Ashlyn Macnamara (7 page)

“Climbed.” Jack swung a smudged foot. “What does bugger mean?”

“Now don’t you go repeating that to your—” He looked about him. “Where is Isabelle?”

“You mean Mama? She’s at home.”

Home? Yesterday, he’d assumed they lived in the village, but that had to be a mile distant. Jack and his mother
certainly didn’t reside on Revelstoke’s estate. “And does she know you’re here?”

“Don’t reckon she does.” Something in the boy’s tone—a hard note—gave George pause.

“Why don’t you climb out of that tree, and we’ll go see her?” He planted his hands on his hips as if the gesture would lend him a measure of authority. “She’ll worry if she misses you, and you already gave her enough of a scare yesterday.”

“I’m vexed with her.” A hint of petulance crept into Jack’s words. “She said she won’t take me back to the beach after yesterday.”

“Ah.” He reached for the boy, hoping he’d take the hint and lean down, but Jack simply sat there, arms crossed and brows lowered. “The thing about women, see, is they need time to get over something like that. If you wait a few days, she might come around.”

“I don’t want to wait. I want to go now.” Then his expression softened, and he leaned into George’s waiting arms. “You wouldn’t take me, would you?”

“That would hardly be sporting of me.” George let the boy slip to the ground. Small but sturdy, that one. “I’m afraid we’ll have to respect your mama’s wishes for now. How about I take you back home? Will you tell me where you live?”

“I bet when you were little, your mama let you do all manner of things.”

“She most certainly did not.” He stopped himself before adding he’d got away with enough forbidden things on his own. Jack was clever enough to work that much out for himself. He hardly needed any further encouragement.

“Then what did you do for fun?”

“Same as most boys. I teased my sisters.”

Jack reached out and plucked a stray branch from the ground. “Don’t have any sisters.”

“Aren’t there any other boys your age in the village?”

Jack shrugged. “Only the vicar’s son, and he’s not allowed to play with me. Not that I want to. He’s too namby-pamby.”

I
SABELLE
ran a forefinger across the bonnet’s delicate lining, careful not to let her work-roughened skin damage the fabric. Silk, white and pure and virginal. Costly. Far beyond her means. Like the ball gowns she’d taken when she left home, she might have sold the entire piece for as much as a crown, but the one and only time she’d worn it, she’d caught the outer shell on a branch. The most she could do now was salvage what she could.

She took a needle, pulled in a breath, and began picking the lining from the worn straw, one careful stitch at a time. Some harried milliner had spent hours until her fingers ached and neck cramped from painstaking stitchery in creating this bit of headgear.

All so some young lady making her come-out could wear it for a few fashionable hours in Hyde Park before casting it aside. During her single foreshortened season, Isabelle had spared little thought for the shop girls. Now, as she undid their handiwork, she appreciated their efforts. The fine fabric would turn into a few fancy cases for her herbs.

A knock at the door made her jump. “Blast.”

She couldn’t afford so much as a pull in the fabric with a slip of her needle. This scrap of a bonnet was the last of the lot. Through careful management, she’d lived on the proceeds of her ball gowns for the past six years, her dwindling funds supplemented by what herbs she might sell. She set the headpiece gently on the floor before pushing herself to her feet.

“Who’s there?” Who indeed would pay her a call?
None of the village wives, certainly. As for the men … She reached for the shears.

“Mrs. Weston” came the muffled call from beyond the door.

Isabelle let out a breath. The vicar’s wife, a relatively safe prospect, that is, as long as Jack had obeyed her latest dictate and stayed away from the woman’s son. Despite a similarity in age, the two boys seemed incapable of getting along. Whatever the truth of the matter, any tears and wailing were invariably Jack’s fault.

She opened the door to find the other woman standing calm and cool just beyond the threshold. A proper distance. It went with her upright bearing, the respectable poke bonnet that covered her cloud of dark hair, and her very proper morning dress that fell in precise folds to her feet.

Isabelle resisted the urge to smooth her rough skirts. “Your pardon. As you can see, I wasn’t expecting callers.”

“I’ve come about Peter.”

Isabelle closed her eyes for a moment. “What’s Jack done to the boy now?”

“Oh, this has nothing to do with Jack.”

Isabelle held in a sigh. Apparently she wasn’t about to be treated with a litany of her boy’s shortcomings—a result of his mean birth, no doubt. Not that Mrs. Weston would ever be so rude as to make such a bald statement, but the implication always lay behind her words. Her family connections might not be worthy of the
beau monde
, but the woman’s tongue could lash just as sweetly and politely as any
doyenne
of the
ton
.

“It’s my boy,” she rushed on. “He’s poorly again.”

“Have you sent for the doctor?” The vicar’s wife, after all, ought to be able to afford an educated medical opinion.

“Oh, I don’t think this warrants the doctor.” Mrs.
Weston advanced into the room. “Not when that infusion you gave me last time did the trick.”

Last time, she’d offered a bottle of one of Biggles’s brews, since she had it to hand. “Is it his stomach again?”

“Yes, it pains him.”

“But not enough for the doctor?”

Mrs. Weston paled. “The doctor insists on bleeding him, and I don’t think …”

Isabelle hesitated. On that count, at least, she agreed. A quick glance at her open cupboard, on the other hand, told her Peter might have to face the lancet after all. “I seem to be out of stomach remedy.”

“Oh, would you make another recipe?” Mrs. Weston fished in her pocket. “I can pay.”

A few shillings glinted temptingly in her gloved palm. They’d perhaps buy a bone from the butcher’s, enough to flavor a watery vegetable stew and remind her how beef tasted. “Of course. I’ll bring it over as soon as it’s ready.”

“Please hurry. I hate to see him all pale and aching.”

Mrs. Weston placed the coins on the table and left. Biggles had walked to a neighboring village to visit an old friend, but surely Isabelle had learned enough to brew a simple stomach remedy without supervision. All she needed was some meadowsweet, pennyroyal, and peppermint, but she already knew no peppermint hung from the rafters. They’d used up their supply.

“Jack? Jack, I’ve got an errand for you.”

No answer. She drummed her fingers against her thigh. She might have known the house was too quiet. He’d probably gone outside.

She raised the window that looked over the back garden. A riot of color floated on graceful stems in the morning sunlight. Butterflies floated from flower to flower.

“Jack? Wherever you’re hiding, come out at once.”

Still nothing. That boy. A cold thread of unease drifted
through her belly. An image of him at breakfast, sullenly spooning gruel into his mouth, flashed through her brain. What if he’d defied her and gone back to the beach alone?

He was fully capable. He was as mischievous as any boy his age, full of the dickens at times and as hard-headed, well, as hard-headed as his own mother. Blast it all, she didn’t have time for this. She’d have to give Mrs. Weston her money back. But she couldn’t take the chance.

Hoisting her skirts, not bothering with a bonnet, she bolted through the door and pounded down the street toward the path to the shore. Soon her breath shot from her in ragged spurts, her ribs crushed against her stays. The late August sun pressed on her, but despite its heat, a cold trickle of sweat coursed between her shoulder blades.

And what if a wave had taken him again? What if he’d been pulled into the icy grip of the Channel? Tears blurred her vision at the thought of his small body tossed from wave to wave on merciless currents. Her Jack, at once sturdy and fragile, tough enough not to show his fear and yet no match for the power of all that water.

Blindly, she stumbled down the crumbling chalk that led to the strand. When her feet slipped on yielding pebbles, she took a breath to steel herself, opened her eyes.

Nothing, save the mournful cry of a lone seagull. The wind rushed along the empty shoreline, its steady hiss underscored by the relentless rhythm of the surf.

Her knees buckled, and she slumped against the wall of rock at her back. A sob choked her, and she pressed a fist to her mouth to hold back the pitiful wail. She should have kept a closer watch. Should have long since sought an apprenticeship for him. A boy his size might find any number of menial tasks within his capacity that would keep him occupied.

She needed to let go of the notion that the grandson
of an earl was above such things. Her family had cast her out, and rightly so, because of Jack. She’d failed at acting the proper society miss, and now she’d failed at motherhood.

A shout from the pathway above reached her ears. Oh God. Someone was about to discover her shame yet again. Unwilling to face whoever it was, she stared at the broad expanse of pebbles that stretched from the cliff face to the waves lapping at the shore. So deceptively gentle today, so calm. Even the pristine shoreline mocked her in the perfection of its smoothness. Not a single hint of a footprint marred the surface.

Not a footprint?

She clenched her fists. Blast it all, if the boy wasn’t here, where on earth had he gone? She turned, and the source of the shouts became clear. Jack and Mr. Upperton picked their way down the slope.

“Jack!” She raced up the path toward her son. The heart-pounding sensation of panic turned hot. “Where on earth have you been?”

He’d begun to trot in her direction but stopped short, his smile fading. His brow puckered in uncertainty. She was so rarely harsh with him. Biggles claimed she wasn’t stern enough. She knew she ought to be, but every time she strove to be firmer, part of her wondered if she wasn’t being overly hard on the lad.

She hadn’t wanted him, after all. Hadn’t wanted any of this.

“Did you come looking for me here?” Jack asked.

“I couldn’t find you anywhere.” Her voice quavered at the memory of the hollowness in her gut when she realized he was gone. “Don’t you ever, ever run off like that again.”

“You’d best listen to your mother.” Mr. Upperton pronounced the words with a quiet authority. “You don’t want to give her another fright.”

Jack hung his head and drew a line in the ground with one toe. “Yes, sir.”

Isabelle forced herself to look Mr. Upperton in the eye. A mistake, that. The laugh lines fanning across his temples had smoothed to seriousness, leaving only shallow furrows to mark their presence. Laughing and good-natured, she’d thought him handsome. Sober and stern, he was devastating. Her mouth went dry, and her lips parted of their own accord.

Dash it all, she couldn’t allow herself to react this way. If only she’d shown a bit more self-restraint during her first season, she wouldn’t be in this situation. She couldn’t afford to succumb yet again to a man’s charm, no matter how overwhelming.

“Where did you find him?”

Upperton ran a hand along the back of his neck. A grin pulled at one corner of his mouth. “He was up a tree, actually.”

“Up a tree?” The only significant trees close to the village lay on the Revelstoke estate. “What on earth were you doing at the manor?”

Jack looked her in the eye, his gaze guileless. “You said I couldn’t go to the beach. You never said I couldn’t climb trees.”

“You are to stay where I can watch you. You’ve no business on the property of your betters.” Their betters. Yes, the Revelstokes were their betters. Now. At one time, she’d have been their equal. At one time, she might have been invited to the house for tea. She might have met Mr. Upperton under legitimate circumstances. He might have asked her to dance. How she missed that simple pleasure.

Jack stuck out his lower lip. “Bugger!”

She let out a gasp before turning narrowed eyes on Upperton. “And where has he learned such language?”

Upperton had the grace to look away. A flush crept up
the back of his neck, just visible where the breeze stirred his hair. “You oughtn’t repeat words you don’t understand,” he muttered.

Jack raised his chin. “I asked you what it meant. You wouldn’t tell me.”

“As well I shouldn’t. Such isn’t meant for young ears.” He glanced at Isabelle. “In my defense, I didn’t realize he could hear me. A horse unseated me, you see, and I thought myself quite alone. Jack here was hiding up a tree.”

“Jack.” Isabelle leaned down until her gaze was on a level with her son’s. Dark brown eyes, so like her own, blinked back at her. “You are not to repeat such words. Do you understand me? As a matter of fact, I think it best if we stay clear of those who speak that way altogether.”

“But Mama—”

“He’s a busy man, I’m sure. He’s got more to do than chase after the likes of us.”

“I say.” Upperton cleared his throat. “It was no trouble at all. I reckoned you’d worry where the lad had got to. I only thought to spare you.”

She straightened. He stepped closer and reached his hand toward her. She stared at it, and his fingers curled inward, as if that might hide the intent behind the gesture. As if she might render the motion void. Her glance shifted to his eyes, and, as yesterday when he’d looked her over, the intensity behind his gaze slammed into her.

He’s interested. He finds me attractive
.

If only he wouldn’t. It would be so much easier to ignore the heat unfurling in her midsection in response. She couldn’t stop the feeling, but nothing required her to act on it. Only … the darkening of his eyes was beginning to tug at her—like a demand.

“It was no trouble at all, I assure you.” Even his voice
deepened to something gravelly and compelling. “Give over,” it seemed to say. But she’d given over once, to her disappointment and ruin.