Laura Kinsale (30 page)

The earl himself met Zenia halfway down the hill from the stables. “What has happened?” he demanded in a rougher voice than she had ever heard from him.

Panic and fury still drove her. “Lord Winter is not to be allowed to attend my daughter,” she said. “She is not safe with him.”

Lord Belmaine looked narrowly at her. “Tell me what has occurred.”

“Ask him,” Zenia said. “I must get her inside. She will catch her death. She doesn’t even have a cap.” She walked past, ready to throw off his hand if he tried to detain her, but he did not. Elizabeth had stopped crying and wriggling, and sat on Zenia’s hip staring about her, pointing at items of interest. Her cheeks were chapped bright red. Zenia put up her hand to tenderly cover the baby’s wind-pinkened ear as she walked.

Back in her playroom, Elizabeth began to cry again as soon as the door closed. She toddled to it when Zenia put her down, reaching for the knob. All the time that Zenia worked to get off her damp and dirty nightgown—he had not even dressed her, but just shoved her small shoes on over her knitted booties and buttoned her pell-mell into a coat—Elizabeth wailed, trying to reach the door.

Zenia bundled her in the warmest layers she had, ordering the nurse to build up the fire. When she put her in her crib, Elizabeth stood up, gripping the rail and screaming. She was going into a fit, Zenia could tell. She tried to cuddle her, but Elizabeth pushed her furiously away. Her screams began to mount.

The earl found his son standing beside one of the paddocks, a saddle and bridle lying at his feet. Just inside the fence cavorted the loveliest little white mare that Lord Belmaine had ever seen, running with her tail held out like a streaming banner. She turned as she saw him and came to investigate at a floating trot.

The earl stood at the fence, a few yards from his son. “What the devil have you done now?” he asked, watching the horse sail along the fenceline. The mare halted, arching her fine neck toward him, her dark eyes liquid with inquisitiveness. Then she snorted playfully and thundered away.

“Oh, I’ve been trying to murder my daughter,” Arden said. “What else?”

The earl felt the place beneath his breastbone begin to clench and burn. He would be forced to resort to a bland diet, he thought gloomily. “I ask myself,” he said, still watching the paddock, “I ask myself why all your life you have made everything so goddamned bloody difficult.”

“So disown me,” his son said.

They stood in silence. The earl finally said, “May I ask in precisely what manner you are accused of attempting to do Miss Elizabeth an injury?”

“I thought she might like to ride with me.” He shrugged. “She seemed to enjoy it.”

“I must suppose that you did not consider the danger, should you fall?”

“This horse is the best blood in the desert,” the viscount said coldly. “She’s trained to perfection. She didn’t bolt in the face of Ibrahim Pasha’s guns—or when a harpy in a widow’s cap came screaming at her either. I wasn’t going to fall off.”

“Anything can happen on a horse. Even the best trained. You know that.”

“Very true. And the house might burn down, and lightning might strike, and the sky might fall.”

If the earl had not taken a secret pride in his son’s superb horsemanship, he would have answered more pointedly. But he was aware that, in fact, Miss Elizabeth could not have been in more competent hands. Instead he said, “Lady Winter is an extremely conscientious and devoted mother. I can find no fault with her precautions regarding Miss Elizabeth. You will not discover that child roaming about unattended or neglected in any way.”

“Does she ever get out of her room?” the viscount asked dryly.

“Lady Winter is very cautious of the peril of childhood illness.”

His son turned his head. “Does Beth get out of her room?” he asked more sharply.

“Her mother takes no risks of infection. I believe that is wise of her, at this season in particular.”

Arden stared at him with narrowed eyes, and then turned back to watch the horse. There was a dangerously forbidding set to his jaw and mouth.

“At least you might have put a cap on her,” the earl said, attempting lightness. “There’s a sharp wind.”

“She didn’t give a button for that.” Arden smiled bitterly.
“She’s
full of pluck. Maybe we’ll run away together and join the gypsies.”

Lord Belmaine leaned on the fence and gazed at his son’s profile. The wind blew the viscount’s dark hair across his forehead. He looked tired and angry, his mouth set hard, as if he endured a physical pain.

“I had hoped,” the earl said slowly, “that you would not run away this time.”

A muscle in the viscount’s jaw twitched. He did not take his eyes from the mare. “I’m here,” he said. And after a moment: “I will try. I am trying.”

How hard?
Lord Belmaine wanted to ask ironically, but he held his tongue. He was determined to remain on speaking terms. He never knew what would set his son off, and he was well aware of how often he wanted back the words that had done it.

“I would like you to speak to our attorney,” the earl said. “Mr. King. Would that be amenable?”

“Perfectly amenable.”

“He is awaiting your convenience in the map room.”
 

“Fine.” His son leaned down and hefted the saddle onto his hip, grimacing slightly at the move. He walked away.

The attorney said nothing that Arden had not already surmised himself. He sat expressionlessly, listening, his gaze focused past Mr. King and his papers, out the windows draped in green damask and gold fringe.

“There need be no great inconvenience to it, sir,” Mr. King said in a dry murmur. “With proper arrangements, the thing can be done with extreme privacy in the chapel here. His lordship and I, after considerable examination of the matter, feel that this would be the prudent and reasonable course. Do you agree?”

“Yes,” Arden said.

The attorney, he saw, very nearly gave a sigh of relief. “Excellent. I shall put the matter in train, then.”
 

“And if she doesn’t agree?”

The man carefully pushed his papers into a perfect stack. “It would be extremely unusual, sir, for a female to be so misguided in her own and her child’s interests.”

“But if she were so misguided?”

“Lord Winter, these are merely formalities—I am informed that you have made a marriage to Lady Winter overseas, but have no proof of it that would be acceptable to the courts should the issue be brought before them for any reason. Which of course we must hope will never occur. We deal only with eventualities.”

“What eventualities?”

“Ah. Should you or Lady Winter pass away, for instance.”

“I already did pass away, Mr. King,” he said mockingly, “and apparently that created no great difficulty.”

“It created some.” Mr. King cleared his throat. “But let me be blunt, Lord Winter. The main eventuality that must concern us would occur should either you or Lady Winter, some time in the future—regret your marriage. Seek a separation, judicial or private. Or perhaps—it has been known, I am sorry to say, that a married person will sometimes evince a desire to wed elsewhere. I am forced to say that the way might still be open even to that. And the guardianship of Miss Elizabeth is not as settled as I would like.”

“What is my position as guardian now?”

“If it came before a court—and no marriage can be proved—” A small shrug. “Nonexistent, sir.”

Arden’s mouth tightened. “Have you spoken to Lady Winter about this?”

“No, sir.”

“Do not,” he said grimly.

“It would be foolish of her—foolish in the extreme, sir—to openly reject your legal relationship merely because it is possible to do so.”

“She’s a woman, isn’t she? What’s reason got to do with it?”

“She would bastardize the child. I cannot conceive that she would intentionally do so. I understand she is a most devoted mother.”

Arden gritted his teeth. “Extremely devoted.” Very faintly, in the dead silence, they could hear the hysterical screams of his daughter far away in the house. “Shockingly devoted.”

“She can only hurt the child if she attempts to live in an unmarried state.”

“You said she could marry someone else.” Arden shoved himself out of his chair. “My God, she’s so bloody beautiful— she could find someone to marry her, and bedamned to scandal!”

The lawyer was silent for a moment as Arden leaned his hands on the window frame, staring out unseeingly. Then Mr. King said, “May I ask you to be perfectly candid with me, Lord Winter? Do you see this as a credible possibility?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know her at all.”

He could feel the lawyer looking at him. This painstakingly maintained fiction that there had already been a marriage “overseas” must be as transparent as water.

“I see. If the guardianship is your sole concern,” the attorney said carefully, “it is possible that could be dealt with outside the issue of marriage.”

Arden looked around at him, his hand gripping the window frame.

Mr. King rustled his papers. “It is conceivable that you can simply adopt the child—become her guardian—without confirming the marriage. If—ah—the mother opposed this, I’m not certain of the difficulty. A child born out of wedlock is legally
afilius nullius,
without relatives, but unquestionably in the mother’s custody. I would have to inquire into it more deeply.”

“I thought that’s what I’m to do anyway—adopt her.”

“Well, I use the word adopt, but of course since there
is
a marriage—” He gave Arden a penetrating glance. “—and the child was born within it, we are merely making absolutely certain that the lack of record can never develop into a difficulty by instituting a formal guardianship. But if, for instance—and I speak entirely theoretically, my lord—if you had arrived and declared that there was never any marriage at all... then I’m afraid Miss Elizabeth would be a
filius nullius
in the eyes of the law.”

“So I have choices,” Arden said sardonically. “I can marry her, or I can toss her out and make a bid for my bastard daughter.”

“That is to put it in a very ugly manner, Lord Winter.”

“And her—she can marry me—or take Beth away, find another man to give her bed and board, and fight me through every court in the land to keep me away from my child.”

The attorney lowered his eyes to the desk. “I think it more probable in that case that she would take the little girl abroad, rather than deal in the courts.”

Arden felt as if something was pressing on his throat.
Abroad,
he thought, with a rising sense of panic.

“Give me some time.” He shook his head, leaning it down on his arm. “For the love of God, don’t tell her this. Give me some time.”

“There is no particular limitation as to time, although the sooner a ceremony confirming and recording the marriage can be held, the better to feel easy about the matter. Your father has asked me to speak to Lady Winter of the legal advantages to such a course. I shall confine myself to that topic. I see no need to confuse a lady with the difficult forensic details.”