Page 7

W hen Piers went off to teach his class, April—since it was no longer fitting for her to join in—usually retired to her rooms to practice on her own.

Her reading was improving all the time, but she was aware her handwriting would not yet pass muster in Society.

It looked like a child’s and needed work.

Not that she had many Society correspondents, but it would be good to be able to write to Lady Haggard—Piers’s friend’s stepmother—and, when they returned to Haybury Court, to Great Aunt Prudence or Piers’s cousin Gussie, without shaming Lord Petteril.

Today, however, she was reluctant to go anywhere near her rooms. She, who had always faced up to violent villains and bullies, was frightened of the way the baby made her feel. Besides, she had plenty to find out. So she went down to the kitchen in search of Mrs. Park.

She found the housekeeper in her sitting room, with the door ajar. She was filling in her account book from a pile of receipts, though she looked up quickly as soon as April entered.

April had the notion that she was not the person expected, though Mrs. Park rose at once and invited April to sit in the comfortable chair beside the fire. There was no sign of baby laundry today.

“What do you think of Mrs. Robb?” April asked, feeling her way to the questions she needed to ask about the servants.

“She’s sober and gentle and knows what she’s doing,” Mrs. Park replied. “Though I have to say she’s a bit of a mystery.”

April raised her brows. “She is? In what way?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, she’s more educated than any wet nurse I ever met, and that includes the respectable ones employed in great houses.”

“Perhaps she came down in the world, and if she lost her own baby, this is the only way she can earn a living.”

“It must be something like that. Why do you ask? Have you seen something you dislike in her?”

“Oh no.”

“It must be a hard job,” Mrs. Park said. “Getting fond of a child and being dismissed a few weeks later.”

“Is that what happens? Are wet nurses not kept on to care for the children after they’re weaned?”

“Sometimes.”

April digested that, along with the warning she was sure Mrs. Park was trying to impart. She wished she hadn’t given over her dressing room to the child. Why had she? Just to prove she did not blame Piers?

“Mrs. Park,” she said determinedly. “Are any of the servants courting?”

Mrs. Park leaned forward. “Francis has a young woman in service he meets on all his half-days. And hers...”

A knock on the door interrupted any further confidences. Martha the maid entered when bidden and dropped a curtsey.

“Begging your ladyship’s pardon, but Lady Petteril and Miss Withan have called. They’re in the drawing room.”

Involuntarily, April glanced at the housekeeper’s clock above the fireplace. It was too early for morning calls, which was curious in itself. She rose with an apologetic shrug to Mrs. Park and made her way up to the drawing room.

Since Christmas, there had been a kind of armed truce between herself and the dowager viscountess, Piers’s Aunt Hortensia.

Although the dowager thoroughly disapproved of April—and of Piers, which was less forgivable—she credited them with finding the doctor who had probably saved her younger daughter’s life.

As a result, she had let it be known she received the new Lady Petteril to whom she had not been rude for an entire month.

Miss Augusta Withan, known to all as Gussie, was looking better every time April saw her.

Which was a testament to both the good sense of Piers’s friend Dr. Laine, and the dangerous idiocy of the so-called physician trusted by the Dowager Viscountess.

Though still a little thin, pale and drawn, there was now a hint of colour about the girl’s cheeks and the lively sparkle was almost back in her mischievous eyes.

She even rose, smiling and holding out both hands. “April! How pretty you look. Do forgive us bursting in on you at this—”

“Gussie!” exclaimed her mother. “Ladies do not burst nor even mention such a word.”

April squeezed Gussie’s hands, which still felt a little frail. “Besides, I am convinced your entrance was much more dignified. You’re looking well, Gussie.” April curtsied to the dowager, whom she should really have greeted first. “Lady Petteril, how are you?”

“I am quite well of course, and so delighted for my girls. Where is Piers?”

“Oh, he shouldn’t be long,” April said vaguely, for there was no point in setting the dowager off by mentioning the education of servants which she disapproved of.

In fact, she probably doubted Piers’s ability to teach them, since she persisted in believing his position at Oxford had been some sinecure obtained by his family name.

“We wondered if you had already left town for Haybury Court,” the dowager remarked. “When do you go?”

“Next week, all being well.”

“I wish you would stay for the Season,” Gussie said wistfully. “It would be much more fun.”

Not for me, it wouldn’t . April kept smiling.

The dowager addressed her daughter. “We shall have to see if you are fit for the Season, Augusta. All those late nights and gadding about...”

“You could always just make a few dramatic appearances,” April suggested. “So that when you’re not at some party, everyone is looking for you.”

Gussie giggled. “I like that idea.”

The dowager, who seemed not to have considered the concept of a partial Season, regarded April with clear surprise. No doubt the idea would be her own, soon.

Tea was brought in, though April, still full of coffee from breakfast, had no intention of drinking any.

As always, Lady Petteril closely observed her carefully-learned command of the tea tray, but her scrutiny seemed more mechanical than actually looking for fault—a further softening on the dowager’s part?

Or did she just have something else occupying her mind?

Of course, she’s heard about the baby , April thought uneasily. I hope she isn’t reserving her fire for Piers...

April rose and took the dowager her tea, more to spare Gussie the task than to appear obsequious. Perhaps Piers would stymie her by going out...

Piers, however, wandered in before the second cup of tea was poured, and greeted his aunt and cousin with his usual vague politeness.

Accepting his tea from April, he lifted one quizzical eyebrow.

She shrugged minutely in response and he leaned his hip against the arm of the sofa she was sharing with Gussie.

“All well, Aunt?” he inquired.

The dowager bridled. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because I’ve never known you to make morning calls at such an hour.”

To April’s surprise, Lady Petteril made no retort to that. Instead, her face became wreathed in smiles, which was quite startling in its unusualness. “We have such wonderful news we could not wait to impart it. Maria has just been brought to bed of a fine son!”

Maria, Lady Gadsby, was Hortensia’s elder daughter who had been married for several years without being blessed by children until now. Although the birth itself was hardly unexpected, it was certainly cause for celebration.

April smiled, glad for the sake of Maria, whom she had only ever seen from a distance, while the exclamations and questions and answers echoed delightedly around the walls.

Somewhere, she was puzzled by the odd tightening of her stomach, the surge of feeling she seemed to have no control over but could not recognize.

She suspected it was to do with that other baby currently in her dressing room.

She had no reason to say anything about Maria’s baby, since everyone else did the talking. So she just kept smiling.

“Of course, we shall be leaving for Barnett Hall this afternoon,” the dowager said happily. “Which is why we called so early.”

“Both of you?” Piers said, startled. “Is that good for Gussie?”

“Well, I can’t leave her behind,” Lady Petteril said impatiently. “And right now Maria must be my first concern. If you were a parent, you would understand that.”

April’s stomach tugged again, in a slightly different way. Piers should be a parent. But he had married her. Was love truly enough?

“Why doesn’t Gussie come to us?” Piers said.

And of course there was silence.

Because Hortensia will never let her daughter stay under my roof if she can possibly avoid it.

“But less than a week from now you are going to Haybury Court,” Lady Petteril pointed out, “which is further.”

“Yes, but it is an extra few days for Gussie to gather her strength,” Piers said mildly. “We will travel more slowly than you are inclined to today, and we can leave Gussie with you at Barnett Hall on our way. I daresay the country air will do her good.”

“I would like to see Maria and meet the baby,” Gussie admitted.

There was no point in hiding it. If Gussie stayed, she would tell her mother anyway.

“Actually, we have a baby here, too,” April said brazenly. “So you can practice.”

Beside her, she felt Piers’s body go still, although she knew his expression would not have changed.

“Baby?” Hortensia repeated, staring at April, then blinking rapidly. “Whose baby?”

“We don’t know,” April said. “He was left on our doorstep. We are looking for his mother.”

The dowager’s eyes flashed disgust and malevolence, much more in her old style. “It is yours,” she hissed. “You are trying to foist your bastard onto our house.”

April laughed. Though her stomach had contracted sharply in pain, the accusation was exquisitely funny.

Piers stood so suddenly that her mirth cut off like a tap.

The silence was devastating. Both his aunt and his cousin gazed at him with something close to fright.

April couldn’t make herself look. She wanted to take his hand, but it seemed she couldn’t do that either.

This was undoubtedly The Viscount, powerful and quite untouchable.

“If that little speech were not so foolish,” he said, his voice clipped and freezing in its rare anger, “I would withdraw my offer to shelter your daughter. When exactly does your truly common-place mind imagine that my wife gave birth to this month-old child? Between courses at Christmas dinner, perhaps?”

His words were like lashes, for the dowager and Gussie had been April’s guests for Christmas dinner.

Hortensia’s face grew red and mottled under his undisguised contempt. Of course, she’d had no way of knowing the age of the baby, but the conclusion she had jumped to said a great deal about her true opinion.

“Don’t be coarse,” she said hoarsely. She swallowed. “But you are right. It was an entirely foolish thing to say and of course I regret it.” Her gaze flickered to April and back to Piers. “I apologize.”

“I hope you mean that. I should be loath to cast off members of my own family.”

No one in the room doubted he was prepared to do so. The colour fading fast now from the dowager’s face showed she understood the warning perfectly. The danger was not yet passed.

Gussie set down her cup and saucer and cleared her throat. “We should go, mama, if we are to finish packing in time. You could take some of my things to Maria’s for me, couldn’t you? I shan’t need so much for a mere few days with Piers and April.”

Her assumption that nothing had changed was quite deliberate, though her anxious glance between her mother and Piers proved she was not nearly as certain as she pretended.

Piers strolled over to the bell and pulled it. “Then we shall see you in a couple of hours.”

Clearly, he would not honour his aunt by conducting her personally to the door. April wondered if she should do so, in the interests of keeping the peace, but when she rose, the flick of her husband’s gaze forbade her. She had never seen him quite like this before. It was really rather...awesome.

“Sorry,” Gussie whispered as she quickly embracedApril. “It will be fine.”

And then Park was bowing them from the room, closing the door behind the visitors who departed rather more subdued than they had arrived.

More timidly than she ever had before, April slipped her hand into her husband’s. He was still rigid, although after a moment, his fingers curled around hers.

“When I think about the number of times you have forgiven that old witch—”

“She was sorry,” April blurted. “Old habits die hard with her, but I’ve never seen her capitulate so quickly before.” She gave his hand a little tug. “Capitulate is a good word, is it not? I can spell it, too.”

His breath caught on what might have been a reluctant laugh. His arm came around her and his forehead touched hers.

“We knew,” she murmured. “We always knew what it would be like, and we did it anyway. Nothing has changed, has it?”

He brushed a stray hair off her face, because he knew she was talking about their marriage. “Yes it has. Sometimes, I like being the viscount.”