‘My lord, I had no intention of criticising.’ Which was an untruth. How fast he caught her up. As a diplomat the man was used to watching faces, listening to voices and hearing the reality behind the facade. She would have to be wary. She glanced towards the house, then quickly away. He must not see the hunger she was certain was clear in her eyes.
‘Hinting, then,’ he said with the first real smile he had directed at her. Laura felt her mouth curve in response before she could stop it. When the man smiled he had an indecent amount of charm. And that was confusing because there should not be one good thing about him. Not one, the child-stealing reptile. She dropped her gaze before he could read the conflict.
‘Papa! Here is Blackie.’ Alice, who never seemed to walk anywhere, bounded to a halt in front of Laura. That energy is so like me as a child. The pang of recognition was bittersweet. ‘Mrs Jordan, this is Blackie.’
The nurse bobbed a neat curtsy. ‘Miss Blackstock, ma’am.’
‘Miss Blackstock. Miss Falconer is a credit to you.’ And you are a credit to Lord Wykeham’s care for Alice, she thought, reluctantly awarding him a point for the care of the child. Not such a reptile after all, if Alice could love him and if he could choose her attendants with such care. Being fair was unpalatable, she wanted to hate him simply and cleanly.
‘Thank you, ma’am.’ There was a stir as the nurse took a seat beside Alice, then a small tussle over the need to eat bread and butter before cake. All very normal for an informal family meal and not at all what she had expected and feared she would find. And that, Laura realised as she nibbled on a cress sandwich, was disconcerting.
She had been braced to rescue her child from some sort of domineering, manipulative, bullying tyrant and found instead a happy girl and, she was coming to suspect, a doting father behind the facade of firmness.
* * *
Tea was finished at last, a final sliver of cake wheedled out of the earl despite Miss Blackstock’s despairing shake of the head, and Alice wriggled off her chair. ‘May I get down, Papa?’
‘You are down,’ he said.
Alice dimpled a smile at him and came to gaze earnestly at Laura. ‘Will you come and visit again, Mrs Jordan? We are very cheerful and there is always nice cake and perhaps you won’t feel so sad then. You could play with my kittens.’
‘Miss Alice!’ Miss Blackstock got to her feet with an apologetic look at Laura.
‘It was indeed very nice cake and I feel very cheerful now after such good company,’ Laura said. Could she come again? Dare she? She must not promise the child something she might not be able to fulfil.
‘Jackson!’ A footman came striding across the grass in response to the earl’s summons. ‘Send to the stables and have Ferris harness up the gig to take Mrs Jordan back to the village.’
‘Please, I do not wish to be a trouble, I can walk,’ she said as the man hurried away across the grass to the side of the house. ‘My ankle feels quite strong now.’
‘I cannot countenance you attempting it without an escort and it is probably best if we do not emerge from the woods together.’ The smile was back, this time with a hint of something that was not exactly flirtation, more a masculine awareness of her as a woman.
‘As you say, Lord Wykeham.’ To drop her gaze, to hide behind her lashes, would be to acknowledge that look. She sent him a carefully calculated social smile that held not one iota of flirtation. ‘Thank you.’
* * *
‘I do not know what to do.’ Laura paced across the parlour and back, her black skirts flicking the bookcase at one side and the sofa on the other as she turned. ‘I thought she would be unhappy and lonely, but I think she loves him and he loves her.’
‘What were you planning to do if she’d not been happy?’ Mab demanded. ‘Kidnap the poor mite?’
‘Go to law, I suppose,’ Laura said. ‘And, yes, I know it would ruin my reputation, but it is the only remedy I can think of. This isn’t a Gothic novel where I could snatch Alice and hide in some turreted castle until my prince came along and rescued us both.’ Not that I have a prince. Or want one.
‘But she is happy and well cared for and loved, so why not leave things be?’ her henchwoman demanded, fists on hips. ‘I can’t be doing with all this handwringing, I’ve my dusting to get on with.’
‘Because he doesn’t deserve her! He lied, he deceived and he bought a child as if she was a slave. He has no right to her.’
‘She’s base-born,’ Mab stated, attacking the bookshelves with a rag. ‘No getting round that. He’s family and she’s better off with him, provided he’s kind to her. He can protect her better than you can.’
‘He is rich, he is privileged, he is—’
‘And so are you,’ Mab pointed out with infuriating logic. ‘But he is a man so he can protect her in ways that you cannot. His reputation isn’t going to be dented by having an acknowledged love child, but yours would be ruined and all the influence you can muster goes with it.’
‘I do not like him.’ Laura flung herself onto the sofa and slumped back against the cushions, exhausted by tension.
‘What’s that to do with the price of tea?’ Mab demanded. ‘You haven’t got to live with him. Alice has.’
‘I am her mother.’ The words were wrenched out of her. ‘All those years when I thought she was gone. And then to find that she hadn’t died, and to have hope and to have that wrenched away and then to discover she was alive after all. And now... Now I have got to do what is best for Alice. But it hurts so, Mab. It hurts.’
‘Oh, lovie—’ Mab tossed the rag aside ‘—don’t you be crying now. You’ve done too much of that these past months.’
‘I’m not crying.’ Her eyes were dry. It was inside that the tears flowed. Or perhaps she was bleeding where some organ she could not put a name to had been wrenched out. It could not be her heart, she could feel that beating, hard and fast.
Mab stomped across the room and sat down on the sofa. ‘She loves him and he’ll do the best he can for her by the sounds of it. He’ll be one of those gentlemen who’ll stick by family come hell or high water—it’s part of their pride. You’ve just got to be glad for her and get on with your own life. He’ll be off abroad again soon, those diplomatic gentlemen are all over the place. Think of all the sights she’ll see, the things she’ll do. And when she’s all grown up he’ll give her a big dowry and find her a nice man to marry and she’ll be happy, just you see.’
‘I know.’ I know. It is the right thing. I am happy that she is alive and so clever and bright and kind and lovely. But she will never know that Piers was her real father, she will never know that her mother loved her and wanted her. ‘I am going to stay for a week. Just a week. I will see her again, I will make certain she is truly safe and happy and then I will go back to London and take off my blacks and rejoin society.’
‘A good thing, too. But who’s going to chaperon you, then?’ Mab asked. ‘You turned down all those fubsy creatures that came in answer to the advertisement.’ She stood up and administered a brisk pat on the shoulder before going to hunt for her duster.
‘I have written to my mother’s cousin Florence. She is a widow and she isn’t in very comfortable circumstances. She says she’d be delighted to be my companion.’
‘What? Lady Carstairs? The one your mama always said had feathers for brains? She’ll be no use as a chaperon.’
‘I am too old to need one of those. I just need a lady companion to give me countenance.’
‘Huh.’ Mab snorted.
‘Yes, I know, I am shockingly fast and have no countenance to