Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

Don’t make me say it.

“You’re twenty-seven years old,” he said. “The hymen can be quite fragile. And I do know that even gently bred girls do not always abide strictly by the rules.”

I ever was a coward. The same coward I was then, when I had a choice and a chance…

Charlotte had a choice now, and a chance.

To do what? Lie? Marry this man, who was prepared to sacrifice his pride in order to protect her so-called honor? What happiness could exist in a marriage founded upon a lie?

She slid down from the desk. “I mean,” she said deliberately, “you are not the first.”

A silence. She made herself meet his gaze, braced herself for anger, disgust. He only tipped his head to one side and regarded her quizzically. “Was it recently?” he said.

“N-no,” she said. She realized she was wringing her hands. She stilled them and held them, folded, at her waist. “It was a long time ago.”

“Ah.”

Another pause.

“Am I the second?” he said.

“What?”

“The second?” he said.

She could only blink at him. Good grief. He was thinking. Analyzing. “Yes,” she said. “You are the second.”

“Did you bury your heart in your lover’s grave?”

“No, certainly not,” she said.

“Or vow undying devotion, or some such?”

“No, of course not,” she said.

“Then we had better marry,” he said. “One may impregnate a girl who is not a virgin as easily as one who is.”

She took a step back. Not that. She hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought of it the first time. Then she was ignorant. She wasn’t now. But how was she to think? She was all turmoil and confusion.

He drew closer and she saw the keen intelligence at work, the falcon gaze. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what it is. I know it must be something dreadful, else you’d tell me straight out. We speak our mind to each other, do we not? This day I told you what I’d tell no one else.”

She’d spoken to him as she’d speak to no one else, too. She’d done it not only today but so many times, perhaps from the very start. She’d tried to pretend with him as she did with others but she could never quite carry it out. With him she spoke her mind. She was easy with him, more so than she’d ever been before, with any man.

She could not be false now.

Her eyes filled nonetheless and her heart pounded and shame flooded through her, like a fever, hot and cold at the same time.

“I had a child,” she said.

Never in all his life had it cost Darius so much to appear calm. Even with his father he had not felt his heart pounding as though it would break through his chest.

He was ashamed of his loss of control, ashamed of destroying her prospects. But he wanted her.

He wanted her enough to bear the prospect of facing her father.

I’ve despoiled your beautiful daughter.

Now she has to marry me.

Yet Darius would do it. He’d bear Lord Lithby’s anger and disappointment and the loss of his esteem.

He’d bear his own father’s contempt.

What he was not sure he could bear was bringing her misery, making her regret what had happened…for the rest of her life.

Four words made the world shift, completely.

I had a child.

He simply put his arms about her and pulled her close.

Now he understood. Everything, it seemed. With those four words, all the puzzle pieces simply fell into place.

It was an appalling burden for any woman to carry, and she would have carried it alone, for the most part. She would have had help, certainly, in concealing the matter, for it had been amazingly well concealed. He hadn’t heard a whisper, and that was rare in country villages, where everybody knew everything about everybody, and the secrets of the great house were common knowledge.

Still, it was her secret, her sorrow, and a heavy burden it was.

He remembered the sketch of the mother and child, and the grief he’d sensed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She wept, quiet, fierce sobs that shook her body.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

He held her while she wept, and he held her while, gradually, she quieted.

“I’m not g-good,” she said, her voice muffled against his coat. “I have no honor. I’m a hypocrite and a coward. I g-gave my baby away as soon as he was born. I shall never forgive myself.”

“You said it was a long time ago,” he said, stroking her back. “You were young then.”

“I was s-sixteen when I met him,” she said. She drew away, and fumbled at her skirts and found a handkerchief, with a great deal of lace and a very little useful cloth. She wiped her eyes, her nose. “Geordie Blaine. He was an officer. So handsome in his uniform. So kind and understanding—or so I thought. But I was only a conquest to him. He had me and left me and eventually got himself killed. Meanwhile I was with child and I didn’t even know, I was that naïve—I, who grew up in the country. But Molly guessed, and she told Lizzie, and I wouldn’t let them tell Papa. They took me away to Yorkshire, saying I was sick and needed a change of air. I nearly died giving birth, they said. I don’t remember very much, except that I wished I would die. I was sick for a long time afterward.”

She’d been sick with guilt and sorrow, he was sure, which would have compounded any physical injury or illness. The so-called wasting sickness people talked of in her case was very likely melancholia.

He brushed a strand of silky hair back from her cheek.

“We need to talk more of this,” he said. “A great deal more. But now is not the time. We’ve been alone, behind a closed door, far too long for propriety. The workmen and servants will be gossiping as it is. I will say only this to you: We cannot change the past. We can only do our best in the present. For the present, the best course is for us to wed.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t have you throw away everything important to you because we were careless once.”

“You are important to me,” he said.

“But I’m an heiress,” she said. “I have pots of money. You said before—”

“That was before.”

“But I want you to do what you meant to do,” she said. “I want you to restore Beechwood. I was so excited when I understood what a great challenge you’d accepted. I was so…proud. You cannot marry me—not at least until you’ve done what you set out to do.”

“This is absurd,” he said. “What if you’re breeding?”

“I shall know in a fortnight,” she said. “If I am—” She stiffened then.

He heard it, too. Voices, drawing closer now, recognizable. Lady Lithby. The housekeeper.

Darius hurried to the door and opened it. Then he said, making sure his voice carried the length of the corridor, “Upon consideration, Lady Charlotte, I prefer to keep the desk. I’ve developed a sentimental attachment to it.”

He needed another opportunity to talk to Lady Charlotte, but he wouldn’t find it at Beechwood this day. Now that Mrs. Endicott was installed as housekeeper, Lady Lithby rarely stayed past noon. They had a house party to prepare for, and though she made light of it, Darius was well aware that this was no ordinary house party. Lady Lithby must give it more than her usual attention. She and Lord Lithby were counting on this party to settle Lady Charlotte’s future.

&n

bsp; The cream of Great Britain’s bachelordom would attend. Darius had not given this much thought until today. He had had Lady Charlotte more or less all to himself. The only rival he’d been aware of was Morrell, and since she seemed unaware he was a rival, Darius had given the colonel little more thought than he’d given the others. In any event, marriage was the last thing on Darius’s mind.

That was before.

Now there was a chance she would bear his child. If he’d impregnated her, she must marry him, like it or not.

If he had not, she must marry him anyway.

He was an intelligent man. He didn’t need days, weeks, months to comprehend the obvious: She was different, and he had feelings for her, strong feelings.

The challenge was to get her to marry him, and to make sure she liked the idea. The challenge was proving to her that marrying him would not be a mistake. He must give her time—and he could make good use of that time as well.

By the time the ladies’ carriage had arrived, he’d analyzed the problem and decided upon a course of action.

He accompanied them to the carriage. As he was about to close the door after them, he said, “I must call upon Lord Lithby soon.”

Lady Charlotte’s eyes widened.

“Goats,” Darius said. “I was thinking of getting goats, and I wanted his advice.”

“Then come to dinner this evening,” said Lady Lithby. “He’ll be more than happy to talk about goats instead of listening to us debating seating and sleeping arrangements. Mr. and Mrs. Badgely will be there, too. You would be doing him a kindness.”

Lithby Hall, that evening

Darius soon understood that Lady Lithby had uttered no more than the truth. Dinner that night was definitely a trial, and even Lord Lithby’s genial smile seemed forced. Mr. Badgely prosed on and on about one of the house party invitees—a naval officer who happened to have served with his nephew—and Mrs. Badgely was even more tiresome, offering endless unsought advice about the correct way to conduct a house party.

This, no doubt, was why Lord Lithby did not hurry back to join the ladies as he usually did. Instead, the men lingered over their port. Ordinarily, Darius preferred this phase of dinner. Male conversation, even drunken male conversation, was usually more stimulating than women’s talk. Tonight, though, he was impatient to join the women in the drawing room, and perhaps did not pay as close attention as he ought to Lord Lithby’s observations about goats.