Читать книгу The Regency Season Collection: Part Two - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 23

Chapter Fourteen

So that was his last letter from Virginia; a couple of lines and a cryptic reference? Now he was supposed to do what Chloe least wanted him to do—dig into her sister’s past as carelessly as if excavating potatoes. Curse it; he’d always thought Virginia loved him, despite his faults and managing ways. Now she’d left him an impossible task and expected him to be happy at the end of it. Chloe would curse him up hill and down dale, then refuse to have anything more to do with him if he found out her sister had cavorted with a married man to beget her child.

How could he not suspect Verity’s father was an adulterer when he’d abandoned a seventeen-year-old girl to carry his bastard alone? If so, the damned rogue would have left no trace of himself in Daphne Thessaly’s life, except the unarguable fact of his child and who could prove one way or the other who her father was on the strength of hearsay and rumours? If Chloe didn’t get the truth from her sister, it couldn’t be uncovered when Lady Daphne Thessaly was ten years in her grave.

‘What if I can’t do it?’ he barked at Poulson when he came to a halt.

‘What if you cannot do what, my lord?’

Luke sought a reason for that confusion and found it in the challenge he’d offered to Virginia’s will and her damnable scheming.

‘This ludicrous quest I’ve been given,’ he snapped impatiently.

‘Oh, that’s simple enough. Then you must inform Lady Chloe you are not willing to carry out your task and she will subtract a quarter of the sum put aside to purchase a manor and estate for Mr James Winterley at the end of the twelve months, if enough of you complete your quests, and forward it to the Prince Regent.’

‘That’s devilish,’ he ground out, Virginia was giving with one hand and taking away with the other.

‘Perhaps the word ingenious describes it better, my lord.’

‘However you look at it, my great-aunt has me tied up so tight I’m surprised I’m not screaming. I’d give a great deal to see my brother decently occupied and financially independent of me. Happy is probably beyond him, but at least he deserves a chance to prove me wrong. James won’t accept a penny from me to set himself up in a new life, but such a bequest could change his life.’

‘Mr Winterley might surprise himself and everyone else if he had the means to do so,’ Mr Poulson suggested as if he thought there were hidden depths to one of the most notorious rakes of the ton as well as Tom Mantaigne. The lawyer shook his head as that idea played through it and he realised how much looking it demanded. ‘If he was better occupied, it would divert his resentment from your inheritance of the family lands and titles.’

‘What a fine prospect you do dangle before me,’ Luke said, wondering why James’s dislike still hurt after all these years of mutual distrust, ‘but it still begs the question whether I can do what Virginia asked me to.’

‘Lady Virginia had more faith in you than you do in yourself, Lord Farenze.’

‘I assume you don’t know what she asked, unless you managed to undo this letter and reseal it without leaving a single trace, Poulson, so pray don’t imagine you understand the task she set me until I come back and admit it can’t be done.’

‘I’m sure you won’t do that, Lord Farenze,’ the lawyer said with a smile Luke didn’t trust one bit.

The man eyed the legal documents he’d been working on to transfer the estate and various other pieces of property to their new owners, as if he could imagine nothing finer than burying himself in wheretofors and howsoevers until dinnertime and Luke sighed impatiently, then left him to it.

* * *

By the time Chloe left the library it was nearly dinner time and she was soon caught up in the rush and urgency when Cook burned her hand and the cook maid dropped a pint of cream on the kitchen floor. She felt a sadly neglectful mother by the time the family and their guests were all served and the kitchen was calm again and she was free to make her way upstairs to spend a few minutes with her daughter.

‘There you are, Mama,’ Verity exclaimed, looking up from the much-crossed and amended first attempt at an essay her headteacher had set her. ‘I was never more pleased to see you in my life,’ she admitted with a quaintly adult shrug and mischief in her bright blue eyes.

‘Because I am an exceptionally wonderful mother, or because you need help with whatever fiendish task Miss Thibett set you this time, my love?’

‘Both, of course,’ Verity said and Chloe wondered if her father had been a charmer as well—if so, it seemed little wonder poor Daphne had found him irresistible.

‘What have you been afflicted with, then?’

‘It’s geography, Mama,’ Verity said tragically, as if she had been asked to visit Hades and report on the scenery.

‘Oh, dear me, that’s certainly not your best subject,’ Chloe sympathised and wished she had more than a scratch education. ‘There must be some clue in one of Lady Virginia’s books or on one of the globes.’

‘I can’t find the Silk Road on a globe,’ Verity said with a pout that told Chloe she hadn’t tried very hard.

It was a trait that reminded Chloe of Daphne and, whilst she would always defend her sister fiercely if anyone else criticised her, she refused to let Verity grow up with the same belief she only needed to cry or bat her eyelashes to get unpleasant tasks done for her.

‘Then you will find it in the new atlas Lady Virginia purchased last year for times like this. Once you have a list of the countries it passes through you can look up the history and trade it carries in the books the last Lord Farenze collected about the more exotic corners of the world. You should be grateful to have such knowledge at your fingertips so you can answer your headmistress’s questions when you return to school next week.’

‘Oh, Mama, must I?’

‘Yes, Verity, you must.’

‘I thought you might help me. It would be so much more interesting than wading through a lot of dry-as-dust philosophising about the savage ways of peoples those dreary old travellers considered less civilised than their own kind on my own.’

‘You must have been looking in the wrong ones. Find a book by someone who loved exploring new places and meeting new people and read what he has to say instead of some person who probably never went to the places he wrote about. There must be writings like that in such a collection. Lady Virginia’s husband doesn’t sound the sort of man who was happy to be bored witless every time he picked up a book.’

‘Then I must plough through every book in the library to find out a few facts that will satisfy Miss Thibett I didn’t idle my time away this week?’

Chloe was tempted to snap an easy reply and go back to her housekeeping accounts. She knew an unsaid question about where her daughter now fitted into the world lay under her Verity’s fit of the sullens and she must set aside her not-very-tempting household accounts to deal with it.

‘You need an occupation, my love. Miss Thibett is a wise woman who knows far more about life than you do and she knows Lady Virginia stood in the place of a family for both of us. That is why she let you come home to say farewell to her ladyship. I was wrong to try to shield you from the pain of loss, my love, and your headmistress was right to let you grieve for the person who meant so much to you.’

Suddenly her daughter wasn’t a young lady, or the mischievous urchin who had torn about on her pony and worried her mama with daring exploits until Lady Virginia offered to send her to school. Chloe tried not to let her own tears flow as Verity turned into her arms to be comforted.

‘I miss her so much, Mama,’ she wailed and wept at long last.

‘I know you do, my darling,’ Chloe whispered into the springing gold curls making their escape bid from Verity’s fast-unravelling plait. ‘You have every right to cry at the loss of such a good friend. Lady Virginia loved you very dearly and I know how deeply you loved her back.’

For a while Verity wept as if her heart might break and Chloe rocked her gently, as she often had in her early years, when Daphne’s child sometimes went from happy little girl to a sobbing fury in the blink of an eye, as if she wept for all she had lost at birth. All Chloe could do back then was hold her until Verity calmed and slept, or Lady Virginia managed to divert the little girl from her woes with a joke or a funny story about her own misspent youth. This time there was no Virginia to make light of such woe and Chloe felt terribly alone and as bereft as Verity.

‘Where shall we go, Mama?’ the desperate question stuttered from Verity’s shaky lips as she battled dry sobs and looked tragic, as if all Chloe had been worrying about for the last weeks was crushing her, too.

‘Oh, my love,’ Chloe responded with tears backed up in her own throat as she realised she should have had this conversation with her daughter as soon as she came home. ‘I don’t know if we can stay here, but Lady Virginia left me a full year’s salary in return for a trifling charge she laid on me. I have enough saved to live comfortably on for a year or two after that, if I should choose not to look for a new post yet, and Lady Virginia left you an annuity, so you will never starve. Please don’t run away with the notion you’re an heiress, though, will you?’

‘Then I shall not. I love her even more though, now I know I shall be able to look after you one day, Mama, when you are too old to do it yourself.’

Chloe went from the edge of tears to fighting laughter. ‘We probably have a few years before I’m too bowed with age to work, darling,’ she said with a straight face.

‘You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?’ Verity accused.

‘I’m sorry, love, but I’m not even eight and twenty yet. That might sound as if I could shake hands with Methuselah on equal terms to you, but I feel remarkably well preserved when my daughter is not making me out to be an ancient crone.’

‘That’s what age does to a person, Lady Virginia told me,’ Verity informed her with a solemn shake of her head, as if she saw through her mother’s ruse.

‘Lady Virginia was at least fifty years older than me, Verity love, and that was only what she admitted to. Her age varied every time someone was rude enough to try to find it out. I’m unlikely to follow Lady Virginia into the grave for a great many years yet and you must stop fretting about me.’

‘But what if you die in childbed, Mama? I can tell Lord Farenze wants to marry you and ladies die giving birth, particularly when they’re old.’

‘Why would Lord Farenze want to marry me?’ Chloe asked; shocked that her brain picked that rather than thinking how to reassure Verity ladies gave birth safely time after time at much more than seven and twenty.

‘Oh, Eve and I realised ages ago,’ her daughter said, as if it was so obvious she was amazed anyone could miss it.

‘I hope you kept that conclusion quiet then, as you couldn’t be more wrong.’

‘Bran and Miss Culdrose agree with us.’

‘And whatever would the rest of the household make of such a silly idea?’ Chloe asked faintly, dread at facing even the smallest scullery maid eating at her lest they were already speculating about it.

‘They think Mrs Winterley will put a stop to it, but Eve says her father takes no notice of what his stepmother says and even less of what she thinks.’

Chloe sighed and decided she could put off telling Verity the story of her own birth no longer, if only to scotch any false hopes of becoming Eve’s stepsister, but her niece’s eyes were red and tired after her crying bout and the sad tale of Daphne’s love affair must wait for another day.

‘Lord Farenze is a viscount; I am his housekeeper and lords do not marry servants. Forget such wild flights of fancy and get into bed, love. Your Miss Thibett would be the first to say you need a decent night’s sleep before you’re ready to face world trade and the laden caravans of gold, jewels, silk and spices that will be winding their way through far-off, exotic lands even as we speak.’

Her imagination caught by the idea of those processions of camels laden down with fine cloth and exquisite treasures, Verity allowed Chloe to walk her to her room and help her undress, then get into bed. Verity asked for a story and how to resist when she usually insisted on reading herself to sleep and this might be the last time Verity let her be her mother? Chloe dreaded telling her the tale of her birth and felt like crying herself by the time they wandered a little way along that ancient road in their imaginations and Verity’s eyes got heavier and heavier until she slept at last.

Chloe let her voice trail away, then gazed at her precious child as if she had to fill her mind with Verity as she was now. Tomorrow Verity might hate her for a pretence begun when nobody else cared enough about Daphne’s child to save her from death or a lonely life at the mercy of the parish.

Shaking her head to keep back the idea things were better as they were, Chloe went to her own room earlier than usual to struggle with the knot her life seemed tangled into all of a sudden. Someone had lit a fire for her and she knew exactly who had ordered it. Luke’s thoughtfulness at a time when he had hundreds of other things to think about made tears sting as she gazed into the glowing flames and wondered how he’d ever managed to fool anyone he was an unfeeling recluse.

She loved Luke Winterley and finally admitted to herself she had loved him far too long. The fact of it, fresh and vital in her heart as she knew it would be to her dying day, made her content and full of hope for all of a minute. Yet if she emerged from whatever fate her family had told the world she had met to wed my Lord Farenze, Verity would be exposed as the reason Lady Chloe was supposed to have died with her sister in the first place.

Her brothers would walk through fire rather than publically admit they’d let one sister give birth with only her twin to help her and a rapidly sobering midwife, then forced Chloe out to starve with her dead sister’s child after even that ordeal didn’t kill the poor little mite and they had to rid themselves of her by other means.

Chloe sat watching the fire with tears sliding down her cheeks as she bid farewell to a dream she hadn’t let herself know she had. She had Verity and a secure future many a woman left with a child to bring up alone would envy her. Verity’s future was secure as well and she ought to be dancing on air. Instead she must fight the heavy weight of grief and an urge to sob her heart out on the threadbare rug she had decreed good enough for her bedchamber, so at least nobody could accuse her of gilding her own nest.

Luke could condemn her thrift and look at her scratch bedchamber with offended distaste, but she had lived among the cast-offs of a bygone age most of her life and was used to making do. Carraway Court had been neglected and down at heel for as long as she could remember and the older servants would shake their heads and say how different it was in her grandfather’s day, before their mother wed her lord and he took all the rents, then left the Court to go to rack and ruin.

Even then they whispered of gambling and extravagant mistresses and how even an earl couldn’t bring such low company to his late wife’s home with her daughters in residence. Chloe wondered bitterly why her father and brothers cared so much about the family name when they blighted it so enthusiastically.

A sentence from Virginia’s letter slotted into her mind as if her mentor had whispered in her ear and a possible plan formed. Lady Tiverley was an amiable feather-head, but she was the daughter of a far richer and more respectable earl than Chloe’s father had ever been and moved in the highest social circles. If such a lady whispered the truth in a few well-placed ears, could Daphne and her romantically mysterious child become the heroines of such a sad tale? It was a faint hope and her heart beat like a marching drum at the idea she and Luke could love openly after all.

Then she remembered Daphne lying in that rough bed, dying and feverishly demanding that Chloe promised her never to love a man so recklessly. She wasn’t Daphne, or a vulnerable seventeen-year-old girl with no protector now, though. Anyone who wanted to take advantage of her would have to get past Luke Winterley first, even if he was the one wanting to take it. She smiled at the thought of him holding aloof from Farenze Lodge for so long, because she had said No and they each had a daughter who would be damaged if she didn’t. He could deny it as often as he pleased, but her love was a noble gentleman from the top of his midnight locks to the tip of his lordly boots and how could she not love him? It was admitting it she had trouble with.

First she must talk to Verity and insist Luke told his own daughter the truth about them as well. Lying in bed, torn between wild hopes and abject terror, the weight of four people’s hopes and dreams seemed to press her into the mattress. Even as the wonder of ‘perhaps’ made her heart lift with joy and her toes and a good many other places tingle with anticipation, Chloe couldn’t bring herself to believe her impossible fairytale might actually come true.

Fumbling Virginia’s letter from the pocket of her neatly discarded gown, she jumped back into bed and relit her candle. She had talked Verity to sleep; now she let Virginia do the same for her. Chloe was very glad in the morning that her candle had sat firmly in a night stick, since it had gutted without her even being aware she had gone to sleep with it alight and slept peacefully the whole night long.