The Black Sheep's Return (15 page)

‘I must go to the children,’ she gasped and ran for the stairway, seeing Reuben only as Cleo’s husband for a panicked moment. She heard the patter of small feet racing downstairs as if their owners might tumble down them in haste. ‘Stay where you are,’ she urged
desperately as the thunder of hooves stopped suddenly and she imagined Reuben jumping to the ground in a running dismount only the finest horsemen could achieve, then getting ready to storm into the house and overcome all opposition.

‘Papa. It’s our papa!’ Hal shouted at her as if joy was about to give him wings and Sally simply concentrated on getting to the wild-looking figure who dashed past Hughes and into the hall as fast as her legs would take her.

‘Papa!’ she yelled as he looked frantically about for them.

‘My darling girl, my Sally,’ he shouted and scooped her up into his arms to hug her so tightly even Sally protested. Hal got to his father just after his sister and flung himself at his legs as they were the first part of him he could grab hold of. ‘Son,’ Orlando managed in a voice that broke with love and all the endless terror for them he must have lived with from the moment he found his children gone.

Hitching his daughter to one side, so he could tow his son up with his other arm and hold him close as well, Orlando seemed deaf and blind to the rest of the world while he greeted his beloved family and Freya told herself it was little and mean to feel jealous. He had never
promised her more than those days and nights in the forest and she could never be the third most crucial person in his life. Feeling she was eavesdropping on a very private reunion, she turned to go back to the Duchess’s sitting room and wait until she could depart with dignity, now he was here to protect his children from harm and didn’t need her any more.

‘You!’ he barked as if her movement reminded him there was a world outside the charmed circle of him and his. ‘How much did it cost my cousin to ransom them from you then, you heartless bitch? I suppose Cleo is skulking somewhere close by, so she can claim her share of the fortune Jack has just paid you to get my children back?’

Freya had imagined all sorts of reunions with her lover during the long three months spent apart, but never one like this. In a few words all the slights she’d handed out as an aristocratic lady were revenged on her a thousand times over. Every organ in her body froze with a whole winter of pain and coldness before she managed to force breath into her lungs and not faint at his feet. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d made her very world a wasteland, so she swallowed the furious
defence on her tongue and shot him one of Lady Freya’s iciest looks of disdain instead.

‘I don’t know you, sir and you clearly don’t know me,’ she informed him coldly. ‘I shall await you in the stable yard, Aunt Carolina, so we may set out on our interrupted journey all the sooner. I thank you for your hospitality and kindness, your Grace,’ she said. She gave a dignified nod of the head to her hostess, which she hoped Jessica knew was all she could manage without losing her dignity in furious tears, then she swept out of the house as if she couldn’t wait to shake the Seaborne dust from her serviceable skirts.

‘Before God, Richard, I’m not sure if I’m delighted or dismayed to see you. It seems you have become a witless fool some time over the six years since I saw you last,’ Jessica told him sharply, then hurried after her new friend to urge her to ignore her boorish cousin-in-law and stay at least for tonight and rest from her hasty journey.

‘I knew it!’ a stiff-backed elderly lady with the coldest dark eyes Rich Seaborne had ever met informed him with a severe nod, then followed Perdita and Jessica into Jack’s stable
yard, as if it was the most fashionable place for a lady to visit this autumn.

‘It seems you’ve made an even more almighty fool of yourself than usual this time, Orlando,’ Reuben informed him with a shrug that said all men were so when it came to their women, but at least Rich had now joined him as one of the biggest.

‘Prudie!’ keened Sally mournfully and wriggled fretfully in her father’s arms.

‘We like her, Papa,’ Hal informed him with manly dignity.

‘I don’t think there’s much chance the lady will ever like
you
again after that, my friend,’ Reuben said with a cheerfulness Rich found almost unforgivable.

‘How come she’s here to offer you to my cousin for ransom, then?’ Rich asked his son more in puzzlement than fury now the initial burn of betrayal had died down.

Was Reuben right again? Had he made the biggest mistake of his life by chasing Perdita out of his life yet again? Despair rushed in on the heels of the burning fury that shot through him at the sight of her, safe here with his children as if they’d been attending a ladies’ tea drinking while he was eating his heart out
for her and his children all the time they’d been gone.

‘You ain’t got a cousin, Papa,’ Sally said distractedly and Hal managed to wriggle away and slide to the floor.

‘Nor a ransom,’ Hal added, looking all at sea about the whole business now his delight at seeing his father was turning to puzzlement over his tirade and Perdita’s hasty departure.

‘I dare say Perdita and Cleo are to share that between them,’ Rich said stubbornly.

‘Prudie don’t like Cleo an’ we don’t like Cleo,’ Sally insisted, hesitating between her father and her rescuer.

‘Cleo’s bad as bad and Perdita isn’t, Papa. We hate Cleo now.’

‘You’re not the only one, son. So how did you come to be with Perdita if Cleo didn’t get her to bring you here so the Duke could ransom you?’

‘We ran away. I waited ’til we got to a big town and made Sally spit out the milk Cleo gave us whenever she went out and left us alone. We climbed down a ladder from the loft over the stables and I gave Sal a piggyback so we could get far enough away and hide.’

‘Then what?’ Rich asked, dread eating at him as all that could have happened to them
next flashed through his head in a kaleidoscope of nightmares.

‘We ran fast as we could, then hid in an old tree like the one in the forest. It was ages before Cleo came after us, but when she did she couldn’t stand up properly and looked all wobbly. We stayed quiet as mouses until she went right away, then we got down and ran until Sally couldn’t run no more.’

‘Any more,’ he correct automatically, but Rich wondered why Hal’s grammar mattered when he was miraculously safe and well after all that.

‘That’s right. Then it got light and we ran and ran right into the city and it was a very long way, Papa. I remembered how Kezzie said if everything got dark and grey it helped to speak to God about things so he could put them right and we went inside the biggest church you ever did see, Papa. A nasty man tried to keep us out, but we got past him and then Perdita came. Everything was all right again after that.’

‘How can you be sure Cleo didn’t send her after you?’

‘Don’t be silly, Papa; they never even liked each other. We hid in Perdita’s room all day and didn’t make so much as a squeak when
anyone else but her and Miss Car’lina could hear until the coach was on its way here and Miss Car’lina said it was safe to put the blinds down and talk. They had ham and cheese and cake at the nice inn, but we don’t eat cheese now because Cleo gave us some that made my belly hurt. The milk she gave us wasn’t good either, but we drank some the Duchess gave us just now and it was almost as good as the kind Kezzie’s brown cow gives us.’

Hal’s account of their recent adventures reminded Rich he was only a boy and had left out so much his father wanted to know. He’d still heard enough to tell he was a vile idiot and Perdita would never forgive him.

‘There’s room on the back of my horse for a gallant man like your son, Orlando, if you’re coming back to the forest? Miss Sally can ride in front of her papa and convince him he’s not the worst man in it as you go, despite what the rest of us think.’

‘That’s a task beyond even my Sally, but I can’t leave,’ Rich said gloomily.

‘You’re staying here then, my friend?’

‘I have to. I thank you, friend, for all you’ve done to help find my children.’

‘My woman wronged you,
veshengro
. We gypsies have enough children of our own
and I couldn’t have you thinking we really steal them from the
gorgios
. Blessed be, my brother,’ the handsome gypsy lord said with an impudent grin, ‘you’re going to need all the help you can get.’

‘I have my family back and that’s all I deserve now, but thank you, my brother,’ Rich made himself say quietly.

He would have to be content to have his little family back again and kiss the fantasy of Perdita and her slender-limbed brats added to the mix goodbye after what he’d just done.

‘Then fight for what you don’t deserve,
veshengro,’
Reuben urged before he leapt on the best horse’s back and turned it with a wave of farewell before heading back to his tribe.

‘Look after Keziah for me?’ Rich called after him and Reuben waved dismissively. He’d learnt enough about the complex rogue these last few days to know he wouldn’t visit the sins of her child on a woman he honoured as he did his mother-in-law.

‘Aren’t we going home then, Papa?’ Hal asked.

‘Perhaps.’

‘What about Perdita?’

‘I don’t think she’d live with us now if I begged her to,’ Rich replied wryly.

‘Never mind, Papa, I still love you,’ his son told him as if he was the adult and Rich the child, and after today he could be right.

F
reya didn’t need sympathy so much as something fragile and breakable to throw, so it smashed into shards on the cobbled stable yard and relieved some of her tension. Several breakable somethings would be even better. Since she was going to get it anyway, she fought back her fury and the bleakness threatening to blank out even that tearing emotion and did her best to smile.

‘I am perfectly well,’ she assured her aunt and the Duchess, then felt tears sting as Sally barrelled into the yard and ran up to her. ‘Hello, my love, have you come out here to wave me off?’ she made herself ask as cheerfully when she felt so breakable it hurt.

‘No, don’t go, Prudie,’ the little girl ordered with a fearsome frown.

‘I have to, darling. You have your papa to look after you and Hal now and will be safe with him and Kezzie back in the forest.’

‘Cleo lives in the forest.’

‘I doubt she lives in that particular part of it any more,’ Freya said as she recalled Reuben galloping to rescue the children at Orlando’s side. He clearly had all the generosity of heart Cleo looked as if she should have, with those lazy, heavy-lidded eyes of hers and the seductive laugh designed to draw men in like bees to honey.

‘If you lived with us, Cleo couldn’t watch Papa as if she wants to eat him any more.’

‘I don’t think that would stop her,’ Freya said and tried not to think of returning to that apparently idyllic life and birthing her own child with Sally and Hal eagerly waiting for a new brother or sister downstairs. It was all impossible now and probably always had been.

‘I love you, Prudie,’ Sally said emphatically.

‘I love you too, Sally,’ she told her solemnly, then made herself pull a ridiculous face, ‘but so do Kezzie and your papa. You must hurry back to them before they both start crying from missing you so badly and can’t stop.’

‘Papa doesn’t cry,’ Sally said doubtfully.

‘He could easily sit on the yard and do just that right now,’ Orlando said from behind them and Freya was shocked again at how quietly he could move.

‘Prudie’s leaving,’ his daughter informed him with a disgruntled pout.

‘You can’t leave. It’s not safe,’ he barked as if he had the right.

‘I delivered your children to the safest place I could find and owe you no duty. I sincerely thank Duchess Jessica for her kind hospitality and far more understanding than I deserve, but I have a journey to accomplish and time is a-wasting. Good day, Mr Craven, we shall never meet again.’

‘But, my dear, haven’t you realised yet?’ her aunt asked as if there was something about Orlando that Freya should have seen for herself long ago.

‘Realised what?’

‘He’s not Mr Craven, although after that outburst earlier he might more properly have christened himself Mr Clunch. This is Richard Seaborne, cousin to the Duke of Dettingham.’

Freya marvelled at her stout nerves for keeping her standing after this latest felling blow. Later she would be thankful she had retained
what little dignity he’d left her, but right now a pleasant faint and renunciation of all this painful reality could be almost pleasant. The idea of him discovering her pregnancy when a doctor was sent for to treat the Duchess’s guest made her determined not to let anyone near enough to suspect she was other than a proper maiden lady—anyone apart from her great-aunt and the wretch who already knew she was no such thing and he wouldn’t be coming within a hundred yards of her ever again.

‘Of course he is, how stupid of me,’ she managed as if her words came from some frozen region where Lady Freya kept her wilder emotions.

‘I should have told you, Perdita,’ he said and she peered at the huge oak tree on the hill in the distance, because she refused to let him see how much she hurt right now.

‘Who is Perdita?’ Miss Bradstock asked with a shake of the head for two bumbling idiots who’d got into such wanton mischief.

‘I am. Why run about the countryside advertising my true name so I could be kept against my will until Bowland turned up to ransom me? I would very likely have waited to be an old woman while he made his mind up if he wanted me back.’

‘Are you Lady Bowland, then?’ Mr Richard Seaborne asked her blankly.

‘Of course I’m not, you idiot,’ she fired back as if it was the final straw.

‘She’s his sister, or half-sister if we’re being exact about things, as I rather think we ought to be after the knot you two seem to have got yourselves wound up in,’ Miss Bradstock continued under the fascinated gaze of the Duchess of Dettingham and the stable lads.

‘Lady Freya Buckle, meet Mr Richard Seaborne,’ the Duchess said irrepressibly.

‘Lady Freya,’ he said with an elegant bow that was all Richard Seaborne arrogance and not enough Orlando Craven, so she concluded he was mocking her.

‘Mr Seaborne, I cannot say it has been a pleasure meeting you and I am unable to stay here to further the acquaintance, I am very pleased to say. Good day to you.’

‘Stay,’ he pleaded.

‘I’d rather be eaten by bears,’ she said with what she felt was excusable melodrama.

‘There aren’t any bears left in Britain, Perdita,’ Hal spoilt her grand gesture by pointing out earnestly, as if she needed to know before she made more rash statements.

‘I could hire some from the circus,’ she
pointed out, unable to ignore the little boy she had come to love so much it hurt to leave him and his sister behind. She wasn’t even going to think about his father—that would be a thought too far just at the moment.

‘If you won’t stay for my sake, please stay for his?’ Richard Seaborne pleaded sneakily.

Freya hesitated and both of them took ruthless advantage. Hal turned into a pathetic waif in front of her eyes and his father slanted a look that promised to tell all sorts of secrets he couldn’t possibly say out loud in front of his children and the stable boys if she didn’t.

‘And if not for them, do it for me,’ her aunt said with a weary sigh and Freya knew how hard she’d driven herself for her great-niece’s sake these last few days.

‘Are you very tired, then?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Exhausted,’ Miss Bradstock managed with a long-suffering look at her new friend the Duchess that made Freya wonder how such a robust lady could go from prepared to take on the world to a fragile old lady in a matter of minutes. She sighed wearily but gave in, just in case her aunt was telling the truth, for once.

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ she accused to let
Aunt Carolina know she wasn’t a complete idiot.

‘Knew what, my love?’

‘Who the children’s father had to be?’

‘It’s written all over the youngest imp’s face for anyone to see, my dear,’ her aunt admitted with a shrug. ‘Seabornes always breed true.’

Freya hoped they wouldn’t do so in her baby, or everyone would know who its father was and word might get back to him somehow. ‘If your Grace will kindly have us as her guests for tonight, I suppose we could set out tomorrow morning instead,’ she conceded and hoped it was clear she was only staying for her aunt’s sake and would prefer to put as many miles as possible between herself and Mr Richard Seaborne before it was dusk and too dark to drive any further.

‘You are very welcome to stay as long as you like, Lady Freya,’ Jessica said cheerfully and Freya believed her, a revolution neither of them could have expected a few hours ago.

Orders were given with such ridiculous natural authority that Freya marvelled she’d ever been fooled this Richard Seaborne was the son of a poor gentry family and Hal dragged her back inside the great house he seemed not in the least bit awed by. Father and son had all
the arrogance of their kind and Sally had always been a great lady in the making. Freya felt a fool for taking them at face value back in the Longborough Forest.

‘You need a bath and the loan of some of Jack’s clothes, Richard,’ Jessica told him mildly and raised her eyebrows to remind him he must at least look the gentleman under her roof when he looked ready to argue. ‘Then I can ask your mama and Penelope to join us for dinner without fear they’ll fall into hysterics at your villainous appearance.’

‘What about Marcus? If he’s in town it seems a bit over-eager of him just yet.’

‘How very much there is to tell you after six years of stony silence,’ Jessica said and Freya enjoyed watching him squirm under the cutting irony of the lady of the house.

‘Begin with telling me where my little brother is and proceed on to Jack and Alex Forthin, so we can join together to protect our families against the threat to come.’

‘All in good time,’ Jessica insisted and Freya almost clapped at the frustrated look in the arrogant wretch’s distinctive green eyes.

Why had she never let herself see how very distinctive they were? If only she hadn’t blocked her thoughts against every Seaborne
who ever lived after that awful house party, she might have saved herself bitter humiliation and seen his clear green gaze for the warning it was from the first. He was so like his ducal cousin and yet so otherwise. Even Jack Seaborne was more straightforward than his wily cousin, she concluded, and shot the deceptive wretch a disgusted glare. Jack’s hair was also dark as a raven’s wing while Richard’s had a hint of his sister Persephone’s darkest of red tones in his almost-blond hair. His face was also bonier and less classically handsome. The thought of her old nurse saying ‘handsome is as handsome does’ popped into her head and made her pause her catalogue of ways in which Richard Seaborne lacked the grace and charm of his cousin.

Some things he did very handsomely indeed, her wicked inner self reminded her. Like raising his children with such dedicated selflessness he’d lost so many of the privileges he’d been born into to do so, Lady Freya reminded Perdita. Ha, Perdita mocked and reminded herself back why it would be folly to fall for his lying charm ever again. She would leave for her new life tomorrow, and however difficult it was to shake the Seaborne connection
off her tail, she would do it, or risk them finding her when she least wanted them to.

Reminding herself to make certain she had a very frank conversation with her aunt before they went down to dinner, she meekly allowed herself to be conducted to an airy guest bedroom so blissfully peaceful she eyed the feather bed with wistful longing. No, time enough for sleeping when a whole houseful of Seabornes weren’t about to descend on the vast mansion and make it seem too small to Lady Freya Buckle, faced with another lot of people who thought her the spoilt little snob she had once been while her one-time lover looked on. She thanked the neatly dressed maid who came to tell her a bath was being filled in the dressing room next door and reluctantly refused her aid, asking her to come back once she was dressed and help to arrange her hair.

She dared not let another female see her naked for fear she might realise Lady Freya wasn’t usually this buxom, or noticed her once-tiny waist would soon be a distant memory. Freya sighed and wondered how many more eggshells she must tread tonight. She supposed it was worth it as her aunt
might
be exhausted and the children needed time to realise they were truly safe without her.

Freya took off her plain travelling gown and decided nothing in Mrs Oaks’s modest wardrobe was splendid enough for dining at Ashburton New Place, so she would have to do without the cunningly cut silk gowns she had once worn to dazzle far better men than Richard Seaborne. She reminded herself she didn’t want him dazzled now and doubted she’d reduce him to manly frustration dressed so richly even if she did. Whispered discussions about Rich Seaborne’s wild affairs were creeping into her mind, along with a list of all the stormy beauties he was credited with keeping in his rackety bachelor days.

Returning from her bath already halfway dressed in shift and a short corset, she sighed at the plain but beautifully pressed dark-blue gown, made high to the neck and long in the sleeves as befitted soon to be widowed Mrs Oaks, waiting for her. Sinking on to the rug by a fire lit against the mild chill of a late September evening, she waited for her weighty mass of brown hair to dry and allowed herself a harmless enough fantasy.

Tonight she was the much-loved lady of a country gentleman of modest means. He was nothing like Mr Richard Seaborne, with
his large estate and even larger fortune and uncanny ability to lie that black was white. Rather than an army officer, this time her phantom husband could be a hard-working country squire, busy about his acres in order to improve his competence and provide all their children with a sound education and a start in life. They had a worthwhile life, far away from the extravagance and opulence and lies of the
ton
, and focused their energies on each other and their growing family. Recalling how delightful a simple country life could be in the right company, she set her chin on her bent knees and stared into the fire as if her fantasy might form there if she willed it strongly enough.

Fool to picture her everyday husband as splendid Richard Seaborne, she chided herself crossly and, reaching for the simple wooden comb he’d whittled for her that she kept purely because it was practical, she began the tedious business of combing out her heavy mass of hair and wondered if it might be easier to have it cut. Soon she wouldn’t have the luxury of time to sit by the fire dreamily untangling her annoyingly mid-brown locks while she tried not to think of times when Orlando had done it for her, as if he loved every last
smooth and shining strand. She was relieved when the maid returned, ready to brush, then skilfully secure the heavy mass into a neat chignon that suited Freya better than the elaborate nest of ringlets her mama always insisted on. She watched in the mirror as the maid deftly adjusted her simple gown and decided it became her better than the unsuitable splendours of Lady Freya Buckle ever had.

By the time she discovered the little Seabornes were nearly asleep after their busy day, it was time to go downstairs and face the extended Seaborne family. It would be so much easier to ask for dinner to be sent to her room, but that would be cowardly so she squared her shoulders and descended the grand Tudor staircase as if she owned it.