Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

“I am glad to hear it,” said Lady Lithby. “I suspected that Charlotte heard a threat where there was none.”

“A threat?” he said. He reviewed what he’d said—for the twentieth time. “Good gad, you cannot mean she thinks I threatened to expose her. I told her quite clearly that my intention was completely the opposite.”

“She seemed to think your assurances applied only on condition of her becoming your wife.”

Women.

He did not grind his teeth. If he could restrain himself when with his uncle, he could restrain himself now.

“I made no conditions,” he said stiffly. “No gentleman would. If it sounded that way, I can only blame the heat of the moment. I did express myself badly, I am all too well aware.”

“I wished to make everything clear,” said Lady Lithby. “Some remarks you made might be misconstrued. I am concerned, for instance, that in your zeal to protect her, you made arrangements for the child.”

“Of course I have,” he said. “This morning I sent my servant Kenning to release him from his articles of indenture. I know it is an unhappy accident of fate, but the child’s present situation is an outrage. He is the son of a lady and a gentleman—a cad but a gentleman by birth. The boy shall have a proper home and an education befitting his station. I have everything in hand. You need not trouble yourself about it.”

“I must trouble about it,” said Lady Lithby. “We want the child.”

“You cannot be serious,” he said. “It will be impossible to suppress the matter if that boy remains nearby.”

“Charlotte does not want it suppressed.”

For the second time that day, he could not believe his ears. Had Society gone mad while he was abroad? Or was it only the Hayward segment of it? “She cannot admit to bearing a child out of wedlock,” he said. “I cannot believe you will let her do it. Your influence may prevent every door being shut to her, but she will be treated differently. Women far inferior to her on every count will look down on her. Perhaps few will dare to insult her openly, but you well know that Society has a thousand ways of cutting while wearing a politely smiling face. The idea of her being subjected to such indignities—No, it is unthinkable. Lady Lithby, you must dissuade her from taking this step.”

“She wants her child,” said Lady Lithby. “You must recall your servant from his errand.”

“Even if this were not completely mad, I could not call him off,” said the colonel. “Kenning has his orders. Everything has been arranged. He ought to be in Liverpool by now, if not on his way to Ireland.”

Chapter 15

Daisy did not lead his lordship to the nearest rathole but to his home farm and the pigsty.

They were still a good distance away when Lord Lithby discerned the small, lonely figure sitting atop the sty fence. Some of the men working in the farmyard glanced that way from time to time, but that was all. Apparently, they were used to the lad’s comings and goings.

Once upon a time, Lord Lithby recalled, before Hyacinth’s time, he used to hoist his daughter up onto that very fence. They would contemplate the pigs and converse.

Lord Lithby’s throat tightened.

The dog reached the boy first, and though she was her usual silently inscrutable self, Pip must have sensed her presence because he turned and looked round.

Lord Lithby composed himself, squared his shoulders, and approached the pigsty. The boy’s gaze shifted to him.

As he neared, Lord Lithby saw that one eye was bruised and swollen, making the child look like a little gargoyle.

He joined Pip and folded his arms on the fence, in the same way he’d done so many times when his daughter sat there next to him.

“You must be Daisy’s friend Pip,” said his lordship.

Pip nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I am…Lithby,” said his lordship.

Pip’s eyes widened. Well, one of them did, at any rate. “I beg your pardon, your lordship.” He snatched off his cap and made to climb down.

“No, no, you are perfectly all right there,” said his lordship, gazing at the blond head. The pale hair displayed a tendency to curl and an unmistakable cowlick.

This was Charlotte’s hair, as it was when she was a child, when she wore it loose, when no pins tamed the cowlick and artfully arranged the curls.

“You are welcome to admire Hyacinth,” Lord Lithby said, as he would say to anyone who seemed to appreciate his favorite sow. “She is a fine pig, is she not?”

“I’ve never seen such a pig before, your lordship,” said Pip. “Everyone says she’s the biggest pig in the world. But I don’t know how they can know, when most of them have never traveled as far as Manchester. But they think Manchester’s the ends of the earth, practically, and Salford is on the other side of the moon. Actually it’s very close. It took Mr. Carsington and me only a few hours to get there, and we never went faster than a canter.”

Lord Lithby recalled what Mr. Carsington had said about the Salford workhouse. His grandson—in a workhouse! It was not to be borne. He wanted to kick the fence to pieces. He told himself not to be an idiot.

“That is a prodigy of a black eye you have,” he said.

“I got in a fight,” said Pip.

“It often happens that way, I find.”

“Mrs. Tyler is very upset about it,” said Pip.

“Women often make a fuss about such things.”

“She said she’d send me back to the workhouse, but I think she was speaking in anger,” the child said. “Even if she meant it, Mr. Carsington said he wouldn’t let me go back to the workhouse, and a gentleman’s word is his bond.”

“This is true,” said his lordship.

A silence.

“I know I oughtn’t to be here, your lordship,” the boy said. “I was supposed to go back to help Mr. Tyler today, but I needed to think. Pigs are good for thinking.”

“This is where I usually come,” said his lordship, “when I need to think.”

This is where your mother and I have always talked over important matters, he could have added.

The most significant matter, the one they hadn’t talked about, sat inches away from Lord Lithby’s elbow.

“I still haven’t sorted it out,” Pip said. “Mrs. Tyler told me it was wrong to fight, and I said my mother was dead, and it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, isn’t it? And she said it was, but that wasn’t any reason to go about blacking people’s eyes and knocking their teeth loose. And I said what if she had a boy and another boy said something bad about her? Shouldn’t her boy defend her honor? And she said honor was for ladies and gentlemen. She said ordinary folks need to think about getting their living. She said, What if I broke my arm or leg or jaw and couldn’t work?”

“She has a point,” his lordship said. His face worked, but the child was looking at the sow while he talked and didn’t notice.

“But I can’t let people say mean things about my mother,” Pip went on. “Who’s going to defend her honor if I don’t? I have to. And if I have to do that, then I can’t be an ordinary person. But I can’t be a gentleman, either.” He frowned. “It’s a conundrum, sir, isn’t it?”

“No, it isn’t,” said his lordship, his voice not quite steady. “Women don’t see things the same way men do. You were right to defend your mother’s honor.”

He patted the boy on the shoulder. No one would ever know what it cost him to do that and nothing more. No one would ever know what it cost him to hold back, because Pip’s mother ought to be the first to hold him in her arms.

“Women don’t appreciate the finer points of fighting,” said Lord Lithby. “What happened, exactly?”

According to the outdoor servants, Daisy had found Charlotte’s father, and they were headed to the home farm.

“Of course he would come here,” she told Mr. Carsington as they made their way to the end of the yard where the pigs were kept. “This is where Papa always comes when he needs to—”

She broke off as

they came round a building, and she spotted them: her father, leaning on the fence as he always did…and Pip, who, judging by his gestures, seemed to be reenacting his fight with Rob Jowett—and threatening to fall into the pigsty.

She’d fallen in more than once, she remembered.

Papa would shake his head, and say, One of these days, you’ll learn, Charlotte. I hope.

“It appears that Pip has found your father, too,” said Mr. Carsington.

She would have run to them, but he held her back.

“You must collect yourself,” he said. “You can’t start blubbering. Pip becomes anxious when you cry.” He told her how Pip had come to him the other day, worried because “the younger lady” was weeping.

“Did he?” she said, her throat aching. “But he is a good boy. In spite of everything that’s happened to him. A good boy, and a gentleman.”

She peeped over his broad shoulder at Pip, who had turned his head and was watching them. Had he any idea? Had he sensed her in the same way she’d sensed him? Had her voice remained with him somehow, in his heart? Was it there, perhaps without his quite realizing: the broken little speech she’d whispered before she gave him away?

I love you. I’ll always love you. Please forgive me.

But how could he remember? He was merely regarding her with curiosity—though it was hard to tell at this distance, given the black eye.

Papa turned to look at her, too. He smiled as he always did.

The dog was her usual self, busy shaking a stick into submission.

Charlotte’s eyes filled.