Leslie Lafoy (4 page)

Ah, yes, money and privilege were such burdens for women to bear. “I don’t think that you can honestly characterize your situation as being a hideous trial of feminine independence and prerogative. I have acceded to your every condition and allowed you far more time to accommodate your thinking to the changed circumstances than I had originally intended.”

Acceded? Allowed?
How very much like a man. “The fact that—” Caroline bit the rest of the words off and looked away. “Never mind,” she finished tartly. “I’d have a better chance of reasoning with a post than I do with you.”

“I think that I’ve given a highly credible performance of a reasonable man.”

“ ‘Performance’ being the key word,” she countered, remembering how he’d looked her up and down when she’d come back into the showroom, ready to go. How he’d cocked that damn brow of his and then not only pointedly looked away, but made patently obvious efforts to avoid looking at her again. “But credible? Reasonable? I’m afraid not. Imperious I would be willing to concede, though. Pompous and disdainful, too. And thoroughly underhanded.”

“Underhanded?”

Out of all the less than sterling qualities,
that
was the one that concerned him? “There was no footman guarding my back door,” she reminded him.

“Oh, yes, that.”

He’d all but waved his hand in dismissal! Marriage to a stranger wasn’t looking quite as awful as it had earlier in the day. “And the purchasing of the building so that you could seize my business and force me to bend to your will.”

His brow went up again. “Do you always keep such detailed score?”

“Yes,” she supplied as the coach angled out of traffic and slowed.

“It’s going to be a very long autumn.”

“It is, indeed. Unless there’s a God and you spend much of your time traveling about to inspect all the various and wondrous estates you’ve inherited.”

“No weather will be too foul,” he muttered, leaning forward to turn the door handle. He was already out on the walk when he said, “I shouldn’t be overly long. Stay there.”

Sit. Heel. Roll over. Be a good dog.
Her teeth clenched and her blood pounding, Caroline grabbed a handful of her skirts and vaulted out of the carriage door before he could get it closed behind him.

He blinked. His gaze dropped to the vicinity of her waist and then snapped back up to her eyes. Closing the space between them so that she had to tilt her head and arch her back to see his face, he glowered down at her and said, “I must insist that you get back into the carriage.”

“You may insist all you like.”

He bent his head to snarl into the side of her bonnet, “No lady should be seen entering a house of ill repute.”

Caroline glanced past him to the sagging façade of the
building—the building with the red curtains and the half-dressed woman standing in the open doorway. Her stomach went queasy in realization. She’d blundered. Hugely. How many times had her mother warned her of the consequences of not controlling her temper? Enough that she’d become very good at hasty but strategic retreats. She took a step backward and lifted her chin. “But sitting in a carriage parked in front of one
is
acceptable?”

“If you hadn’t gotten out, no one would have known you were here,” he said tightly, taking her firmly by the elbow and turning her toward the still open carriage door.

She climbed back inside because it was the only dignified thing to do at that point. “Is one of my sisters in there?” she asked to cover what was, in the final analysis, a retreat.

“Lady Simone,” he answered, releasing her elbow. “Now, kindly let me be about getting her out of there with the least amount of embarrassment possible to any of us.”

He didn’t wait for her to offer approval or a pithy comment before he closed the door. Through the open window, she watched as he resumed his earlier course. He didn’t get much farther than he had the first time.

The wooden steps squeaked as a large woman in a shockingly red, horribly crushed velvet dress descended with deliberate speed and altogether remarkable agility. “You be Lord Ryland?” she asked, coming to a winded stop right in front of him.

“I am.”

Shoving the loose knot of gray hair back onto the top of her head, she said, “I’m Essie.”

“A pleasure to put a face with the name, madam,” he replied with a slight ever-so-genteel bow. “Would you care to step—”

“Twenty pounds is what we agreed to,” she interrupted, sticking out her hand. “The money first and then you can have the chit.”

Caroline watched him reach into the pocket of his coat and hand over a small leather bag. “Please feel free to count it if you would like.”

Essie did, yanking open the drawstring and pouring the coins into her hand. She plucked one up and bit it before looking over her shoulder and nodding. Two burly men in billed caps instantly filled the doorway. Between them, held firmly by the arms, was a glaring bundle of squirming rags. Simone, no doubt.

Caroline considered her sister. She was small and rail thin and filthy from head to toe. What she lacked in size, though, she made up for in spirit. Somewhere there was a fishmonger in awe of the depth and breadth of Simone’s vulgar vocabulary. The men marched her down the steps, ignoring her efforts to twist out of their grasp, and planted her between Essie and Lord Ryland.

Caroline leaned forward, trying—unsuccessfully—to see Simone in the knot of much larger bodies.

“This is the man that bought you,” she heard Essie say harshly. “Don’t make no problems for him, or you’ll be coming right back here and I ain’t gonna be happy to see you. Understand what I’m telling you?”

She couldn’t see or hear Simone’s response, but Lord Ryland’s was immediate and swift. He turned with Simone’s upper arm firmly in one hand as he reached out and wrenched open the carriage door with the other. In the next second, Simone’s trouser-clad bottom was on Caroline’s seat and sliding toward her.

The smell was beyond horrible—a combination of sewage and rotting garbage and heavy smoke. Gasping
was the instinctive reaction, but most definitely the wrong one. Her stomach heaving, Caroline quickly and quietly expelled the breath and tried not to sag in relief as Simone recovered her balance, scrambled to the far end of the seat, and packed herself into the corner of the carriage.

Lord Ryland pulled the door closed and barked a command to his driver in the same second. In the next, the carriage shot forward, its sudden momentum making his effort to get onto his own seat a bit less than graceful.

Simone’s chuckle drew Caroline’s attention back to her. The stench was still strong, but the desperate bravado in the dark eyes peering out through an unruly, greasy mop of black curls was heart-wrenching. As Simone’s gaze darted warily between her and Lord Ryland, Caroline summoned a smile and resolved to do what she could to put the child at ease.

“Hello,” she said gently. “My name is Caroline. I’m your half-sister.”

Simone raked the back of her right hand under her nose, sniffed, and announced, “I don’t got no sisters.”

“I believed the same thing until an hour or so ago,” Caroline offered. “Until Lord Ryland informed me otherwise.”

Her gaze snapped to the man in the opposite seat and her eyes narrowed. “I ain’t no whore.”

“You cannot know,” he said dryly, “how very relieved I am to hear that bit of information.”

“You even look like you wanna touch me, I’ll rip your balls off.”

He blinked. “Good God.”

Well, if nothing else, Caroline decided, hiding a wide smile behind her hand,
she
had to look like a highly cultured princess compared to Simone. At his glare, she
managed to sober enough to ask, “You didn’t explain the true circumstances to dear Essie, did you?”

His brow inched upward. “Would you have opened that Pandora’s box?”

Since they both knew the answer, she didn’t bother with admitting it aloud. Instead, she turned to her sister. “Simone,” she began soothingly, “no one is going to touch you inappropriately. Or even look at you in a manner they shouldn’t. You are perfectly safe with us.”

“Then what did you two buy me for?”

“
I
secured your freedom,” he answered, his tone hard-edged, “because there are conditions on the inheritance of the personal fortune of my late cousin, twice removed—may his soul burn in the deepest, hottest fires of hell for all eternity. One of those conditions is you.”

Simone studied him for a second or two, her face scrunched. Finally, she looked over at Caroline and asked, “Huh?”

“What Lord Ryland could no doubt say better if he would control his anger and frustration, is that the late Lord Ryland, his cousin—”

“Twice removed,” he inserted, staring out the window, his jaw pulsing. “Don’t tie me to the scoundrel any closer than I have to be.”

“Yes, of course,” Caroline said to placate him, and then turned back to Simone. “Anyway, as I was about to explain when I was so rudely interrupted . . . The Lord Ryland before this one had three daughters out of wedlock.”

“You mean bastards.”

“Yes. I am one. You are another. We have another sister whose name is Fiona.”

It took less than a heartbeat for her to digest the information, shrug, and say defiantly, “So what?”

Well, in the child’s favor, she was quick-witted enough to know that they hadn’t reached the crux of the matter yet. “The old Lord Ryland felt bad about ignoring us—but not before he was dying, of course—and said the new Lord Ryland . . . ”—she gestured in the general direction of the opposite seat—“had to take us under his wing and make ladies out of us. If he doesn’t do that, he can’t have all the money that goes with being a duke.”

Simone looked Lord Ryland up and down. “Why’d he hate you so much?”

“Damned if I know,” he replied without looking at his young ward. “If you ever discover the answer, I do hope you will share it with me.”

She snorted and scrubbed the back of her hand under her nose again. “I ain’t no royal, you know.”

He closed his eyes and—with what Caroline considered far more gloom and doom than necessary—said, “Our blood line does not descend from the House of Hanover. A fact for which I am sure the queen has always been grateful and will soon be even more so.”

“Huh?”

“He means that we aren’t related to Her Majesty,” Caroline clarified, growing more annoyed with his airs by the second. “Our ancestors apparently did something that a past king or queen really appreciated and were given a title as a reward.”

“So this Ryland that cocked up his toes was our da?”

“That’s what he claimed.”

“And you believe it?”

“Well . . . ” Caroline allowed.

“Pointin’ to just one man as my da would be one helluva trick. How’d my ma manage that one and make him believe it?”

“I have no idea,” Lord Ryland said. “It’s not my place to make judgments concerning the accuracy of the claims. Geoffrey believed that you are his daughter and that’s sufficient. I’m to make a lady of you and see that you marry well.”

“Marry! I ain’t about to spread—”

“Not for a long, long time!” Caroline hurried to assure her. “And never if you really don’t want to. No one’s going to force you into a relationship that you don’t want.”

“I don’t want to. Not ever.” She leaned forward to glare at the man on the other seat. “You try to make me and I’ll—”

“Yes, I know,” he said with a sigh of greatly strained patience. “You will unman me. It is not necessary to repeat the threat at every opportunity.”

Simone slowly eased back into the corner and shifted her consideration to Caroline. “You gonna let him marry you off?”

“I have very serious doubts as to his ability to find anyone who would want to marry me. He says that he can, but . . .” She shrugged. “We’ll see how desperate I am to escape come spring.”

The look he slid her across the carriage was somehow both wounded and challenging. Even as she puzzled it and how to best respond, Simone asked, “How long before he cuts me loose?”

Yes, of course Simone would think that the arrangement was only temporary. The odds were good that nothing in her life to this day had been anything but moment to moment. “If you prefer not to marry,” Caroline assured her, “you’ll be provided for for the rest of your life.”

“Huh?”

Caroline was trying to decide whether Simone didn’t
understand the wording of the explanation or if it was simply a matter of the child not being able to grasp the concept of being cared for on a reliable basis, when Lord Ryland cleared his throat and said, “When one doesn’t understand something or wishes for it to be repeated, the proper response is to say, ‘I beg your pardon?’ ”

“I don’t beg,” Simone retorted, her voice granite hard. “Not for nuthin’.
Ever.
”

Caroline looked between the two of them, noting their steely glares and thinking that they might go to physical blows at any second. “Ah,” she said, chuckling softly, hoping to break the tension. “Spoken like the true daughter of a duke.”

Still holding Simone’s gaze, the supposed adult said, “Do not encourage her.”

“In answer to your request for clarification, Simone,” she went on, refusing to be cowed, “Lord Ryland will see that you never want for anything for as long as you live.”

“I want a lot.”

“For instance?” he asked icily.

“Shoes with no holes in the bottom.”

“That can be arranged.”

“And supper every single night.”

“There shouldn’t be a problem with that, either.”

“A
hot
supper,” she countered. “Fixed
that
day.”

“I will make sure the staff is aware of the expectation.”

She hesitated, as if, Caroline thought, she’d exhausted the full range of her dreams and was having to dredge the realm of utter impossibilities. “And a
real
bed,” Simone added, sounding a bit triumphant. “That I don’t have to share with anyone.”

“You will have a choice of a private chamber and the bed in it.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Nobody gives away shoes and food and beds for nuthin’. What do you want from me for it?”

“You will be expected to undertake your lessons diligently and cheerfully.”