Читать книгу The Regency Season Collection: Part Two - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 26
ОглавлениеTurning to stamp out again and ride as far as a fresh horse could carry him this late in the day, Luke stumbled over the doorstep, then righted himself like a drunkard. Just as well he did, considering Chloe rushed into the yard to confront him with her cap sadly awry and her auburn locks tumbling from under it. She would have tripped over him if he had tumbled on to the cobbles.
‘Don’t you dare say that, then walk away from me, you lubberly great coward,’ she spat at him. ‘How dare you come home, looking like something the dog didn’t want, then snap and rage at the man who saved my daughter from the very men you were supposed to be protecting her from?’
‘I suppose he has some excuse for being here.’
‘Yes, and I have the good manners to thank him for it, whoever he might be. You challenged him for no good reason that I can see.’
‘If you can’t see why I would, then I’ll leave you to your touching family reunion. The man is clearly everyone’s hero but mine and you have no need of me.’
‘You’re jealous, aren’t you?’ she asked and gave him a smug smile that made him squirm, but at least temper made him face her challenge with one of his own.
‘Of course I’m not, the man’s obviously an idiot.’
‘How can even you say so, let alone believe it? My brother hatched a wild plan to abduct Verity, to keep me quiet about his past sins until his wedding was over and the poor girl bedded so it could not be annulled. Captain Revereux foiled it, then rode here with Verity up behind him and a bullet lodged in his arm, until Josiah recovered consciousness after being knocked out and he and Mr Peters rode to the rescue a little too late to be a great deal of use.’
‘Then he is clearly your hero and I have nothing to do or say here.’
‘And you’re going to turn and walk away in a fit of pique? Go out of my life for another ten years...’ Words failed her for a moment. ‘How could you, you ridiculous, thick-headed, bad-tempered great idiot? You wrote me all those wonderful letters; full of love and hope, and let me dream of you loving me back. Now you’re going to throw it all away because you’re tired and you’ve lost your temper? Oh, go away then, you stupid great oaf. How could I ever think I loved you? I must be an even bigger fool than you are.’
He stood reeling when she turned on her heel with a huff of impatience and prepared to storm off and leave him there gaping after her like a stranded codfish.
‘No, you don’t,’ he barked as he snapped out of his shocked stupor and grabbed her by the waist to physically stop her walking away from him. ‘You’re not going anywhere until you’ve explained yourself,’ he told her gruffly.
‘I’m not saying anything,’ she informed him and tossed her head so the awful cap finally fell off and the sight of her glorious copper-gold locks down her back like hot silk nearly mazed him into slackening his grip and letting her go.
‘Good,’ he said huskily and snatched a hungry, explicit kiss square on her mouth at the instant she opened it to hurl some new insult at him.
She resisted angrily and a rational, gentlemanly part of him stood aside and tutted as the rest of him deepened the kiss. His grip on her softened, but he had to persuade her to need him back before he dared raise his head and admit she was right and he was a damned fool to even dream of walking away from her and this.
His inner gentleman was about to win the battle and let her go if this wasn’t what she wanted desperately as well when she wriggled insistently against him. His heart in his boots, he waited for her to wrench out of his arms, then rage at him and demand he never came within a hundred miles of her ever again. Instead she flung her arms about his neck and held on to him as if she never intended to let him go. Fierce joy sang in his heart even as the appalling weariness of his forced ride threatened to wash over him and send him into a very unmanly faint.
‘I missed you so much,’ she informed him tearfully as she stood on tiptoes, meeting his tired eyes with a blaze of passion in her own. ‘I love you, Luke Winterley, and don’t you dare walk away,’ she threatened fiercely. ‘If you do, I’ll walk in the opposite direction and you’ll have to chase me, because I am a Thessaly and I do have some pride,’ she told him; all they could be together in her mesmerising gaze.
‘Oh, my Chloe, whatever would I do without you?’ He breathed and hardly dared blink unless he was imagining the feel and fact of her against him and the wondrous promise she’d just made, in public, in front of rather a lot of witnesses as half his staff were standing in the kitchen doorway grinning like idiots.
‘I feel the same about you, you great unshaven, smelly brute of a man,’ she murmured, then kissed him as if he was her perfect pattern of a gentleman.
‘It might be best if you came back in, Lord Farenze, ma’am,’ one of the men Peters had sent to protect Verity interrupted them from the back of the crowd. ‘Yon Captain Rever—whoever you said he was—has fainted and the cook’s beating the kitchen maid with a soup ladle.’
‘Oh the romance of it all,’ Luke whispered against Chloe’s lips as he forced himself to stop kissing the love of his life and met her laughing eyes instead. ‘Life seems to await us in all its rich variety, my darling. Don’t forget me whilst you deal with it in your usual inimitable fashion.’
‘As if I could, my scruffy, disreputable lord,’ she whispered, ‘now let me go before I kick you in the shins as I should have done the instant you laid disrespectful hands on me, you great barbarian.’
‘Virago,’ he replied shakily.
Scandalously hand-locked, they went back into the once spotless and beautifully ordered kitchen and Chloe snapped a series of concise orders. Within minutes the hysterical kitchen maid had been sent to lie down in a darkened attic, Cook was sipping tea in her chair by the fire and looking sheepish while the footmen hauled quantities of water onto the hot plates to hasten the bath Luke knew he needed rather badly.
Eve somehow stopped Verity plucking the feathers out of the head housemaid’s best feather duster to burn to revive the patient. Revereux woke from his faint of his own accord and was now insisting on getting down from his undignified perch as if he would never do anything so unmanly.
‘Don’t be an idiot, man,’ Luke urged him roughly as Revereux tried to stand tall and accept the challenge Luke had thrown out in his flash of overwrought temper after finding Verity safe and sound and his mad dash south more or less unnecessary. ‘Lady Chloe explained about your rescue of Miss Verity and told me in no uncertain terms that we are all deeply in your debt and I owe you an apology.’
‘I was protecting my own,’ the man stubbornly insisted, as if he could think of nothing he would like more than a good fight with his uncouth host.
‘Shame you weren’t about when the child needed you most then, isn’t it?’ Luke rebuked him grimly and met the man’s pained blue eyes, so like Verity’s there really was no questioning his claim to be the girl’s father.
‘Aye,’ he replied with a deep sigh and looked easily as weary as Luke felt.
‘I am here, you know?’ Verity intervened even as Chloe sent Luke a warning glare to inform him he was making things worse for the poor man.
‘Something I trust Lord Farenze and his daughter are about to remedy,’ Chloe said and Verity looked as if she was about to argue. ‘This is not the time for anything other than making sure poor Mr Revereux is made comfortable as he can be with a bullet wound in his shoulder—explanations can come later.’
‘I don’t know about that, but would you mind finding out how my poor horse does, Miss Verity?’ the gentleman asked faintly. The girl still hesitated and Luke’s admiration for her courage increased.
‘Very well, but please don’t think I’m too young or stupid to know what’s going on,’ she said sternly and managed her exit a great deal more gracefully than the master of the house had done.
* * *
As soon as Verity was out of earshot Luke watched Chloe ruthlessly uncover her patient’s wound, despite his protests this was too public a space for a gentleman to remove so much of his clothing.
‘Pray stop being such a baby,’ she ordered the strapping sea captain, who bit his lip, then fainted again while she examined the wound for stray fragments of cloth and lead, then cheerfully pronounced the ball had passed along the fleshy part of the gentleman’s upper arm and avoided any major veins or arteries.
She frowned in concentration while doing her best to remove every shred of fine linen threads from his wound then clean it with a solution of what smelt to Luke like rosemary and brandy, before binding it up with a pad soaked in herbs and honey and bandaging it in place.
‘It’s as well we’re still only in March,’ he observed as Chloe sat in one of the kitchen chairs with a relieved sigh and accepted a cup of Cook’s best tea. ‘The poor man would be mobbed with bees and wasps if he set foot outside later in the year.’
‘It will stop infection, although Captain Revereux must have the constitution of an ox to manage to ride here from Bath with a wound like that draining him of energy all the way,’ she said.
‘True, although it would be as well if we wait to get the whole tale out of him before we declare him a hero. He doesn’t strike me as being the type to dwell on his good deeds and he is a little late in rescuing his daughter from the wolves,’ Luke said, glad he hadn’t been called upon to test his limited knowledge of herbs and doctoring in his current state of travel-stained weariness.
‘And Mrs Wheaton is quite right, Papa, you really do need a bath,’ his own daughter told him with a fastidious wrinkling of her nose at the smell of sweat, road mud and horse so strong on him it almost drowned out the astringent herbs.
‘I’m a trial and embarrassment to my womenfolk at the best of times,’ he said with an unrepentant smile and went away to remedy it with an energy he’d have thought impossible, before Lady Chloe Thessaly admitted she loved him.
* * *
‘Why did Lord Farenze call you Lady Chloe when you were arguing, Mama?’ Verity asked even as she accepted Chloe’s help to don a fresh gown and sat still for her to comb out her tangled mane of wheat-blonde hair.
‘Because it’s my real name, my love.’
‘Then you are the daughter of an earl or marquis or duke?’ Verity said as she held Chloe’s gaze in the mirror.
‘An earl,’ Chloe admitted with a sigh.
‘The men who tried to make me go with them, then attacked Mr Revereux, said the Earl would have their hides if they let us escape. What an odd coincidence.’
‘I’m afraid not, love,’ Chloe admitted, wishing Verity was less intelligent for once.
‘He is the same one, then? My own grandfather paid those men to kidnap me and attack anyone who got in their way? What kind of man would do such a thing to his own flesh and blood?’
‘The earl who wanted to capture you is your uncle and not my father and I don’t really want you to know what kind of man he is now.’
‘I want to know why he thinks I would want to live with him when I’d rather be your next scullery maid. He had poor Mr Revereux shot because he stopped those bad men carrying me off.’
Chloe was unsure how much Verity had heard or understood of the arguments in the kitchen, so she took a deep breath and told Verity how she and Daphne grew up together on a rundown estate in Devon. How their father and brothers ignored them until they decided Daphne would net them a fortune as a beautiful and biddable young lady they could sell to the highest bidder. She couldn’t describe Daphne’s visit to Lady Hamming in Edinburgh because she didn’t know about it herself, but she also admitted that her father, the Earl of Crowdale, thought their aunt should introduce his prettiest and most docile twin daughter to Edinburgh society before she married the old man he agreed to sell her to.
‘Rumours that my father was in debt were probably flying about London and a London Season is very expensive. My aunt has always doted on her brother and nephews, so they knew she would do as they asked her to at no cost to them.’
‘It’s a sad story and I feel sorry for Aunt Daphne, but what has she got to do with that man who says he is my father?’ Verity asked.
‘Well, instead of marrying her to an elderly duke, your grandfather and uncles brought my sister back to Carraway Court in disgrace. They ordered me to pack enough for both of us, because we were going to live in the most remote place they could find since she refused to marry that rich old man. So I packed all I could in the time they gave me and was glad to quit the Court with my father and brothers stamping about there as if every breath we took was costing them dear.
‘Our things were bundled into a farm dray and we were taken to meet the stage coach, then thrown off it at the turning leading up to a farmhouse high on Bodmin Moor, where no tenant would stay because it’s so isolated you can only walk there or ride a single pony across the moor. It was miles from our nearest neighbours. The roof leaked in places and the wind howled across the moor as if the hounds of hell had been let loose to roam the earth. We were often cold and hungry as summer turned to autumn, then winter, and the local people would leave scraps of firewood and any vegetables they could spare us where our narrow track left the road. They had the kindness our own kin lacked and we might have died of cold and hunger if not for them.’
‘Why did they turn on you because Aunt Daphne didn’t want to marry some horrid old man, Mama?’
‘Because she was with child,’ Chloe admitted reluctantly.
‘How old were you both then?’
‘Seventeen at the turn of the year.’
‘Then you must have been the one who was pregnant, Mama, since you had me when you were seventeen.’
‘I’m sorry, my love, but your true mother was my twin sister, Lady Daphne Thessaly.’
‘Then I’m a bastard,’ Verity whispered blankly, the full nuances of that word seeming to hit her like a blow.
‘A love child,’ Chloe corrected her gently.
‘And you lied; you pretended I was your child.’
‘I admit there never was a Mr Wheaton, love. I had to make him up, so we could both be respectable and I could keep you with me while I worked to feed and clothe us both. I couldn’t let my father take you away after your mother died and there was nobody else to look after you but me.’
‘Where was he going to take me, then?’ The question was without inflection and Chloe hated to go on with her story when Verity was already so shocked by it.
‘Your mother was buried at a tiny church on the Moor where the vicar was a good Christian. I was so glad when my family sent for us so you would be fed and warm. I didn’t ask what they intended to do until we were back at Carraway Court and I overheard an argument about which church to leave you at on the way to London.’
‘Poor little baby,’ Verity said as if talking about someone else.
Chloe longed to take her in her arms, but Verity looked as if the last person she wanted close to her now was the one who had lied to her and everybody else about who they both were for so long.
‘I stole every coin I could lay hands on that night and took what was left of your grandmother’s jewellery. I’m sorry, Verity, but I sold it when I got to London and used the money to support us until I managed to get work. I’m a liar and a thief and you must hate me for pretending to be your mother.’
‘You could have left me somewhere safe.’
‘Abandon my twin sister’s beloved child to an orphan asylum? No, I couldn’t. I loved my sister dearly, but I already loved you more.’
‘If not for me you would have a family of your own by now. Grandfather was too stupid to see how beautiful you are, but some fine gentleman would have married you long ago, if you didn’t have me.’
‘Nonsense, I was quite content to be the carroty-headed quiz of the family, my love, and I have loved being your mama, even if I am really only your aunt.’
‘No, you’re truly beautiful, Mama. Oh botheration, I know you’re not my mother now, but I can’t call you Aunt Chloe after all these years.’
‘Then don’t, but you do have a father after all, Verity. Until today all I knew about him was he was young and handsome and Daphne loved him, but from all appearances he is quite the hero and seems very ready to own you as his daughter.’
‘Mr Revereux?’
‘So it seems and the rest of their story is his to tell, since I don’t know it and your mother kept him a secret even from me, for some reason best known to herself.’
‘Would Grandfather and my uncles have kept me if they knew he was a gentleman?’
The comforting lie trembled on Chloe’s lips for a moment, but she bit it back and shook her head. ‘I suspect they did know and forced them apart. My father was a cold man and my eldest brother isn’t much better. ‘
‘Then I’ve had a better life than you did, Mama,’ Verity astonished Chloe by saying practically. ‘Lady Virginia loved us and I had you. I much prefer being me to living the kind of life you two had to at my age.’
‘It wasn’t so bad, our mother’s aunts descended on us every summer to make sure we didn’t grow into a pair of savages.’
‘So you two ran wild, yet I endure algebra, logic and geography?’
‘Such are the injustices of life.’
‘You and Lord Farenze could have married years ago if you weren’t Mrs Wheaton for my sake. That’s an injustice and a shame if you ask me.’
‘Since his lordship doesn’t go into society and I can’t see my father paying for me to come out even if he did, it’s highly unlikely we would have met in my true guise, darling.’
‘He has met you, though, and I think he loves you, Mama.’
‘And I love him back, Verity,’ Chloe admitted quite calmly now it was out in the open.
At times, she reflected, she could wish her precocious niece was a little less perceptive about the adults around her. It was probably because Verity had spent so much time with Virginia that she saw through social pretence. In a few years’ time the beaux of the ton would need to watch out when Miss Verity Revereux-Thessaly was launched into their rarefied world.
‘You two are going to get married like Lady Virginia and her Viscount Farenze did, are you not?’ she asked bluntly now.
‘Lady Virginia was fabulously beautiful in her youth.’
‘And so are you. Eve and I think this Lord Farenze loves you easily as much as the last one loved Lady Virginia,’ Verity persisted stubbornly.
‘I have had to work for my living, Verity. He really shouldn’t wed a housekeeper.’
‘He can do as he likes and I think you can, too, if you want to badly enough.’
‘And I think you need your dinner sent up and a good night’s sleep after all your adventures today, young lady,’ Chloe said as Verity’s eyelids began to droop. ‘Why not climb into bed and I’ll see if I can persuade Cook to send up a tray for you just this once.’
‘I’m not ill.’
‘Maybe not, but you’ve had a busy day, even by your standards. It won’t hurt if you play the young lady and lie abed until noon if you choose to tomorrow either.’
‘But I am a young lady, if all you have told me is true and my father intends to own me as his daughter.’
‘Indeed, Captain Revereux seems the very model of a heroic gentleman,’ Chloe said and managed to hide a nasty little stab of jealousy. Heroic and handsome Captain Revereux would soon win his daughter’s admiration and love and where would that leave Lady Chloe Thessaly?
‘I still like Lord Farenze best, though. He will never let anyone hurt me if he’s my stepfather,’ Verity argued sleepily and Chloe was glad the under-housemaid knocked at the door with the tray Cook had sent without waiting for an order.
She let her niece finish her soup and a syllabub, then sit up fighting sleep, as she had to let it all go down before she could curl into her warmed bed with a guard set before the fire and a weary sigh of relief.
‘I’ll stay with her, you’re needed elsewhere tonight,’ Brandy said, as she swept into the room with a bland smile while Chloe wondered if she should stay in case Verity had nightmares after such a day.
‘Give me time to make certain all’s well and Miss Thibett has been told Verity’s safe and I’ll be back to sit with her myself,’ Chloe whispered and Bran shook her head and shooed her away like a farmer’s wife chasing hens from her kitchen.
