CHAPTER SIX
The words blurred in Lucy’s sight and her head buzzed. She felt sick to her stomach and the curate’s warning words sounded in her head: misery and disappointment. Until this instant, the bare fact of her unseasonable advent had not fully registered.
As one in a dream she heard Dion’s frantic accents: “A chair! Quickly, one of you, she is going to swoon!”
Then Stefan: “Stand aside!”
Next instant, as her knees gave way, she was caught up in a strong embrace and lifted off her feet.
Her head fell upon a broad chest and she sank thankfully into its welcome warmth, closing her eyes.
In the background of her mind, she could hear a scrabble of footsteps, hushed urgent voices and the scraping of a chair. Then a rumble in her ear.
“Set it down there. Is it possible to procure her some water?”
“I will fetch it from my abode,” answered a familiar voice. “It is close by. I will not be above a moment.”
The outer vestry door opened and closed, and then Lucy felt movement in her captor.
“I am going to set you down in this chair, Lucy. You will be better directly.”
Her eyelids fluttered open, and she found Stefan’s strong jaw line jutting above her, his face at an odd angle as he looked down at her.
“Oh, see, she is recovering,” came from Dion close at one side. “Poor Lucy, are you all right?”
“Don’t ask her foolish questions, Dion.”
Lucy could only be grateful for the admonition.
She felt incapable of speech as she was set once more upon her feet and pressed into a chair.
She leaned into it, struggling to hold up her head, and wishing she had still been held in the safety of those strong arms. Stefan’s hands were on her shoulders, his face close before her own.
“Have no fear. I will not let you fall.”
But the faintness was receding already and Lucy straightened herself, feeling strength beginning to return to her limbs. “I am better, I think.”
Doubt was in Stefan’s face as he eyed her, his grip on her shoulders lessening a trifle. “Damn that curate for being altogether right! We should not have pursued this.”
Lucy managed a faint negating gesture. “It was only the shock of seeing it written. I think I had not fully believed it before.”
“Well, I am glad you saw it,” said Dion stoutly. “Far better to have the truth than to be beset by doubt and question, and at the trifling cost of a half-swoon.”
“Trifling!”
A weak laugh was drawn from Lucy at Stefan’s scornful tone and raised brows as at last he released her.
“Dion is right. I am better, I promise you. I could not wish I had not seen it.”
Stefan looked down at her again. “You cannot be said to have got much by it. It is clear your mother’s name was never established.”
“But it is a start,” Dion insisted. She moved back to the sideboard and looked again at the entry. “Oake or Oade.”
“Believed Oake or Oade.”
Lucy met Stefan’s sceptical glance. “You think they may neither of them be correct?”
“I think it highly probable. You said yourself your adoptive father could not be sure of the names the woman mentioned.”
Her face fell, and Stefan was smitten with remorse. He need not have dashed her hopes so thoroughly. Relief arrived in the form of the curate, armed with a carafe of water and a glass. Stefan shifted back, allowing the fellow to administer such aid as was at his disposal.
Instinct had led him to catch Lucy up as her legs buckled, but he had been conscious of more than the mere urge to assist her as he held her in his arms. He had been too caught up to think of it at the time, but as he watched Mr Waley administer the restoring water, Stefan felt an echo of it in a ridiculous urge to take the glass out of the man’s hand and himself hold it to Lucy’s lips as the curate was doing.
As if only he should be allowed to see to her comfort, a notion as absurd as the feeling that accompanied it.
Annoyed with himself, he emulated Dion, taking another look at the entry of Lucy’s birth in the register. Only then did it occur to him that the curate had located the entry with unerring accuracy and speed.
He glanced back at the man, who was pouring more water into Lucy’s glass.
She had taken over holding it for herself, to Stefan’s secret satisfaction, but his attention was all for Mr Waley.
When Lucy at last waved away any further refill and gave up the glass to the curate’s hand with a word of thanks, Stefan took his opportunity.
“You have seen this before, I take it?”
Mr Waley looked deeply offended at being addressed in this manner, but Stefan cared nothing for that. He waited, so the fellow had no choice but to respond, though his voice was stiff. “Yes, my lord. I had occasion to search for it.”
“When you had been told of Lucy’s illegitimacy, no doubt?”
The air of outrage grew. “Since you ask, sir, it was indeed so.”
“I suppose you wanted proof,” Dion cut in, her manner — to Stefan’s annoyance — a trifle conciliatory.
Mr Waley glanced at her and then turned his eyes on Lucy. Stefan was conscious of a rise of irritation.
“To be frank, Miss Lucy, I had some anticipation you might require proof.”
“And you gauged the matter correctly,” said Dion.
“Not entirely,” Stefan drawled. “Lucy was hunting for her mother, not proof. She already had the letter from my uncle if she wanted proof.”
He glanced at Lucy as he spoke and noted her attention appeared to have wandered.
Stefan did not know whether to be glad or sorry, for he was aware of behaving with unnecessary hostility.
Why he should be so provoked by the wretched curate was a matter passing his comprehension.
He shifted the focus of his attention. “Lucy!”
She looked up sharply. “Yes?”
Stefan smiled involuntarily. “You were miles away.”
She shook her head slightly as if to clear it. “It occurred to me that by the time he wrote the entry, Papa must have made his decision to adopt me.”
Dion looked struck, and Stefan was moved to check back upon the entry, reading the name again.
“Of course. Lucinda Graydene Ankerville.” He felt absurdly elated for her. “An excellent compromise. You live no lie as Lucy Graydene, yet your true identity is available to you.”
Even the curate was moved to produce a thin smile. “A move typical of the vicar, if I may say so. He was far-sighted as well as the kindest of men.”
A tremulous curve was upon Lucy’s mouth, and Stefan shocked himself with an image of kissing the soft lips.
“I believe I was lucky, more so than if the man who fathered me had chosen to take me in. I was not of his flesh, but no one could have been a kinder or more loving father to me than my own dear papa.”
Stefan was glad of his sister’s rush to embrace Lucy, for he was still in a state of shock at the trend of his earlier thought. The last thing in the world he needed was to become amorously entangled with Lucy Graydene.
The prospect of hunting throughout Gloucestershire for all the Oakes and Oades who might live there daunted even Lucy, keen as she was to find her mother’s family.
“And when we had done so,” added Dion in accents of frustration, “ten to one it would turn out your papa had the name wrong after all and the whole effort will have been for nothing.”
The matter was exhaustively discussed over dinner and beyond, but Lucy was loath to abandon the scheme. She was encouraged by Stefan’s belief that the woman succoured by Mr Graydene could not have come from very far afield.
“By the vicar’s account, Alice was afoot, and in the last stages of pregnancy. She cannot have come far in that condition.”
“True,” agreed Lucy, “although that does not mean she had not travelled some distance at the start of the business.”
Dion was in agreement. “Exactly so. If only we knew where my uncle had met her, we might have something to go on.”
“But it might have been anywhere,” Lucy said despairingly. “Bath or London, for all we know.”
Stefan looked decisive as he shook his head.
“No, I think we may safely discount the sort of places where the gentry congregate.” A sliver of dismay entered Lucy’s breast as he gave her an apologetic look.
“I have no wish to distress you, Lucy, but we must face facts if we are to gain any ground at all. Recollect the whole affair was conducted in secrecy. Had Alice been of gentle birth, there must have been a scandal. I cannot think the vicar’s efforts to uncover the facts would have met with failure.
I imagine his enquiries were exhaustive. ”
Lucy sighed. “I do not know. I keep telling you, he had little time to inform me, and he was so weak he could not speak for long without losing breath.”
“But you do know his efficiency,” Stefan insisted. “You know what sort of a man he was. Does it seem to you likely that he would have adopted you as he did had he any suspicion there was a genteel family in the case? After all, he wrote to my uncle.”
Aware of Dion’s compassionate gaze, Lucy thrust down the rush of dismay attendant upon all discussion of Papa. She met Stefan’s eye with assumed fortitude. “You are saying I must look among country folk and village maidens. Very well, but how does that help with our immediate enquiries?”
Dion’s mischievous look dawned. “Yes, we cannot go knocking upon the door of every farmhouse in the county and demanding if they are missing a daughter.”
“No, but what we can do,” said Stefan, dismissing his sister’s attempt at humour, “is to find out the parish clerk and ask him if he knows of any persons named Oake or Oade hereabouts.”