Patrica Rice (14 page)

"Have I offended you? I thought you were already so furious with me that nothing further I did could offend you more. I apologize if I spoke out of turn."

Carolyn forced her tumultuous emotions into control and offered a brittle smile. "I'm not offended. Perhaps my pride is. You did not lose much time finding a mistress, if I'm any judge of a child's age. I shouldn't be so surprised, but even after all these years of knowing what you are, I find I am. But I do not blame the child for the father's faults, and neither will my family. She is welcome in our home at any time."

The smallest inkling of hope gnawed at his insides as Jack gazed into Carolyn's flushed and averted face. She spoke with more sophistication than the young girl he had once known, but the raw emotions couldn't be entirely concealed by her poise. The frozen tundra he had met with earlier wasn't quite so thick as he had believed. Amy had warmed a hole through it in a single meeting. What would it take to melt the whole and discover the truth beneath?

If he wanted truth, he had to offer honesty. This wasn't the place or time, but he might have no other. Touching her elbow, Jack guided her toward the refreshment table. He kept his voice low, bending his head closer to her ear. For all anyone knew, he could be speaking sweet flattery.

"Carolyn, I have never been more than a man, never claimed to be. Perhaps I cannot fit the perfect ideal you have made of your father, but he has only somehow been more discreet than I am. Until you give me permission to speak as a lover, I cannot defend myself further. Should that time ever come, I will tell you all you wish to know of Amy. In the meantime, I can only thank you for your concern for her welfare. I am glaringly aware of my faults, and I doubt that forgiveness is possible, but I would cry friends, if only for Amy's sake."

She had forgotten how Jack could erase all transgressions with his smooth words. In the same few sentences he could raise her ire and soothe her ruffled feathers. He was quite right, actually. He should not be talking to her of Amy's origins, but to suggest there might be a future time when he had that right was above and beyond all else. She ought to slap him right here in view of everyone, but his mention of Amy's need for friends diverted her anger. Obviously, if he loved no one else, he loved his child.

Carolyn looked up at Jack with suspicion, but there was no triumph in those gray eyes. They glowed with a strange intensity as he awaited her reply, but there was no indication that he knew it in advance. His anxiety was only for Amy.

She nodded. "If you can tame the dragon lady, I would have Amy come for tea. I know she is much too young, but little girls like to play at being grown-up. She will learn to get on in society that way."

Jack caught her elbow to swing her around to face him. "I thank you, Carolyn, but she is not likely to be part of society. Surely you must see that."

She met his eyes coolly. "If you legally adopted her, she would be accepted, but that is your decision. All I can do is entertain her for a few hours a day."

Jack stared into Carolyn's porcelain face, willing himself to see there what he wanted to see. Amy needed a mother. How many women would accept him knowing they would have to accept his bastard daughter, too? He had thought briefly of finding Amy a loving family willing to raise her as their own, but he had not been able to bring himself to look for one. Now here was Carolyn telling him to adopt her. Surely she knew that would be condemning him to a life without a wife, Amy to living without a mother?

He made a slight bow of acceptance to the truth of her words. "Send around a note as to a convenient time for you. I will make certain that she is there."

* * * * 

Amy arrived promptly at the time designated, the feather perched archly over her tiny nose from a bonnet otherwise decorated in roses. Her guardian dragon sniffed as Carolyn greeted the child.

"His lordship said I might leave her here while I do some shopping." The disapproval on her face was more than apparent.

Carolyn dismissed her without a glance. "She will do quite nicely with us. Thank you, Mrs. Higginbotham."

Without a backward look, she led Amy to the library, where Blanche waited.

At the sight of Jack's small daughter, Blanche exclaimed in surprise, threw Carolyn a swift look, then knelt to remove Amy’s bonnet and cloak. The little girl gazed at Blanche's blond curls with awe and obediently stood still under her ministrations.

"It is a pity our Penny is not here to play with you. I'm certain you would get
on tremendously." As protective as Carolyn of her younger sisters, Blanche easily accepted this new arrival. Carolyn had only mentioned that the child seemed timid and perhaps a little frightened by her new surroundings.

Once freed of her outer garments, Amy wandered to the table where Blanche had been working. Scattered bits of paper and pens and scissors covered the leather working surface, and her gaze fastened on the elaborate valentine. "What's that?"

Carolyn laughed. Jack had mentioned that the girl had a penchant for lovely and exotic objects. To a child's eyes, that lacy red-and-white confection would seem quite exotic. She helped Amy into a chair at the table. "That's a valentine. It's a gift to someone you love on St. Valentine's Day. Would you like to make one?"

To Blanche's amusement, her prim-and-proper older sister sat down at the library table and proceeded to instruct a four-year-old in the intricacies of valentine making. She had not seen Carolyn so animated in years. Whatever was going on here, it was good for her.

Blanche rang for tea to be brought in the library. If she remembered correctly, four-year-olds preferred sweets with their instructions.

Over the next week, Amy came to visit several times. Sometimes they persuaded her to listen to a story or go for a carriage ride in the park, but mostly her fascination led to the glorious array of ribbons and pretty papers scattered across the library table.

Dissatisfied with her first attempts, Blanche continued to make more and more elaborate creations, and Amy's awe at their extravagance did not cease. Under Carolyn's tutelage, she painstakingly constructed one of her own. In showing the child what to do, Carolyn created a card for the first time since she was a child of Blanche's age.

Jack sometimes accompanied his daughter to the door, but in recognition of Carolyn's earlier threats, he declined to enter. Carolyn stubbornly refused any invitation, although when they met at social affairs, she spoke with him of his daughter's progress. Since often this was in the company of Lord Hampton, Jack could not put a favorable construction on their new relationship.

She kept him firmly in his place, but Jack could not resign himself to believing he had arrived to find her still unattached, only to watch her marry another. He consoled himself into thinking it was only a matter of biding his time.

* * * * 

Time ran out one frosty February day. The unsettling news that George's mother was on her way home from the Continent was superseded by a more immediate calamity. Jack came home to a household in an uproar and two physicians in the nursery. In near-hysterics, Mrs. Higginbotham cowered in a corner, exhorting the physicians alternately to take care and to do something.

In a trice, Jack pushed between the maids and doctors to find his daughter lying limp and pale against the sheets. Hiding his terror, he knelt beside her bed and touched his hand to her smooth forehead. It burned with fever.

With a stricken look, he turned to the elder of the two physicians hovering in the background. Jack could not speak, but the medical man replied to his expression without need of questions.

"The child was overexposed to the cold, and I suspect she has eaten something while outside that does not agree with her system. She has been vomiting steadily until now."

A murderous anger began to build as Jack turned his gaze to Mrs. Higginbotham and the two nursemaids he employed to look after one small child. The nursemaids chattered in tandem, making it impossible to decipher a word. He focused his ire on the massive woman cowering in the comer.

Realizing it was a matter of self-preservation, Mrs. Higginbotham drew herself up to her full height and presented the woeful tale in the best light she could.

"She took my sewing scissors and cut up the frontispiece of one of your books in the library, mangled it dreadfully, she did. I caught her when she was cutting the lace off one of her gowns. She's badly spoiled, m'lord, if you'll forgive my saying so. I thought to teach her a lesson, so I sent her to an empty garret to reflect on her bad behavior. She weren't there no more than an hour or so."

Her composure was slipping badly, and with it, the artificial elegance of her speech. Jack continued to stare at her grimly, determined to have the whole tale before he ripped the nursery and everyone in it to tiny pieces.

At his silence, the woman took a deep breath and continued, "When Maisie went up to fetch her for her tea, she wasn't there. We looked everywhere, we did. There's not a bit of furniture in that room. She couldn't of hid. She just up and disappeared."

Since the garret she referred to was icy cold and accessible only by the back stairs, Jack found nothing mysterious in this. He was not blind to Amy's less than-obedient nature. She wouldn't have stayed in that dull, cold room for long, and he doubted that there was a key to be found to fit the lock. Given the opportunity, she would have slipped back down the stairs. Where she had gone from there was anybody's guess.

"Where did you find her?" he demanded curtly when it became apparent the woman would not willingly volunteer any more information.

"Begging your pardon, m'lord," one of the maids interrupted when Mrs. Higginbotham seemed unable to reply. "Timmy followed her footsteps in the snow. They got kind of confused in the park, he said, and he came back to get some others to help him. They said they found her by the far gate. She didn't have no coat nor nothin' on just her wet dress," she amended at the furious blaze in Jack's eyes.

The fury was as much for himself as for the servants. He had brought the child to a strange climate to which her small body wasn’t adapated and that she had not learned to fear. He had left his only daughter in the care of thoughtless servants and a woman he had been warned did not approve of or even like her. He had selfishly not made any attempt to find Amy a better situation, not wanting to admit that he couldn't take care of her, not wanting to be parted from the one creature on God's earth who loved him for himself. And this was what he had brought to her.

With a strangled cry, Jack gathered Amy into his arms and ordered everyone else out. She would be well again, if he had to pour his own life's blood into her.

When Amy didn't appear at her appointed time the next day, Carolyn was curious and disappointed. She had grown fond of the child and enjoyed watching her blossoming with care and attention. Oddly enough, the news that George's mother would arrive in London next week did not excite her so much as watching Amy master the scissors and paper to cut an almost perfect heart. Reporting this progress to Jack seemed more consequential than speculating as to whether the dowager marchioness would consider an insignificant but wealthy chit as wife material for her son.

Unable to curb her curiosity and concern, Carolyn sent a maid around to inquire as to the reason for Amy's absence. When the maid returned with the news, Carolyn picked up her skirts and headed for the stairs.

"Send word to Nanny that I have need of her fever medicine, the recipe for the cold posset, some of those dried herbs we picked last summer for steaming, and perhaps the purgatives. Just tell her what you have told me. She will know what to do." The instructions streamed behind her as she hurried down the stairs.

At the last sentence, Florrie nodded in relief. Even if she forgot part of these hurried orders, Nanny would know what was needed. She watched in concern as Miss Carolyn called for her cloak and a carriage. Surely she could not be thinking of going to a gentleman's house unescorted.

Carolyn wasn't looking at her flight in precisely that light. She had nursed her four sisters through all manner of childhood illnesses. She knew what Amy needed. Since Blanche was from home at the moment and her maid had to get word to Nanny at their country estate, it seemed expedient to go alone. The only consequence she had in mind was seeing Amy back to health.

Finding herself suddenly confronted with the door to the town house Jack had taken for the Season, Carolyn experienced a momentary qualm, but when the door opened to reveal a frightened Mrs. Higginbotham standing in the hallway beyond the doorman, her resolution firmed. She announced herself and stepped across the portal without giving the servant time to refuse her entrance.

"Where is Amy?" she demanded of the startled matron. The woman in all rights belonged in the nursery with her charge. Such scandalous breach of duty ought to be reprimanded. Jack certainly ran a loose household.

"She is ill in bed." Mrs. Higginbotham drew herself up defensively.

"I wish to see her." Ignoring the challenge in the woman's eyes, Carolyn started for the stairs. The nursery would have to be upstairs. She would find it for herself if necessary.

"You can't go up there!" Scandalized, Mrs. Higginbotham lurched after her.

Carolyn blithely sailed upward. "Just tell me which room. I'll find my way. You needn't concern yourself further."

"You can't go in there!" the woman repeated with slight variation. "His lordship's in there!"

It had truly never occurred to her that Jack would be in the nursery with his ill child. Her own father had probably never seen inside the nursery doors, but he'd had a wife and daughters to see to the care of his younger children. There hadn't been any necessity for involving himself personally in childhood illnesses. Still, the thought of Jack sitting at his daughter's bedside sent Carolyn's heart pounding, and she hesitated.

A door at the end of the hall opened and a nursemaid emerged carrying soiled linen. Without another thought, Carolyn hurried in that direction. Mrs. Higginbotham beat a hasty retreat.