The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ you realise what a scandal my resurrection from whatever early death they made up to account for losing two daughters would be? Far better for Verity to remain the daughter of an obscure housekeeper who might or might not have been widowed tragically young. Nobody will care enough to argue the birth of a girl of the middling sort as they would about Lady Daphne Thessaly’s child.’

      ‘And you would narrow all her choices to that? Being a nondescript girl of the middling sort? Oh, no, Lady Chloe Thessaly, you can’t make a nonentity out of a girl who carries all the promise of being as inconveniently beautiful as Virginia once was. Haven’t you noticed she has the fine bones, character and colouring that will take the world by storm in a few years’ time? Foolish of you if you haven’t, but as the child of a mere housekeeper she is going to have a terrible time without a father to protect her from the storm her looks and grace will bring down on both of you as soon as she’s old enough to attract the wolves to your door.’

      ‘I...’ Chloe ground to a halt and wondered if he was right.

      ‘Yes, you...?’ he insisted mercilessly, temper now sparking in his grey eyes and knitting his brows in a formidable frown.

      It made her want to love him even more. His fury was part on Verity’s behalf and part because he seemed, wonder of wonders, to want to be her daughter’s father.

      ‘I can’t simply change my mind and say yes because it suits me to have a noble husband, that wouldn’t be right.’

      ‘Oh, Chloe,’ he said on a choke of unwilling laughter that chased the thunder clouds from his stormy gaze. ‘My Chloe,’ he said as if nothing would ever change that fact, whatever she did to argue him out of it, ‘I would say never change, but I’m not quite sure I could mean it when you’re keeping us apart with such idiocies. I promise to cherish your daughter as if she is truly my Eve’s little sister. Please accept me and admit we’ll never stop wanting each other this side of the grave. I vow I’ll do my best to track down your Verity’s father and make him honour his obligations towards her, if he still lives. She is a Thessaly when all is said and done, Chloe, and that means something to me, if only because you are one too.’

      Chloe would have argued, but he shook his head.

      ‘No, don’t insist on reeling off a list of your father’s and now your brothers’ sins to blight both your lives with. Yours is still an old and loyal name and the title was won by better men than the current holder or your father. Thessaly women have defended castles and led soldiers in their husbands’ absence; tramped across battlefields to find loved ones and guarded fortunes so their sons wouldn’t have to go to the devil in their father’s footsteps. Stay in hiding and you will oblige your brothers even more than you have already by staying away, as well as robbing your Verity of her heritage and all the fierce warrior ladies she has a right to know about.’

      ‘No,’ she denied. ‘How can you sit there and condemn me for doing what was right? Are you accusing me of being less than all those rash and outrageous Thessaly women, because I ran instead of letting them put Verity out to freeze to death in the depths of winter?’

      ‘I don’t need to, you’ve done it to yourself,’ he said so quietly she stopped in mid-rage and stared up at him with her mouth open. ‘And now you’re doing it to me and both our daughters as well,’ he added ruthlessly.

      ‘No, whatever happens they will be safe from harm.’

      ‘That’s not true, Chloe. Unjust as it may be, they could still suffer for the sins of their fathers,’ he said bleakly and how could he call himself a sinner when he had been so desperately young when he became a father himself?

      A boy of twenty seemed unlikely to have a pocketful of sins to carry around, let alone the vast burden he looked as if he had on his shoulders as he said it with a heavy sigh that spoke of mysteries and secrets she wasn’t sure she even wanted to think about right now.

      ‘And their mothers?’ she said, thinking of Daphne dying in agony as she strove desperately to give her child life. ‘Birthing them ought to wipe out all of them in one blow,’ she said with a shudder.

      ‘Would that it did,’ he rasped as memory seemed to suck him back into the past as well. ‘Not that your sister had time to bank many sins in her short life,’ he added, as if forcing himself to slam the door on whatever his wife had done before she met her end in a carriage accident in a far-off country, too many miles and years away from her husband and daughter to matter in their lives any more by then.

      ‘No, and I refuse to believe Daphne died as a punishment for what she did to bring Verity into the world. I can’t pretend many wouldn’t say that was so, then go on to blame Verity for being born the wrong side of the blanket. We must think of her, Luke. I might not like it, but there’s no point pretending the world won’t point the finger and speculate endlessly who her father is if the truth comes out,’ she said gently, his name openly on her lips for the first time and would it wasn’t to find another way of saying no to him. How she wished for the right to squirm back into his arms and forget the past in loving him now.

      ‘Aye,’ he said with a heavy sigh, ‘so it might, but if we have each other it won’t touch us. That’s what I’ve learnt from being Eve’s father and you need to learn it as well. As long as there is love and strength inside our home the evil and pettiness outside can only touch us if we let it.’

      ‘You can’t stay shut away in that bleak castle of yours for ever though, my lord,’ she half-teased and half-warned him, wondering how he would cope with the fuss and attention of Eve’s début in a couple of years’ time, if he had a stepdaughter with no apparent father and a wife who had sensationally returned from the dead with an orphaned niece at her side to make them all a seven-day wonder.

      ‘It’s not enough any more, thanks to you,’ he said dourly.

      ‘There’s no need to sound quite so cross about it.’

      ‘Why not? I was almost happy living with what I could have if I didn’t think too hard about what I truly wanted, until I learnt to hope. You’re the one who taught me, Chloe, so do you really think you have any right to take it away from us now I’ve learnt the trick of it at last?’

      ‘I’m not sure.’

      ‘Then be sure, be so certain you could carve it into rock and display it in the Strand, Lady Chloe Thessaly, because until you can, I won’t give up.’

      ‘Can you imagine it in the announcement, my lord? Lady Chloe Thessaly, whom the world thought dead a decade ago, is to marry Viscount Farenze, who deserves our profound sympathy.’

      ‘And can you imagine what the world had to say about me and mine when my wife dragged my name through every muddy puddle she could find and the odd boggy swamp or two along the way? I don’t care what they say; the people who matter to me will know the truth and those who don’t can do as they please. It’s of no consequence to me what the wider world thinks.’

      ‘But it is to me.’

      ‘That is your cross to bear, don’t make it mine as well.’

      She met the challenge in his straight gaze once again and nodded to admit it was a problem she must worry at until she knew if she could accept such notoriety for them all or not. Wasn’t it asking too much of any man to take her and Verity on, but could she and Luke endure not to take that risk? Could she live without him; wait every day to read of his marriage to another woman; the birth of his children and not hers? Wouldn’t it drive her mad to stay in her СКАЧАТЬ