by Karen Ranney
Still, he loved her with all his heart, however much she judged him at this moment. She’d bathed his skinned knees, sat with him the night his beloved dog, Hamish, had died, watched over him as friend, mentor, and always mother. It was Bernie who had augmented his curiosity about the world by filling his mind with lurid tales of blood and gore, who had played Roundhead with him in the east wing of Sanderhurst and taught him how to hold a saber.
Bernie, the one person in the world he did not wish to see at this moment. When he was twenty, she’d come to him and said that from now on, she would only answer to Bernie, that she was going to see the world, that he was old enough to be a man on his own and that she was not getting any younger. He’d been half-terrified and half-ecstatic to be granted such freedom.
She’d never used artifice when he was a child, and even now disdained the use of powder and paint favored by the older women of the ton, tarting themselves up to resemble absurd ancient dolls. Bernie’s face was lined, and her skin was tanned, but there was an energetic robustness about her that reminded him of her athleticism, that she’d taught him to ride using example, not a riding master. It had been Bernie who played with him in the gardens, who fished with him in one of the lakes surrounding Sanderhurst, who hunted with all the skill and avidity of any male he knew. Fondness for this women filled his heart, vying with the irritation he felt.
“I will admit to being absurdly proud of your good looks, my darling son,” she said, smiling broadly. “But then, you’ve shown promise since the day you were born and stared up at me with those black eyes like two lumps of coal in your face. But why on earth do you look as if you’ve been rousting in the hay all day, dear boy? Not that you have any clinging to you, but you are barefoot, Archer. And although you seem quite dressed, your hair is falling down upon your face. It’s quite a thoroughly titillating thing, to have caught you without your composure.”
“I’m known as St. John the Hermit, you know. Probably from my dislike of visitors, a reputation I’ve spread about to discourage our many ancillary relatives from plaguing me for contributions to this or that, or seeking knowledge about the state of my health.” His tone was bored, his words almost tinged with sardonic reverie. Except, of course, that his eyes were snapping.
“Well, you’re certainly your father’s son, my dear. That speech was vintage Earl of Sanderhurst. Is this my welcome, then, Archer?”
He descended the last five steps, stood standing in front of her, shaking his head. Admonition, it was not. Wonderment, quite possibly.
“I suspect the turban is a bit much, Archer, but they are all wearing them now.”
“With so many ribbons and bows, Bernie? And an ostrich feather and a ruby in the middle?”
Her headgear, however, was not all that rendered him speechless. She was wearing pantaloons. Oh, they were loosely draped, but they were pantaloons nonetheless, in such an odd color green that it looked the shade of pea soup left alone to ferment for a few days. Her jacket was of the same color, but a shawl of splashy flowers topped the affair, its fringe almost touching the floor. Her red kid slippers were the most absurd complement to the entire wardrobe selection. Even Archer, having been familiar with his mother’s penchant for thumbing her nose at society’s strict guidelines for dress, could not restrain a chuckle when he saw those. They were bright red and curled at the toe, like a jester’s slippers. At the end of each toe, a silver bell was hung, and his delightfully witty and urbanely charming mother jingled when she walked.
“You have a mind to poke your finger in the eye of the ton, is that it, Mother?” She squinted at him. He only called her Mother when he meant to be particularly irritating.
“Nonsense, Archer. I simply wish to have a little fun. Life is too short to be such a slave to propriety.”
“Please, Mother, be more frank with your opinions. You hold too much within,” he murmured, bending to give her a kiss.
“No hug? After all, it’s been nearly a decade since last we met in Paris.”
“You do not look a day past our last meeting.”
“And you are as polite as I raised you to be.”
“While you are as outrageous as I remember your being.”
“I have missed you.” Her hand brushed his cheek in an altogether gentle touch. She smiled up at him with glittering eyes. Twice this night a woman had bestowed such perfect tenderness upon him that it made him wonder if he looked so much in need of it.
He only smiled back at his mother, sincerely grateful she was safe, eternally thankful that she had given him the love he’d needed as a child and had protected him from the almost apathetic cruelty of his father. She had taught him what love was about, that it was conceivable to like one’s relatives and to do something that was proper and right and made someone else proud.
“Archer?”
They both turned their heads, looking up at the head of the curving stairs. Mary Kate stood there, hands grasping the overlong folds of one of his unused nightshirts, evidently unearthed from a drawer where his valet kept them. Her hair was in disarray across her shoulders, her lips were bruised from his kisses, her pink toes emerged from beneath the puddling hem. Altogether she had the appearance of a woman well loved. She blinked at both of them. Archer could imagine what they looked like, he nearly naked and his turbaned mother sporting a wide and nearly demonic smile. It was a wonder Mary Kate didn’t think herself in the throes of a nightmare. He should have explained before he left the room, but had been, quite frankly, rendered speechless.
Not unlike his current dilemma
“Oh dear, Archer,” his insouciant mother replied, evidently relishing the concupiscence that surged through him at the sight of Mary Kate night touseled. “Is that Alice come home?”
He turned and gaped at her.
“And here I returned, just to help find her.”
Chapter 24
“I am the Dowager Countess of Sanderhurst,” Bernie explained, as she mounted the staircase to the accompaniment of tinkling bells on her shoes. “But I am quite positive you cannot be Alice.”
Mary Kate stood frozen in place, immobilized by the dawning awareness of the physical resemblance between this surprising woman and the man who stood at the bottom of the stairs glaring up at them.
A mother. Dear God, Archer’s mother.
Bernie grasped Mary Kate’s hand, held onto it with a grip that was relentless for all its gentleness and propelled her down the stairs. “Alice had such lovely blond hair. Not that yours isn’t quite as lovely. But it isn’t as if I could mistake you. Unless of course, Alice has changed all that much, and I don’t suspect that is true. Besides, she is supposed to be missing.” She tossed a glance over her shoulder. “Or has that changed, Archer?”
Archer simply frowned at her.
Mary Kate had no choice but to follow where she led. Archer had the odd thought that it was like watching a dinghy being towed by a merchantman.
“Dear boy, please ring for tea. I’ve no doubt that your staff has already taken it upon themselves to do so, despite the hour, but I am quite famished. I have spent the majority of the last week touring England as if I had never been here before. Not that I intended to do so, of course, but the scenery entranced me so much that I simply had to view the lake country. With the end result that I have spent my nights in some truly dreadful hovels. I simply would not do it again. The English must learn a better standard of hospitality.”
“You are English, Mother, or have you managed to become an expatriate in your years abroad?”
“I think I am being chastised. Dear Archer, it is not my fault you were caught in flagrante delecto. Do not be such a boor about it.” She managed to artfully frown while not accentuating those creases around her eyes. He wondered if she’d practiced that look in the mirror, then recognized the idiocy of that thought. Bernie didn’t give a flying farthing what her face looked like; in fact she’d often bragged that she could not wait for old age in order to become a true eccentric. Until
then, she’d announced, she would only be considered odd.
“Most mothers would simply swoon,” he said now, a reluctant smile softening his answer.
“That is simply the worst kind of insult, to label me as normal.”
“God forbid,” Archer said dryly, opting to retreat for the instant to the sideboard, where he poured himself a measure of brandy. Perhaps it was a coward’s gesture to seek solace in spirits, but it was three o’clock in the morning, he was deadly tired, recuperating from the best sex he’d ever had in his life and all the ramifications that brought to his mind, and intrigued beyond measure to see how his mother and Mary Kate would suit.
Members of the ton were not expected to rear their children. There were nannies for that, or nurses and governesses, tutors for boys. There were riding masters and dance instructors and those whose sole purpose in life was to make miserable the life of one small child, heir to one of the world’s great fortunes. Yet his mother had not only taken an interest in his well-being but had overseen every hour of his day, an effortless granting of love and affection for which he’d always be grateful.
He had often thought that perhaps it was not a good thing to have learned of women from one unlike the rest of her sex. His mother was an iconoclast of the first order, eschewing such things as docility and decorum. She spent her money on things like orphanages and the unearthing of obscure artifacts. Each month, in whichever country she was currently residing, she adopted a poor child, spending countless amounts of money on establishing him or her with a family and people who wanted to care for and to love a child. She helped those who would learn obtain skills with which to support themselves, and tossed her hands up in the air and abandoned those who would not.
But she’d never abandoned him.
She had always been there, waiting to welcome him home on school holidays, demanding that he bring what friends he would down to Sanderhurst. She had protected him from the grasping manipulations of those women who cared little about the St. John heir and more about the St. John fortune. Even the horde of relatives he supported had been forced, until his majority, to appeal to his mother first, a state of affairs that proved amenable for all those involved. Bernie, after all, saw nothing wrong with doling out what funds were requested; it seemed there was an inexhaustible supply of it. The petitioners were satisfied, Archer was pleased because he did not have to suffer through any more of his obscure relatives’ whining tales of misfortune, and Bernie enjoyed the power of it.
Even after she’d left England, she’d never abandoned him. Her monthly letters were filled with stories of her exploits, reflections upon life itself. And not uncommon was another lecture upon the error of his ways, the particular sin his mother had chosen that month to assail.
If his greatest wish was for a family, it would not have been the one he was saddled with, who expected him to act as banker for all their demands. It would have been, as “normal” as it sounded, for a wife who quite frankly adored him and children who worshipped him. A fairy tale life, in fact. And a home? Sanderhurst was the greatest of places to found a dynasty. There were hidden rooms and at least three concealed staircases and a large, well-lit library and a thousand places to play. There were lofty ceilings and a storeroom that was located beneath the main floor, dungeonlike. In other words, a ready-made paradise for those children he’d sire. Except of course, that there would be none of those. Alice had, by disappearing, guaranteed that.
He wondered if he’d given Mary Kate a child. It was not for want of trying. He’d sent his seed so deep inside her he wondered she could not taste it. The possession of it had surprised him. No, more than that, surely, Archer. It had given him the single most powerful experience of his life.
What would a child of theirs look like? A dark-haired boy with flashing green eyes? A girl with hair the color of a carrot, with black eyes? A miniature of both of them, temperament to match? He found himself very much wanting to know. It was a thought that should have sent him scrambling from the room.
Instead, he leaned back against the sideboard, having fortified his glass once again, and watched two of the most interesting women he’d ever met eye each other with a great deal of trepidation.
“So, I’ve established the fact that you are not Alice, girl, but have not yet gleaned your true identity.”
Mary Kate looked at Archer. He wished, fervently, that his protective impulses were not so easily summoned by such a stricken glance. But he could not help responding to her unspoken plea any more than he could have prevented himself from taking her to bed tonight. Both impulses were likely to have far-reaching consequences.
“Mary Kate is my guest, Mother, that is all that’s necessary to know at this juncture.”
An eyebrow arched. When had his irrepressible mother become so adept at unvoiced sarcasm?
She turned to Mary Kate, laying a warm hand upon the younger woman’s arm. “And how do you find the comforts of Sanderhurst?” There was a gleam of interest in her eyes, or perhaps it was simply speculation, Archer didn’t know. All he knew was that the battle of wits was somehow overmatched. Mary Kate was neither noble nor well-traveled, nor so secure in her consequence that she could ignore the dictates of polite society with impunity. Allowing herself to become his mistress was one thing, becoming target for his mother’s protective claws was quite another.
He strode to the sofa, extended his hand. Mary Kate placed her fingers across his palm as she stood. It was a delicate gesture, a polite one replicated a thousand times a day between men and women. It should not have struck a cord somewhere deep inside him. An innocent friction that called to mind another stroking, deep inside her.
“It is late,” he said, cutting off his mother’s questions, silencing with a look the comment she would have made. “There is plenty of time tomorrow for questions.”
“And answers, Archer? Will there be time for those?” Bernie didn’t smile as she looked up at him, then glanced at Mary Kate. There was something in her eyes he’d seen before, when he’d fallen from his first pony, or been beaten by his father on one of those occasions when he’d been summoned to the library when little more than an infant.
Instead of answering her, he escorted Mary Kate from the room.
Chapter 25
“No, no, the elephant’s tusk goes on that stand. See, there! And that, my good man, is a fertility goddess, not a good-luck charm. You will do yourself no good fortune by stroking her breasts with such an ardent touch. Oh, there you are, girl,” she said, noticing Mary Kate standing in the doorway. “I’ve heard some interesting tales of you, Mary Kate Bennett.”
Mary Kate hesitated at the doorway. “Shall I help you unpack, Countess?”
“Half the fun of resting upon journey’s end is unearthing the things one thought so precious at the beginning of the trip. Do you know that I once traversed the Pyrenees with a whole trunk full of Venetian crystal? Sad to say, only about half of it survived the mules, but then again, there are the odds of things to consider. However, you shall attempt to assist me in the placement of these things, now that my furniture is about me.”
“Do you always travel with your own bed?”
“My own bed, my own chair, my own mattresses, and the carpets beneath my feet. What good is having so much money if one cannot find a use for it? And before you scrunch up that pretty nose of yours at the frivolity of such expense, girl, just think of the laborers who are so glad to see me arrive and even gladder still of my departure.”
“I was not thinking of such criticism, being one of the people who would have profited by your appearance.”
“Your smile is really too spectacular, my dear girl. Like the sun shining out from behind a dull cloud. So, girl, you’re of yeoman class, then?”
“I am from it and of it. Not simply placed here for the pleasure of your son. I have honestly worked most of my life, not simply whored for it.”
The directness of her look would have been hard to escape, had Bernie wished to.
Instead, she nodded briskly. “Well, there is that question answered, then. You have magnificent hair, girl, you should let it flow free. Hygeia would have had such looks.”
“Not girl. Mary Kate.”
Bernie squinted at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“I dislike being called girl. I have not been one since the day my monthlies arrived.”
The bluntness of that statement widened Bernadette’s eyes and prompted a guffaw of laughter. “I think I shall like you, Mary Kate of the yeoman class. Provided, of course,” she said, pointing a finger at her, “that you aren’t a stupid woman. I cannot abide stupid women. Men, you cannot expect more than average from the lot of them, with a few exceptions. Women, on the other hand, either soar into brilliance or are dumber than an ass’s ass.”
“I shall endeavor to blind you with my brilliance.”
“Don’t be laughing at me, Mary Kate. I see that look in your eyes. You shall call me Bernie. I dislike Bernadette intensely, and do not answer to Countess, except in such occasions as it is helpful to have a position in the world. It is a singular stupidity, however, to consider those with titles more endowed than those without. Nobility is an accident of birth; being noble quite another thing entirely. Do you not think so?”
It was like being overcome by a giant river, rolling out of its banks. No one expects a flood, especially downstream, where there is no rain. But Bernadette St. John was like the Thames gorged from its tributaries, dangerous to everything in its path. She did not so much converse as she led people into her mind.
“So you think you’re being haunted?” This, seemed one of her conversational gambits. Lead the victim into thinking nothing untoward would be said, then thrust the question at her with the agility of a fencer’s rapier. “Well? Do you see spirits, or hear them?”
