Claiming the Ashbrooke Heir. Mary Nichols

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ enough: the windows gleamed, the curtains were clean, the step scrubbed and the brass knocker on the door shone with much polishing. If she was staying here then she was not doing too badly and perhaps it would be best to leave well alone. There was no proof of anything, and Jeremy had denied he had got the girl with child. Jeremy, his brother. Was he his brother’s keeper?

      The answer to that was that, in the absence of the brother himself, he was certainly his offspring’s keeper—if such a child existed. He went up the steps and knocked.

      A skinny little maid opened the door, and then left him on the step while she went to speak to her mistress. He did not have long to wait. Mrs Porter arrived, tying a fresh apron about her waist. He doffed his beaver. ‘Good afternoon, ma’am. I am looking for Mrs Anstey—Mrs Annie Anstey. I am told she resides here.’

      ‘No more, she don’t.’

      ‘Oh, do you know where she has gone?’

      ‘No.’ She was eyeing him up and down, probably coming to the conclusion he was the child’s father. ‘You’ve come a bit late in the day, hen’t you?’ she went on. ‘She could ha’ done with you a couple of months since.’

      ‘She had a child, then?’

      ‘Don’t you know?’

      ‘No. I met her husband out in Spain and I have a message for her from him.’

      ‘Hmph,’ she muttered, evidently not believing a word. ‘I still don’ know where she’s gone. Try the work’us.’

      He took his leave and went to the workhouse. She was not there, had never been there, and he was thankful for that; it was a dreadful place. Men separated from their families, mothers from their children, brothers from sisters, and they all looked listless and downbeat. He left and returned to the street, glad that he would never have to enter such a place, but wondering where to go next.

      Standing on the pavement with his back to that forbidding building, with the sun beating down on him, he was transported back to Spain, to the last time he had seen his brother. When the command had come to move out of their winter quarters and pursue the enemy, the troops had marched with a will. None more so than himself. He hadn’t been able to wait to get at the enemy. His quarrel with them was more than a soldier’s duty, it was personal. He blamed them for the death of his wife and baby son nearly four years before, notwithstanding they had been safe home in England at the time. He had convinced himself that if he had been with them, if he had been at home and not waging war hundreds of miles away, they might have lived. He had been so ridden with guilt over it the burden had become intolerable. It had eased it to take his venom out on the enemy, and Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, who had started the conflict. He had vowed he would not rest or go home until he had seen him beaten.

      It was a vow he had been obliged to retract when Jeremy had been mortally wounded at the Battle of Vittoria. His brother should never have been sent to war; he had not been soldier material and he cursed the unknown girl who had made it happen. He had known his father and stepmother would take the news very hard, and he could not let them learn it from an impersonal letter. He had seen his brother decently buried and come home.

      He had been right; his father was wretched and his stepmother could do nothing to help him. Jeremy, the golden boy, had been his father’s favourite, and he was dead. Charles knew he ought to go to Brookside, the country house he had shared with Arabella, but he could not bring himself to do so. It was not only that he could not bear to be reminded of her, but because he did not like to leave his father, who went about the estate with hardly a civil word to anyone and, when at home, sat in his chair in the library and brooded.

      ‘I wish I could do something for him,’ he had told his stepmother. ‘He needs something to occupy him and take his mind off it.’

      ‘You could furnish him with a legitimate grandson.’

      ‘I could, but to do that I must marry again.’ He remembered pausing, because her use of the word legitimate had made him think. ‘I am hardly likely to come up with an illegitimate one, Mama.’

      ‘No, but I think Jeremy has.’

      They had been breakfasting together at the time, and he had put down the piece of toast he’d been buttering and stared at her. ‘Tell me about it.’

      And so she had told him about Annie, the nursery maid. He’d listened, remembering his conversation with Jeremy. ‘He told me about her,’ he said when she finished. ‘But he said it was only a romp and he had not got her with child.’

      ‘He did not know. I sent him away. I feel dreadful about it now. Not about the girl—because Jeremy was only doing what hundreds of other young men have done, trying out his manhood. It is up to the girls to stop them if they do not like it—but because I sent him to his death.’

      Charles did not agree with her about the girls. Her attitude, and that of his brother and other aristocratic youths like him, was careless in the extreme, but he did not say so. Instead he asked what had become of the nursery maid.

      ‘I have no idea. Does it matter?’

      ‘I think it does. I think I should try and find her.’

      ‘You never mean to bring her back here?’ She was horrified at the idea.

      ‘No, of course not. It would not do. But I can at least make sure she is not in want. If there is a child, she is not going to find life easy, is she? She might need help.’

      ‘She should have thought of that before …’

      ‘Mama, can you not find it in your heart to be charitable? After all, Jeremy must share some of the blame. If he had lived, I am sure he would not have let her starve.’

      The trouble was that no one at Riseborough Hall knew where Annie had gone. She had not mixed with the other servants and had kept herself to herself. ‘Too high and mighty for her own good,’ Miss Burnley had told him.

      He had found out quite by chance when he’d visited Becky, something he always did when he was at Riseborough. After their mother had died, giving birth to Jeremy, she had been the only mother they had known until his father had married again, and by that time they’d been grown up. Becky had always been a safe haven whenever they needed one.

      She had been distressed on learning of Jeremy’s death, and had spent several minutes talking about him and the mischief he’d used to get into. ‘When you were at home you would always haul him out of his pickles,’ she said, dabbing at her tears. ‘But you weren’t here that last time.’

      ‘You mean the business over the nursery maid?’

      ‘Yes.’

      It was then, after a little hesitation, that she told him of Annette’s stay with her and gave him the direction of her sister. And after all that Annette had moved on and his journey had been in vain. He turned on his heel and went back to his room at The Maid’s Head. He had tried and there was little else he could do; the girl had gone, obviously intent on not being found.

      And then he thought of the woman with the parcel. Could it have been Annette? She had had no child with her, but she could have left it somewhere—farmed it out, had it adopted. The idea did not sit well with him at all, and he knew he had to find her if only to confirm she was not the woman he sought.

      Annette, СКАЧАТЬ