Would even Pamela stoop to seduce a seventeen-year-old boy? Yes, he’d decided with bitter sickness threatening to choke him. To take a twisted revenge on Luke for marrying her without adoring her slavishly she would, and enjoy every moment of her betrayal. Young enough to hurt to his very soul, he felt as if sharing a city with her a moment longer would surely suffocate him.
‘Bring the child, we’re leaving,’ he’d snapped at the street urchin wet-nurse.
‘Not ’til I’m sure she’s better off with you than the ragman,’ she said, appearing at the nursery door with Eve wrapped in a worn shawl that had to be her own since Pamela wouldn’t even give it to her maid.
‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ Pamela said spitefully.
‘How can you say such terrible things, dearest?’ her sister, Alexandra, Lady Derneley, protested faintly from behind her. ‘She’s your own dear baby.’
‘I’d prefer to house a ferret or a weasel than that squalling brat. Has James visited me once while I was fat and lumbering like a cow because of a girl they got on me between them? You know he hasn’t, Lexie; he promised undying devotion when he seduced me behind his brother’s back and look how long it lasted. I’d hate her for ruining my figure, then chasing dear Blasedon away with her wailing and whining, even if she wasn’t a Winterley. I’ll be happy never to set eyes on the whelp again as long as I live, she can go to hell along with him and the sooner the better.’
Lady Derneley turned chalk white as her little sister’s true nature hit home and fainted to avoid it.
‘To hell with you, you unnatural bitch,’ Luke roared.
‘To ’ell with both of you,’ the street urchin’s voice somehow rose above the uproar. ‘This poor babe ain’t ’ad time to do wrong, whatever the rest of you ’ave been up to and you be quiet,’ she ordered Pamela, who gaped at her open-mouthed. ‘If you’ve a spot of pity use it on an ’elpless mite who din’t ask to come into this world instead of yourself for once. Mister, you can take us both away from ’ere afore the poor little thing dies of cold and ’unger, or missus ’ere murders ’er while I’m asleep, never mind if you’re ’er pa or no.’
It was then Luke made the life-transforming error of looking at the tiny little being in the girl’s bony arms and realised she was right. Almost as frightened by the quiet as by the shouting, the baby screwed her tiny face up to wail her woes to the world. He put out a finger, more by instinct than in hope his touch would soothe her. Eve paused, opened her eyes wide and seemed to focus on him as if she’d been waiting for him to come since the day she was born. She made him her father, whatever the facts, by latching on to his finger and refusing to let go.
Somehow he managed to hide that fact while convincing Pamela he would stop her allowance and sue for divorce, instead of legal separation, if word got out Eve might not be his. The journey to Darkmere with Eve and Brandy Brown in tow was a nightmare he shuddered to think of now, but they all survived it somehow and Eve grew up free of a mother who hated her for being a Winterley.
Luke made himself ignore news of Pamela cavorting round any bits of the Continent free of revolutionary wars with a succession of lovers. He didn’t care if the generous allowance he paid her kept her and her latest love in luxury and when news of his wife’s death reached Darkmere three years later he hadn’t enough hypocrisy left to mourn.
Now Lord Farenze might seem harsh and indifferent as the moors in sight of his castle towards the wider world, but he truly loved his daughter. A sneaky voice whispered it was safe to love Eve. If remembering his wife kept Chloe Wheaton and the danger of feeling more than he ought to for her at arm’s length, then he would dwell on the last time he let a woman walk into his life and rearrange it for however long it took to put him off the idea.
Resolved to do so often over the next few days, he was dressed before he found out dinner had been put back an hour. Eve had been informed, however, and was discussing which black gown was better suited to the occasion with Chloe and Bran. He could see little difference and left the room as if the devil was on his tail as soon as he saw the housekeeper lurking in the darkest corner of the room. Feeling thoroughly out of sorts with the world, Luke went downstairs like a guest arriving too early for a party.
* * *
Chloe was consulting Cook about the number of entrées Mrs Winterley thought fashionable to serve at dinner and agreeing this wasn’t the time for excess, even if they could find half-a-dozen more dishes at the drop of a hat, when the sound of a late arrival surprised them all. The terse announcement she was needed outside made her scurry in the head groom’s wake to the stable yard.
‘Verity, oh, my love!’ she cried as she saw her daughter blink against the flare of the stable lads’ lanterns when she stepped down from the coach.
‘Oh, Mama, I’m so glad to see you,’ Verity said with a wobbly smile that made Chloe want to cry, instead she hugged her as if they’d been parted for months.
‘But how did this come about?’ Chloe asked as Lord Farenze’s coachman nodded tersely at her and she could only marvel at his endurance.
‘His lordship ordered it soon as he heard little miss here was waiting to come home,’ Birtkin said as if he drove all the way to Bath and back after enduring the long drive here from Northumberland at least once a week.
‘I’m very grateful to you,’ she replied with a warm smile of gratitude.
‘Not my doing, ma’am, you should thank his lordship,’ Birtkin mumbled as if trying to reclaim his dour reputation.
‘You and your men were the ones who drove through twilight, then darkness, on Verity’s behalf, so I’m grateful to you, whether you like it or not.’
‘We was doing our duty, ma’am.’
‘I will stop saying thank you, since it seems to trouble you, but I’ll ask Cook to send plenty of the food left from feeding his lordship’s guests to the servants’ hall for dinner. You and your men need good food and some cheer on such a night.’
‘My thanks, ma’am, we’ll settle the beasts and see we’re clean and tidy before we comes in.’
‘See that you do,’ Chloe said and led Verity into the house.
She could afford time away from her duties; Oakham would supervise the dining room while Cook organised the footmen behind the scenes with dire threats of retribution if they dropped even a teaspoon of her food.
‘I should scold you for telling your teachers I need you here when I wanted to spare you this, my love, but I’m far too pleased to see you for that,’ she said as she urged Verity upstairs, guessing she’d slept very little since the day Chloe made that sad trip to Bath to tell her daughter Lady Virginia was dead. ‘But now you are here you must go straight to bed,’
‘Oh, Mama, why? I’m not in the least bit tired.’
‘I can see that, but I suppose you will just have to humour me, now you have got your way in everything else,’ Chloe said with a wry smile.
How hard it was not to spoil this wilful, clever little conundrum of hers and how right Virginia had been to insist Verity went to Miss Thibett’s very good school. Her daughter needed to learn the self-discipline and all the other disciplines that Miss Thibett considered made up a well-rounded human being who happened to have been born female. Chloe and her sister had never had a governess, let alone gone to school, and look where that lack of any learning but what they happened to light on in their maternal grandfather’s long-neglected library landed them.
Verity’s room was in the nursery wing the late Lord and Lady Farenze had