Anne Gracie - [The Devil Riders 02] (17 page)

“We leave for London this afternoon,” Harry told her. “You’ll come with us, I hope, Aunt Maude.”

Nell almost spilled her tea.
This afternoon?

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Besides, someone has to take the poor child shopping—she can’t get married in the clothes she has.” She bent down and kissed Nell warmly on the cheek. “Welcome to the family, my dear. I’ve been itching to dress you, just itching!” She sailed from the room, clapping her hands, saying, “Sprotton, call the staff together, we’re going to London this afternoon. We must pack.”

Nell blinked and caught her breath.

Harry saw her expression and chuckled. “Like a whirlwind when she gets going isn’t she?”

Nell nodded, then swallowed. “She’s very kind. You all are. But—I can’t marry you.”

“Nonsen—”

“I’m not
fit
for marriage.”

He bent forward in sudden concern. “Are you ill?”

For a second she was tempted to say yes, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him, not when he’d laid himself so open to her. “Not ill. Morally unfit.”

He frowned. “You mean you’re not a young innocent?”

“No, I’m not. Not at all.”

He shrugged and sat back in his chair. “Which of us are by this age. I’m no pattern card of respectability, myself.”

“It’s worse than that. I had a baby. A daughter.”

He blinked. He was silent a long time, then he said, “Who’s the father?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

She set her jaw. “I won’t tell you. My daughter has nothing to do with
him
.” She almost snarled the word.

Harry frowned. “You mean he doesn’t acknowledge it?”

“No.” She met his gaze squarely. “You can ask until you’re blue in the face but I’ll never tell a soul.”

“Not even your daughter?”

“Especially not her.”

He didn’t like that, she could see. Too bad, she wouldn’t change her mind.

He had a grim look in his eyes, but his voice was mild enough when he asked, “Where is the baby now?”

“I don’t know. I lost her.”

“Lost her? You mean—oh, I’m sorry.”

“No!” she said quickly, seeing his expression. “Not lost as in—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words. “She’s alive, I think—I pray—but she’s
lost
. As in I don’t know where she is. Papa stole her away from me while I was asleep, and before I could find out where he’d taken her he was dead. I think she’s somewhere in London.”

He said nothing for some time, looking thoughtful. He was shocked, she knew.

“How long ago did you give birth?”

She stared. It was an odd thing to ask. “Just over two months ago.”

He frowned. “Two months? And yet when I first saw you, you were traveling alone, uncared for, on the back of a cart!” He sounded furious. “Dammit, you—someone needs to be taking better care of you than that! Two bloody months!”

“I had no choice in the matter,” she said quietly.

He seemed to master his anger. “And now you’re starting to look for her?”

“No, of course I didn’t wait that long! I went after Papa straight away. But he died on the road. I buried him and then went on to London. I searched everywhere for my daughter. For weeks I walked the streets of London, searching for her, asking everyone I could think of, but finally ...”

“Finally you gave up.”

“No! I’ll never give up on her,” she said vehemently. “But I ran out of money and I collapsed in the street.”

“Dammit! So you fell ill, because nobody was taking care of you.” He clenched his fists.

“No, I wasn’t eating enough, that was all. I’d been saving every penny for the search for Torie. That’s her name, Victoria Elizabeth, after my mother.”

He swore again under his breath.

“I realized then I couldn’t go on the way I was. I couldn’t help my daughter if I was dead in a ditch. That’s why I came home, to Firmin Court, to raise some more money to go back and keep searching until I found her.”

Harry stared at her. “That’s why your feet and skirts were so muddy,” he said slowly. “You’d been walking. You walked home. All the way back from London?”

“Oh no,” she assured him. “Not all the way. I got several lifts.”

“I wouldn’t send a mare on a journey like that so soon after giving birth!” He closed his eyes and said something under his breath. “And when you got there, you found your home had been sold.”

She nodded. “I was in flat despair at first, not knowing how I could ever get back, but then the vicar saw the advertisement for a companion to accompany a Bristol lady to London. It was the answer to a prayer.”

“And you got the harpy from hell.”

“No, honestly, I didn’t care a rap for the way she carried on. As long as she got me to London to look for Torie, she could call me anything she liked. My only problem with her was the delay she made in Bath to drink the waters.”

“Well, there we shall have to disagree, because if she hadn’t, I would never have found you again.”

She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“I would have thought it was perfectly obvious.”

“You can’t still be thinking of marrying me,” she told him. “I’m a
fallen woman
!”

“What rubbish, of course you’re not. And of course I’m still going to marry you.”

“Even though I’ve had a baby?”

“Yes. I want you to have babies. I want a family.”

“But what about Torie?”

“We’ll start looking for her as soon as we get to London.”

“I won’t give her up.”

He frowned. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”

“But she’s a—you know—illegitimate. Most men would never even think of taking a child like that into their home.”

“I’m not most men. She’ll live with us, of course.”

She stared at him, unable to think of a thing to say. Her mouth wobbled. Tears slowly filled her eyes and fell, unchecked.

He pulled out a handkerchief and started drying her cheeks. “In my experience it makes no difference if you are or if you aren’t illegitimate. My brother Gabe was born in wedlock. His father got some maggot into his head, decided Gabe wasn’t his son, and refused to have him in the house. Gabe grew up the spitting image of him. Made no difference. Father never relented. Called him a bastard till the day he died.”

“That’s terrible,” she whispered in a choked voice.

“I was born to the same father, but my mother was a maidservant. As soon as she discovered she was pregnant, he married her off to the the village blacksmith and I was born in wedlock. Legally legitimate. But you know what people call me.”

He finished drying her tears and held the handkerchief to her nose. “Blow” he said, and like a small child she blew. She was exhausted.

He put the handkerchief away, then said, “Now that we’ve got that all cleared up, you’d better go upstairs.

Wash your face and take a nice long nap. I’ll wake you for luncheon and we’ll leave for London after that.”

She stared at him unable to take in such generosity of spirit. “I don’t understand; why would you want someone like me when you could have your pick of fresh young girls with no stain on their past?”

“You haven’t worked it out yet?”

She shook her head, mystified.

“Because of this,” he said and kissed her.

It wasn’t the kind of burning kiss of before; it was just a simple kiss, tender and gentle. A promise, an affirmation. And it moved her unbearably.

Harry released her and stepped back. They had their lives to organize. He rang the bell and sent for his aunt’s housekeeper to usher Nell upstairs. He hoped she would take his advice about napping. She looked exhausted. He was partially responsible for that but at least now he could ensure she was properly taken care of instead of being run ragged.

Two bloody months!

He forced himself to focus on the task in hand: there was much to do if they were to leave for London today. Normally he would ride, but for this trip he’d hire a post chaise for himself and Nell. He wanted a little privacy. His aunt would follow in her own traveling carriage with her dresser, Bragge. She wouldn’t mind.

But first, he had a few letters to write. He fetched a small writing desk from the sideboard and took out a pen, ink, and several sheets of paper.

He trimmed the nib, dipped it in ink, and stared at the blank white paper, his mind filled with questions.

A child. He had to admit it was a shock. He hadn’t expected anything like that.

Who the hell was the father? Why wouldn’t she say? Did she love him? She sounded as though she hated him, but love very easily turned to hate, he knew. Why hadn’t she told the fellow about the baby? He must be married, otherwise he would have married her, surely?

He’d find out, he vowed. The main thing was that he had Nell under his roof. His aunt’s roof, he amended, but it was the next best thing. He wasn’t going to let her get away from him again.

All he had to do now was find her baby, marry her, and take them both home to Firmin Court. They would be a family. He dipped the pen in the ink and started to write.

He wrote to Rafe and Luke first, asking them to meet him in London. They could help in the search for Nell’s baby, instead of racing around the countryside risking their fool necks.

He wrote to Barrow and Mrs. Barrow, telling them he was getting married. The Barrows were the closest thing he had to parents.

Mrs. Barrow would cry, he knew. She always did at weddings, and for Harry’s she’d probably weep buckets. She would get a new dress and hat, too. Especially for a fancy London wedding, which it was bound to be with Aunt Maude at the helm. Harry didn’t care. He would just as soon do it quickly by special license, but women were different.

Having trapped Nell into marriage, he wanted her to have the wedding she wanted.

He sealed the letter to the Barrows, and then penned a quick note to Ethan, apologizing for leaving things in his hands for so long and explaining that he was getting married. He also asked Ethan to carry out a couple of personal requests.

He smiled as he pictured Ethan’s face when he learned that Firmin Court would have a mistress before the month was out and who that mistress was. Harry dusted the letter with sand and wondered how Ethan’s own courtship was progressing.

 
 
E
than picked up Tibby’s latest letter for the third time. Such fine, elegant script—he could never learn to write so beautifully, not if he practiced for the rest of his life. He read it through slowly, his lips moving as he read.

 
Ethan swallowed. Court etiquette—he hadn’t even known what the word meant until he’d asked the vicar. He was dreaming, hoping a woman who was on letter-writing terms with half the royalty of Europe would look at a battered Irishman.

 
Aye, Ethan thought gloomily, not like the great thickheaded lummox who’d started his lessons the same time as Jim.

Tibby’s writing was like herself, he thought; small, elegant, firm, and resolute. No fancy flourishes or unnecessary curls, every letter precise and crystal clear and not a blot or a scratching out in sight.

Lord, whatever must she think of his own letters? Even after getting the vicar to correct his spelling, Ethan made mistakes on the fair copy he made.

And when he read over his own letters—for he kept the ones the vicar had written on to check on what he’d told her and to get the correct spelling of some words—he was embarrassed at how clumsy they sounded.

But he couldn’t stop himself from trying. Ethan dipped his quill in the ink again and labored on . . .

 
He looked at the letter and sighed. He could describe the cottage so easy if he was talking; the words were in his head, fine and bright and shiny. But when it came to writing those same words down and wrestling with pen and ink and the spelling getting in the way, in the end his words came out all scratchy and wooden and dead.

There was a pencil in the box with the pens and ink, so Ethan picked it up. He’d heard people say a picture was worth a thousand words. He didn’t know about that, but it would take him forever to find words he could spell that would describe the cottage, but he could draw it in a minute.

He’d always been good at drawing, from the time he was a small boy, scratching out a picture in the dirt or with a piece of charcoal. The more he drew, the better he got. In the army he’d been able to draw quick, neat maps and drawings of fortresses and had been promoted as a result. Nobody ever realized he couldn’t read. Ethan was very good at finding ways around any reading he had to do.