The Christmas Carrolls (21 page)

Lord Carroll was determined to find something to bring his beloved out of the blue devils. “Then what say we go to Austria? Everyone is there, including our girls. They say it’s the most glittering assembly Europe has ever seen.”

   She raised hopeful eyes to his for a moment, then lowered her gaze to the handkerchief clenched in her hands. “No, we cannot intrude on their honeymoons. No one needs their in-laws around at a time like that.” She blew her nose. “No one needs me at all.”

“Ah, Bess, I need you. You are the stuff that holds my world together, don’t you know?”

“What, am I glue, then? You always did have a way with words, my dear.” At least she smiled. “No, let the children enjoy themselves. Besides, I know how you hate to travel, Bradford.”

“But I hate more to see you unhappy, my love. We could stay in a hotel of our own, see the sights by ourselves. Like another honeymoon for us, don’t you know. Then we can bring Merry and Max back with us, help them get settled in their new place. I have plans for that young man, Bess, if he learns as quickly as I think he will. I’m hoping he’ll take over running this place in a few years, and oversee Rendell’s property for him as well. Maybe Evan’s, if the lad doesn’t get home soon. It will be a good life for them, just what Merry will enjoy the most, and she’ll be close by, too.”

Bess heeded only one sentence. “You manage Winterpark, Bradford, and always shall.”

“Not forever, my dear. I’m already relying more and more on bailiffs and agents. That’s not like one of the family. I have to prepare for the future, my love, for your future.”

“Oliver will own Winterpark, Bradford,” she noted with a lack of enthusiasm. “He’ll pick his own estate managers and advisers.”

“That’s another reason we should go to Vienna. Do you realize that not one letter from the girls mentions Oliver? I’d like to know what he’s up to. No, my love, I shall not leave you to Oliver’s mercy. Can you see Aubergine Willenborg taking on your duties as mistress here, visiting the sick, keeping the still room, administering the village school?”

“Well, I shan’t stay to see it, Bradford. I’ll get a cottage of my own and travel from daughter to daughter, visiting my grandchildren.”

“As Oliver’s pensioner, like that Almira Krupp female?”

“What, my lord, do you not intend to leave me better provided for than that? Shall I be saving my pin money?” Bess knew her husband was the most generous of men. “Perhaps I’d better start lining my pockets from the household accounts.”

“You know you’ll never want for anything as long as I live, dearest, or after I’m gone.”

“Don’t speak that way, Bradford. I don’t care how wealthy I am as a widow.”

“I have to speak of it, Bess, because you’ll still have to deal with Oliver. He’ll go through his wife’s money in no time. Then he’ll destroy everything we’ve built, our family’s heritage. You know he cares nothing for the land. Not even Merry and Max can protect Winterpark when I am gone.”

Now it was the countess’s turn to offer solace. “There is no other option, my dear, so stop fretting. I cannot be happy with the thought of Aubergine standing as chatelaine in my place, but I shan’t be happy without you, no matter what or where. Oliver cannot keep the dower house from me, so I’ll be here to make sure he doesn’t pillage the estate. I owe you that, for not bearing you a son.”

“Oh, Bess, no—”

“Yes, and I have regretted it my whole life, especially knowing how you feel about your cousin’s child. But there is no choice.”

“What if there is a choice, Bess? What if we have a chance to bring love and laughter back into this great rambling barn of a place that’s so empty without the girls? What if I found a way to safeguard everything I hold dear?” He rocked her close to him, telling her without words that she was the dearest.

“What, would you conjure a different successor out of thin air?”

“No, out of Sussex.” Bess stiffened and would have moved out of the earl’s arms altogether, but he wouldn’t let her. “No, this time you have to hear me out, Bess. There is a boy, my love, you know there is. If I were to legally adopt him, give him my name...”

“What, you expect me to welcome your bast—your by-blow, your—”

“Son.” He stated it quietly but firmly.

“Your son,” Bess repeated. “Your illegitimate son. You want me to bring him into our home, where everyone would know how you betrayed me? That’s why you wanted the girls out of the house so fast, wasn’t it? So they couldn’t criticize their idol, their dear papa. That’s why you pushed Evan at Hollice, so she’d take Rendell, and why you left Meredyth alone with that soldier until the inevitable happened. You wanted them gone,” she angrily accused, “so you could bring your baseborn child here without their censure.”

Lord Carroll could not deny her charges. “I thought you would accept the boy more readily without the girls’ reputations to think of, and I would not bring unwanted gossip to their comeouts.”

“No,” she countered bitterly, “you’d only bring scandal into my own parlor. Well, you are wrong, sir. I shall not accept another woman’s child. Oliver would only challenge you through the courts, anyway, creating more of a bumblebroth.”

“Oliver won’t be a problem. He knows I can have him up on charges in an instant. An English lord can beat his wife or renege on his tailor’s bills. He cannot cheat at cards. Besides, I have all those extra titles floating around. I’ll make him a viscount or something and offer him a generous allowance. That should satisfy him and that harpy he married. Listen, Bess, I have checked with my solicitors. It’s been done. If I—if we—adopt the boy, the law would have to recognize his right. We could give out that he was my brother Jack’s grandson, so there’d be less talk.”

“Your brother died without issue. Everyone knows that.”

“No, they only know that he didn’t have an English wife and children. Besides, I am an earl. Do you think anyone is going to disagree to my face if I say the boy is a product of Jack’s short, secret French marriage? No one will, especially not with Rendell to guard his finances and Comfort to see him established in society and Max Grey to oversee his properties. You’d be his guardian with them, to guide him, to raise him into the man I’d want. Winterpark needs you here forever. And I need you with me on this.”

“What of my needs, my home and family, my husband’s loyalty?”

“You’ve got it, dash it. One night out of twenty-one years, Bess, that’s all it was.”

That’s all? It was a stake through her heart. Lady Carroll stood. “You know, perhaps a jaunt to Austria might be pleasant. You’re right, I’ve been pining over the girls too much.”

“Don’t do this to me, Bess,” the earl begged, but his Bess was already on the other side of a very closed door.

Chapter Twenty-three

The food was too rich in Vienna, the social rounds were too hectic, and Bess was too busy to spend time alone with her husband. She planned it that way. Lord Carroll knew, and he hated every minute of the trip, except when he was with one or the other of his daughters.

Joia was already becoming a political hostess of note, and Holly had begun a literary salon. Merry was the darling of the military set, with Max a quiet, smiling presence at her side. Each was a success, but more important, each one’s marriage was a success. All three happy couples wanted to show the Carrolls the sights, entertain them in style, and introduce them to the cream of Viennese society.

There was too much blasted cream, Lord Carroll grumbled. He was growing fat on flawn, and his gout was worse than ever. He was expected to dress up and waltz every damn night besides, like a trained pony at Astley’s Amphitheatre. Of course, he was gratified the gentlemen he’d selected for his daughters were proving so satisfactory, but now that he’d seen that for himself, the earl wanted to go home.

Bess, on the other hand, seemed determined to take in every overcrowded party, visit every boring museum and suffocating gallery, listen to every pluck of every blasted violin string. Between times the countess shopped with the girls to round out their incomplete trousseaux and so she’d have something to wear to all the events. Not only was Lord Carroll deprived of his wife’s companionship, but he was paying handsomely for the privilege. No, he was paying for his past sins, and well he knew it. By the time they finally retired at night, Bess was too exhausted to talk, of course.

His dear wife was trying to avoid his presence, Bradford believed, so that he couldn’t press her about the succession, as if, by ignoring the issue, she could make it disappear. Instead, with every ball and breakfast, Carroll was more convinced that he was too old for all this claptrap, that he should get his house in order before it was too late.

So he went looking for Oliver.

His hapless heir wasn’t in attendance at any of the court functions, nor any of the sporting events, coffeehouses, or gambling establishments. None of the girls had seen their cousin or his wife, either. Lord Carroll was able to track them down finally, but only through Joia’s husband’s contacts at the Consulate. Sons-in-law were handy for something, even if they couldn’t purchase their own wives’ bride clothes.

The address the earl had been given was in an unfashionable outskirt of Vienna, where few of the foreign tourists bothered to visit. The earl was happy he’d brushed up on his schoolboy German. He was also happy he’d thought to change his blunt into local currency. Oliver’s landlady, it appeared, was not about to permit him to visit the sapskull until Oliver’s rent was paid, plus bills for his medicine, doctor, and food.

The once-dandified Oliver was a sorry mess, and Lord Carroll was never sorrier he was connected to the makebate after he’d heard Oliver’s tale of woe.

       Aubergine, it seemed, regretted her bargain within days of the hasty marriage. The Tulip’s shirt points were the only stiff thing about him, the earl surmised from Oliver’s garbled account. As soon as they got to Vienna and the new Mrs. Carroll realized that she was even less socially acceptable than before, that Oliver’s expectations could not gain her entry into the
haut monde,
she’d been more displeased. She didn’t speak the language, not even French, didn’t have a single acquaintance among the English elite, and didn’t want to waste her brass paying the inept wastrel’s gambling debts. So she’d decamped with a Polish count and Lord Carroll’s wedding gift money.

Oliver hadn’t been able to satisfy his obligations, not even the Austrian bootmaker who, unlike the English tradesmen, actually demanded payment on delivery. The fop knew he couldn’t send to his cousin for more funds, Lord Carroll having made that clear on the occasion of signing the wedding check. So Oliver went to a moneylender. When he found that his luck hadn’t turned, that he couldn’t repay this new, higher-rate-of-interest creditor, Oliver did what he usually did: he cheated at cards. And what happened was what usually happened: he got caught. This time the flat he’d chosen to fleece was a Prussian major who called him out, then laid him out with a bullet in the shoulder. Which still didn’t get Oliver’s debts to the cents-percenter paid. That displeasured businessman sent an associate to beat Oliver to a pulp, saying he’d kill him in a fortnight if the money was not forthcoming.

And that, Oliver concluded, was why he was hiding out in a run-down room with a lamprey for a landlady, both eyes swollen shut, half his teeth missing, and his dealing arm in a sling. He’d take any offer his cousin was willing to make if it would get him out of this benighted country alive. An allowance, a minor title,
and
a plantation in Jamaica? Where should he sign his disclaimer to the succession? Oliver would endorse it without looking, with his left hand. Hell, he’d use his own blood if the landlady wouldn’t provide ink.

Sons-in-law were deuced convenient indeed, Lord Carroll congratulated himself. Rendell’s people handled the settlement with the moneylender. Comfort’s connections made the travel arrangements, and Max’s departing army friends acted as escort to ensure Oliver got on his ship. Of course, all three of the girls’ husbands were happy to get their cousin-by-marriage, clunch-by-birth, out of the country and out of their lives. They weren’t as happy as Lord Carroll, however. Bess was ready to go home.

Merry and Max were anxious to take up the reins of their own property. They invited the earl and countess to come along to Kent, to offer advice and suggestions toward making the farm profitable, the house livable. Merry could have managed the place with her eyes closed, but she was wise enough to let Max do the deciding. Merry was good for the lad, and his quiet calm was good for her. They didn’t need their in-laws hanging about.

Not even Bess could think of an excuse to linger in Kent, especially not with Joia and Comfort expected back in England soon. The countess was planning to meet their arrival in London to save them the extra travel time, and stay on there until they left for Ireland. Meantime, she threw herself into a frenzy of housekeeping at Winterpark, changing the girls’ bedrooms into suites for when they came to visit with their husbands. She also supervised an addition to the village school, a total refurbishment of Saint Cecilia’s, and the construction of a new infirmary. B’gad, her husband lamented, she’d see to paving the roads next, rather than spend time with him.

The earl and countess seldom visited in their sitting room anymore. Both found it too painful to look at the hurt in the other’s eyes. Bess felt betrayed by Bradford’s demands; Lord Carroll felt betrayed by his wife’s distrust. She wouldn’t listen to him, much less see his viewpoint. For the first time in over twenty years, there was a coldness in the air at Winterpark, a palpable feeling that each would rather be somewhere else, with someone else.

Carroll thought he might not go to London when Bess went. She’d enjoy herself more without his crotchets and complaints. And why should he suffer the fools in Town, when he could suffer just as well in the country? It wasn’t as if Bess was going to share his bedroom there, any more than she was sharing his concerns here.

The earl slammed his fist down on the breakfast table. No, by George, he was not going to spend what time he had left on God’s green earth breathing soot in the city. And he was not going to live every day paying for one night of insobriety. “Bess,” he shouted across the long table, “do you still love me?”