Unmasking the Duke, page 23
Johnny frowned. “But you can’t come to London. I’ve received no word that you are no longer in danger.”
Deliberately, Aline ran her hand over her flat stomach. “Have you ever seen a woman looking less with child at seven months at least? This is my safety, and the sooner I spread the word, the better. People might talk, of course, but I don’t care if you don’t. I am still a chaperone to your cousin for as long as you need me to be.”
Johnny smiled at her. There was no one like Aline, and he was privileged to have her friendship. “Five minutes?”
“Four,” she said, already gliding through the door.
Chapter Twenty-Three
From the coaching inn, Kitty walked to Seven Dials. Which, since darkness had fallen some time ago, might not have been wise. Seven Dials, once built for the wealthy to rival the beauty of Covent Garden, had never had the chance. The ornate buildings had never been sold as intended, and in no time, they were occupied by the scaff and raff of London, the poor and the criminal, penniless immigrants and desperate folk with nowhere else to go.
Not for the first time, she wondered why the Harrises chose to keep living here now that Jimmie ran a successful business. Perhaps here they could be the big fish in a little pond, and certainly, the criminal elements seemed to leave the family alone. All the same, it hardly seemed safe for Vera to wander these streets without protection.
Or Kitty. She walked down the middle of the roads as much as she could, caught no one’s eye, and ignored all remarks flung at her from doorways, most of which were ribald rather than threatening. She wondered if Bill Renwick’s name would still be enough to get her out of trouble.
In the end, she didn’t need to try it out. She arrived unhurt at the Harris’s building and banged on the door until it opened a crack and then wide.
“Kitty! What are you doing here on your own? Come in, come in!” Sal dragged her inside by the arm, closed, and locked the door before leading her to the stairs. “I thought you were in the country with your duke.”
“I was. I had to come back.”
“Have you just got here, then? Because Jimmie’s taken Vera and Luke up to Maida.”
“Oh. That was bad luck. But actually, Mrs. Harris, it was you I wanted to talk to.”
Sal took her into the big parlor, where a fire blazed in the grate. “Sit here, and I’ll get you something to eat. You look as if you haven’t slept for days.”
“I slept a little on the coach,” Kitty said vaguely. But she sat and took off her hat and cloak and gazed into the flames until Sal reappeared with a plate of sandwiches and a glass of milk. “Thank you,” she said with surprisingly sincere gratitude. “I’ve just realized how hungry I am.”
“Does your uncle know you’re here?”
Kitty shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Well, eat up and warm up, and then I’ll walk you to the hackney stand.”
Kitty nodded and swallowed the rest of her sandwich. “Mrs. Harris, do you still have Maggie’s locket?”
“’Course I do, love.”
Kitty met her gaze. “It was never Maggie’s, was it? It was yours. Who really gave it to you?”
Sal’s gaze fell. She was silent a moment. “I did give it to Maggie once. And she gave it back to me to keep it from her old man, so I didn’t lie to you or your duke.”
“Not quite. I don’t really care about that, though. Where did you get it, Mrs. Harris? For I’m pretty sure you are not the duke’s Cousin Margaret.”
Sal collapsed on a stool before the fire and dropped her head into her hands. “Oh God, Kitty, how did you find out?”
“Alf Smith. He told me you couldn’t have children, but he’s a nasty, lying creature, and I’d like to know the truth from you.”
Sal sighed. “He didn’t lie about that. I suppose for once the truth let him serve up pain enough. No, I can’t have children. Broke my heart and Jimmie’s. But we took my niece’s baby, Toby, when she couldn’t look after him and brought him up as our own.” She paused. “And then there was Mrs. Penrose.”
“Cousin Margaret,” Kitty murmured.
“I cleaned her little house for her. She was a nice lady and good to me. So even when she couldn’t afford to pay me anymore, I went round to see her. She was devastated when her husband died, leaving her with a child, but them fancy relations she hinted about never came near her. And she wouldn’t ask them to help, though I begged her to. But she didn’t live long after her man.”
Sal swallowed and swiped at her eyes. “She came here to die. Stayed with Jimmie and me, asked us to take her little Isabel when she’d gone. And she gave me her last piece of jewelry to pay for the child’s keep or to give to her when she grew up, perhaps. She didn’t really make it clear. And in any case, I gave it to Maggie to stop her telling anyone that the child was Mrs. Penrose’s.”
“And you changed the child’s name,” Kitty said, “to Vera.”
Sal nodded once. “We loved her to distraction. Always did. Always will. I couldn’t bear her to be taken away, even by her own people, even to make her rich. By the time that Dunne came poking around here, Vera only wanted Luke. And I didn’t mind doing you the favor… And Maggie had the right name, which helped.” She smiled faintly. “Did you know Maggie even called you Sarah after me?”
“I guessed.”
“I was touched,” Sal admitted. She raised her eyes to Kitty. “But why are you here? Didn’t it work out with your duke?”
“No.” Kitty swallowed. “It could never have worked out. It was based on a lie, and you must have known I could not flim-flam him into marriage.”
There was a long silence, during which Kitty consumed another sandwich and drank her milk.
Sal stood up. “Come on. I’ll go with you back to Maida. It’s time I told the truth to your Uncle Bill.”
*
The Gardens were eerily dark. The hackney dropped them at the back entrance, nearest to the cottage, and Sal knocked Kitty’s hand away as she tried to pay. Kitty let her and moved up the path toward the cottage.
Although the lantern hanging by the front door was lit, there was no glow from within the house.
“They must have gone up to the pavilion for a private party,” Sal said behind her.
“I expect so. Who else were they expecting?”
“I’m not sure. Your cousin, Pete, I think, and his parents. A few old friends.”
“Why didn’t you go?” Kitty asked curiously. She unhooked the lantern and used it to light their way to the main drive.
Sal’s smile was twisted. “Jimmie and me have been fighting. He thinks I shouldn’t have let this masquerade go so far, that it’s no wonder Toby lies. And I told him he only wants Vera to be a duke’s cousin.”
“Does he?” Kitty asked evenly, while every part of her that could hurt did.
“I don’t know,” Sal said. “I don’t think he does. Mostly he doesn’t want her to throw herself away on Luke.”
“And now he has ammunition…”
“If he tells Bill the truth and persuades Bill to tell your duke.”
“That would be best,” Kitty agreed, while her insides seemed to crumble.
“Would it?” Sal’s gaze was on her face. “I rather got the impression that you were in love with the duke. And that he was sweet on you. He might not marry Maggie’s brat.”
“He won’t,” Kitty said with certainty. “But that has nothing to do now with what you do or don’t tell Uncle Bill.”
The upper part of the pavilion, which actually had a fireplace and a chimney, was lit up like the Dearham Abbey ballroom, although there was no music. As they drew nearer, talk and laughter drifted down to them, along with the clink of glasses and the smell of wine and beer and food.
“Just like a ball night,” Kitty said lightly. Except no one as much as glanced out of the upper windows.
Entering the pavilion, she blew out the lantern and left it at the foot of the lit staircase. She hung her cloak and hat over the back of a chair. Sal dropped hers on top. Then they went up together, and in spite of everything, Kitty’s throat ached to be back with her family. Her true family. Not the Dearhams, and certainly not Alf Bloody Smith.
The old familiarity hit her like a battering ram. Various friends and family members were scattered across the various tables, everyone nibbling and drinking as they caught up with news and jokes. There was a tiny instant when everyone stopped talking, and then a cheer erupted.
“Kitty!”
A chair fell over as Uncle Bill sprang up from the corner table and charged across the room to fold her in his strong arms.
It was too much. The tears spilled, silently down her cheeks onto his coat as she hugged him fiercely, and he murmured her name over and over into her hair. And then, laughing and crying at once, she could embrace Rob and Dan and wave to the entire room. Until, over Dan’s shoulder, she saw the man standing half-hidden among the shadows by the corner table, where Uncle Bill had been sitting. Where Jimmie and Vera and Luke still sat.
The man was tall, seemed ridiculously well-dressed for this place. She had to blink several times because he looked so like the Duke of Dearham. And then he moved out of the shadows toward her, and her breath vanished.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, dropping her arms from Dan. “Not you, not you…” She waved one helpless hand. “How did you even get here?”
“I failed to catch you in time at the Golden Cross and came straight here.” He stood before her larger than life and ten times as handsome and dear and wonderful, and she had no idea how to bear his presence.
“Why is it,” he said softly, “that whenever you say goodbye to me, it is only by letter? Letters stained with tears?”
Of course he would have seen that, damn him, but did he have to bring it up when she was held together only by the weakest thread? She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Because I don’t have the courage to say it in person.”
And his eyes, wary and veiled, suddenly melted. He took her hand and raised it to his lips, and the blood sang in her veins.
“Oh, don’t, please don’t,” she choked out. “Your Grace—”
“Come, let us sit down and talk. You should hear what we have been discussing.”
Somehow, she sat beside Vera, leaning into her hug. It was just one more task to deal with before she fell apart in her own little bedchamber. On her other side, making everything twice as difficult, the duke folded his long person into the next chair, and again she forced herself to meet his gaze.
“I am not your cousin,” she said bluntly. “I think you know that.”
“I know that,” he agreed steadily.
She drew in her breath. “Vera is your cousin.”
“So I understand.”
It didn’t seem to have quite the cataclysmic effect she had imagined. “You knew that, too?”
“I began to suspect. Dunne is very good at tracing people, and the building did seem to be important.”
“Anyway, no offense to His Grace,” Vera said cheekily, “but who wants to be a nob?”
“Vera,” Luke said warningly.
“Well, we’ve had all that! His Grace can give us a wedding present if he wants, and throw any work he likes your way, but I’m not going to live with his family, and I don’t want any public acknowledgments. My dad is going to give me away, and I’m going to marry you.”
“Jimmie,” Sal said, low, and her husband looked at her, both pained and angry. Perhaps she couldn’t bear it, for she looked instead at Uncle Bill. “I’m sorry, Bill. It was a hard secret to keep, especially from you and Mary. And I shouldn’t have lied about Kitty’s birth name and set you all off on the wrong track.”
“No, you probably shouldn’t,” Uncle Bill agreed heavily. “But I’ve already told Jimmie I understand why you did.”
“The thing is, Mrs. Harris,” the duke said, “you are very good at keeping secrets. And since it’s what everyone seems to want, I’m more than happy to leave it that way. Though I do congratulate you on your daughter’s character and will do anything either she or you wish in order to help her.” He glanced from Sal back to Kitty. “From the world’s point of view, nothing has changed. For all anyone knows to the contrary, Kitty, you are my blood relation. The great Ludovic Dunne has said so. No one will look down their noses at my choice of bride, and no one will ostracize you, cut you, or otherwise make your life unpleasant.”
She stared at him, a wicked surge of hope mingling with disbelief. “You would live a lie? You?”
He shrugged. “Actually, I would do anything to live with you. But the lie will not be between us. It was one we told inadvertently in good faith, and if the world loves you as my betrothed already, I see no reason to tell them anything else.”
His eyes, suddenly, unforgivably, were teasing. “But if you really want to, we can tell everyone you are the illegitimate daughter of one Maggie and, probably, her violent paramour Alf Smith, the same Alf Smith who is about to be executed or perhaps merely transported. Society, being what it is, will only laugh at me, and I find I don’t really care. But it will be very unkind to you. You will be lonely, uninvited, the butt of cruel jokes, and treated as a social leper. It is not fair, but it is the way of the so-called polite world, and until we can change it, I think we can be pragmatic enough to be happy.”
“If only for the children’s sakes,” Vera said irrepressibly.
Kitty gazed wildly from one to the other, and then at her uncle and cousins and at Luke and the Harrises. “You have all decided this, haven’t you? Even before I got here. That I should lie and pretend for a coronet!”
Vera leaned closer and whispered in her ear, “For the man you love.”
With a sound very like a sob, Kitty sprang to her feet. “You don’t understand! It’s spoiled! I am spoiled!” And she bolted for the door, rushing past surprised guests and throwing herself down the stairs, grabbing her cloak as she went.
She stormed out with some vague intention of going back to the cottage, to her own, familiar bedchamber, and curling up into a ball, alone with the realization that nothing could ever be the same. But by the time she realized she had forgotten the lantern, she was facing the dark path to the lily pond.
She halted, breathing deeply, and a voice behind her said, “I thought you would come this way.”
Johnny. The duke. She closed her eyes. How much more strength would she need?
She felt movement beside her, heard the striking of flint, and then a light glowed on the ground, showing her Johnny’s beloved figure crouched over the lantern. In profile, his face was handsome and tranquil, and yet she knew, somehow, that he was not calm at all. There was a slight tightness to his jaw, to his lips, that betrayed discomfort at the least. He closed the lantern and swung it up.
Only then did he look at her. “Shall we talk?”
And perhaps because he asked rather than insisted, she was helpless to refuse. He offered her his arm, and she took it. Did she imagine the faint relaxation of his muscles, the relieved twitch of his lips?
“Oh, what is there to say, Johnny?” she whispered.
“Everything,” he said, moving forward up the path, “if you still call me by my name.”
“It has become a habit in my head. Look, I thank you—God knows I thank you—for trying to salvage our plans and for being prepared to sacrifice your honor in such a way, but I cannot lie, live a lie in order to let you marry a nobody from the Seven Dials gutters.”
He nodded as though taking in her points. “First, any sacrifice would be in letting you go, and my honor, like everything else, is wrapped up in you. We have already dealt with the lie part—really, it’s just a game to get around the foolish rules of society that we had no hand in making but have some chance, perhaps, of changing. Which brings us to you, my nobody from the Seven Dials gutters.”
“Are you making fun of me?” she asked in a small voice that she hated because really, she wanted to scream at the world, shout them down, shout Johnny down for his foolishness.
“God, no. I’m making fun of society’s judgments. You are an exemplary young woman, kind and hard-working. You look after your family and help with the family business. You have been sheltered and cared for as much, if in a slightly different way from, my own sisters. You are pure, innocent, and sunny by nature. Now, me… My nature may be me mostly amiable, or at least sanguine, but I am far from pure and innocent. From a mischievous child, I grew into a youth who thwarted his family and happily embarrassed them over his frequent scandals. I fought duels, raked my way across Oxford and London without a care for my responsibilities or how my behavior might reflect on my family. But the truth is, I got away with everything because I was a nobleman, the heir to a duke.”
“There is more to you than that,” she said quietly.
“Yes. As there is more to you than the young woman I described. Or the child from the gutters who never did anything wrong. But society—the society I was born into and where we must live if we are to be together—will not forgive you for your birth. Although you could not help that any more than I could help mine.”
He lit the way up the steps to the lily pond, and her mouth fell open. The area around the pond was lined with what looked like silk cushions and blankets.
“What…how did these things get here?” she asked, astonished.
“They’re from my coach,” he said apologetically. “I thought I would find you here when I first arrived, and since it’s sheltered by overhanging trees from the rain and the worst of the winds, I thought we might as well be comfortable as we talked.”
She waved one hand in a helpless gesture of dismissal. “Talking changes nothing. Life is not a fairytale after all, and what we know now spoils what we had.”
“How? Do you love me less?”
“Of course not.”
“You cannot believe I love you less?”
She gazed up at him, her heart beating hard at the boldness of what she was about to say. “You left me last night. You could not bring yourself to take me in the end because whatever you say now, I am spoiled in your eyes. I could not live with your contempt, however secret you made it.”
