Chapter 14
Eliza felt little better in the morning. It was as if she were slowly convalescing from a great illness. How foolish she must appear.
Seven years ago, she’d not even been out. She’d not been presented. She’d been a schoolgirl who’d fallen desperately in love with a much older— married—man.
A man whose sudden reappearance into her life had stirred up the past and caused her to faint, which was something she’d never done. Not even when she was carrying Jack, for she’d been strong and robust throughout her pregnancy, which is how she’d managed to make her escape with him so shortly after his birth.
As she idly walked the gravel path that wound down the grassy hill and circumnavigated the lake, she felt weak. Weak and foolish. Certainly on a fool’s errand if she persisted in this ridiculous idea of marrying Mr Bramley so she could do her best by Jack.
Now Jack’s father was here. Oh yes, hadn’t that kept her awake all night. Jack would be arriving in the donkey cart, and the children would be rushing about, no doubt tripping up the adults, and Orlando wouldn’t even know his own son.
Was it her duty to both Jack and Orlando to reveal the truth? Orlando seemed another world away. A different man from the one she’d hoped to marry. The man who’d whispered words of love and promises of marriage as he’d loved her in the secret tower room had been in no position to offer her anything.
He’d lied to her. Oh, she believed he loved her at the time; that he would have married her if he’d only been free to do so, but he’d behaved, ultimately, so dishonourably. Was this a man to whom she should entrust her son? Their son?
“Eliza!”
She swung round at his well-remembered voice. How often she’d heard that breathless note, the prelude to her throwing herself into his arms.
Their ‘courtship’ had been a long one of friendship, companionship, and only, at the very end, love and passion. Too brief to know if it would last, she supposed, but long enough to create a child, though Eliza had only truly lain with Orlando twice. So much frustrated passion and longing had led to the culmination of their overheated desire for each other before Edmund had stumbled upon them.
They’d been careless, and what else was Edmund to do when he knew what Eliza didn’t—that Orlando had a wife.
“Orlando.” She spoke his name carefully. She didn’t want to imbue it with any of her true feelings, for fear it would make her vulnerable somehow.
He clasped her hands, squeezing them as he brought them to his lips.
“Don’t do that!” she snapped, pulling them away and continuing to walk. “You’re still a married man. Just like you were the first time.”
He didn’t answer immediately as he matched her stride across the lawn. “Eliza, you were so young when I met you. I should never have let myself fall for you that magical summer, but these things happen. And it had been so long since Millicent had been well that I didn’t consider myself a married man.”
“You still had a wife.”
“Yes, who was dangerously ill and had tried numerous times to kill herself.” He put his hand on her shoulder to make her stop. “I truly loved you, Eliza. I would have married you if I could have, and I truly believed it would be possible.”
“A pity Edmund took honour to the limit.” Her tone was ironic, but she stopped when she saw three children tearing across the grassy slope towards them, biting her lip as she anticipated the collision between Jack and his father, but of course, the children were involved in their own game of tag. They had no interest in two serious-looking grown-ups, though, laughing, they ran in circles several times around Eliza and Orlando before heading for a large oak tree Eliza knew they liked to climb.
“Those are the children of Ladies Fenton and Quamby,” Eliza told him when he made no comment. She swallowed, and added carefully, “There’s a boy who comes each day from the foundling home to play with them. He’s a very clever lad.” She hesitated. “You’d like him.”
Orlando sent her a look as if he were trying to fathom whether she was teasing, but before he could answer, Lady Fenton arrived, a little out of breath.
“Miss Montrose, are you all right?” she asked, glancing between Eliza and Orlando, before adding quickly in answer to Eliza’s rather scandalised look, “Good, I was sure you would be, but I’m trying to catch Katherine as Mrs Candlewick is here to fit her for a new dress. She doesn’t want to come indoors, but she has to. Please try and restrain her if you can. The little hoyden already knows she’s going to be punished.”
“Then perhaps you’ll never catch her, at least not this afternoon,” Orlando said with a smile.
Lady Fenton made a noise of exasperation. “I f
ear you’re right, but she has to learn. And she does want that dress, only she’s utterly besotted with that foundling boy. I truly think the highlight of her day is getting into some scrape or another with him. Or finding some new way to vex Young George. Oh look, there’s Jack now. Jack!” She called him over, adding to Eliza and Orlando, “I can count on him to make my daughter toe the line.”
Dutifully the boy trotted over, tugging his forelock as he executed a neat little bow. As it always did, Eliza’s heart did strange things.
“Eliza?”
She realised she was still looking at him. Smiling stupidly? Giving herself away? Lord, she hoped not. She slanted a glance at Orlando, too afraid of seeing in his eyes the dawning realisation that before him stood his son. Instead, lines of faint puzzlement creased his brow.
“You invite orphans here to Quamby House, Lady Fenton?” he asked, taking no account of the fact the boy remained where he was as he’d not been dismissed. “Are you not worried something will go missing?”
“I understand your sentiments, Mr Perceval, and indeed it was difficult to persuade my husband and the earl of the merits.” Lady Fenton patted Jack on the head. “However, my cousin was most insistent that we do what she called her ‘God-given duty to succour the little children’; those who came into the world with nothing.”