‘Babes die all the time,’ Mrs Browne had murmured, emerging from the shelter of her apron. ‘All ours did. Broke my heart...’ She mopped at her eyes. ‘I still had milk, you see. Her ladyship, your mother, made sure I could feed the little mite.’
They lived remotely in their distant dale. No one knew that they had a different child in the house, it had all been so simple and Wykeham had been so authoritative, so overwhelming. ‘You’ll want the money,’ Browne said, his weather-beaten face blank with stoical misery. ‘It was wrong, I know it, but the milk cow had died and the harvest was that bad and even with what your father was paying us...’
Laura had looked at the clean, scrubbed kitchen, the empty cradle by the fire, the grey hairs on Mrs Browne’s head. All her babies had died. ‘No, keep the money, forget there ever was a child or an earl in a carriage or me. Just give me his card.’
Now Laura took the dog-eared rectangle from her reticule and looked at it as she had done every day of the eight weeks it had taken her to track Wykeham down, organise her disguise, create a convincing story for her staff and neighbours.
She had wanted evidence she could hold in her hand of the man who had stolen her baby, stolen every day of her growing, her first tooth, her first steps, her first word. Piers’s cousin, the rich diplomat, Avery Falconer, Earl of Wykeham. Now she no longer needed a piece of pasteboard: she had seen him, that handsome, laughing, ruthless man her daughter called Papa. The calling card crumpled in her hand as Laura tried to think of a way to outwit him, the lying, arrogant thief.
* * *
‘Papa?’
‘Mmm?’ Saying yes was dangerous, he might have missed the whispered trick question. That was how the house had become infested with kittens.
‘Papa, when may I go riding?’
Avery finished reading the letter through and scrawled his signature across the bottom. Sanders, his secretary, took it, dusted over the wet ink and passed the next document.
‘When I am satisfied that your new pony is steady enough.’ He looked back to the first sentence and tapped it with the end of the quill. ‘Sanders, that needs to be stronger. I want no doubt of my opposition to the proposal.’
‘I will redraft it, my lord. That is the last one.’ John Sanders gathered the documents up and took himself and his portfolio out. The third son of a rural dean, he was efficient, loyal, discreet and intelligent, the qualities that Avery insisted on with all his staff.
‘But, Papa...’
‘Miss Alice.’ The soft voice belonged to another member of his staff, one possessed of all those qualities and more. ‘His lordship is working. Come along, it is time for a glass of milk.’
‘I will see you before bedtime, sweetheart.’ Avery put down his pen and waited until Alice’s blue skirts had whisked out of the door. ‘Miss Blackstock, a word if you have a moment.’
‘My lord.’ The nurse waited, hands clasped at her waist, every hair in place, her head tipped slightly to one side while she waited to hear his pleasure. She was the daughter of his own childhood nurse and the only one of his staff who knew the full truth about Alice. Blackie, as Alice called her, had been with him when he had finally tracked the baby down to the remote Dales farm.
‘Please sit down. I think it may be time for Alice to have a governess, don’t you think? Not to usurp your position, but to start her on her first lessons. She is very bright.’ And impetuous. As her father had been.
‘Indeed, yes, my lord.’ Miss Blackstock sat placidly, but her eyes were bright and full of questions. ‘You’ll be advertising for someone soon, then? I’ll speak to Mrs Spence about doing out the schoolroom and finding a bedchamber and sitting room for the governess.’
‘If you would.’ Avery looked out over the rolling lawn to where the parkland began at the ha-ha. It was small but beautiful, this estate he had inherited from his cousin Piers and which he had signed over to Alice along with its incomes. He would do his utmost to give her all the standing in society that he could, and this place restored to prosperity as part of her dowry and an education with an excellent governess would be the start.
‘There is no hurry to arrange the accommodation here. However, will you ask her to arrange the same thing at the Berkeley Square house immediately?’
Miss Blackstock stared at him. ‘You are taking Miss Alice to London, my lord?’
‘I am. I intend staying there for the remainder of the Season.’ There was no reason why he should explain himself, even to an old retainer, but it would help if she understood. ‘I plan to marry.’
‘But, my lord...’ Miss Blackstock hesitated, then opted for frankness. ‘Might Miss Alice perhaps...discourage some of the ladies?’
‘Her existence, you mean?’ Avery shrugged. ‘I would not wish to marry a woman who thought less of me because of one, much-loved, child. Anyone who will not accept Alice is simply unacceptable themselves.’
‘It will certainly winnow the wheat from the chaff,’ the nurse murmured. ‘When will you go up to town, my lord?’
‘In two weeks. Late April.’ Wheat from the chaff, indeed. Avery’s lips twitched as the nurse shut the door behind her. It was a long time since he had been in London for the Season, it would be interesting to see what the quality of this year’s crop of young ladies was like.
Chapter Two
‘April in England. Can’t be bettered.’ The spaniel stopped and looked enquiringly at Avery. ‘You agree, Bet, I can tell. Go and flush a rabbit or two.’
The shotgun, broken open for safety, was snug in the crook of his arm, just in case he did spot one of the furry menaces heading for the kitchen garden, but it was really only an excuse for a walk while the sun was shining and the breeze was soft.
I’m getting middle-aged, he thought with a self-mocking grin. Thirty this year and enjoying the peace and quiet of the country. If I’m not careful I’ll turn into a country squire with a placid wife, a quiverful of children and the prospect of the annual sheep shearing for excitement.
After an adulthood spent in the capitals of Europe, in the midst of the cut and thrust of international diplomacy, he had thought he would be bored here, or that country life would bring back unpleasant memories of his childhood, but so far all he felt was relaxed. The parkland was in good order, the Home Farm and the tenant farms thrived, as his regular rides around the surrounding acres showed him. Piers would have been pleased, not that he had been much interested in farming. Army-mad, he had been since boyhood.
Relaxed but randy, he amended. It was easy to maintain a mistress in the city and keep his home life separate, but a remote country manor and a small child were a combination guaranteed to impose chastity. And decency told him that setting up a London mistress at the same time as hunting for a wife was cynical.
Still thinking vaguely about sex, Avery rounded a group of four beeches and stopped dead. A dry branch cracked under his booted foot.
‘Oh!’ The woman in black sitting on the fallen trunk of the fifth tree jumped to her feet, turned and recoiled at the sight of him, her eyes wide in her pale face. He had an impression of fragility, as much of spirit as of form, although she was slender, perhaps too slender. Her eyes flickered down to the gun and then back to his face and her hands, ungloved and white against the dull sheen of her walking dress, clenched together at her waist.
‘I beg your pardon, madam. I had no intention of frightening you.’
‘I suspect I am trespassing.’ Her voice was attractive, despite her alarm, but there was a huskiness in it that made him think of tears. She was in mourning, he realised, not simply soberly clad, and there was a wedding ring on her finger. A widow. ‘I was told in the village that there was a public path across the estate, but I saw a deer