Page 10 of Lord Heartless

He feathered his corners, he steadied his wheeler. His Belcher neckcloth flapped in the breeze. So did Glad's ears. Ah, if the Four-in-Hand Club could see Viscount Hartleigh now! But Sue squealed, and then her eyes drifted shut as he pushed the pram across the street No race victory was sweeter.

He called at the front door of Sir Gilliam's town house, out of sheer perversity this time. He did offer to wait on the stoop with his carriage and his faithful hound while Mason went to fetch Mrs. Kane. He would have had a long wait but for Pippa being on the watch for him. She skipped along the side of the house toward the viscount and the pram, her mother following with a market basket in her hands.

"I do wish you wouldn't tweak Mason's nose that way, my lord,” Carissa chided after greeting him and tucking the blankets more firmly around the baby.

"But that officious, pointed beak is just begging to be pinched."

"Yes, but it does make him more difficult to live with."

He smiled. “Then you'll come live with us."

"Ah, I see what it is now. You hope to give Sir Gilliam cause to dismiss me so you'll have a reliable housekeeper.” She spoke severely, but he could see a spark of humor in her eyes, now that he knew what to look for, under the abysmal mobcap. “I must inform you that I do not cook."

Lesley wondered what else she did, or didn't do. He was wise enough to keep the question to himself, although he'd thought of little else last night after seeing that glorious hair tumbled around her shoulders. Sobriety and abstinence did that to a fellow, he decided, after one day of both. Giving Mrs. Kane a disgust of him did not suit his current plans, however. Not at all. As he pushed the pram with Mrs. Kane strolling beside him, therefore, he tried to make polite conversation. He was sorely out of practice, it seemed. “How did your husband die?"

To give herself time to recover from the unexpected question, Carissa looked back to check on her daughter. Pippa was marching along, one hand on the horrible hound's collar, one in her mouth. Carissa bit her lip and looked straight ahead again. “I am, ah, not entirely sure. The War Office was not forthcoming with details.” That was an understatement. The War Office had never heard of Phillip Kane.

"Yes, those chaps can be closemouthed. Would you like me to look into it for you? What regiment was he in?"

"I am sorry, my lord, I do not like to discuss my husband. Please understand, it is simply too painful."

After four years? Or was the man such a rotter she did not wish to be reminded of him?

Then it was her turn to try to fill an awkward silence. “Have you made any progress toward finding Sue a foster family?"

That was another sore subject. “Oh, look, we've reached the apothecary already."

Hartleigh greeted the chemist in a friendly manner and purchased some peppermint drops. Then he returned outside while Carissa waited for her order to be filled, offering one of the sticky treats to Pippa, one to Glad. As Carissa watched through the window, shaking her head, the viscount tipped his hat to a fur-clad matron who stopped to admire the infant and nodded to a bewigged barrister hurrying past. He chatted with a young woman with two children in tow and smiled at an aproned abigail come to fetch her mistress's Denmark lotion.

His lordship was not high in the instep at all, she marveled, when it suited him. Or else the infant was having a mellowing influence. He positively beamed when anyone complimented him on the pretty baby. What kind of heartless rake was this?

When they left the apothecary, they passed a butcher shop. The viscount groaned, recognizing the place where Glad preferred to do his own shopping. Lesley could have bought the store thrice over, for the damage reparations he'd paid. He let go the carriage to grab for the dog. The pram continued rolling. Mrs. Kane cried out. So did the driver of a wagon careening around the corner.

"Bloody hell!” Lesley dove for the carriage and snatched Sue out of it just as the first dray horse crushed the fragile wicker beneath its platter-size hooves. “There, Lovey,” he soothed the startled child. Guilt tore through him, even before he saw the condemnation in Mrs. Kane's fine brown eyes. Damn, but he wasn't fit to own a canary, much less a baby. And damn, he needed a drink.

Mrs. Kane took the baby from him, as if he couldn't be trusted to hold the sprout now, Lesley lamented. So much for his plans to impress the widow. At least Glad hadn't caused any trouble at the butcher's. The dog was sitting at the corner, with Pippa holding one flopping flap up so she could whisper in his ear. Whatever she was promising him as reward for good behavior seemed to be working.

"Gingerbread,” she confided at his lordship's questioning look.

"Then gingerbread it shall be! There must be a bakeshop somewhere nearby."

Carissa was afraid her daughter would grow spoiled, but she kept still. The poor man was so remorseful over his lapse—and he'd been so magnificent in his rescue—that she couldn't disappoint him. As they left the bakery, however, they passed their neighbors, the retired schoolmistresses. The Misses Applegate pulled their skirts aside, as if afraid of soiling the hems, when the viscount's little party went by. And Glad hadn't even marked the spot so he could come back for more gingerbread.

"I am afraid our neighbors do not approve,” Lord Hartleigh said.

Carissa was enjoying her pastry too much to be upset “Oh, those ladies do not approve of anything. They are barely civil to me on the best of days."

"Still, they used to dip a shallow curtsy in my direction now and again. Honoring the title if not the man, I suppose. The baby seems to have sunk me beneath contempt, though. I do hope you won't be tarred with the same brush, accompanying me and the child."

"Think nothing of it, my lord. If you are concerned that anyone might suppose the infant to be mine, rest easy. I wasn't enceinte or on holiday in recent times, so there is no suspicion of that. Everyone in this neighborhood knows the tale of Sue's landing on your doorstep, anyway. It was too good a story for the servants’ grapevine, I am sure."

"Still, you cannot like being part and parcel of the gossip. We should turn back."

"But Pippa hasn't fed the ducks yet, and I did promise. Besides, my lord, I had no reputation to lose in the first place. People are always ready to think the worst of one, do you not agree?"

"Most definitely!"

"Why, do you know that there are persons who believe Sir Gilliam is my ... that is, that he has, ah, designs on my person?"

"You don't say?” his lordship exclaimed. “Tsk, tsk."

"As if the dear man would even think such licentious thoughts."

"Absurd,” he agreed.

She nodded at his understanding. “Sir Gilliam's is not merely an empty title handed to him in exchange for large donations to the Crown, I'll have you know. He is a true gentleman in every sense of the word."

"Here, here."

"No one who knows him, or you, for that matter, could ever suspect such a thing."

The viscount choked on his gingerbread.

They found the ducks, but Glad found them first and happily splashed through the stagnant waters to chase them off. So Pippa fed him the bread crumbs from her pocket.

"I told you he wasn't stupid,” the viscount said.

Then it was time to return home. Carissa had chores and Pippa needed her nap. The baby was growing fussy, too, and needed Maisie.

"Dash it,” the viscount muttered. He'd been enjoying himself, teaching Pippa to skip stones, jiggling the baby, listening to the widow's cork-brained comments. He was thoroughly unused to curtailing his pleasure for anyone else's convenience, especially a hungry infant's. “I suppose a father is de trop most of the time."

Hers was, Carissa concurred, and Pippa's. But she thought a doting papa just might have a place in a little girl's heart. If he didn't break it.

As he left, the viscount invited Mrs. Kane and her daughter to accompany him to Hyde Park on the next nice day. The ducks in the Serpentine wouldn't be afraid of any old dog, he told the girl, and if they were, the swans would send Glad to the roundabout. And there were horses too, not as fine as Blackie. he assured her, but very handsome. If she was very good—and he could not imagine the sprite being anything but—he might take her up in front of his horse.

How could Carissa say no? Especially when he made the engagement for her half day off? She fussed over Pippa's frock and her braids for an hour, after spending two hours on her own appearance. She wore her least shabby day gown, brightening it with the paisley shawl Sir Gilliam had given her last Boxing Day. And she wore her Sunday straw bonnet with fresh flowers tucked in the brim. For a housekeeper, she thought, she would not shame his lordship, not until the flowers wilted or the sunshine grew too warm to wear the shawl, at any rate.

Looking more handsome than ever in his buckskins and boots, blond hair gleaming in the sun, the viscount rode his gelding alongside an open carriage that held Maisie and Sue. Byrd drove, with Glad beside him on the bench, lop ears like windmill vanes in the breeze. Maisie was almost as excited as Pippa, and even Carissa had to admit that it had been ages since she'd been in an elegant rig, behind prime goers.

When they reached the park, Lord Hartleigh lifted Pippa out of the coach and onto his horse. Carissa couldn't doubt his power or his prowess, but she couldn't look, either. After a gentle canter, they all got down to feed the ducks and walk on the pedestrian paths toward some benches, where Byrd produced a jug of lemonade and some tarts.

The refreshments were from Gunter's, since Lord Hartleigh's most recent cook, a French chef, actually, had left his employ the evening before. It seemed Glad did not understand allez, allez. He did understand fricassee. Every last bite of it.

The previous cook had been overheard to speak of Sue as a foreign bastard. She hadn't lasted for breakfast. One of the new footmen had ogled Maisie while she was feeding the babe, and the maid-of-all-work had decided she'd rather work on her back, in the viscount's bed. Never had a man been so bedeviled by his employees, Lesley complained as they sat on the bench, eating and watching Glad chase squirrels. His lordship was thinking of trying another employment office.

"Perhaps you should try another city,” Carissa replied dryly. “The owner of the agency you've been using complained to me that his hirees would rather starve than serve in such a havey-cavey household. ‘Queer as Dick's hatband’ was the expression he used, I believe. And no, I will not leave Sir Gilliam."

"Well, Maisie offered to learn to cook, so I bought her a book of recipes. Now all I have to do is find someone to teach her to read. I don't suppose those Applegate women would, do you?"

Carissa had to laugh. And she had to offer the lessons, for she was starting to teach Pippa her numbers and letters. What was one more pupil, if Sir Gilliam was not discomposed by it? She would ask him.

When the last tart was gone, they returned to the carriage, walking away from the benches that were filled with shouting nannies and their rambunctious charges, shy young lovers and irate old ladies who'd come to feed the squirrels. The viscount tied his gelding behind and sat across from Maisie and Carissa, with Pippa on his lap. He pointed out to his fellow passengers all the trees and shrubs he could identify and made up names for the ones he could not. He asked for Pippa's opinions on the horseflesh they passed, and Carissa's on the fashions of the riders. He waved to friends, nodded to acquaintances, bowed to the long-nosed dowagers with lorgnettes, and ignored the garish women who tried to catch his eye. He did not stop for introductions, but neither did he hurry his companions away from society's gaze, until they passed Lord Cosgrove. He was riding a showy hack, and both of them were already winded after one turn around the tanbark. Maisie hid her face in the baby's blanket.

"Let's leave, Byrdie,” his lordship directed, loudly enough for those nearby to hear. “The park is growing too crowded with the raff and chaff of the city.” Lesley reached across and patted Maisie's hand. “No one can ever hurt you again, my dear. Remember that."

What a nice man, Carissa thought yet again, and what a delightful day. Pippa had fallen asleep without her supper, after a surfeit of treats, but Mrs. Kane knew she'd have a harder time of it. Why couldn't he be old and ugly, mean and miserly? Why couldn't Lord Heartless live down to her expectations? And why, oh, why, did she have to be growing so fond of the man when there was no future in it? Not with his reputation, not with her past.

The other thing keeping Carissa awake was the niggling feeling of being watched in the park. She did not mind the passersby who barely concealed their curiosity at the odd caravan, but she'd felt something furtive, half seen. It had been enough to bring shivery goose bumps to the back of her neck. Her past, again?

The viscount was entirely pleased with the day. His plan was working perfectly. The news would be served up at any number of fashionable dinner parties that evening, that Lord Heartless had a family. Not a sanctioned marriage, but a ménage. The baby was his—he'd never made an effort to deny it—and if anyone chose to wonder if Mrs. Kane's moppet belonged to him too, well, that was a bonus.

Today's performance should put paid to his stepmother's matchmaking once and for all, if it didn't give her an apoplexy. Not even the most desperate female would align herself, or her relations, with a gentleman so lost to propriety that he paraded his by-blows in the park. No marriage-minded mother would push her daughter into a match that was already adulterous, with no signs that the groom meant to cut the connection. No right-minded father would betroth his daughter to such a loose screw. Lesley knew he wouldn't. Why, let a rake like himself look twice at his little girl, or Pippa, for that matter, when they were of marriageable age, and Lesley would call the scoundrel out, by George!

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