Читать книгу Bought: The Penniless Lady - Deborah Hale - Страница 8

Sussex, England—April 1824

The summons Lady Artemis Dearing dreaded had come at last.

Scooping up her small nephew, she pressed her lips to his silky hair, which was the same honey-golden shade as his late mother’s. If only she could absorb some of his innocent optimism and headstrong courage! She needed both, desperately.

Oblivious to his aunt’s distress, the child wriggled in her arms, chortling with the simple joy of being alive and loved. For an instant, his sunny spirits made Artemis forget her lingering grief and worries for the future.

With the tip of her little finger, she traced the shape of his mouth and his dimpled chin, which reminded her so keenly of her brother. It comforted her to know that part of her sister and brother lived on in this dear child. She must not fail him as she had failed them.

“Please, my lady,” said the housemaid who’d been sent to fetch Artemis, “the master wants you to come straightaway. He’ll only be in a worse humor if you keep him waiting.”

“Of course, Bessie.” The fragile bubble of happiness inside Artemis collapsed at the mention of Uncle Henry. Having waited fifty years with little hope of inheriting the Bramber title and estate, the new marquis seemed impatient to make up for lost time. “Can you watch Master Lee for me? I daren’t take him with me and if I leave him in his cot, he’ll only cry.”

Cry indeed. He would scream at the top of his sturdy little lungs. He was still too young to understand that such outbursts were unseemly. The last thing Artemis needed during her interview with her uncle was Lee’s piercing shrieks echoing through the decorous stillness of Bramberley.

“But, my lady…” Bessie backed away with a regretful grimace “…I’m that far behind with my work already. The master wants the State Apartments aired and dusted, floors scrubbed and windows washed. How am I to get that done on top of all my other duties when I’m being sent to run messages and pressed into service as a nursemaid?”

Artemis stifled a flicker of vexation. A few months ago, none of the servants would have dared refuse an order from the mistress of the house. Since her brother’s death, so much had changed at Bramberley…none of it for the better.

“Please, Bessie?” Artemis hated to stoop to bargaining, but she had no choice. “I will not be long, I promise. And once Lee is asleep tonight, I will come and help you scrub.”

“That wouldn’t be fitting, my lady!” The offer seemed to shock Bessie into agreement. “Very well, I’ll take him, but I reckon he’ll cry anyway, being away from you. You’ve got him well spoiled.”

Perhaps she did indulge the poor child, Artemis admitted privately, but how could she do otherwise for a tiny orphan everyone but she seemed to wish had never been born? How could she keep from clinging to the last person in the world she had left to love?

“If you take him down to the Green Gallery and let him walk from one chair to the next, he’ll never notice I’m gone.” Artemis gave the child a final kiss, then thrust him into Bessie’s arms. “Just keep a tight hold on his leading strings so he doesn’t fall.”

Brushing past Bessie, she rushed from the nursery. Lee was less likely to fuss if she left him quickly, while Uncle Henry was more apt to fuss if she kept him waiting.

Artemis arrived in the library out of breath with her heart racing. After taking a moment to compose herself, she knocked, then entered at her uncle’s bidding. As she crossed the threshold, she inhaled the dry, musty aroma of old parchment and leather. That smell revived heartening memories of her adored father.

Her two uncles sat in a pair of matched brocade armchairs. Artemis willed her knees not to tremble as she made a respectful curtsy. “You wished to see me, Uncle Henry?”

“I did, my dear.” The Marquis of Bramber pressed his long, thin fingers together and rested his chin upon them. “I have some very encouraging news to share. After the past year of bereavement and scandal, the Dearing family may soon put all that unpleasantness behind us.”

Wrenching as the events of the past year had been, Artemis did not want to put them behind her. That would be like turning her back on the memories of her brother and sister. Since she knew better than to contradict her uncle, she stood in composed silence, waiting for him to continue.

He did not keep her in suspense. “I have made Mrs. Bullworth an offer of marriage, which I hope she will accept.”

“Mrs. Bullworth?” Artemis could not keep her tone from betraying surprise and distaste.

She had heard plenty of gossip about Harriet Bullworth over the years. The former actress had been kept by a succession of gentlemen before marrying a wealthy banker three times her age. After his death left her a rich widow, Mrs. Bullworth had made no secret of her intention to buy her way into the highest peerage possible.

The prospect of such a brazen adventuress usurping the place that had belonged to a succession of the most refined ladies in the kingdom horrified Artemis.

“You heard correctly.” Uncle Henry’s iron-gray brows contracted in a severe frown that brooked no argument. “The lady is a most suitable choice for many reasons, not least of which is her comparative youth. The duty of propagating the Dearing line has fallen to me and I will not shirk it. A man of my years looking for a younger bride is in no position to pick and choose. Particularly when the size of his fortune does not match the luster of his pedigree.”

Duly chastened, Artemis lowered her gaze. “I understand, Uncle. Of course I want the Dearing line to continue.”

Her show of deference seemed to appease her uncle. “I knew I could count on your support, my dear. You have always been a paragon of loyalty and duty. If only your unfortunate brother and sister had followed your example, we might not have found ourselves at this pass.”

Any gratitude her uncle stirred by praising her loyalty, he forfeited by criticizing her brother and sister. “Perhaps if you had not forbidden Daphne to see Julian Northmore—”

Uncle Henry gave a dismissive flick of his fingers. “That is all water under the bridge.”

Some long-suppressed spirit of rebellion made Artemis itch to seize a pair of heavy bookends and hurl them at her uncle. Prudence restrained her. Now that Uncle Henry was head of the family, she could not afford to antagonize him—for her nephew’s sake as well as her own.

“You have been a model of familial duty,” Uncle Henry repeated. “Caring for your sister and her unfortunate child. I am certain the family can depend upon you to act for its greater good.”

Artemis sensed a lurking threat in her uncle’s praise. “What greater good might that be?”

“The one of which we just spoke, of course, and you endorsed.” Uncle Henry sounded impatient. “My finding a wife and begetting an heir.”

At the risk of annoying him further, Artemis asked, “What do your plans have to do with me?”

“You must appreciate Mrs. Bullworth’s position, my dear—the impropriety of her living at Bramberley under the same roof as an illegitimate child.”

Uncle Edward gave a fastidious shudder. “Not to mention the harm you have done your own reputation, keeping the child with you for so long.”

“I have always been perfectly scrupulous about my reputation, Uncle. I fail to see how caring for my dead sister’s child should damage it. As for Mrs. Bullworth’s propriety—” Artemis bit her tongue to keep from saying something that might make Uncle Henry lose his temper. “I sympathize, of course, but you cannot turn Daphne’s child out of Bramberley. He is barely a year old. He has nowhere else to go, any more than I do.”

“You will always have a home at Bramberley,” said Uncle Henry. “But the child must go. I should have insisted upon it sooner, but I feared being parted from her infant might be the death of your sister. Now that she is gone and the boy is weaned, surely some place can be found for him.”

The fear that had stalked Artemis since her sister’s death now pounced, threatening to rip her wounded heart to pieces. “Please, there must be some other way. Bramberley is such a vast place and so much of it unoccupied. Could I not move with Lee to a room in the north range? No one would ever have to know we were here.”

“I would know.” Uncle Henry looked thoroughly shocked at her suggestion. “I mean to give Mrs. Bullworth my word of honor that the child will not be living under her roof, and I refuse to be foresworn. You know as well as anyone, the word of a Dearing is sacred.”

“Surely our responsibility to an innocent child of our own blood is sacred, too? If he cannot stay at Bramberley, find us a little cottage on the estate or give me some money to take him farther away.” It would be a wrench to leave this sprawling old mansion crammed with rich history. But giving up the child, who was her only remaining link to her brother and sister, would be a hundred times harder.

“Out of the question.” Uncle Henry seemed surprised and vexed by her reluctance to bow to his wishes. “It would reflect badly on the family when we most urgently need to restore our good name.”

“I cannot hand him over to strangers,” Artemis protested. “He is such a little fellow and so attached to me since his mother died.”

“Attached? Nonsense!” The marquis turned up his nose. “A child that age is more vegetable than animal. As long as it is clothed, sheltered and given adequate nourishment, it will be reasonably content. By the time the boy is old enough to reason, he will have long forgotten you.”

If that were true, the thought did not comfort Artemis. Even if Lee forgot her, she would never forget him or cease to yearn for him. Perhaps because he was so small and helpless, so entirely dependent upon her, she’d permitted him to creep into her aloof, solitary heart.

Before she could devise an argument that might sway her uncle, he rose from his chair, signaling the end of their interview. “I have made my decision. The child must go. You have two weeks to find him a place you deem suitable. If he is not gone by then, I shall take matters into my own hands.”

Though a dozen desperate emotions raged in her heart, reticence and deference were so deep a part of her character Artemis could only murmur, “I understand, sir.”

“That’s a good girl,” said Lord Henry. “Be assured, as long as I am head of this family, you will always have a home at Bramberley.”

As long as she did not try to keep Daphne’s child with her. The marquis was too well-bred to put his threat in such bald terms, but Artemis knew that was what he meant. She had a fortnight to find Lee a good home and reconcile herself to parting from him. Or she would be cast out into a harsh world without friends or resources to scrape a living for herself and her nephew.

As she hurried away from the library, gusts of impotent rage buffeted her, while waves of despair threatened to sink her spirits.

Over and over, she cursed the name of the man who had killed her handsome, dashing brother and ruined her beautiful, vivacious sister. “Damn all Northmores!”

“Hadrian Northmore, what are you doing on this side of the world?” Ford Barrett, Lord Kingsfold, strode across the drawing room to greet his business partner. “Did Tuan Farquhar expel you from Singapore for trespassing on his authority again?”

In spite of Ford’s hearty tone, Hadrian sensed something amiss. Had he come too late to prevent the British government from handing Singapore over to the Dutch?

“Farquhar has been replaced as Resident.” Hadrian wrung his partner’s hand. “Before you ask, I had nothing to do with it. I’ve come to represent our fellow merchants in treaty negotiations with the Dutch. Whatever else the Foreign Office has to concede, they must not give up Singapore. The volume of trade has more than tripled since you left. Before long it will be more profitable than Penang.”

“You don’t need to persuade me.” Ford looked so relaxed and content, he appeared to have grown younger in the two years since Hadrian had last seen him.

Could that be on account of the fair-haired beauty who stood by the window with a young child in her arms, patiently waiting for an introduction? Hadrian had been surprised to receive word of Ford’s marriage—to his cousin’s widow, no less. He wished his partner better luck in marriage than he and Simon Grimshaw had found.

Before leaving Singapore, Hadrian had been charged with fetching back an English girl to be Simon’s mistress. Simon had suggested he find one for himself as well, but Hadrian shrank from the prospect. A mistress was too much like a wife to suit him.

“You will not need to persuade the government of Singapore’s commercial value, either,” Ford continued. “They signed the treaty last month. In exchange for Bencoolen and some other concessions, the Dutch have agreed not to oppose British occupation of Singapore. I wish you and Simon could have been here to celebrate the good news. Now that you are, I must call up a bottle of champagne so we can drink a toast.”

“Not champagne.” Hadrian grinned. “Arrack is the only proper drink for toasting the future of Singapore. But first, I must beg the honor of introductions.”

“To my charming ladies, of course.” Ford beckoned the woman to join them. “Forgive me, my dear. My partner’s unexpected arrival drove all civility from my mind. Allow me to present Mr. Hadrian Northmore, senior partner of Vindicara Company. Hadrian, this is my wife, Laura, and our daughter, Eleanor.”

“I am delighted to meet you at last, Mr. Northmore.” Sincere pleasure beamed like sunshine from the cloudless blue of Lady Kingsfold’s eyes. “I have heard so much about you from my husband. No one could be more welcome at Hawkesbourne.”

The little cherub in her arms stared gravely at Hadrian. The moment he met her gaze, she turned bashful, hiding her face in her mother’s shoulder.

“The pleasure is mine, ma’am.” Hadrian bowed. “I would wish my partner joy, but I see he has already found it.”

“Indeed I have.” Ford’s doting gaze rested on his wife and daughter with such obvious adoration, Hadrian scarcely recognized the grim, guarded man he’d once known. “After we raise our glasses to Singapore, we must drink to my good fortune.”

“If you will excuse us, gentlemen,” said Lady Kingsfold, “we shall leave you to your toasts. Eleanor must have her nap or she will be too cross for anyone but her papa to tolerate. I shall have Mr. Pryce fetch you a bottle of arrack. You must stay the night with us, Mr. Northmore. I hope my husband can persuade you to visit longer.”

“I accept your gracious invitation for tonight, ma’am.” Hadrian looked forward to becoming better acquainted with the woman who had worked such a transformation on his partner. “But tomorrow I must press on for London to see my brother. He is my other reason for returning to England. I mean to do whatever it takes to win him a seat in Parliament.”

It had been his mission for more than fifteen years—to put his brother in a position of power, from which he could work to reform the worst abuses of the mining industry. Abuses Hadrian had experienced firsthand. Abuses that had nearly wiped out their family.

All the warmth drained from Lady Kingsfold’s smile. She and Ford exchanged a furtive glance, which revived Hadrian’s earlier instinct that something must be wrong. As she fled the room without another word, her young daughter began to cry.

“What is it?” Hadrian demanded. “Is my timing off for that as well? Has there been an election already?”

Ford shook his head. “Not for another year or two. It’s just…Have a seat, won’t you? Pryce should be along soon with the arrack.”

Hadrian had never seen his partner so shaken. It did not bode well. “Damn the arrack and damn the chair! Whatever you have to tell me, spit it out, man. Julian’s landed himself in trouble, hasn’t he? Has some little fortune hunter got her claws into him? I told you to warn him about women of that sort.”

“I did!” cried Ford. “It isn’t that. Damn it, Hadrian, I thought the news would have reached you. Your brother is…dead.”

“That can’t be!” Hadrian staggered back. “Julian is not yet five-and-twenty and he’s scarcely had a day’s illness in all that time.”

He and his brother came from hardy stock, bred in the harsh beauty of the Durham dales, tested in the dark depths of the northern coal mines. It took a lot to kill a Northmore.

“He didn’t die of an illness.” Ford inhaled a deep breath that seemed to suck all the air from the large room. “He was killed in a duel over a year ago. If it is any consolation, the end came quickly. His opponent was not so fortunate.”

“A duel! Who with? Over what?” Dueling was the folly of gentlemen who cherished their highborn honor. Hadrian had worked and planned to launch his brother into the highest tier of English society. But not for this.

Had the young fool forfeited his life over some stupid gambling debt or an insult spoken in the heat of drunken anger? Hadrian cursed himself for not taking the lad in hand sooner. But how could he? He’d been halfway around the world, making the fortune that would have put Julian in Parliament to be a voice for those who had none.

Now Hadrian’s fortune could have been dust for all it mattered. Because Julian was dead, his promising young life snuffed out like the rest of their family.

“His opponent was my neighbor, the Marquis of Bramber,” replied Ford. “He was wounded in the duel and died a few weeks later in great suffering. Their dispute was over a young lady.”

“I might have known. Was the little minx playing them off against one another?” He’d make her regret it if she had.

“Nothing like that!” Ford shook his head vigorously. “The lady was Lord Bramber’s sister. She is dead now, too, poor creature.”

“Poor creature?” Deprived of its rightful targets, Hadrian’s anger fixed on his partner instead. “You sound sorrier for your fine neighbors than you do for my brother!”

“I pity everyone involved,” Ford protested. “It was a terrible tragedy that never should have come to that.”

“Then why did you not stop it?” cried Hadrian. “If you could not talk sense into this neighbor of yours, you should have been able to warn Julian.”

“I tried to intervene when it began.” Ford sounded defensive. “But I was told to mind my own business. When it all came to a head, Laura and I were abroad. I’d meant to return to Singapore, but…my plans changed. I had a great deal going on in my own life just then.”

“Too much to care what happened to my brother?” Hadrian grabbed Ford by the arm. “Did you forget promising me you’d look out for him? Or would that have interfered too much with your grand new life as lord of the manor?”

“I hope you know me better than that.” Ford wrenched his arm free. “I tried to talk to your brother, but he did not want my advice any more than he wanted to stand for Parliament. He only wanted your money to pay off the debts he’d incurred from idle living.”

“That is a lie!” Hadrian stabbed his forefinger into his partner’s chest, hoping to provoke a fight.

Landing a few good blows might vent the dangerous head of rage building inside him. And if Ford struck him hard enough, it might knock out the nagging fear that he was somehow to blame for his brother’s death.

But Ford refused to be goaded, damn him! “It’s the truth. Julian was a rash young fellow used to getting his own way. He acted improperly, but he did not deserve to die for it. Looking back, of course I wish I’d done more. But I never thought it would go so far.”

“You let me down, after all I did for you.” Turning away from his partner, Hadrian headed for the door before he said or did something he would regret even more. “Perhaps folk like you never feel a sense of obligation to folk like me.”

As he strode away, the volatile brew of shock, desperation and fury within him threatened to collapse, leaving him as empty and dead inside as his brother. As dead as the Northmore family, of which he was now the last surviving member.

“Before you storm out of here,” Ford called after him, “don’t you want to know what became of the child?”

“Child?” That word stopped Hadrian in his tracks. It stirred the ashes in his heart like a breath of air, coaxing the dying embers to glow again. “What child?”