wasn’t even certain she was aware she was shaking, like a leaf struggling to remain tethered to a branch when the wind was determined to see a different outcome. He fought to keep his body from coiling with the need to strike out, so she wouldn’t be aware of the struggle within him. If her father weren’t dead, he’d have found a visitor in his rooms later that night.

  Placing his hand against her cheek, he tucked her face into the hollow of his shoulder, his throat tightening as he felt the cool dampness left by her tears. “It wasn’t your shame, Vivi.” He bit down on his back teeth to keep himself from howling at the unfairness of it all. “Why didn’t you tell me? That night when we first crossed paths or when we spoke in the nuns’ kitchen?”

  “I was ashamed. I didn’t want you to know how weak I’d been. Although that first night, I was still angry with you, thinking you’d left me. Later when you were no longer looking at me with hate, I couldn’t bear the thought of you doing so again.”

  He hated now, hated himself for not being there for her, even if others had been responsible for keeping him away.

  “I couldn’t stop her from taking it, and afterward I fell into such despair. I was in a lot of pain after the birthing. A midwife was on hand, but they had to send for a doctor. He gave me laudanum. It not only eased the aches in my body, but in my heart and my soul. So even after I healed physically, I continued to take it. For a year, more, I lived in a fog. Then one day Mother came into my bedchamber and told me she’d had quite enough. It was time for me to stop moping about and get on with my life. I asked her where my child was.

  “‘If God is merciful, it’s dead,’ she said. And I went mad and slapped her. So hard, Finn, but it wasn’t enough to stop the terrible grief and the anger. That’s when I started packing to leave, but instead I was hauled off to the madhouse.”

  “My God, Vivi.” He held her tighter, wanting to block out that for which he’d been responsible, in which he’d had a hand. He’d thought he could have her without consequences. He’d been a young man so full of himself, unwilling to recognize the differences between her place in the world and his.

  “I thought I would go truly mad there. I told you what it was like. Then Father died, and she came for me because eyebrows would be raised if I wasn’t there to mourn. Mother blamed me for his passing, said my sins were responsible, laid his death at my feet. And I let her. So when I might have left, I stayed, striving to make up for the wickedness, determined to bring honor back to myself and my family. To uphold the contract my father had made, to marry Thornley. But as you’re well aware, I wasn’t strong enough to do that either.”

  “Leaving took more courage than staying.” He turned her face up until he could look into her eyes. “My brave, brave girl.”

  He kissed her temple, the corner of her eye, the tip of her nose.

  Tears again welled. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him . . . or her. The shade of his eyes. The color of her hair.” She shook her head slightly. “It never occurred to me they’d be so cruel as to take it, and then to hold their silence on the matter as though none of it had ever happened. Between the laudanum and the madhouse, so much time passed that I knew I would never find it, so all I could do was carry on.”

  He didn’t know how she had survived any of it because the ache in his chest was such that he could barely draw in breath.

  A knock on the door had them both giving a startled jump.

  “Miss Kent?”

  Vivi gave a huff of nervous laughter. “Meg. No doubt come to help me prepare for the day.”

  “Tell her to come back. We’re not done here.”

  With a little nod, she slid off his lap, adjusted the covers around her, and padded from the room. He almost followed. He didn’t want to lose sight of her ever again. Instead he shoved himself out of the chair and walked to the window, surprised to discover she wasn’t the only one who’d been trembling. So many emotions—anger, grief, hatred for what they’d done to her, to them, might have done to their child. Their child.

  Looking out on the street, busy with wagons rolling by, carts being pushed, people strolling, children running, he seemed incapable of focusing on a single thing other than the fact that he had a child. A son or a daughter somewhere. It would be seven by now, if it still lived. How could he care so much for someone he had never met? And yet he did.

  He heard the patter of feet, was aware of her coming to stand just behind him, felt the warmth from her skin radiating toward his. “Do you take children from baby farmers because you’re searching for ours?” he asked quietly.

  “In a way, although I know it’s unrealistic to think I’d even recognize the child as ours. So if I saved him or her from an unhappy life, I probably wouldn’t even know, although it brings me comfort to think I might. However, all the children I’ve managed to rescue so far have been younger. Three or four in age. But even then, if the child is blond, like either of us, I think . . . perhaps he or she is ours.”

  He caught sight of Robin strutting up the walk with a walking stick the Duke of Thornley had given him, decked out in the fine attire the same man had purchased for him, his dark hair flowing out from beneath his pint-sized beaver top hat. “My hair was darker when I was younger.”

  Turning he faced her. “You know I’m going to confront your family.”

  She nodded. “It’ll only increase your frustration. The person who knows the most, my father, is dead. I don’t think my brother even knows I gave birth. He was a young buck off gallivanting, sowing his wild oats, and they’d sent him to one of the distant estates to manage it for a while. My mother keeps her lips tightly sealed, knowing her silence is a punishment to me. So what will you do? Strike them? Threaten them? With what? Bodily harm?” She skimmed her hand down his arm. “That’s not you.”

  “I have to do something, Vivi.”

  “Then help me find more children who are in need of a better home.”

  He didn’t want to find more children. He wanted to find his child.

  He’d left her then because he hadn’t known where to put all her revelations, how to categorize them, how to deal with them. Plus there was still much to see to in planning for the evening when they would introduce their club to the ladies of the ton. Although at that particular moment, he couldn’t seem to work up any enthusiasm regarding the future of the establishment. He could barely work up any enthusiasm for properly dressing himself.

  How had Vivi managed it all these years?

  That hurt the most, imagining her going through it all alone. She’d been so young, had barely crossed over the threshold into womanhood, and she’d had to face so much responsibility, so much worry, so much unkindness from her family. What she would have endured from Society would have been much worse had anyone discovered her state. She’d had to set aside all she knew, her friends and acquaintances—

  And then to have been locked away in an asylum. Even though she’d told him that part of her story the night they went to the festival, now that he knew the full extent of the agony she’d endured . . . it was all too bloody much!

  It didn’t even register that he had plowed his hand into the oak wardrobe until the jolting pain of it travele
d up his arm. Slamming his eyes closed, he fought for control.

  Her father might be dead, her mother silent, her brother ignorant, but by God that didn’t mean he wouldn’t confront the ones who remained, wouldn’t find a way to bring her peace, to bring them both peace.

  By the time Meg had finished assisting her in dressing for the day, Lavinia was surprised not to find Finn waiting for her in the office. Instead she found Robin, looking quite dapper, a small replica of a lord if she’d ever seen one.

  “Morning, miss. I’m here to run yer errands.”

  Her gaze shifted over to the invitations stacked on the desk. She couldn’t quite find the energy to hand them over to him, to explain where they needed to be delivered.

  “Have you seen Mr. Trewlove?”

  He shook his head quite forcefully, and she couldn’t help but believe that Finn was in his rooms striving to disseminate all she’d confessed that morning. She’d never meant for him to learn the truth, to know how she had failed him and their child. She’d never wanted him to experience the devastating grief of it. She’d had seven years to come to terms with the sorrow, and yet still it lingered. For him, it was fresh and raw. And she didn’t know how to lessen the hurt of it.

  She looked over at the lad who was waiting so expectantly for her to give him a chore, and suddenly all the running, all the avoiding of her family, seemed unbecoming and cowardly. She was no longer a girl of eighteen, young and naïve. She was perfectly capable of standing up for herself. Hadn’t her nightly excursions taught her that? Hadn’t her time with Finn shown her that she was different than she’d once been?

  She’d told him everything and felt stronger for it. She knew what she needed to do, what she must do. “Tell me, young Robin, would you welcome earning five hundred pounds?”

  His dark eyes widened, his mouth dropped open. “Five hundred quid? It’d make me bloody rich, the richest in all of London!”

  “Not quite that rich. You’d have to put it away in the bank. You can’t spend it all at once.”

  He scrunched up his face. “I could hide it under me mattress.”

  “No, it must go in the bank. It’ll still be yours, but they’ll protect it for you.”

  He didn’t seem to like that notion but eventually he nodded. “Good lad.”

  She penned a quick note for Finn and left it on his desk. Then she set out to do what she should have done long ago.

  Chapter 22

  “Lavinia, are you seriously insisting that this lad found you, brought you here, and is deserving of the reward?” her brother asked incredulously after she’d walked into his library and explained he owed Robin five hundred pounds for bringing her to him as indicated in the handbills.

  “Did I not just say that?” It was a little lie. The lad hadn’t actually brought her, but he had accompanied her in the hansom.

  Neville stood behind his desk, appearing somewhat flummoxed. “He can’t be more than eight or nine.”

  “Old enough to git a bird to come with me for some fun,” Robin piped up.

  Her brother scowled. “What does that even mean? This is ludicrous.”

  “Simply pay him, Neville, so we can get on with this.” If she was going to return to the residence, she wanted someone to benefit from it. She was wearing the navy frock. It made her feel powerful, in control, even if her stomach was trying to tie itself into an assortment of knots.

  “But I called off the hounds. I wrote you a letter telling you so. Trewlove was supposed to deliver it to you.”

  “He did. You let the men go. You didn’t cancel the reward.”

  “They are one and the same.”

  “No, Neville, they are not. The idiots you hired passed out handbills, so I was not completely free as anyone could have hauled me over here for the blunt. And young Robin did.”

  With a put-upon sigh, Neville sat, opened a drawer, withdrew a leather-bound book, opened it, and began writing.

  “Ye’re not s’pose to write in books,” Robin announced. “The duke says so.”

  Her brother paused, his pen lifted from the parchment. “You hang about with dukes, do you?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact he does,” she said. “Thornley, to be precise.”

  Neville narrowed his eyes. He was the Earl of Collinsworth now, and everyone referred to him by his title, but she simply couldn’t. It reminded her too much of her father. “Have you been hiding out in Whitechapel, then? That’s where Thorne believed you to be. I was inclined to believe you asked my driver to take you there to simply throw us off the scent.”

  “It doesn’t matter where I’ve been. It only matters that I’m here now.” To settle her affairs, and if she found herself trapped, Robin knew to scurry back to the Elysium Club and alert Finn as to her whereabouts. She knew nothing would stop him from coming for her, not this time. She jerked her chin toward her brother. “Get it written.”

  He completed his task, tore the note from the book—

  Robin gasped as though he’d just witnessed someone committing murder.

  “It’s all right,” she reassured him. “It’s a special book for writing in and tearing paper from.”

  Neville shoved back his chair none too gently, marched up to Robin, and extended the paper.

  Robin, holding his hat and walking stick in one hand as any gentleman might, merely looked up at him and blinked. “Wot ye take me fer? A dimwit? That ain’t five hundred quid, guv.”

  “It’s a banknote,” Neville said impatiently. “It’s worth five hundred quid.”

  Snatching it from Neville’s fingers, she presented it to Robin. “You take it to a bank, and they’ll give you the money. We’ll do it once I’m done here. Now go find the kitchens and tell the cook that Lady Lavinia said you were to be given some biscuits and milk.” She had little doubt he was resourceful enough to make his way through the house, and since the butler had seen the lad arrive with her, she knew they wouldn’t toss him out.

  With a nod, Robin took the paper from her, placed his hat on his head, and tapped the tip of his walking stick—a lion’s head—against the brim. “Thanks, guv. Ye ever need anythink, any errands run, ye let me know.”

  Then he strutted out.

  “Thorne has a walking stick like that, with a lion’s head,” Neville said, sounding somewhat perplexed by the notion.

  “Yes. Robin told me Thorne had given the miniature one to him as a gift.” The lad had told her a good deal as they’d journeyed through London. He was quite the magpie once he got going. “I need to have a word with the dowager countess. Do you know where I’ll find her?”

  “Just like that? You just come in here, demand I pay the lad, and don’t offer any explanation as to where you’ve been or why? We’ve been worried sick.” His tone reflected true concern.

  “I wrote you every week to let you know I was well.”

  “For all I knew, someone could have been forcing you to write the letters.”

  She gave him a small smile. “Really, you must stop reading those ghastly stories about murders and such.” Her brother enjoyed the more gruesome tales.

  “We’re not going to discuss my reading habits. I’ve spent more than three months telling people you were ill. I have no doubt most of London believes you to be on your deathbed. If it’s any consolation, I’ve received an abundance of condolences on your poor health. I want an explanation regarding what the devil is going on.”

  “I’m sorry, Neville, but I told you I had doubts regarding my marrying Thornley. You wouldn’t listen. Mother locked me in my room on the night before I was to wed.”

  Looking down at his polished shoes, he seemed contrite. “Yes, I learned of that later.” He lifted his gaze. “What you told that boy about the bank—you’re not leaving with him, surely.”

  “I can’t stay. There’s so much you don’t know, Neville, but I wasn’t happy here. This isn’t the life I want.”

  “It is the life to which you were born.”

  “But that doesn�
��t mean it is the life I must live.”

  “I don’t understand, Lavinia. What the deuce do you want?”

  With a long sigh, she held his gaze. “To let go of the past. Now where will I find Mother?”

  “In the morning room.”

  Spinning on her heel, she headed out of the shelf-lined library, keenly aware of her brother following closely behind her, his faint sputtering reaching her ears. There was too much to explain, too much he wouldn’t be able to comprehend. He strongly resembled their father and every earl who had come before him and lived by their creed. Honor, duty, and respectability ruled. There was no room within their world for a girl’s tender feelings or a woman’s determined plans if they didn’t involve marrying a lord.

  The wide French doors to the morning room were open and she swept through them in the same manner that her mother had once swept out of her bedchamber, a tiny bundle cradled in her arms—with vengeance and righteousness shimmering off her. Her mother sat on the bright yellow brocade sofa, sipping her tea. She did little more than arch an eyebrow at Lavinia.

  “Where is my child?” she asked, coming to a halt in front of the low table that provided a barrier between her and the woman who’d given birth to her.

  Neville, who had moved past her to be nearer to their mother as though he feared he might need to serve as her protector, staggered to a stop and stared at Lavinia. “Pardon?”

  Her mother simply looked at her, her expression passive and unchanging. Lavinia might have received more of a reaction if she’d asked her if she were expecting it to rain.

  “Which baby farmer did you give it to?” she asked determinedly. “What were her initials? M. K. or D. B. or X. X. or some other combination?”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” Neville asked, his gaze roaming over her from head to toe as though he were searching for the evidence that a babe had once grown inside her. “What child?”