‘Ridiculous. The place was still swarming with people even as I left, all desperately trying to catch a glimpse of Napoleon even though he was long gone. Apparently, it’s been like that for the last month. From the moment the public learned the Navy were holding him on the Bellerophon just off the coast, the town was inundated. There were so many boats in the water one day, the Captain threatened to turn his cannons on them.’
‘Did you get to meet the man himself?’
Usually reluctant to discuss state secrets even when they were public, Piers seemed uncharacteristically happy to spill it all thanks to the stifled atmosphere around the table. ‘I cannot say we had a conversation, but I was present when Captain Maitland gave him his marching orders. Yet even then he tried to argue against his exile to St Helena and continued to claim asylum here in England—and he expected it to come with a house grand enough for his station and big enough for all his battalions of staff. Staggering really...the nerve of the man is unbelievable. He was so adamant of his due it was as if invading half of Europe and starting a huge war was of no consequence.’
‘But some men are like that, aren’t they?’ said her mother with a frigid glance towards Griff. ‘Shameless L-I-B-E-R-T-I-N-E-S who cause mayhem and take what they want with scant regard for whether it is right or proper. But at least we expect nothing less from Old Boney who has never tried to hide his villainy. It is the W-O-L-F in sheep’s clothing who is always the rottenest to their core. Who say one thing with the utmost piety and do quite another. Who garner people’s trusts and use it to prey on innocents and take advantage—’
‘Enough!’ Charity’s cutlery clattered to the plate. ‘Stop taking this all out on Griff!’
‘And who else shall we take it out on, Daughter?’ Her father slammed his wine glass down with such force the stem shattered, sending red wine all over the expensive Irish linen tablecloth while everyone else around the table audibly held their breath. All except Mrs Philpot who buried her tearstained face in her handkerchief. ‘I entrusted that scoundrel with your safekeeping, and he repaid me by seducing you!’
‘He didn’t seduce me.’
‘Charity...’ From his exiled seat at the furthest edge of the table, Griff shot her a warning look. ‘Your parents have every right to be angry with me.’
‘No, they don’t, Griff.’ It wasn’t fair that he should take the fall alone. It wasn’t as if anyone around this table was in any doubt that they had been intimate with one another—like Napoleon, that ship had already sailed a week ago when she had confessed to her sisters her predicament and within minutes they had unleashed hell. ‘I will not sit here and allow your entire character to be assassinated. Not when it was I who seduced you.’
‘What!’ Her father surged to his feet, his eyes bulging with fury as he pointed at Griff. ‘Has he put you up to this? Manipulated you into taking the blame like he manipulated you into his bed!’
In for a penny, in for a pound. ‘Actually, it was my bed, Papa, and Griff was only in my bedchamber because he was trying to reason with me and talk me out of going to Lord Denby’s house party unchaperoned as I intended—and as Dorothy will confirm.’ As her wide-eyed best friend nodded, Charity glanced at her new husband down the table and shrugged at Griff’s exasperated expression.
‘We argued. As I am sure you can imagine, because Griff and I have always done that so well. I didn’t take kindly to either his interference in my plans or his intuitiveness when he despaired at me continually throwing myself at a man who didn’t show the slightest interest in me...’ She might as well throw it all out in the open. No matter what the circumstances or his unflattering feelings, he had stepped up and she knew in her heart that that noble sacrifice deserved some acknowledgement. Confession was supposed to be good for the soul, after all, and if any air ever needed cleaning it was the toxic fumes choking this dining room. ‘I took umbrage simply because he was right... Denby didn’t want me and I already knew it by then.’
Griff’s expression was now as shocked as everyone else’s. ‘Because unbeknownst to Griff, before our argument that fateful night, I had just read a letter from Lord Denby informing me there would be no house party on account of his engagement. And because hell apparently really does have no fury like a woman scorned, in my irrational state, I took it all out on Griff and kissed him.’
Which was as much of the truth as she was prepared to admit to for now.
Her father’s fist banged the table. ‘A kiss is a long way from a seduction!’
‘In my experience, that all depends on the kiss.’ Luke’s comment earned him a sharp nudge from a very pained-looking Hope and a sympathetic nod from Piers.
‘He could have walked away! He should have walked away!’ Her father wasn’t ready to be placated, but Charity shook her head defiantly. ‘He could have done the decent thing—the only gentlemanly thing—and left my youngest daughter well alone!’
As the smell of the gravy was making her queasy, she pushed the plate away before she answered. ‘Who is your most headstrong daughter, Papa? The one most determined to always get her way?’
Nobody needed to say it was her. The way they all stared intently at their plates was confirmation enough. The only person who met her eye was Griff, his expression a cross between mortified, bemused and, she hoped, impressed that she had stood up for him. She offered him a resigned smile and he sent her one back. Oddly, it meant the world. ‘I am the most reckless and tenacious one. The one you most despair of, Papa, and I started it and was quite determined to finish it—hence we all find ourselves here today trying to come to terms with the aftermath.’
Her father finally sat, heavy like a broken man, and groped for her mother’s hand. His disappointment made her feel awful, but she didn’t regret telling him the truth. As horrible as the situation was, they were all in it together and she and Griff most of all. It wasn’t right that he be pilloried any more than it was fair that the lifelong bonds between the Brookes family and the Philpots be shattered because they felt the need to choose sides in a battle that neither had started.
She had.
And all to prove a point.
‘I treated him like a son...’ Her father shook his head in disbelief as her mother nodded, and Charity rolled her eyes.
‘But he isn’t your son, Papa, nor is he my brother, so stop behaving as if we’ve committed some hideous cardinal sin above the obvious one, because we haven’t. We share no blood connection whatsoever so have always been perfectly free to marry.’ That was probably why there had always been friction between them. She had always wanted him in a way he hadn’t wanted her. She might as well embrace that truth too while she was being honest.
‘Griff proposed the next morning, by the way, long before either of us knew I was pregnant, so he did the decent thing unprompted in case you level that charge at him too, and I stubbornly refused him. I thought I could pretend it hadn’t happened, and like my frequent scandals, I thought it would all eventually disappear and be forgotten about. That’s why I ran away and came home...and when he followed me and tried to do the decent thing again, I refused to see him let alone discuss it. If you don’t believe me, ask Lily, as she was the one I tasked with sending him packing because I was too much of a coward to do it myself.’ He had deserved better than that. ‘But despite that, when the worst happened, he was there beside me like a shot and not once in this wretched last week has he been anything less than a gentleman about it all. Which, all things considered, is rather admirable really—don’t you think?’
For several fraught seconds, you could have heard a pin drop as everyone digested this. Until her sister yelped as her waters broke and the whole house descended into more chaos.
* * *
It was an hour or so before dawn when they finally returned home. After assisting in the birthing room, Charity was dead on her feet and had almost nodded off on the short five-minute carriage ri
de from Bedford Place to Burton Crescent, so Griff had sent her straight to bed. In view of the hour he did the same, but with his mind whirring, he didn’t bother trying to sleep and instead stretched out on his mattress while he tried to examine everything to make some sense of the muddle. His life had been turned upside down, and at such speed he’d had little time to make head or tail of any of it, but now that time ominously stretched before him his organised and logical mind needed a forward plan seeing as a significant part of the old one had so spectacularly failed.
There was one new and enormous constant which couldn’t be ignored.
He was married.
That he happened to be married to the woman of his dreams was by the by, because the circumstances and the premise weren’t right. Charity was only his on a technicality and a veritable ocean still flowed between them. That had to be fixed, although he had no idea how. All he did know, without a shadow of a doubt, was he couldn’t live with the situation as it was and certainly not indefinitely. It was too painful and if it continued on in that same vein, it would destroy him. Reason told him he had three viable options after the baby was born.
One—they could agree to live completely separate lives as so many unhappy couples in the ton did.
Two—they could divorce. It would be a scandal, of course it would, but as Piers had proved it could be weathered and once a suitable amount of time had passed, he and Charity could move on. There was no doubt she would any more than there was no chance he would.
Or three—they could make the marriage work as a good marriage should.
As the first two options would likely destroy him, that only left three on the table. But the odds were undeniably stacked against him. If he were a betting man, at best it was a long shot and...
He thought he heard a distant sob and sat bolt upright. Then another. Definitely coming from next door. She was crying and it broke his heart.
On leaden feet, he ventured to the connecting door and pressed his ear against the wood, not wanting to intrude on her misery but needing to at the same time, the sounds beyond more ugly than tragic. Anger perhaps on top of the sadness? Despair? Horror?
Another sob, then a cough and a groan and he could stand it no more. Without knocking, Griff burst through the door to comfort her and then skidded to a stop at her upturned palm.
‘Go away!’ She was on all fours on the floor, leaning over the chamber pot. ‘Don’t look at me!’ Then she retched and sobbed and groaned some more.
‘Oh, my God!’ In a panic, he hit the floor beside her, tried to support her shoulders and she flapped his hand away. ‘Shall I fetch the physician?’ It was quite the wrong time to ask her a question, but she managed to shake her head then answer between each violent spasm.
‘No point... Morning sickness...please go away...give me some dignity...’
At a loss at what to do to help her and damned if he’d leave her to suffer all alone simply so she could pretend all was well when it plainly wasn’t, Griff turned his back and waited until it all subsided. Then, riddled with guilt, he helped her to the bed and fetched her some water. As she drank it, he wrung out a clean flannel and handed it to her too. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘This.’ He gestured to her ineffectually as she wiped her drawn face. ‘For doing this to you. For making you so ill. I had no idea morning sickness was so bad.’
‘To be fair to you neither did I.’ She flopped back on her pillow, so pale she almost matched the milky shade of her ivory nightgown. ‘And for the record, morning sickness is a misnomer, for it gives the sufferer false hope that it confines itself to the mornings when it plainly doesn’t.’ Then she managed a limp smile as she touched her belly. ‘Whatever demon you planted in here, Griff, ensures I am sick morning, noon and night.’
A worrying thought. ‘Surely that can’t be right?’
‘According to your mother it is. Don’t you remember? She said that with you she was in an awful state for the first four months—which I suppose only reiterates that you are to blame for the state I am in.’ She thwacked him playfully. ‘Proof if proof were needed that you have always been ornery, Griffith Philpot, and even before you were born you managed to royally spoil someone’s fun.’ It staggered him that she could find amusement in the situation when he was so appalled by it all.
‘There must be something we can do to make it better?’
‘Our family physician said it would pass eventually.’
‘Well that isn’t good enough! You cannot spend another two months like this!’
‘Did you hear that, little one?’ She lifted her head so that she could talk to her stomach. ‘Your papa is displeased with your behaviour and wants it to stop.’
She was being ironic, typically flippant, yet had no idea what a profound effect that simple jokey comment had upon him. Because up until that moment he hadn’t fully understood the full implications of their situation. But those two simple repetitive syllables in ‘papa’ kindled something strange inside him which he hadn’t realised was there. Something primal and protective and all-consuming. An emotion which slammed into him like a locomotive at full speed.
Fatherhood.
An enormous responsibility and another new constant which couldn’t be ignored.
Unaware that she had left him entirely speechless and floundering, Charity grinned despite her nausea as he sat on the edge of her mattress. ‘This baby won’t listen, of course, because the half that isn’t ornery like you will be rebellious exactly like me, and therefore will instinctively chafe against direct orders. What on earth was fate thinking to amalgamate two such troublesome personalities as ours? Unless it’s clearly intent on punishing us both for being so troublesome in the first place.’
Or fate was pushing them together.
As stunned as he was by their new situation, Griff couldn’t help but think there was also a sense of inevitability about it all too. A sense of rightness. That might be because he knew that if his heart had had to choose his wife, it would have chosen Charity—no contest. There would have been no other candidate as far as that fickle organ was concerned, no matter what his sensible head had to say on the subject.
‘We might even have created a monster, Griff. Have you considered that?’
‘Impossible.’ He smiled trying to picture the character of their minute offspring, and of its own accord, his hand gently rested on her belly. That too felt right. ‘In here is a brilliant inventor. So brilliant he’s practically a genius like his impressive father, and he will invent steam engines so sophisticated they will fly.’
She laughed as she shook her head, her hands resting on top of his, unconsciously completing their unlikely family circle in a way which touched him profoundly. It felt like fate—his destiny—that with this woman was exactly where he was always meant to be. ‘Obviously, she’s a soprano—but I see no reasons why she shouldn’t tinker with steam engines on the side if that happens to take her fancy too as she’s bound to be a genius because she’ll follow me more than you. I have decided to insist upon that.’
‘The Philpot & Daughter Manufacturing Company...?’ Griff let the idea marinate for a bit and decided he liked it. ‘It has a nice ring to it.’ His eyes drifted to the gold wedding band on her finger and decided he liked that there too. And behind it was another thought. The realisation that he had to fix the unfixable, no matter what it took, because his bursting heart told him that there really was no other option.
Chapter Seventeen
With all the many, many, many suitors Miss C. from Bloomsbury has accumulated over the years, alongside all the rife speculations that came with them, I have to confess, Gentle Reader, that not even I could have predicted yesterday’s unlikely groom...
Whispers from Behind the Fan
—August 1815
They spent over an hour with the expensive Harley Street physici
an the next morning. Charity trying to take it all in and Griff asking numerous questions while making copious notes. Doctor Macdonald was much more verbose on the subject of pregnancy than the Brookes family physician, probably because Griff seemed to need to know the ins and outs of everything, and while most of what the physician said seemed straightforward, some of it was so daunting Charity wished she had remained ignorant of it all. Breech births, childbed fever, caesareans, forceps, stitches...complications that would likely give her nightmares for the next seven months. It was all so daunting her head was spinning by the time they got home. Not that this strange house in Burton Crescent felt anything like her home yet either.
Mrs Gibbons greeted them in the hallway. ‘I sent the footman to the Minerva Lending Library as you requested, Mr Philpot, and the books are all in your study. I expect you and Mrs Philpot shall be wanting some tea after your busy morning...’ She offered Charity a slightly awkward smile, one that told her that Griff had finally appraised his housekeeper of her predicament. ‘Shall I bring it to the drawing room?’
He stepped forward to help Charity out of her light pelisse before the housekeeper could. ‘The terrace, please, Mrs Gibbons...and could you also brew up some peppermint tea for my wife too.’ As she scurried off to do his bidding, he took Charity’s arm and gently wrapped it around his. ‘It’s a lovely day and Dr Macdonald did say that plenty of fresh air would help with the nausea.’
This time, when he led her through the house, she noticed more, and as if he knew she had been in too much of a state yesterday to pay much attention, he took his time leading her through it. ‘I bought the house from a banker last year when I returned from Sheffield. After four years of living on my own, it didn’t feel right moving back in with my parents. It was only built five years ago so I confess I haven’t changed much about the place from the previous occupant beyond purchasing some furniture. Obviously, you’ll want to change the decor and as I have no clue about such things I shall happily leave you to it.’ Then he smiled, delightfully boyish and awkward as they paused in the centre of the spacious and airy drawing room. ‘I want you to feel happy here, Charity. This is your house too...now.’
How Not to Chaperon a Lady--A sexy, funny Regency romance Page 16
