The Clergyman's Daughter (5 page)

“Liar!” Jessica shrilled. “It was because of you that he forbade me to see my own mother, denounced me from the pulpit like some—”

In a booming voice so loud that it rattled the glass chimneys on the candlesticks, Raeburn bellowed, “
I
never told him to disown you!
That was his own crackbrained—”

But Jessica never had an opportunity to hear the rest of his impassioned disavowal. In the kitchen a baby squawled.

Jessica froze, staring up helplessly at the earl. The thin, hungry cry of infant outrage sounded again, and Raeburn’s fair head jerked around to stare at the half-open scullery door. His hands clamped bruisingly around Jessica’s arms, making her squeal with pain as he growled, “What in the name of…?”

Jessica twisted her head to peer over her shoulder at the doorway, where suddenly Willa appeared, her rough hands cradling a squirming, swaddled bundle high on her shoulder so that the baby’s face could not be seen. Jessica could hear the smacking noise her daughter’s tiny lips made against Willa’s throat, and she felt her breasts swell at the sound, reminding her with aching insistence that it was again time for Lottie’s feeding. Beneath spiky black lashes her fearful green eyes flicked up at the ashen face of the man who held her brutally while he gaped at her maid. Oh, God, Jessica moaned with silent, impotent anguish, what would he say now, what would he do when….

Willa said, “Miss Jess, I’m sorry my baby disturbed you. I promise it won’t happen again.”

Raeburn’s grip relaxed slightly. His wide brow furrowed, he demanded harshly, “Your child, Willa Brown?”

Willa lifted her chin, her dark eyes meeting his contemptuous gaze steadily from beneath the ruffle of her mobcap. For as long as she could remember, Willa had been the object of men’s lust and scorn, and at seventeen, after falling into the hands of a pack of aristocratic ruffians, she had vowed that she would die rather than suffer degradation again; but when she flung herself into the stinking waters of the Thames, Jessica had saved her, had revived her life and her soul, and since then Willa had been her eager slave. Now she said evenly, “Yes, Your Lordship, this is my baby,” and Jessica, hearing this, felt her heart flip with wary gratitude at the enormity of what her friend was trying to do.

Raeburn’s gaze narrowed cynically. Under his breath he muttered, “Well, I suppose it was to be expected….” His voice lifted in curiosity. “Dare one inquire after the father of this unfortunate infant?”

Willa glanced quickly at her mistress, who at last had managed to free herself from Raeburn’s hands. Angrily Jessica inserted her slim body protectively in the space between the maid and the earl as she insisted, “Graham, you have no right to interrogate my servant. Her private life is not your responsibility.”

One thick, fair brow arched sharply upward. “On the contrary, my dear sister-in-law,” Raeburn drawled, “you are most definitely my responsibility, and if this woman and her bastard are imposing on you—”

“Damn you, Lottie is not a bastard!” Jessica snapped fiercely, too incensed by his attack on her child to weigh her words. “She’s—she’s….” Abruptly her voice faded as she recognized just how close she was to revealing the one secret she had struggled for over a year to keep. Helplessly she glanced at Willa again, who gently rubbed the fussing baby’s back, trying to soothe her. As Jessica watched, one of little Charlotte’s fists worked loose from her tight wrappings, and she began to suck on it greedily. Jessica winced at the effort not to reach out to her.

Raeburn’s hooded eyes were inscrutable, but skepticism was patent in his deep voice. “Perhaps,” he suggested evenly, “Miss Brown—or should I say Mrs., since you tell me the child is…legitimate—ought to take the infant back to the kitchen and feed her. I claim no authority on the subject of children, but even I can see that the brat is hungry.”

Anxious to distract him, Jessica interjected, “Actually, we think she’s teething….”

Lottie wailed loudly, and Raeburn grimaced. “All the more reason to get it out of here,” he grumbled. He frowned at Willa. “Well, girl, what are you waiting for? Go on, be quick about it!”

Willa glanced uncertainly at her mistress. “Miss Jess?” she ventured as she bounced the baby on her shoulder.

Jessica wavered, torn between her fear of Raeburn and her instinctive maternal response to her child’s cries. Her hand pressing tightly against her breast, at last she said reluctantly, “Perhaps you had better take her back to the kitchen, Willa. There must be something there to soothe her…her pains. I-I’ll join
you
as soon as His Lordship leaves.”

Willa nodded slowly. “Yes, miss,” she said, turning to carry her wriggling bundle back to the warmth of the other room. Just as she did, little Charlotte gave a final furious howl and waved her fists blindly, dislodging the worn blanket that Willa had kept draped over her head. The frayed woolen cloth fell back, revealing a mass of baby-soft curls that blazed like infant fire against Lottie’s flushed skin.

Raeburn gaped, his flinty gaze riveted to the child’s red hair. Jessica heard him mutter, “What the…?” as he pushed her aside and stalked toward Willa, who was retreating toward the kitchen. Intercepting her, he towered over the maid like some enraged Titan, and when he ordered in a low, strained voice, “Give me the child, Willa Brown,” she had no choice but to obey him.

Jessica gnawed her lip as she watched the earl lift the infant carefully into his arms. For someone who disclaimed knowledge of children, she thought irrelevantly, he seemed to hold this one with surprising skill, crooking one elbow so that the baby’s head and back were cradled securely against the broad lapels of his perfectly tailored coat, Lottie calmed at once, lulled by the only masculine arms that had ever held her, except for the palsied grasp of the arthritic old vicar who had christened her. With his free hand Raeburn gently tugged the blanket away from her face, and he peered intently into her small, perfect features, the rosebud mouth, the short nose, the long lashes that were the same burnished copper as her hair. “Andrew’s hair,” he murmured in wonder, and as he spoke her lashes flew up, revealing wide slanting eyes that already gleamed with emerald fire.

Raeburn glanced dismissively at Willa’s plain round face, her brown eyes and yellow curls, then he turned to Jessica. With eyes as bright as her daughter’s, she met his gaze courageously. Through clenched teeth he asked, “A girl, you said? What is her name?”

“Lottie,” Jessica mumbled. “Charlotte Andrea.”

Raeburn digested this for a moment. “Exactly how old is she?”

“Six months. She was born the week after Easter.”

“And it was Michaelmas when Andrew…” he muttered, scowling. Jessica could almost see the calculations whirling in his head. Suddenly he growled, “You miserable bitch, you must have known!” Jessica said nothing. Raeburn looked down at the baby again and his face darkened with rage. He accused, “Damn you, Jessica Foxe, if you were a man, I’d kill you for this! How could you keep my brother’s child from me?”

Lottie whimpered uneasily, and Raeburn’s blunt fingers moved with unexpected tenderness as he soothed her, stroking her hair. She settled again, her green eyes focusing uncertainly on the bright buttons of his coat. Just for an instant Jessica saw Raeburn’s harsh features soften in a poignant smile, but when he lifted his head to glare at her again, his expression was cold and unyielding.

Gravely Jessica reminded him, “She’s my child too, Graham.”

Raeburn retorted, “She’s a Foxe, the granddaughter of an earl. How dare you keep her in this—this tenement? She belongs at Renard Chase, among her own kind.”

“
I
am her kind,” Jessica insisted, reaching for her daughter, whose cries had quieted momentarily. “I will be the one to decide what’s best for her.”

Raeburn released the baby and watched Jessica set her expertly on her shoulder. He drawled sarcastically, “And you think it’s best for her to keep company with prostitutes?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Jessica could see Willa’s recoil, her forthright, honest face flushing with humiliation. In Jessica’s mind flashed a picture of her maid as she had been when she and Andrew fished her out of the river one foggy London night not long after they were married. Andrew had wanted to leave her on the embankment, saying that it was enough that they had saved her from drowning, but Jessica had insisted on taking the shivering girl back to the security of Raeburn House, where even Willa’s garish rouge had not been able to disguise the livid braises and contusions purpling her unhealthy ceruse-poisoned skin…. Jessica’s temper flared at Raeburn’s callousness, and bright flags blazed in her pale cheeks. She said with withering disdain, “Well, Graham, I see you’ve become very adept at insulting those who can’t defend themselves. Why not try calling me names for a change?”

“Jess—” he tried to interrupt, but she would not be stopped.

“Why so squeamish, dear brother-in-law? You’ve found it easy enough to revile me in the past! Shall I remind you of some of your favorite epithets? ‘Doxy,’ ‘vixen,’ ‘conniving little temptress,’ just to name a few. But, of course, ‘upstart drawing teacher’ is the term of choice with your family, I believe. At any rate, that’s the one I recall overhearing the day of my husband’s funeral: ‘How shall we rid ourselves of the upstart drawing teacher now that Andrew’s dead?’ ”

Raeburn was staring at her with a puzzled grimace. “Who said that?”

Jessica shrugged silently. She turned to Willa and passed over the dozing infant. “Here,” she soothed, knowing her friend was still hurt by Raeburn’s crude reminder of a life she had tried to put behind her, “why don’t you return Lottie to her cradle? I know she wants feeding, but I do think she’ll sleep for a little longer now.”

“Thank you, Miss Jess,” Willa murmured, fleeing from the room.

Raeburn watched the maid escape through the kitchen door then he turned to face Jessica’s accusing eyes again. “All right,” he murmured grudgingly, “I’m sorry I…spoke slightingly of your servant; it was unworthy of me. One of the first lessons my nanny ever taught me was to be courteous to those of inferior station.”

Jessica laughed sardonically. “Am I to conclude from that that you consider my family equal to that of an earl? You have never made any effort to be courteous to me!”

Raeburn’s face darkened as he recalled her earlier words. “Obviously someone at Renard Chase was less than…deferential to you. Who was it, Jess?”

Jessica shrugged, trying to disguise her remembered pain. “At this late date, I’m not quite sure, Graham. Is it important?”

“Yes,” he growled. “I want to know who dared speak so cruelly to you that the words drove you away from your home before the clods had even settled over your husband’s coffin.”

The image made her shudder, and to disguise her reaction, she seated herself on the settee once more and smoothed her skirt over her lap. She murmured reluctantly, “It was a woman, I remember that much. I suppose the speaker could have been Claire, or possibly her bristle-faced witch of a chaperon, Mrs. Talmadge; it matters little. I just remember that from my sitting-room window I watched the crepe-hung carriages return from the churchyard, and I thought…I thought that despite our differences you might see fit to come to me and tell me about the service….”

Her voice thickened suddenly, and she looked away. “I knew you were as heartsick as I was, and I even had some bird-witted notion that I might help assuage your grief by telling you your brother had not died without issue…but you didn’t come to me, Graham. I sat alone in that room, with no one to comfort me except for Willa, until nightfall, when I decided to bury my pride and go to you. But as I stepped onto the landing outside the small parlor, I heard all of you discussing how to rid yourselves of the upstart drawing teacher, and I knew then there would never be a place for me at Renard Chase, even if you welcomed Andrew’s child.” Her face twisted, and her hands closed protectively over her belly, as if sheltering the baby she had once carried there.

Watching her, Raeburn shook his head solemnly, his gray eyes stricken. “Whatever you overheard that day, Jess, I knew nothing of it. After I finished burying my brother, someone gave me a brandy flask—to combat the cold, he said, although I seem to recall that the day was fairly temperate for autumn—and by the time we got back to the Chase, I was as drunk as a French whore. I didn’t come to my senses till the next morning, when my sister told me that you and your maid had ran away during the night.”

“I’ll wager that was welcome news,” Jessica muttered.

Raeburn colored. “Welcome?” he repeated hoarsely. “Damnation, woman, if you had any idea what I’ve been through this past year, worrying about you, not knowing if you were alive or dead, or whether you had enough to—”

Jessica’s eyes clouded as she remembered those first horrible weeks, a time when she had learned with chilling impact that in her father’s house, despite their penury, she had never known true hunger before…. She smiled ironically, her dark head sketching a circuit of the dismal room. She said lightly, “Well, Graham, now you may be reassured. I am alive and well, my daughter and my maid and I eat with reasonable regularity, thank you, and in future we shall—”

“But how did you manage?” Raeburn demanded to know. “You took nothing with you but the clothes you wore.”

“I had my wedding ring,” Jessica reminded him stiffly. “I sold it.”

Raeburn said grimly, “The most prudent housewife in the world could not make the proceeds from that ring last a year. What else did you sell—or was it that dubious companion of yours?”

Jessica blushed scarlet as his implication struck her, and frustrated rage burned in her at his obvious belief that no woman could earn money except on her back…. In truth Willa, concerned about the health of the child her mistress carried, had reluctantly offered to go back to the only occupation she knew, but before she had been forced to make that ultimate sacrifice, Jessica had discovered, by fortunate accident, that people were willing to pay for the bitterly satiric cartoons she had hitherto sketched only to vent her anger and frustration….