Loving Lady Marcia (6 page)

“Greetings, Jenkins.” He handed his hat to the waiting butler. “Where’s the little heathen?”

Jenkins tilted his head. “In the drawing room, my lord, with Aislinn and Margaret.”

Duncan held a tightly wrapped package under one arm. “Summon everyone for an impromptu party, please. Warren’s probably shining my favorite boots for the umpteenth time. And Rupert is currying Samson. Tell Lizzie not to forget to bring
Gulliver’s Travels
from the mantel shelf in the kitchen. I’ll read a chapter to everyone before dinner. It’s been three days of boring sessions with solicitors”—
and one awkward encounter with an unforgettable young lady—
“and I’m anxious to get back to the Lilliputians.”

“As you wish, sir.” Jenkins did his best to feign indifference, but he took off at a distinctly unbutlerlike speed, striding down the hall as if his tailcoat were on fire.

“Faster, Jenkins!” Duncan teased him, and watched the butler slow down to his usual lugubrious pace and disappear round a corner in the direction of the kitchens.

Now it was time for Joe.

Duncan felt all his tension disappear when he threw open the door to the drawing room and saw the two maids hiding behind chairs.

Ah, he’d interrupted a game of hide-and-seek.

One of the girls looked up at him and winced.
It’s all right. Don’t move
, his expression told her, and he put a finger to his lips.

With a pleased twinkle in her eye, she went back to hiding.

The little heathen—better known as Joe—spotted him and forgot all about the game. “Papa!” he cried. As he ran by the chair, the maid reached out and grabbed him.

Good God, the shrieking!

With a laugh, Duncan swooped down and pulled Joe from Margaret’s arms. “I’ve brought you something,” he said when the boy had calmed down a bit.

Duncan put him back on the floor and joined him there, sitting on his haunches to watch him unwrap the brown paper package. It contained brightly painted wooden circus animals he’d seen in a shop window.

The boy held a yellow giraffe aloft like a trophy and laughed when Duncan extended his hand to try to take it.

“It’s mine,” Joe said, pulling his hand back, then changed his mind. “But you may play with it, Papa.”

“Not until you’ve had your turn.” Duncan grinned. “But thank you.”

Joe dropped the wooden figure and made a wicked face. “Aarrrrr!” he cried, and slashed at him with an invisible sword.

It was their usual game. Duncan fell back and placed his hand over his breastbone, pretending to be mortally wounded. “Now look what you’ve done,” he groaned, and felt a familiar pang near his heart. It was especially fierce on Joe’s birthdays.

Guilt.

Prone on the floor, he inhaled a careful breath and snatched up the freckle-faced mischief maker, trapping him beneath his arms. If only he hadn’t been so naïve, Duncan thought when Joe yelled with delight. If only he’d figured out that Finn had had a reason—a bad one—for leaving so soon for America.

Duncan would have attempted to right the wrong his brother had done Joe’s innocent mother. He’d have found her in time and married her on the spot, even though he’d met her only once.

His chest tightened when he looked at his son.
You’d have been my legitimate son and heir
.

If only.

And then full of a regret he made sure not to show, he accidentally on purpose created an exit beneath his arm so his captive could wriggle out.

When Joe was free, he laughed in triumph. “You can’t get me,” he told his parent with a great deal of pride. “I’m strong. And fast.”

But then he caught sight of his new circus animals, turned his back on Duncan, squatted, and began to play with them. “I’ve got to see to it that they’re fed,” he said over his shoulder. “The elephants are hungry, and the lion wants to eat them. One of my toy soldiers will have to fight him.”

You’re going to be trouble.

Duncan’s guilt was overwhelmed by a love so strong, he was amazed he was capable of it. He stood, his hands on his hips, reveling in the boy’s enjoyment of his gift. Turning four today hadn’t changed Joe in the least.

It is
I
who have changed,
Duncan thought.
Utterly and completely
.

He saw that the servants had gathered at the door. “The whole family’s here, my boy,” he told Joe, “so it’s time for a song.” He walked to the pianoforte, lifted the tail of his coat, and sat down.

A rustle of some skirts and some thumps of boots, and the makeshift family was inside the room. Joe sat amid them all on the carpet, grinning from ear to ear.

Duncan made a sweeping motion with his fingers down the keys of the pianoforte, paused a moment, then hit a crashing major chord:
“I once knew a boy named Joe…”

He thought quickly as he played a few playful notes.
“I mean to say, JosephHenryAugustusLattimore, the fourth…”

Which made everyone laugh.

He proceeded to invent a funny song about Joe and an elephant and a wicked lion whom Joe tamed with sweets, some of which managed to fall out of Duncan’s pockets as he played.

After which everyone clapped, Joe, especially, his mouth bulging with a piece of toffee. And Duncan played for another hour, song after song after song. Ruby, the cook, was an excellent soprano, and Warren-the-valet’s lower register was so low, the windows rattled when he sang. The maids played “Ring Around the Rosie,” with Joe over and over until he lay down on the rug and fell asleep.

The banging on the piano never woke him, and when they were done, Duncan read
two
chapters from
Gulliver’s Travels
. The servants watched raptly as he walked about the room reading, acting out all the parts with different voices and the occasional flourish or flinch, scowl or chest-thumping, depending on the action.

And when he was done, Margaret woke Joe, and Ruby fed him a meal of a roasted chicken drumstick and potatoes and peas in the kitchen, where he had his own special table and chair, just his size. He hated to eat in the nursery, so Duncan didn’t make him. Afterward, Aislinn walked with him upstairs to play games again for another hour, then to hear a story, bathe, and dress for bed.

When Duncan went in to kiss the boy good night, Joe grabbed his hand. “Papa, why don’t I have a mother?” he asked him from beneath his coverlet. “Perhaps she lives in a great shoe. I’d like her to tuck me in tonight.”

He’d never said such a thing before, had never seemed to notice his lack of mother. He’d seemed perfectly content with Aislinn and all the women of the house.

Duncan looked quickly at the maid, whose face was frozen in concern, and kept his smile in place. “Aislinn does a fine job of tucking you in, does she not?”

Joe merely stared at him.

“And I love you very much,” Duncan told him. “It’s why I come to kiss you good night.” He did just that, kissing Joe’s forehead. “Would you like another story? I can tell you one about a knight and a dragon.”

“I’m tired.” The boy blinked and yawned. And then he rolled over and closed his eyes.

Thank God
.

Out in the hallway, Aislinn waited. “I’m so sorry,” she said in her gentle Irish accent. “I read him the Mother Goose rhyme about the old woman who lived in a shoe.”

Her face flushed.

“No. You’re doing a fine job.” Duncan meant it, but the glow of the evening was gone. “He was bound to ask sometime.”

Joe would only get older and more clever, and someday he would learn the truth, that his mother had died in childbirth. And that he was born out of wedlock, a fact which most people would hold against him.

He’s too young to suffer,
Duncan thought as he slowly descended the stairs. It was his great sorrow, that Joe would suffer at all. He wished he could take it all away.

But he has me,
he reminded himself, and stopped to grip the banister. He always went back to that moment on the gangplank, when he’d made an irrevocable decision.

You did it for Joe
.

For
Joe.

Because Finn hadn’t wanted him.

A kind tenant farmer and his wife—the ones who’d moved to Australia from Duncan’s country estate in Kent—had wanted Joe, though, hadn’t they? If Duncan had placed him in the hands of the gnarled old nurse he’d hired to carry Joe across the world to them, the boy would have had a suitable mother and father and no one whispering about his less-than-proper origins.

Duncan eyed the opulence of his surroundings—the tapestry on the wall, the thick carpet beneath his feet, the marble stair rail—and was reminded that earls don’t waste time over what-ifs. They act. They do. They stand by their decisions.

A boy could do worse than have a rich and titled papa who loved him very much and would never,
ever
let him live anywhere else but with him, wherever he made his home.

And with that thought to comfort him, the Earl of Chadwick resolutely whistled his way down the stairs, only to see a fashionably dressed masculine figure in his drawing room, facing the fire. He instantly recognized the self-assured stance.

No,
he thought at the most primitive level, and remembered that Joe was asleep upstairs. He stood so that he intentionally blocked the doorway. “What the devil are you doing here?”

His brother Finn turned to face him, compelling amber eyes gleaming with wry amusement. “I’m home, Duncan. And I’m not going back.” He grinned. “God, it’s good to see you.”

Chapter Five

That night, Marcia dreamed a long, elaborate dream. She was through the front door of the school, her eyes on a drab black vehicle that was waiting to take her away. Someone pushed her toward it, and without looking back, she ripped open the door of the hired hack and pulled herself in, collapsing on the floor, her bag squashed beneath her.

“Go!” she yelled to the dream driver between sobs. “Please, go!”

“But where to, miss?” the driver called back.

For a second, she had no idea. And then she realized she had no choice. “To London,” she called, her voice thin. “To Grosvenor Square.”

In her dream, the carriage lurched forward, and she refused to look back. She couldn’t think about the fact that her world had been ripped out from under her yet again.

She’d go back to the people and the place she’d avoided as much as possible since she’d lost her virginity—and her pride—to Finnian Lattimore.

She’d go home.

Home to the House of Brady.

When she opened her eyes the next morning, she realized with a great shock that she was already there.

Mama had sent the maid who’d accompanied her from the school back to Surrey in the coach that had brought them to London. And she’d laid one of Janice’s gowns on a chair next to Marcia’s bed. A new maid—the sweet-faced one, who was named Kerry—helped her get ready for the day.

At the dressing table was a vase of peonies and a book of Shakespearean sonnets Mama must have provided Marcia as a comfort.

But all they did was remind her of the weeds and spindly flowers in motley vases decorating every available level spot in her office at Oak Hall, and the preponderance of drawings and poems—varying from the primitive, from her younger girls, to quite sophisticated, from the older girls—lining her walls there.

Oh, dear God, yesterday had been horrible. But as Kerry brushed her hair, Marcia realized that she wasn’t sad. Her mood was more like the bright red tapestry hanging on the hall outside her bedchamber door.

She was seething.

How were her girls? And the teachers? Of course, the staff, under Deborah’s guidance, would know how to keep the vast ship sailing, no matter the crisis. But she’d never imagined the crisis would be her dismissal.

What if they needed her? There was the assembly today. Several prospective parents were coming. Would they sense tension? Would one of the younger girls start bawling in the middle of the program because Marcia wasn’t there?

She’d spent a half hour each day this past week walking the littlest ones through their steps around the stage, reminding them how to properly curtsy.

Who knew what was going on this very moment at Oak Hall?

All Marcia knew for sure—right now—was that she’d been through a serious crisis once before and intended to deal with this one differently. She wouldn’t be passive. She wouldn’t spend time pitying herself. She’d fight to get her position back.

But she’d have to be careful going about it.

“Are you all right, my lady?” Kerry asked her softly.

“I’m much better today, thank you.” Marcia managed a small smile. The red-cheeked girl hovering over her seemed genuinely concerned. “Actually, Kerry, I hope we’ll become friends while I’m here.”

The maid smiled shyly back. “Thank you, my lady.” And then her brows shot up. “Wait. While you’re here? Aren’t you here for good—that is, until you marry?”

Marcia looked steadily at her in the glass. “I don’t know,” she said, and paused. “Can I trust you to keep a confidence?”

The maid gave a vigorous nod. “I swear you can.”

“Good. I might need an ally in the house. Because the truth is, I want to return to Oak Hall.”

It felt good to say it out loud.

“You do?”

“Yes.” Marcia realized why she’d felt no sense of euphoria—no feeling of vindication—after she’d seen Lord Chadwick. It was because her plan to show Duncan Lattimore and the world that she was happy on her own had had unexpected, wonderful consequences: She
was
fulfilled. And now—

She wanted that feeling back.

Kerry began to work on pinning her hair. In the mirror, Marcia enjoyed watching the girl’s absorbed expression and her light, deft fingers.

“Every day, I got to witness wonderful things happen all around me,” Marcia said wistfully. “In the girls. The teaching staff. And in the people who cook, clean, garden, and run the stables.” She smiled. “It’s a delightful world, Kerry. We’re an enormous family. And when things go wrong, I get to work on solutions.”

“I suspect you’d be good at that,” the maid said with a grin.