Vicar's Daughter to Viscount's Lady. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ not the grand dining chamber she had been expecting. Lord Hadleigh rose to his feet from a chair beside the fire and put down the book that had been closed in his hands.

      ‘Good evening, Miss Shelley.’ That smile again. Despite everything there was a lightness there, a sense that he smiled easily. He watched her and she had the impression that he was looking at her as a woman and that, under different circumstances, he might have flirted with her. Yet she did not feel threatened.

      ‘You are rested and feeling a little better, I trust.’ He went to take the chair at the head of the small rectangular table and a footman pulled out the other chair set at right angles to his. Bella sat and had her napkin shaken out for her.

      She had been fussed over by a pleasant housekeeper who had removed her wet clothes, found her a cosy wrapper and then tucked her up in bed with a cup of tea and a dish of plain biscuits. Without in the least expecting to, she had slept deeply and dreamlessly for almost two hours.

      Neither the housekeeper, nor the maid who came to wake her and help her dress, seemed at all surprised that she had turned up out of the drizzle. It was curiously hypnotic, this degree of comfort and luxury, the unobtrusive service, the lack of questions. It would not last, but she would draw strength from it while she could. And she so much needed strength. Strength to fight her own guilt and despair, strength to fight the world’s opinion.

      She had woken, knowing what she must do for her baby. Rafe might be dead, but the plan she had originally formed to deal with his almost inevitable refusal to marry her must still be tried. She felt ashamed to have to demand it now, but a steely determination had entered her heart while she slept. She would do whatever it took to protect her child, even at the expense of a man who was innocent in all this.

      ‘I feel much better, I thank you, my lord.’ It was seven o’clock on a dark, wet May evening, the seducer who had rejected her was dead and she was virtually penniless amongst strangers. Bella stamped on the rising panic; she could say nothing with the footman in attendance.

      ‘Serve the soup, Harris, and then leave us. I will ring.’

      The savoury curls of steam made her almost dizzy with desire. It was an effort to sip the soup and not to pick up the dish and drain it. It must be forty-eight hours since she had eaten a proper meal, but the rags of her pride made it important to behave like a lady in this, if nothing else.

      ‘Well, Miss Shelley.’ Lord Hadleigh regarded her with those deep blue eyes and she felt insensibly a little safer. ‘Will you tell me your first name?’

      ‘Arabella, my lord.’

      ‘And when is the baby due?’

      ‘Early December.’ That was easy to calculate; she had lain with Rafe only the once, after all.

      ‘You believed my brother would marry you? He offered marriage? Do have one of these bread rolls, they are excellent.’

      ‘Yes, he promised. Perhaps you doubt my word?’ she asked, the moment of reassurance vanishing. Elliott Calne shook his head. ‘I am sure you think me wanton. I should be ashamed to even try to justify myself. But it was a fairy tale: my Prince Charming had hacked his way through the thorns to rescue me. You are doubtless wondering how a twenty-five-year-old woman could be such a romantic. It is not like me, I assure you. I have the reputation of being sensible and practical,’ she added bitterly.

      ‘Where did you meet? In London, I suppose.’ He was too polite to comment on her morals and she was not sure how to explain it to him in any case. How could a man understand the impact his dazzling, treacherous brother had had on her? She was the lonely, dutiful, unhappy eldest daughter of the vicarage and Rafe had been the fulfilment of a fantasy.

      ‘No, in Suffolk. I live—lived—in a village near Ipswich. I am a vicar’s daughter. My two younger sisters, who could not bear life with Papa any longer, ran away some time ago. I remained. I am expected to support my father in his old age.’

      ‘How old is he, for God’s sake?’ the viscount demanded. He was certainly to the point, she observed, through her haze of misery.

      ‘Fifty-three.’ Bella took a wary sip of the red wine in her glass.

      ‘A long wait for him to become decrepit, then. I gather he is not a joy to live with. More soup?’

      ‘No. No more soup, thank you, and, no, he is not.’ It was futile to lie. Lord Hadleigh needed to understand. ‘He believes that females are natural sinners, the cause of wickedness, and it must be beaten out of them if necessary. “Woman is the daughter of Eve. She is born of sin and is the vessel of sin”.’ She quoted the sampler she had worked with her sisters. ‘My middle sister eloped with a young officer, her childhood sweetheart, the youngest ran away and I was seduced by a viscount. Papa was quite correct, it seems. I do not know where either of them is,’ she added with a pang. Bella put down her spoon with an unsteady hand and braced herself for this viscount to express his disapproval.

      ‘So, with two sisters gone by the time Rafe happened along, you were ripe for escape?’

      That was not the outright condemnation she had expected. Did Rafe’s brother understand after all? It was hard to tell whether he was sarcastic or sympathetic. How to explain the magic of the week of February sunshine that had come with Rafe, like a harbinger of joy? How to convey the sheer wonder of having such a man—handsome, attentive, sophisticated—pay her attention?

      ‘He had fallen in love at first sight, he said,’ she began, haltingly explaining it to both him and herself. ‘He was in the country, staying with his friend Marcus Daunt at Long Fallow Hall a few miles away. He admitted he was on a repairing lease because he was not feeling too well. The last thing he had expected was to fall in love, he told me.’

      ‘That must have been the infection beginning,’ Lord Hadleigh said. ‘I wondered where he had been. He was in London when he died.’

      It seemed odd that he did not know his own brother’s movements. And how strange that she had not sensed that he was ill; somehow the baby made a connection between them that should have been tangible, however much she hated him. ‘When was it? Did he…was there much pain?’ The room blurred as she struggled to get her emotions under control. This was her baby’s father; even after everything, she did not want him to have suffered agonies.

      ‘He was in some pain at first, they tell me, but he slipped into unconsciousness very quickly. Miss Shelley—’ He got to his feet and came round the table to crouch down beside her, his movements lithe. He was fit, she thought vaguely, and fast. ‘I am sorry, that was too abrupt. Here, drink some wine.’ He picked up the glass and wrapped her fingers around it, guiding hand and glass to her lips.

      She drank a little. ‘Thank you. I am all right. I wanted to know, it is better than imagining things.’ She made herself go on with her story as he went back to his seat. It was hard to look at him: he was so like Rafe and yet, so different. He seemed kind, he seemed caring. So had Rafe—at first. Beware, the voice of experience whispered. He’s a man. ‘We loved each other—I thought—but I warned him about Papa, who became angry if I and my sisters so much as spoke to the curate.’

      ‘Viscount Hadleigh is hardly the curate,’ the current holder of the title observed drily. He got to his feet, removed her soup plate and began to carve a capon. ‘Are the side dishes within your reach?’ He handed her a plate with meat and served himself.

      ‘Thank you, yes.’

      ‘Go СКАЧАТЬ