Scandalous Miss Brightwells [Book 1-4]

Odette blushed charmingly, and Fanny could see how she appealed to Jack. Yet Odette had not the depth and spirit her Katherine did. She was sure of it. Nor did she love Jack like Katherine, she thought fiercely.

“Yes, warm praise indeed for such a notoriously difficult to please gentleman which is why, I daresay, he remains unwed. Now, where has Jack got to? Ah, there he is, talking with his father. Or rather, uncle, I should say.”

Introducing the element of uncertainty regarding Jack’s parentage might be of no account, but it couldn’t hurt, Fanny thought. But then, if Odette really loved Jack, that would not signify.

Having just spied Bertram, Fanny was weighing up how safe it was to navigate their way in his direction. Bertram was a wild card, yet he’d been the only one to come up with anything resembling a plan to bring together two unlikely hearts that were elsewhere engaged. If only some great drama could be orchestrated, she thought wistfully. Bertram was the king of drama, but unfortunately they usually didn’t go according to plan.

She was about to take Odette’s arm and gently steer her in her brother’s direction when the girl said, “I do wish Jack wouldn’t talk of his parents as if they were a charitable institution.” She ventured an uncertain look at Fanny, then, perceiving encouragement, went on, “They’ve been so good to him, not distinguishing him from their other children, yet he speaks all too often as if he really were some foundling child adopted by Mr and Mrs Patmore.”

“But he is a foundling child,” Fanny said cautiously. “And Mr and Mrs Patmore have been very generous to him in giving him their name.” To anyone else she’d have fiercely claimed Jack was just as good if not better than anyone else in the room, and most definitely the equal of the Patmore’s natural children. “Is there something about that that troubles you?”

Odette looked ashamed, then fierce, then sorrowful. “Sometimes I have to cover my ears with my hands when he says the reason he’s driven to work so hard is that f

or all he knows, his father might have been a highwayman for whose misdeeds he must atone. Or even a murderer. I hate hearing him talk like that.”

Dismayed that Jack should continue to be tormented for such fantasies when Fanny knew the truth of his parentage, she swallowed and asked, “What do you say?”

“I tell him that he is a gentleman in my eyes, and that he should just go on about his business to the rest of the world on that basis. I don’t think he should tell people he was adopted, and he certainly shouldn’t spout all this nonsense about criminals and highwaymen, or else people will question whether he deserves their respect.”

“Perhaps you respect him more for having worked so hard to get where he has despite his origins?”

Odette shrugged. “I’d fallen in love with Jack long before I found out he was adopted. Papa never told me. It was quite a shock, but I resolved that I wouldn’t let it stand in the way of how I felt about him.”

“You just wish he’d never talk about it?”

“That’s right.” Odette darted a worried look at her. “You don’t think that’s wrong of me, do you?” she asked.

“I think it’s important we’re all honest about our feelings, my dear. Otherwise, how can we trust each other if we keep secret what we really feel?”

Sadly, she thought of her Katherine, bottling up the secret of her love for Jack all these years. And, intercepting a fleeting look between Jack and Katherine and realising the depth of her feeling was more than reciprocated, her resolve hardened that the no doubt worthy Odette must be replaced.

“Come, my dear. Have you met Lord Derry? You have? Ah then, as he’s talking to my brother who was interested to know how you enjoyed your visit to the tower, there’s no need to introduce you if we join them, is there?”

Chapter 23

Diana was certain that hiding under the bed would solve all her problems. The moment she’d heard her grandmother’s voice in the hallway five minutes ago, she’d taken advantage of the fact that her nursemaid had just left the nursery to look for a cloth to clean up the paint water she’d spilled.

Now, as she heard Betsy calling her name, her breath came in shaky bursts as she contemplated the consequences of being found.

Her grandmother wanted to take Diana back to her house. “To spend a few nights there so we may become better acquainted,” she’d overheard the old woman saying.

Diana couldn’t imagine anything worse. She imagined days spent pressed against the stiff purple silk of Lady Hale’s clothes, which smelt musty and nasty, while her grandmother read her stories with Diana perched unwillingly on the chair beside her. It was like a nightmare. As was the fear that her grandmother might steal her away.

At the evening party her great-uncle Lord Quamby had held the night before, Diana had overheard such a possibility being suggested by two men, one of them Lord Quamby’s son George whom Diana didn’t trust at all, and the other, Lord Derry, the gentleman who was always mooning over her mama. Although Diana had known him all her life and, in fact, didn’t object to him like she did her mother’s cousin, George, she’d been frightened by what she’d heard.

She remembered it with terrible clarity. Cousin George had sauntered over to Lord Derry who was standing by the sofa near where Diana was hiding behind a large pot plant, and said, “Lady Hale thinks Diana should spend a few days with her as per Freddy’s dying request that the two become better acquainted after his death.”

“Katherine wouldn’t let his mother over the threshold after she insulted her that memorable evening, and I don’t blame her. Lady Hale is a deplorable woman.” Lord Derry had taken a sip of his drink, sighed, then said, “Well, if you think that can help influence Katherine, I’d be enormously grateful. I don’t want to force her into anything against her will, you do understand; I just feel that I can help her to be happy.”

Diana had thought that those words were very strange: I can help her to be happy.

Diana knew he couldn’t. Her mother only ever smiled when she spoke of her happy memories of being a child and when she first came to London, and how everything changed the night the carriage came.

The carriage.

She strained her ears for the sound of Betsy’s footsteps then pulled herself out from under the bed and ran to the window. Standing on a chair, she saw Lady Hale’s carriage and, in front of it, the carriage belonging to the nice man from across the sea who always made her mother smile, though her mother looked even sadder when she watched him leave. Diana was very attuned to what made her mother smile and what made her sad. Lord Derry made her mother anxious and sad, and Mr Patmore made her mother smile when she was with him and sad when she wasn’t.

Jack. He was a nice man. Diana also didn’t mind the lady he always brought along. She was pretty and laughed a lot. But Diana would rather that Miss Worthington stay at home instead of going everywhere with Jack.