Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
PATIENCE HAD BADLY underestimated how badly the people in orphan houses wanted to find homes for the unwanted children.
She had been to visit three since arriving in London. It was May now, and the Season was already winding down, and she was still in half-mourning, so it wasn’t as if she was in need of some social whirlwind, but she was just as alone here as she had been in the north. The house here was unknown, and she’d had to hire new staff, and Charlotte seemed to be settling in a bit less well than either had hoped. She complained of the constant noise and crush of the city. People out in carriages at all hours! And the grime. It’s everywhere.
But all of this could have been fine, for Patience could have adopted a babe and then made plans to simply go back home.
However, it seemed that a widow of her age wanting to adopt a child seemed to strike everyone as somewhat horrific.
They all chided her, saying she must simply get married again, that there was no reason she could not have a child of her own. They said that she needed a husband to care for the child, though when she put serious arguments as to what, exactly, it was that this husband was meant to do for the child, they could find nothing to say.
Sometimes, they blustered about how he must provide for the child, but when she pointed out her adequate financial situation, they all seemed to fall silent.
They would come out with something about how the child must have a proper father figure to observe in the household, and nothing she could say seemed to make them waver from this idea.
In the end, they would all say something like, “This is just highly irregular.”
At the fourth place, when the woman she was speaking to, a matronly type with gray streaks in her hair, started in on all of it, Patience decided to jump right past it.
“I’m aware, yes, that this is highly irregular. I might consider marriage again, I suppose, but the truth is, my last husband hit me. And I suppose it’s irregular that my first emotion, when I heard of his untimely demise, was relief, but that is the bald truth. I can’t subject myself to the risk of it again. Before I married him, I certainly had no inkling he would hurt me, and I don’t see how, if I entered into a marriage again, I could be better informed. But I am young and I wish… these children need a mother, do they not?”
The woman stopped. She was silent for a time. Then she lowered her voice. “Come back in ten years, Lady Balley. In ten years, I think the resistance will be much lower.”
“Ten years,” whispered Patience, horrified by this.
“My dear,” said the woman, “when I was your age, I had the notion that perhaps I could write an opera, one that might be performed in one of the bigger opera houses. I eschewed all offers of marriage, spending all my time writing music and playing on the piano. And then one day, he walked into the sitting room at my parents’ house, and everything was different.”
“Who did?”
“Why, my husband,” she said with a laugh. “He wasn’t yet my husband, of course. He was just a man, and when I saw him—no, when I heard him speak…” She shrugged. “You’re too young to commit yourself to a life alone, that’s all I’m saying. You never know what the world has in store for you.”
“But… what? You stopped writing operas?”
“Well, yes. It was a silly dream, a dream of my youth. I realized that what I wanted from all that, from being a celebrated composer of operas, was actually love. I wanted to be loved by many, but that is a foolish dream, not a dream that is really a true dream of a woman. I had confused my desire to be loved by a man with it, that is all. You will find someone else, someone you can trust.”
“I don’t wish to commit myself to a life alone,” muttered Patience. “That is precisely why I am looking for a child.”
“You don’t want a child, you want a husband,” said the woman.
“I assure you, I do not,” said Patience.
“Well, in ten years, it won’t seem like a waste is all. I did have a friend, one who ran off with a band of traveling gypsies and went all over, even into the Ottoman Empire and to Greece with them. That was because she wished to be an opera singer, you see. I was going to write the operas and she was going to star in them. She never did marry, but she died of the French disease in some brothel. Don’t throw yourself away on a foolish dream of your youth, my dear.”
Patience did not see how wanting to adopt an orphan was anything like going off with a band of travelers to Greece.
But she could see she was getting nowhere, and so she left.
That night, she cried again.
Charlotte stood behind her, combing her hair, the sensation of the comb against Patience’s skull soothing her sobs away.
“There are other considerations,” Charlotte said quietly. “Things that have occurred to me that I have not wished to mention for I did not wish to make things more difficult for you. But there is the fact that you would have little to give this child for its future, have you thought of that?”
Patience sighed. “I suppose.”
“My lady, you have no means to earn an income of any kind. You have enough to live on and to take care of yourself and a child, but what do you have to establish that child into its adult life? You cannot give a girl a dowry, for instance, and who would she marry? No man would marry some girl who is adopted by a widow. You would raise her coddled and cosseted, and then she would have to go into service or something.”
“Perhaps she could be a governess,” Patience said quietly.
“Perhaps,” said Charlotte.
“I could adopt a boy,” said Patience. “And then he could have a profession.”
“Yes, that might be better. You could pay for his schooling, and he could be a solicitor or a surgeon or something. But he, too, would face a feeling of having been brought up in your world, with a viscountess mother, who would then never ascend to those heights.”
Patience shuddered. “So, it is some selfish idea I have, some idea that would not do anything but sow misery.”
“I haven’t said that,” said Charlotte. “Ask a motherless and fatherless child whether he’d like to grow up in a workhouse or with us, and… well, no question, I think. But if you do decide to wait and think it over and, well, see if there might be someone else who you do wish to marry—”
“I don’t want to get married,” said Patience.
“It’s only that I might,” said Charlotte. “I feel as if you are counting on me here, to choose this life with you, but if I should fall in love—”
“No, of course, there is no question of that. If you wished to marry, I should never stand in your way.” Patience sighed again. “Why must everything be so complicated?”
“I don’t know,” said Charlotte, “but it is.” A pause. “I told you about that invitation that came today?”
“Oh, everyone in the entire town has been invited to that ball. It will be crowded and stuffy and ridiculous,” said Patience. “I do not wish to go. I am still in half-mourning, and must be in mourning until July. There is no reason to go to a ball in mourning.”
“All right,” said Charlotte. “But you might stand with a bit of something diverting, that is all I am saying.”
CHARLOTTE brOUGHT UP the ball only six more times. In the end, Patience acquiesced to it just to put an end to the subject.
She had a new dress made, which seemed foolish, a mourning dress, but she didn’t have any mourning dresses that were suitable for evening wear, so it was necessary. And then she resigned herself to a truly dull evening of standing on the periphery and watching people dance.
She definitely didn’t think he would be there. That thought never crossed her mind.
In all truth, she never thought about that highwayman. Never.
It was odd, because she should have tried to figure out who he was. It would have made sense to attempt to divine his identity. She knew that he’d been an associate of the Duke of Dunrose, at least that seemed likely. So, if she had put her mind to it, considered it even a little, she might have discerned his identity rather easily.
Dunrose ran around in a pack of dukes. There were four of them, and they were fast friends. They spent their autumns together in the country at a house belonging to one of them. When they finished a hunting party at Dunrose’s place, they all went together somewhere else. There were four Lords of the Crossroads, and four of them.
It was laughably obvious.
Of course, the Lords of the Crossroads weren’t being talked of anymore. Everyone was going back through the crossroads these days. If she had heard rumors of some group of French-speaking terrorists who claimed to be taking wealth from the English gentry in the name of Napoleon, she had not made a connection to the highwayman who’d captured her that night.
He was there at the ball.
They were all there. The Duke of Dunrose, the Duke of Arthford, the Duke of Rutchester, and him—the Duke of Nothshire. They were mingling readily in the gathering, dancing here and there, standing together in a clump and laughing together at various points, laughing at each other’s jests.
She watched him across the room, and he was so obviously him that she wondered at herself.
Why had she given this man no thought?
Why had she never wondered how it was that Balley fell victim to bandits trying to deliver her ransom?
Why had it never troubled her that she’d been part of an aborted kidnapping attempt?
Surely, she should have asked someone to do something about their villainy. It was the bare minimum she should have done to responsibly protect the rest of society from these men.
It was only that deep down, she had sort of suspected that they’d killed her husband.
And deep down, she was rather pathetically grateful to them for that, as shameful as that might have been.
So, in the end, it was no wonder she didn’t like to think about any of that.
They weren’t looking at her, so she looked at them. She stared at them from her vantage point on the other side of the room, clutching her glass of punch. She didn’t even try to hide that she was staring at them.
Then, of course, he looked up, and he saw she was looking at him, and their gazes locked, and her heart began to pound in her chest and she looked away in mortification.
But now, gazing into her glass of punch, she wasn’t looking at him, so she didn’t know what he was even doing.
She looked back up.
He was still staring at her.
Dash it all.
She looked away again, and now the panic was rising in her chest like a live thing trying to claw its way out of her throat. She didn’t know what to do, but she began to think that she must flee the ball immediately. She started to catalogue all the things she must do in order to leave. She would have to find a servant to go and fetch her carriage driver, who had left and was not bound to return for some hours yet. She didn’t truly wish to trouble the servants at this house, so she began to think if it were possible that she might simply walk home. Of course it was farther than she would have liked, for she could not afford a house in the fashionable part of town, and that seemed impossible, after all.
She looked back up.
He was gone.
They were all gone.
She could not breathe.
She looked about for some surface, any handy surface, to deposit her drink upon, and eventually left it on top of a bookshelf against the wall, and then she lifted her skirts and went for the door to the ballroom.
Now, she was in a hallway, and she rushed down it, heading in the direction of the entryway.
“Lady Balley!” called a voice behind her.
She recognized it as his. She should have kept going, should have picked up speed and run for her very life, because she was beginning to realize that there was no real reason that he shouldn’t have silenced her, since she knew who he was.
But she didn’t do that. For some unknown and indiscernible reason, she stopped and turned and waited.
He approached her, his gait slow.
He was tall. Taller than Balley had been, taller than her brother. He had broad, broad shoulders and large hands. She remembered those large hands wrapped around her much smaller arm, jerking her along through the forest, and a strange sensation went through her.
It should have been fear.
It was like fear.
It was different.
Her breath caught in her throat.
He was practically on top of her now. She remembered that his whiskers had been dark points against his jawline under his mask when he’d taken her from the carriage. Now, the sharp line of his chin was clean shaven. His nose was long and straight and nearly regal. And his eyes, his eyes were huge and brown and so very expressive. Mournful eyes, she thought, which was a foolish thing to think, and certainly nothing about him had been mournful when he’d kidnapped her.
“Lady Balley,” he said.
“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” she heard her own voice saying, and she sounded dismissive and vain and every ounce the proper and contained lady, though how she was managing that when she felt as if her entire being was unraveling, she did not know.
“Oh, I do,” he said. “I’m certain of it, though it was before you were married, back when you were Patience Hawthorne. It was at the, erm, the Lakely house, wasn’t it? You played lawn bowling with a kind of determined passion I’ve rarely seen since.” He was amused. He smiled at her, but his eyes were still mournful.
Stop thinking about his eyes, which aren’t mourning anything, she snapped at herself. “That must have been a very long time ago.”
“I’m Benedict Taylor,” he said. “The Duke of Nothshire. I don’t know that I was a duke back then either. I had a courtesy title, the Marquess of Millins. That might jog your memory?”
She swallowed. “Oh, yes, sir, I do remember you.”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course you do.”
A moment passed between them, full of unspoken conversation.
“You seem to have found your way back to London,” he said.
She inclined her head
“And you’re all right,” he said. “I wanted you to be all right, and it seems you are.”
What? She furrowed her brow. “You did not,” she whispered.
He gave her a little half-smile. “If there’s anything you require, you need only ask it of me, you know? There’s no reason to go around spreading bits of gossip about anything at all, and if I can do something to see to your comfort—”
“Are you bribing me, sir?” she said.
“No,” he said. “You haven’t said anything thus far, and I can only hope that remains the case.”
So, this was the way of it, then. He’d pursued her because he was worried she would tell tales about his activities as a highwayman. “I haven’t heard tell of the Lords of the Crossroads, anyway,” she said. “What is there to say?”
“Good,” he said.
Then, it was silent.
He fidgeted with his cravat, clearing his throat. “I do mean it, my lady, even if I see why you might have reason to doubt me. I do wish for your comfort and happiness, I promise you. And if there is anything I can do, I am at your disposal.”
She looked him over. What? Had he… killed her husband because he had somehow known she wished it? That couldn’t be. She had given him no reason to think that she would have been pleased with Balley’s demise.
She hadn’t allowed herself to really think about how it had happened, she supposed. It was too horrid to admit to herself, how pleased she was with her widowhood. So, whenever she thought on it, a great well of horrified shame welled up in her, and she could not bear it, so she didn’t dwell upon it.
But now, she was very quickly having a number of realizations about the way it had all happened. Her husband had been lured to his death. To hear the stable boy tell the story, he’d been attacked straightaway, with no warning. They had planned to kill him and take his money.
Had that been the plan all along? She was trying to sift through the half-remembered conversation she’d had with the highwayman in that room with the awful pictures in that brothel, and she couldn’t remember it well.
They hadn’t killed anyone else, so far as she knew.
She supposed it might not have been him. Could there have been some other violent band of criminals in the wood that night?
Come to think of it, why did a duke turn to thievery in the first place? What need did he have of her husband’s coin or jewels? There were titled men who had lands and status but very little in the way of actual wealth. Her brother had been one, after all. But these dukes were not.
“Anything you can do for me?” she said coldly. “What if I say I’d like my ransom returned?”
His lips parted. “I wasn’t aware you were in a situation where finances were a concern, but if you are, yes, I might be able to see what I can do.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I’m not asking for some sort of handout. You stole from me. From him. I realize I don’t even understand why.”
“Keep your voice down,” he said. “This is exactly the sort of thing I don’t think needs to be spread about.”
Oh, well, then. It was bribery. It occurred to her that she had power over this man. This man with the broad shoulders and the large, large hands was worried that she could ruin him, just by talking .
She was not the sort of person who ever had wanted that sort of power over anyone at all, but she had come to understand her place in the world as rather powerless, and it seemed foolish to throw away anything that might be advantageous. “Anything that you can do for me, indeed,” she breathed. She lifted her chin. “Let me think about it, Your Grace.”
His expression flashed something—alarm, yes, but something else. A kind of respect, something she hadn’t seen in his expression before. She had never seen anyone look at her in that way, truthfully. Men looked at each other that way, but a man to look at her—a woman, a widow—like that …
It was startlingly gratifying.
“All right, my lady,” he said, and his voice was different now, more liquid, more expansive. “How much time do you need to think?”
“I really don’t know.”
“One night, perhaps? I could call upon you tomorrow. We could discuss this somewhere more privately.”
Oh, she could have callers now, and it would be different than before, when she had been an unmarried virgin, always needing to be chaperoned. As a widow, she could meet with a man alone.
A thrill went through her and she wondered at herself.
Anyway, she wouldn’t be alone, not entirely alone. They might be alone in a room, but she had a houseful of servants, and she was not ever truly alone. He could not hurt her, at least she didn’t think so.
Would he hurt her?
That feeling again—the not-fear feeling that was like fear. It was a little bit delicious, wasn’t it?
“Yes, call upon me,” she said. “We shall discuss what business there is to discuss between us.”