Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Uncle Dorian?! Even the child spoke him with great familiarity.
Rose nodded weakly, searching that shy young face for some resemblance to her own handsome husband. The blond hair was certainly not from his side of the family, but what about those high cheekbones and playful mouth?
“You don’t know who we are, do you?” the woman asked suddenly, the realization spreading across her face. “Dorian really hasn’t told you, has he?”
At that moment, Rose could pretend no longer and burst into tears. It was all too much. Both the woman and the little girl came forward and tried to comfort her.
“Why are you crying?” asked the child, patting Rose’s hand and kissing her cheek.
“She didn’t know that Uncle Dorian had a half-sister and a lovely little niece, I think,” suggested the woman. “He told us we would be safe and secret here but I didn’t really think we would stay secret even from you.”
“Sister?” sobbed Rose. “You are Dorian’s sister?”
The woman nodded and put a cup of tea into Rose’s hands.
“Not every nobleman in England would acknowledge a half-sister born on the wrong side of the blankets, never mind one in so much as trouble as I have been, but Dorian goes his own way.”
While Rose continued to cry for a few moments longer, they were now happy tears. She returned the embraces of both woman and child with the greatest sincerity, only glad now to see the resemblance to Dorian apparent in both faces, despite their different coloring.
“Dorian does go his own way,” Rose agreed with a tearful laugh, finally taking a sip of her tea. “Still, I am very glad to meet you both now. My name is Rose. What is your name, little one?”
“My name is Charlotte and I’m five years old,” declared the girl. “My doll is Mary. My Mama is Jane.”
“What a lovely doll! I used to have a rag doll like Mary once, but not half so pretty as yours, Charlotte.”
The child smiled at this compliment and snuggled into Rose’s embrace. The warmth and solidity of the small girl was comforting and soon Rose managed to compose herself.
“When I saw you at the front door, I thought…” she began to say to Jane and then blushed beet red at what she had first assumed.
Jane grasped Rose’s unspoken meaning quickly but only laughed, not at all insulted and indeed finding the idea absurd.
“Oh, I can imagine what you thought. Dear me! I can promise you, Rose, that my brother has no skeletons in his closet of that kind.”
“I never want to think so, but people tell me so many stories that it is hard to keep them from my mind,” Rose excused herself.
“Dorian is no angel,” his sister continued to laugh, before her voice grew more earnest. “I know that. But he’s no devil either.
He would never get a woman into trouble and leave her to fend for herself, not like some men.
He never thought for a minute of turning his back on you, you know, after what happened. ”
Rose felt a twinge of shame now. While she believed that he was hiding something important, it was true that Dorian had never been less than honorable in his dealings with her. Her suspicions had done him a disservice.
“Seeing you at the door gave me such a turn but I feel so foolish now,” she confessed. “Please do forgive me. I have been a little dizzy lately and might not be well.”
“It seems we might be in the same boat,” replied Jane kindly but mysteriously, offering biscuits from a tray. “You should eat something, especially if your breakfast was lacking. Now, would you like to tell your story first or shall I tell mine?”
Jane’s story was an unfortunate one but told in pragmatic terms without self-pity. Her mother had been Dorian’s governess, Miss Reese, who was seduced by Dorian’s father and then dismissed from her post.
A penniless gentlewoman without living relatives, it had been fortunate that Miss Reese attracted the attention of a gentleman farmer, Mr. Vernon, who considered a well-spoken and an educated wife an asset, even if carrying another man’s child.
“My step-father was not a bad man, but he never took to me and I never felt part of their new family. So, I accepted the first offer of marriage I received at eighteen and left home to marry my Luke, a junior naval officer. Midshipman Luke Chatham…”
“Was he Charlotte’s father?”
Jane nodded with a fond smile.
“Yes, a cheery blond youth, with blue eyes, like his daughter. Anyway, Luke was away with his crew and I was alone at Portsmouth when Dorian tracked me down. I didn’t believe a word he said at first, but he had called first on my mother and she had written to confirm every word.”
“What prompted Dorian to do that, after so long?”
“Dorian finding us? Oh, it was after his parents died, when he was clearing out his father’s papers.
He found letters between my mother and his father and saw what had happened between them.
It incensed him and he wanted to do something to put matters right.
Dorian is ten times the man his father was! ”
Rose nodded, feeling proud of Dorian herself, and seeing Jane’s pride in her brother too as she spoke of him.
“My mother told him that she was well-married and needed nothing from his family now. Still, she asked that he keep an eye on me, with my husband at sea and a child expected. No full-blooded brother could have done more for my comfort or in the efforts he took to get news of Luke’s ship during that time. ”
Not wanting to ask the next question, Rose only waited, her eyes already full of sympathy for what she knew would come. When it arrived, the blow was as heavy as she had expected but still spoken in matter-of-fact tones.
“Luke died of a fever at sea, shortly before Charlotte was born. He never saw her. Dorian was there for us, though. He’s no churchgoer but still came to the church and stood as godfather when Charlotte was christened.
I don’t think I could have got through either the funeral or the christening without him. ”
Rose nodded. This was a whole other side to the Wolf of West London. No one would ever have thought of Dorian Voss in this light and she rejoiced to hear it. Jane too was smiling fondly as she continued her tale.
“After that, Dorian took a little house for us in Portsmouth and visited regularly. He would tell me of all his adventures in London while dandling Charlotte on his knee, and I would laugh. It wasn’t a world I wanted to be part of, but I could see it suited him well enough.”
“It is not really my world either but I know he has many friends,” Rose remarked. “He charms everyone in London and the whole world likes Dorian Voss.”
“Many friends, yes,” Jane nodded with a raised eyebrow. “But no one who loves him, except us. I think sometimes that was part of why Dorian came looking for my mother and I too, even if he didn’t know it. We all need to be loved, don’t we?”
Except us. Was Jane including Rose among the people who loved Dorian? Or only herself and little Charlotte?
“Did you marry again?” Rose asked, intending to change the subject harmlessly and not have to talk about love, although it had once been her favorite subject.
Jane shook her head.
“No, I only expected to marry,” she sighed, touching her belly again.
“You will likely be shocked, Rose, but I shall not lie to you. I met another handsome sailor in Portsmouth and when he told me the most fantastic stories, I believed every word. Even after what happened to my mother, perhaps I believed that all men were like Luke or Dorian. They are not.”
“He left you in that condition?” inquired Rose falteringly, having learned enough in Dorian’s bed and the Ravenhill House library to ask the question.
Jane gave a resigned nod and short laugh.
“Yes. I believe Dorian would have horsewhipped him if he could have laid hands on Owen Gaskell – that was his name – but he was already on a ship bound for South America and nothing to be done about it.”
“How awful! What a terrible man!” Rose exclaimed in sympathy, already on Jane’s side for Dorian’s sake, regardless of any transgression on her part. “I should have horsewhipped him too, if I could!”
Rose knew that much of society would have condemned Jane, but having lived some months with Dorian as companion, she was beginning to see the world from his perspective more than that of the ton. The unfairness of events roused her wrath on Jane’s behalf.
“So, you see, I am now not quite respectable on two counts, both for my own birth and for the child I carry. I could not let Dorian take us to Ravenhill House so he brought us here to keep me safe from wagging tongues in Portsmouth. When I am delivered, we will move somewhere new and I will only be Mrs. Chatham, another widow with two children.”
“Mrs. Chatham,” Rose repeated, as a realization came to her.
“‘Mrs. Chatham, a woman of my close acquaintance with whom there can be no question of impropriety…’ Dorian mentioned you once when I asked about his correspondence. He did not explain and I thought he was talking of some elderly family retainer or similar.”
Jane took Rose’s hand and squeezed it in sisterly solidarity while shaking her head with a chagrined smile.
“Men! Is that any way to introduce anyone, I ask you? Now, what about you, Your Grace?” the other woman asked. “What brought you out here today to a house you suspected was empty?”
Rose took a deep breath and stroked the hair of the little girl who was still leaning against her and singing softly to her doll.
“I thought I could understand Dorian better if I knew more of him,” she attempted to explain.
“He went to London and has not come home for weeks but I don’t understand why.
We have not argued and I thought we were happy together, even though our marriage was not a love match.
He was not even angry. I do not think there was another woman. He just went…”
Jane Chatham looked at her with compassion.
“You thought you could learn more of Dorian from his childhood home?”