The Bride's Secret (8 page)

Peggy spun back toward Carlotta, her face crunched in disappointment. “When does he return?”

Carlotta shrugged.

“Oh, madam, it's sorry I am to hear that, for Lord Rutledge has been so very good for ye. I'll be worried now that ye will return to your moping ways, like when Mr. Blankenship left.” She assisted her mistress into the selected gown.

Carlotta laughed without mirth, as Peggy began to brush out her hair. “'Tis not the same, Peggy. There's nothing between Lord Rutledge and me.”

Peggy shot Carlotta a questioning glance. “Ye are trying to convince yerself, but ye can't fool Peggy.”

“It's the truth!” Carlotta insisted. “He's . . . he's only interested in the boy.”

“Then yer as blind as a bat if ye believe that! I seen the way he looks at ye. He's lovesick. And if ye asks me, I'll wager he's left Bath because he doesn't think he has a chance with one as beautiful as ye,” Peggy said as she fastened a pin in Carlotta's swept-back tresses.

“I'm heartily sick of hearing about my beauty,” Carlotta snapped. The earl had most likely left because he had come to realize how fully her inner beauty was at odds with her outward beauty. She wanted to throw something at the looking glass she sat in front of.

After breakfast, Carlotta lingered over her tea, gripping her purple Kashmir shawl to her. It seemed to her that Lord Rutledge must have taken the sun with him, for deep gray blanketed the cloudy skies. She had neither the desire to leave Monmouth Place nor to mount the stairs to the nursery where her son was likely playing with his soldiers. 'Twas so very gloomy a day.

Unaccountably, memories of the things she had done with the earl and the topics they had discussed intruded on her thoughts. She wondered what they would be doing now, were he still in Bath. No doubt, they would have been gay no matter how dreary the skies outside. She could not imagine being with Lord Rutledge and not being happy. He filled whatever room he was in with good humor. And so much more, she thought forlornly.

He had brought purpose back to her life. He'd given her the desire to get out of bed in the mornings and to care about her appearance. He had restored her son to her, and he had been full of sage advice. And though he was a gentleman, he always spoke his mind, even when his words would offend.

In the drawing room, she sat next to a candle which illuminated the room this dreary day as she worked at her embroidery—the piecework she still had not finished. She was anxious to finish so she could allow herself the luxury of re-reading Coleridge.

The very thought of Lord Rutledge giving her the precious volume sent her pulse racing. How thoughtful he had been, and how very well he had come to know her. No man had ever understood her as he seemed to. She blushed to think at the age of five and twenty, she had already been intimate with two different men, and a third—whose knowledge did not extend past the bedchamber door—most certainly knew her better than the others.

Her heart drummed. Was it his knowledge of her wickedness that had driven Lord Rutledge away? He was no fool. He knew she had been a wretched mother, and he had been responsible for nudging her out of her indifference. Had he also learned of her greater shame? After all, he
had
lived in Bath. She blinked away the tears which threatened.

She had already lost so much in the past year. Her thoughts drifted to that soul-deadening moment when she had realized that Gregory would never offer marriage. She had not even been angry with him, for he had told her before he ever bedded her that he would never offer marriage. Yet she'd been so blinded by her love of him she had foolishly believed she could change him.

All that had changed was her respectability.

And now, were she to lose Lord Rutledge, too, she thought she would undoubtedly die.

She had come to crave just being with him, having someone to talk to who withheld judgment.

Then she remembered her physical reaction yesterday when he had placed his big hand over hers. The memory caused her to whimper. She set down her embroidery and sat there in the dimness, picturing Lord Rutledge as he had looked, his long legs stretched before him after they had partaken of their nuncheon. He was possessed of a very fine face, especially when he was pensive. And the sound of his laughter filled her own soul with happiness.

Though she had wildly and recklessly loved Gregory Blankenship, she had not the respect for him that she had for James Rutledge.

And she had likely lost him forever.

* * *

James sat at his desk on the ground floor of the wainscoted library at Yarmouth Hall, watching rain trickle against his foggy window. He had been unable to concentrate on the columns of figures in the ledger his steward had given him. He wondered how he had managed to conduct business at all these past few days with his steward and his secretary and his housekeeper when all the while his every thought centered on Carlotta Ennis.

By removing himself from Bath, he had wanted to purge himself of his obsessive desire for her. More than that, this self-imposed exile was his way of punishing himself for having craved a woman who belonged to another. For he had come to realize he had always been in love with Carlotta Ennis. His Goddess of the Night. Even when her husband had been alive.

James was so disgusted with himself, he questioned his own sincerity in befriending Stevie. Had that, too, been done in order to be close to the lad's ravishingly beautiful mother?

He heard a rapping at his door and looked up to see his secretary stroll into the vast room. “I have some correspondence which needs your signature, my lord,” Fordyce said. The young man drew up in front of his employer and handed James a stack of letters. “If I might be so bold as to suggest you move closer to the fire. It's deuced cold here by the window, my lord.”

“The cold suits me,” James said grimly, dipping his quill into the ink and penning his signature on one page after another, glancing over each before he signed.

When he finished, he handed them back to his man of business. “Be a good man and tell Mrs. MacGinnis not to bother with dinner tonight. I'm not hungry.”

Once Fordyce had left the chamber, James poured himself a glass of port. So what if it was but two in the afternoon? He sat back in his leather chair and took a long drink. What had come over him? He'd always been a man's man, interested in masculine pursuits. Yet now all he could think of was a violet-eyed widow and her small, dependent son. The pair of them elicited in him a sense of protection. He thrived on supporting them in any way he could, be it by paying their lease or just by being there with a helping hand.

But how could he allow himself the intoxication of being near her when he'd adulterously coveted her all these years?

He took another sip and closed his eyes as the port warmed its path down to his gut. Against his will, he pictured Carlotta. Carlotta lying on silken sheets, her black hair draping across her breasts. Breasts that begged to be taken in his hands—and in his mouth. He saw her heavily lashed eyelids drop seductively as she lifted her face to his.

Enraged with himself, he threw his wine glass against the bricks of the hearth.

* * *

One dreary day succeeded another. Carlotta finally finished her piecework and re-read her slim volume of Coleridge so many times she committed the verses to memory. Oddly, every line brought to mind the noble James Rutledge and reminded her of how truly she missed him.

She had not left Monmouth Place since she had last seen him. She had not taken a single meal with Stevie, nor had she actually sat down at the table for a meal herself. 'Twas as if Lord Rutledge had stolen away with her appetite, too.

After a week had passed, she told herself he was never coming back.

As a tribute to her fondness for him and for what he done for her and Stevie, Carlotta flung aside her poetry and mounted the stairs to her son's nursery. Just because the carpet had been ripped from beneath her feet was no reason to penalize the boy. He had to be feeling Lord Rutledge's loss as keenly as she. The two had been extremely close. She scorned herself for not having thought of Stevie's bereavement.

With each step she took, her excitement grew. Her lips curved into a smile as she climbed past the second floor. She had missed the little fellow. Hang Lord Rutledge! She no longer needed him to show her how to be a mother. He had opened her eyes to her son's worth. Now she could proceed without his guidance. She would see that Stevie's happiness was not thwarted—with or without Lord James Rutledge!

As she neared the top floor, where her son's nursery was located, she heard muffled sobs. Clutching at her breast, she flew to the door of the nursery and flung it open. Had something happened to her son? Her heart beat erratically.

There sat her son, huddled in a corner of the chilly room, his thin legs blue from the cold, his thumb shoved into his little mouth, big tears puddling on his face. Thankfully, she saw no blood.

Chapter 8

Carlotta flew across the nursery's wooden floor and fell to her knees in front of her son, drawing him into her arms. “Stevie, my love, what's wrong?”

“I'm afwayed to be up here by myself.”

She held him tightly against her, gently stroking his quivering back, her eyes filling with tears.

Memories of her own fears when she was no older than Stevie rushed over her. She'd been terrified to be in her own chamber without her nurse—even during the day. It was so vast and dark and frequently cold—a testament to her grandmother's thriftiness. Yet she'd never told anyone of her fright. She had merely huddled in a corner and cried. Like Stevie.

Her child's suffering was like a raw wound in her heart. “Oh, my love, I'm so grievously sorry. I didn't realize . . .” She gathered him closer to her, the tears now running freely down her cheeks. “I give you my word, you'll never be left alone again.”

She scooped him up in her arms and carried him downstairs to the drawing room. There, she sat beside the fire and settled him on her lap as she began to read him a children's book.

Soon Stevie was giggling over the talking animals in the book, and there was no sign of the tears that had so recently ravaged him. As they sat reading, a hazy sun broke through the clouds.

“Go get your coat on, sweetheart,” Carlotta said to him, swatting at his bottom. “I'm taking you to the Pump Room.” Her stomach dropped perceptibly as she thought of the icy reception she was sure to get there. But as long as Lord Rutledge wasn't around to see her shame, she could suffer it. Stevie had always expressed an interest in drinking the miraculous water there, and she would devote this day to making her son happy, to making him forget his distress.

Once he was at the Pump Room, though, the water did not hold as much interest as the orchestra which played on a balcony high above the lofty chamber. Stevie craned his little neck to watch them. Carlotta soon realized the lad had never before seen musical instruments being played.

“You'll strain your neck,” she cautioned, taking his hand and moving forward. “You must be a gentleman and escort your Mama around the room. It's what one does when one comes to the Pump Room.”

Stevie wrinkled his brow as he concentrated on being a gentleman. He took long strides as he clutched his mother's hand.

“I believe all the ladies in the room will be jealous of me,” she said with mirth, “for I most undoubtedly have the most handsome escort of all.”

He was unable to the hide the smile which slid across his face, though he tried to act like a grown-up man. “Wemembah when Lord Wutledge said he mistook me for a short man?” He giggled.

Carlotta burst out laughing. The earl was so very good with children.

“I've missed his lordship,” Stevie said solemnly.

Her thoughts exactly. “I have too, darling, but he has a big estate that demands his attention, too. We can't have him all the time.”

“I wish you'd marry him so we could always be with him.”

The smile vanished from her face. As highly as she regarded the earl, she had not once considered herself suitable to be his countess. A conquest of such grand proportions had never even crossed her mind. Yet the very thought of it set her insides trembling.

Not only was he not married, he had also remarked frequently on her beauty. And how could she forget that he had spread his protective cloak around her, smothering her in his care? Yet she had not once considered him a suitor.

Her heart drummed. It was because she was so ruined. She was not fit to even give thought to such a misalliance. The earl deserved far better.

And of course, Lord Rutledge's only interest in her was as the wife of Stephen Ennis and the mother of the fallen captain's young son. That was all.

Stevie looked up at her strained face. “Am I not escorting you properly?”

She squeezed his hand and looked down at him, her face lifting into a smile. “You're doing wonderfully. I am, indeed, the luckiest woman in the room.”

The smile stayed on her face. Despite her ruin and despite that the respectable people in the room likely scorned her, Carlotta believed what she had just told her son. Oddly, showing Stevie off to all of Bath filled her with the most glorious sensation, a sweeping pride like she had never before known.

As she and Stevie were taking their leave of the Pump Room, Carlotta's eyes met those of Miss Arbuckle, a most worthy young woman of gentle birth, and Carlotta nodded to her.

A wide smile brightened the plain Miss Arbuckle's face. “This must be your little boy!” Miss Arbuckle said, walking up the them. “I'd almost forgotten you were a mother.”

“Allow me to make you known to my son,” Carlotta said with pride before she made the introductions.

“I declare,” Miss Arbuckle said, looking at Stevie, “everyone is talking about what a fine boy you have there.”

“I'm most blessed,” Carlotta said in a low voice, her smile reaching her eyes as she took and held the hand of the generous Miss Arbuckle.

Of course Miss Arbuckle, being a maiden, had not heard of Carlotta's shame. Nevertheless, the young woman was virtuous and kind. “It's so very thoughtful of you to take notice of my little lamb,” Carlotta said, beaming down at her son. “And it has been a pleasure seeing you again.”