Angel In My Bed (17 page)

“So, you understand why my loyalty will stay where it is, my lady.”

“Did Nellis say who? If you know anything—”

“I don't. You can ask him when he returns from London.” Stillings folded his arms over his chest. “Nellis Munro has a fondness for French brandy and fancy baubles, my lady. Lately he's added Rose Briar to his list. You should know, you can't win against someone who is stronger than you are. Haven't you learned that by now?”

“But what if we could win, Tommy?”

“You cannot do it alone, my lady. And that is exactly where you stand. Alone.”

“I
've never seen fabric this beautiful.” Bethany pressed the blue velvet to her chest as if it were a living thing in her arms.

Victoria sat in front of her vanity watching the girl twirl about like a bright golden top. Bethany met her gaze in the mirror. “However did you afford this, Victoria?”

“Finished, mum.” Moira set down the comb in front of the looking glass.

Victoria didn't answer Bethany's question. She looked at herself in the mirror and raised her brows. The gown she wore was reserved in its lines but fit her like a glove. Since discovering the old forgotten trunk of clothes in the attic, and with a little alteration to update the style, she'd added three new gowns to her wardrobe. This afternoon, dressed in a red and green muslin skirt and ivory blouse belted at the waist, with her wealth of dark hair piled atop her head, she looked the picture of sophistication.

Shouts from downstairs roused her. “A carriage is approaching, mum!”

“A carriage?” Victoria stood in a rustle of petticoats.

The distant jangle of an approaching coach pulled her through the boudoir. She ran to the window facing the orangery. A black carriage rumbled past. Even before it came to complete stop, the door flung open and a boy leaped out.

“Nathanial.”

Victoria whirled in a flurry of muslin and hurried down the corridor. She stopped on the landing as the front door flew wide.

“Mama…” Her son hurtled himself up the stairs.

Tears in hers eyes, she met him halfway and, kneeling, took him into her arms. “Look at you.” Holding him at arm's length, she examined his face and arms. “You've grown two inches since I saw you last.”

“I outgrew my trousers, Mother.” And he proudly displayed his arm in demonstration of his newly gained muscles from working real machinery. He filled Bethany in on the state of his many cousins' affairs and that Janie kissed Peter at the apple dunking, which was why he had not arrived earlier than today.

“Because Janie kissed Peter?” Bethany asked from behind them.

“No, you goose.” Nathanial rolled his eyes and returned his attention to Victoria. “We stayed and celebrated the harvest.” He added with relish how his uncle Fred allowed him to sip a mug of the family's ale.

Victoria looked over his head at David standing in the foyer, looking tall and beautiful, wearing a new suit of clothes, his hair nearly black in the sunlight of the day.

“Lord Chadwick let me stay.” He leaned nearer and whis
pered in her ear. “He danced with Bessie and Mildred and Frannie. She wants to marry him.”

“Frannie?” Bethany scoffed. “She's hardly out of swaddling. What does she know about marriage?”

Frannie was Bethany's age and her rival at family functions. “No doubt His Lordship has that effect on younger women,” Victoria said.

“Where is Zeus?” Nathanial leaned over the banister.

“The last I saw that cat, he was sleeping in the bookroom.” Victoria gripped the spindles on the stairway. “Be careful, Nathan. The floors have just been polished.”

But her son paid her no heed. Her eyes met David's and she rose to her feet.

The color rising in her cheeks as he took in every detail of her appearance, she rested her hand on the polished banister. Despite everything, her world seemed safe and whole again, though she knew it was neither.

Bethany stepped around her. “I'll check on those tarts Mrs. Gibson pulled out of the oven. Nathanial is probably hungry.”

She fled, leaving Victoria alone with David, her heart racing against her ribs.

“I half expected to find you gone,” he said.

“We had an agreement,” she said, electing to stand on moral high ground in lieu of remembering that until a few weeks ago she'd planned on fleeing. “How did you know I would be at this house?”

“Rockwell rode out to meet the carriage. He told me what happened between you and Sir Henry. I'm—”

“Do not think to apologize. He has a right to his opinion of me.”

David moved to the bottom of the stairs, and she looked
into his upturned face, caught by the sweep of light and shadow in his eyes. “I only meant to say I'm surprised you told him the truth.”

She lifted her chin. “Does Nathanial know?”

“Everyone in Salehurst thought my
family
tie to you explained our resemblance. Another lie, until we can sit down and talk to him. I won't allow my son to grow up thinking his father is dead.”

She listened to Nathanial's exclamation as he found Zeus. Dare she tell David that they were already the topic of town gossip? “Are we prepared to answer his questions about us then, David?”

“You have caught me well and good on that score, madam.” His quiet scoff raked over her. “By the very dynamics of our relationship, it would serve us both if I removed myself from this case and walked away forever.”

She held her tongue, stricken by the fear he would do exactly that, yet knowing she had no right to ask anything from him. But she wasn't prepared yet to lose her son. David had brought him back. She was beyond trying to rationalize her relief. “Can we please agree that we want the best for our son?”

“Mother?” Nathan bounded from the bookroom, holding Zeus with both arms. “May I see Peepaw?”

“I'll take you to your grandfather,” David said, pulling his gaze from her.

“Lord Chadwick said I'm going to see Big Ben.” Grinning, Nathan bounced back on his heels. “We came home to see you and Zeus and Peepaw, too. And to fetch my pillow.”

Thrusting down sudden panic, Victoria looked at David. “You're taking him to London?”

“A train leaves from New Haven tomorrow night. I've already made arrangements.”

What he didn't say, but what was evident in his eyes, was that he had brought Nathanial here to say good-bye. So this would be the way it was between them? David had already made the decision. Even as a part of her recognized that Nathanial might be safer in London, she was not prepared for the knife-sharp pain in her stomach, and dropped to one knee in front of her son. How would she ever tell Sir Henry?

“I'll visit the menagerie when it opens in the spring, Mother,” Nathan said. “And I'll get to go to a school like Ethan Birmingham. He learned fencing last year.”

Victoria touched his cheek. Her son spoke with so much enthusiasm, that she could not bear to let him see her sadness. “You'll need to pack more than your pillow, Squirrel.”

“I shan't be gone forever, Mother,” he reassured her, suddenly sounding like the man of the house and not her baby. “All the boys go to school. And when I get back, Ethan Birmingham won't be calling me a brat anymore.”

“I thought you, Ethan, and Robbie were best friends?”

“We were till Ethan went to school last year.”

She smoothed a lock of dark hair from his brow. “Mrs. Gibson pulled fresh tarts from the oven less than an hour ago. Why don't you see if they are ready?”

With an exclamation, Nathan whirled on his heel. Her side hurt. She couldn't stand. David's steady hand was suddenly at her elbow. “Who is taking care of you?” he asked.

She withdrew her arm, and it was all she could do not to collapse on the stairs. “I don't need anyone's help. I can fight my own battles, David.”

“Bravo, General Faraday.” He stepped back, his smile hinting at amusement that did not reach his eyes. “I'm glad to know that your frail physical condition has not changed your disposition.”

“I'll take my son to the cottage. There will be things—”

“I'll see that he gets everything he needs in London.”

“Of course you will.” There was a dull thudding in her head. “Does that include a new mother as well?”

“Hell, it might.”

“If you divorce me, you'd have to actually admit in public you married Colonel Faraday's treasonous progeny. There will be a terrible scandal. Even you would not survive unscathed.”

She watched in disbelief as he removed a cheroot from his pocket and stuck it between his lips. “Which is why I would seek an annulment,” he said, striking a match against his boot heel. “I believe I can still work the occasional miracle.”

Narrowing her eyes, she took a firm grip on herself. “When did you start smoking those awful things again?”

“It would have behooved me never to have quit,” he said, shielding the flame with his hand as he observed her flushed expression. “Do you want to know why?”

He waved out the match and dropped it in a brass pot beside the banister. “Even if you didn't have high treason charges hanging over your head—not counting, say, the hundred thousand pounds' worth of stolen artifacts and jewels still missing, the death of my partner, and my own brush with mortality at your hands—you and I would never be a family.” He dabbed ash off in the pot, and she followed the movement with her eyes. “But maybe if you're nice, I won't throw you out of this house upon my return. For you see, I still have tender feelings for you. Enough not to shake you where you stand.”

“Feelings?”

“I've done naught but think about you since I left. I have a
son and I never thought it possible. In some bloody way, I even agree with what you did.” He moved toe to toe with her, the slight movement peeling away her meager temper. “I find myself admiring your courage in the face of defeat, unable to comprehend what you must have felt like all these years knowing that I betrayed you and my child. Asking you still to trust me. I don't want to take Nathanial away from you. Tell me those aren't feelings for stalwart fools to suffer?”

Entrapped as she was within his stormy gaze, she peered at him with watery eyes. “Sometimes, I find myself completely baffled by you, David.”

He gave her a mocking salute. “Likewise, madam. I baffle myself,” he said leaving her staring at his back as he shut the front door firmly behind him.

 

David leaned against the carriage boot as he finished the cheroot. His coat collar lifted against the icy chill, he wore a fur-lined hat to cover his ears and wondered irritably if he still wasn't underdressed. He brought the cheroot to his lips, knowing he didn't have an answer to the way he was feeling at that moment.

He should be downstairs in the kitchen with Meg and their son. He should be, but he wasn't, and didn't quite know what he'd say even if he were. So what did he do, but come outside to freeze his bum off?

His eyes narrowing against the smoke, he peered toward the distant church tower, then straightened as an old wagon crawled into sight. He recognized Mr. Doyle. A towheaded boy sat between him and the second man hunched at the reins.

Recognizing the Widow Gibson's son from his visit to
their homestead a few weeks ago, David dropped the cheroot to the ground and crushed it out with the heel of his boot. The wagon came to a jangling halt in front of him on the drive.

“Lord Chadwick.” Mr. Gibson wiped his hands down the front of his coveralls, then introduced his son. “This is my son, Robbie,” he said. “He used to spend much of his time here when I managed the estate. I'm glad to see you back. I hope you are here to stay.”

David remained silent in his reluctance to pursue this tack of conversation. Beyond having purchased Rose Briar as his side of an agreement with Meg, he held no other connection to this house or the land. Nor did he want to.

The door behind him flew open and Nathanial appeared.

Robbie suddenly came alive. “Nate!”

“We didn't know the nipper was back,” Mr. Gibson said, his face lighting beneath his hat.

“May I see him, Papa?”

Mr. Gibson deferred the decision to David, who could not have stopped him if he'd tried. “You're friends, are you?”

“The best, my lord,” the boy said as David stood aside in time to escape being trampled.

Robbie ran to Nathanial, who was halfway down the cobbled walk. David realized he knew nothing about his son's life here, except what little he'd discerned on the trip back from Salehurst. His boy was bright, confident, and seemed popular wherever he went, a trait he'd not failed to notice.

David's gaze touched Meg standing on the pathway as she said something to Robbie that animated both boys. They rushed inside out of the cold.

Wrapped in her cloak, looking very much the lady of the manor, Meg straightened and smiled at Daniel Gibson. Watching her, David felt as if someone had hit him in the
chest with a staff. Meg wasn't pretty in the traditional standard. She was extraordinary, like stepping into sunlight after years of living in a cave, and when she smiled, it took a moment for him to breathe.

She approached the two men in the wagon. “Mr. Gibson. Mr. Doyle. I see you have been taking care of yourself.”

An icy gust whipped her skirts around David's legs as she leaned into the wagon to adjust the blanket on the old man's lap. “He didn't want to come, mum,” Mr. Gibson said.

“Don't you want to work in the orangery?” Meg asked, worriedly noting Mr. Doyle's nervousness. “You love flowers.”

David followed the man's gaze, listening for what it was no one would say. He seemed afraid of the house. “You will like that there are other people around to talk with,” he heard Meg say. “I've put you in the cottage the other side of the orangery. Mr. Gibson's mother has already kindled a warm fire.”

Doyle's forehead disappeared in a set of wrinkles. “There be no spirits in the orangery?”

“Not a single one. You're safe,” Meg quietly said.

She stepped away from the wagon and stood next to David as it lumbered away. “I've never seen him like that,” Meg said, still watching the wagon—as David couldn't help watching her—the extent of his discontent with her vastly abridged as he'd observed the ease of her affection for these folk. “I hope I've done the correct thing bringing him here.”