Elisabeth Fairchild (9 page)

“Well, I heard he went nigh mad with worry over the child, didn’t I? Betsy, the upstairs maid, told me how it was he had called upon Miss Foster, of all people, to sit with poor Felicity through the worst of the fever.”

“Penny Foster? Felicity has mentioned her.”

“Well, when I heard that
she
went to him, of all people, poor child, that
she
could forgive him after all that he had done, well, how could I do any less once he got shot and came off of the liquor?”

“Shot?”

“Oh, aye. Cupid shot him. In the leg.” She lowered her voice. “To stop him, you see.”

“Stop what?”

“Why, suicide, love. ‘E was on his way up the mountain with poor fevered Felicity, ready to throw himself off a cliff. Thought she was dead, you see. Thought he had killed her, getting drunk while she was ill.”

“No!”

“Oh, aye. Truth be told. God Bless Master Cupid and Miss Penny for stopping ‘im.”

“Was he in love with her? This Penny Foster?”

“Aye, love. A canny one you are to ask. Still is, if I read the signs right. But that is another story and another time to tell it. The wee one stirs.” She whisked herself away, through the curtain, toward the bed, where she said, without taking pause for breath, “And how are you this fine morning, Miss Felicity? Ready to rise and shine?”

Elaine stood at the mirror, the braided tail of her hair grasped in her hand, the braided tail of Lord Wharton’s past harder to grasp. Valentine almost killed Felicity? He had been drunk when she was ill?
Oh papa, how can men so forget themselves?

She watched the dear child stretch and yawn in the bed. She wondered about this woman, Penny, whom his lordship still pined for. What was it Valentine Wharton had done to her, that she must forgive him for it?

Will I ever forgive papa?
Neatly rolling the end of the braid into a knot at the nape of her neck, she pinned it into place.
I cannot do it again. I cannot place myself in such a man’s care.

Felicity’s touch startled her, the child’s hand tucking into hers. “Your hair is very pretty that way,” Felicity stared up at her, eyes wide, very blue. Her father’s eyes. “Will you dress mine in the same fashion?”

“If you like,” Elaine said. Her hands delved the soft, wildness of Felicity’s curls.
Wrapped around her finger. I am wrapped around her finger.

They went down to breakfast together, Felicity’s hand in hers, their hair identically plaited, and in the mirror on the landing it was not Lord Wharton’s child she saw smiling back at her, but the mirror image of herself at a much younger age.

I cannot leave her, anymore than I would abandon myself.

They were met in the private breakfast room his lordship had booked by a booted and spurred Valentine, coffee cup in hand.
He does not look like a drunkard.

Elaine tried to imagine this handsome, well-built young man with speech, gaze and gate affected, to imagine this snide, self-confident creature ready to take his own life, for his illegitimate daughter’s sake. His eyes were bright. His gaze intent and clear.
How do I look to those eyes?

“A word, Miss Deering,” he said when she would have turned along with Felicity and Mrs. Olive to fill her plate at the sideboard covered with dishes.

He went to the table, pulled out her chair, sat himself beside her.

 Elaine tensed.
What is this?

No reason to fear. It was only to push a packet of paperwork in her direction that he leaned close. The packet was sealed, the wax bearing the imprint of his signet ring.

She looked up, puzzled.

He shrugged and leaned back, saying, “I’ve no wish to hasten your parting from us, Miss Deering, nor to encourage it, but if you are to leave us today I wanted you to have a proper recommendation to take with you.”

A recommendation! He means to give me a recommendation!
Her heart sang. Her blood raced at the thought. She stared at the packet that bore his name, his seal, in thrilled disbelief.
But he barely knows me.

“Read it, if you wish,” he suggested, handing over his butter knife, handle first.

She stared at the knife a moment, and then slid the blade neatly under the seal, the bulk of the wax left intact. An added cache to present a recommendation bearing a nobleman’s seal.

Carefully, unsure what to expect, she unfolded the page. His handwriting was bold, well-formed and even. In that hand he had written fine words: that she was “well-informed in all subjects”, that she was “neat and tidy of appearance”, that she taught deportment as well as the use of five languages, that she had “protected his child from the bullying of rougher students”, and that in a time when he had been “unable to care for his offspring, indeed incapable of the task” he had been secure in the knowledge that his daughter was, “safe in Miss Deering’s capable hands.”

A glowing recommendation! This once drunken rogue had written her a glowing recommendation, while she did nothing but think ill of him and gossip about his past.

Elaine blinked, tears springing to her eyes, her future secure again with no more than a few words on a piece of paper, and the imprint of a signet ring. She must not allow tears to mar that perfect page, that blessed ink. She sniffed, dabbed at her eyes, and carefully folded the page into it’s original square. When she opened her mouth to speak he stopped her with a wave of his hand and a sarcastic, “So kind, I know.”

“Yes,” she said unevenly. “So very kind.”

He leaned forward again. This time she did not flinch.

“And yet there is a price,” he said.

Her brows rose. Would he ruin the gesture?

He pinned her with his sky blue eyes, spread his hands, and said in an awkward rush, as if unaccustomed to asking favors, “I am hoping that in your gratitude you will agree to stay with us until we reach Chester this evening. It is the last place before we enter the wilds of Wales in which I think I might be able to contract another governess to take your place, and I should prefer to look there rather than here in Manchester.”

Elaine nodded, tucked the precious gift of his personal recommendation into the deep pocket of her gown, and said quietly, “You have done me so many kindnesses how could I say no?”

“You have only to open your mouth and utter the word,” he said sardonically.

She tilted her head and looked him straight in the eyes. “I know very well how to say no.”

He seemed for moment left speechless by her bold regard, but then he nodded, and said, “And so you do, for I have witnessed it, oh mighty dragon slayer. Forgive me. I ought not scold. Rather I should thank you kindly,” his eyes twinkled mischievously “and encourage you to eat a hearty breakfast, and compliment you on the arrangement of . . .” he glanced at her hair, “my daughter’s hair. It is very pretty braided thus.”

Clever. He was a very clever man, kind and clever, wording everything just so. Bending her to his will. She could not take offense, even at his compliments.

T
hey made their way to Northwich, its streets lined with ancient, timbered houses. There they stopped to change the horses and to eat. They did not linger. Clouds grayed the skies, and grew menacing. Just beyond the village of Hartford, before they had sighted the crossroad to Tarporley, great, fat drops of rain pelted the windows, just a few at first, and then a steady thump at the top and sides of the carriage, like insistent, drumming fingers.

“Rain again!” Mrs. Olive said in disgust. “I begin to believe we shall never see the sun. Poor master! Poor lads! Never a full day dry.”

“Was that thunder?” Jumpy as a cat, Felicity peered out through the steady wash of droplets.

“I heard no thunder.” Elaine knew how unnerved Felicity became at sound of it. Valentine Wharton might relish this sort of weather. Not so, his daughter. Felicity’s agitation increased with the power of the storm.

“It was raining that night,” Mrs. Olive whispered to Elaine. That night Cupid shot Valentine. The night a fevered Felicity had come close to dying.

Elaine had surmised something unsettling was connected to stormy weather. At school, she had taken to sitting with Felicity on lightning-laced nights, least her cries wake the other girls. On the worst nights, when thunder boomed, shaking the very walls, Felicity trembled and wept.

Elaine had sung songs to her, and cradled her in her arms, and wondered what nameless terror Felicity refused to speak of. She suggested that they must all sing a song now rather than allow her charge to sit wide-eyed on the seat beside her, flinching with every distant boom, every distant flash.

“Come,” she said, but Felicity refused, pressing her face and hands to the window as the rain pelted down harder than before.

“Tell papa he must come in.” So plaintive was her tone, so agitated the rocking body motion, and hand wringing, that Elaine slid down the window at once, calling, “My lord, the child needs you.”

He took one wild, wet look at his daughter’s face, and called to the coachman, “Hold!”

His mount given over to one of the footmen, he intruded on them in all his wetness, rocking the coach, stirring them to make room. Mrs. Olive tucked away her knitting. The slate Elaine and Felicity had been spelling words upon found a home in the door pouch. The three females bunched their skirts out of the way of the sudden dripping bulk of Valentine Wharton.

Droplets splashed everywhere, from the opened door, his hair, coat lapel and capes. Even his boots shed wetness upon the floorboards, dampening skirt hems. He swept off his hat. A small river cascaded from its brim. The wings of his overcoat brought the weather with him. He seemed so very large as he slid the coat from his shoulders and held out the ends of his sleeves to Elaine, as if it were customary for a governess to undress him without so much as a request for assistance.

And because it was the sensible thing to do, his coat too form fitted for him to shrug out of ii himself, and because the dripping sleeves would soak her skirt otherwise, Elaine obliged him, equally wordless.

The coat sleeves were cold, and wet. The soaked gloves she brushed against warm and wet. He stripped them from his hands, and slung them over the edge of the doorpouch to drip dry, and ran his fingers like a rake through sodden hair, sweeping it sleekly away from his brow, from the blazing blue of his eyes. A trifle overwhelmed by his sudden flurry of purpose and presence, a trifle overawed by the power of his gaze, Elaine sat back as far as she could, hands demurely folded in her lap. She diverted her gaze from the intensity of blue eyes and dripping hair, by looking down, at gleaming boots, at the puddles gathering beneath his heels, but found her gaze drifting upward, along the soaked seam of his pant leg, deep blue, the muscles straining against wet fabric. The muscles of an outdoorsman.

She glanced up to find him watching her, an amused tilt to his lips. She looked away at once, cheeks fired, her gaze fixing on Felicity, who leaned into the damp shelter of her father’s arm and said, “I am glad you decided to come in out of the rain.”

For the briefest instant their eyes met again, as the child attempted to snuggle closer. “You must not lean on me, love. I am soaking wet.”

At once the child’s face took on a wounded look, as if he went out of his way to hurt her.
How tender she is. How much she strives for his approval.

Felicity moved away, leaning against her governess, all the while watching her father.

Elaine handed Lord Wharton her lap blanket. He took it with a grateful nod, and using it first to dry hands, face and hair, then blotted legs and boots, placing it at last in the hollow of his arms, and beckoned to his daughter. “Come. Now I am dry.”

But Felicity had perched herself on the seat between Elaine and Mrs. Olive. She shook her head, lower lip outthrust.

“Go on now,” Mrs. Olive prodded. “Go to your father. Don’t be a goose.”

Felicity shook her head the harder.

His lordship frowned, so forbidding the look, Felicity cowered, burying her head in Elaine’s lap.

“Come, come, little one. Chin up,” she coaxed gently, to no avail.

Lord Wharton’s mouth pinched tight. He wore for a moment a defeated expression.

“Let us sing a song.” Elaine suggested briskly.

The suggestion hung tremblingly upon the air. It seemed an idea destined for failure.

“A song?” His lordship’s brows rose.

“Come,” Elaine coaxed him. “Surely there is a song we all know.”

She felt the chill of the missing blanket, shivered with the sudden nearby crack of another flash of lightning. The horses whinnied. The coach trembled with the boom of thunder that followed. Felicity let out a muffled screech, fingers clutching, head burrowing under Elaine’s arm.

“A lullaby?” Valentine Wharton asked evenly, and without awaiting their approval, this generally snide and sarcastic young man broke into slightly off-key song without the slightest sign of embarrassment.

“Sleep, my love, and peace attend thee, all through the night.”

“I
t is not night, papa,” Felicity sat up to object.

“I know, my love,” Val said gently. “But we shall pretend. Simply close your eyes and imagine yourself swaying in a great cradle.”

“I am not a baby, papa,” she protested, shocked. “I shall be ten in four months time, in case you had forgotten.”

Mrs. Olive made a little noise of objection.

Miss Deering leaned close to whisper a reprimand in her charge’s ear.

Felicity ducked her head with a stricken look. Val hated to see it, hated to think his daughter in any way feared him, or his opinion of her.

“I have not forgotten how old you are, Felicity,” he said, attention unwavering. “All too soon you will be a young lady chasing away a bevy of suitors.”

Her eyes brightened. “A bevy, papa? Do you think so?”

“I am sure of it,” he said. “But for now I should like to pretend you are the baby girl I never knew and sing you a lullaby.” He held his arms wide.