Chapter 23 #2
“You have forgotten Birch Vale, Hetty,” Clarinda said in her musical voice. “I know it is very little, only what—three thousand acres?”
“Three thousand acres?” the marquess said. “Three thousand pounds a year?”
“With a good harvest, though the place is in need of improvements. I would like to see what Lord Darien has done with The Revels. He tells me he designed a canal for Bellamy. I have considered one for shipping our butter.”
“You do have the most excellent butter,” Clarinda said. “I shall call for tea and some bread. I think Lord Langford would like a taste.” She rang a small bell and spoke in a quiet undertone to the maid who appeared.
“Something in the water, do you suppose?” Darien asked, watching Henrietta set another neat, careful stitch.
“No, I think it is the feed. Our milk is very sweet.” She tugged slightly at the thread, and he grimaced. She sponged away the drop of blood with her saline rinse. The marquess watched her, an alert, calculating expression in his eyes.
“Objection three,” Henrietta said. “Darien needs a fashionable wife. I would be a terrible hostess. I have very radical opinions.”
“Henry has a deplorable sense of style,” Darien told his father. “She won’t spend a sovereign more than she must to clothe herself, and she’ll let anyone dress her. She’ll never bankrupt her husband with gowns and fripperies.”
“I have Duprix to dress me, thank you,” Henrietta said. She tied off the thread, then leaned forward and bit through it. “Have you told your father I was taken up by the watch?”
“Put in the bridewell?” The marquess recoiled.
“Yes, political dissenter,” Darien said solemnly. “Had to go myself and bail her out, with the help of her uncle—you know Sir Pelton, I’m sure. Pitt’s cracking down on public debates, and Henry got herself caught up with the London Corresponding Society. Put Pitt’s nose quite out of joint.”
“He could use it,” the marquess said. “Can’t say I hold with Fox and all his pot-stirring, but Pitt’s a mushroom trying to get out of his father’s shade. Do him good to have some air let out.” He regarded Henrietta with narrowed eyes. “Bluestocking, are you?”
“It is my dearest hope to be made a votary of the Minerva Society,” she confirmed. “Lady Bessington has been a mentor and a great inspiration to me.”
“Ah, Bess,” the marquess said, and his face softened with a memory that lit his eyes and made his mouth curve in a smile. “There’s not many a dame like her anymore. She reminds me a good deal of my marchioness.”
“I do wish I could have met Lady Langford,” Clarinda murmured. “I’m told she was a great one for causes, and very clever besides.”
“Translated Italian poetry,” the marquess said with a proud smile. “Work of some Renaissance poet. Febea, I think.”
Henrietta put down her sponge. “Febea!” she exclaimed. “The Earl of Warrefield has a copy of her Orlando Furioso. It was a very small printing, and I’ve never found a copy of my own.”
“Well, I can give you one,” the marquess said grandly. “And perhaps let you look at a few of her old papers besides.”
“I’d be very much obliged to you,” Henrietta said, dazzled.
“But perhaps not until after you’ve had your tour of the King’s collection,” Darien said. “His Majesty envies Warrefield his catalogue so much that he’s considering hiring Henry to make one for him.”
“A commission from King George?” The marquess blinked. Not even he, with his rank, ran tame through Buckingham House, where the royal family liked to withdraw from the public halls of St. James.
“We are losing sight of our objectives,” Henrietta scolded as Darien picked up his discarded shirt. “No, you needn’t wear that old thing. I’ve a fresh one for you.”
“I beg your pardon for my state, Clarinda,” Darien said, glancing at his hostess.
“No need,” Clarinda said with calm composure. “I am an old and happily married lady. Though Hetty is not.”
“He is my patient,” Henrietta said. Being this close to a nearly naked Darien made her stomach turn like churned butter, but it would gain her nothing to let the others see her in such a state. “Besides, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. He looks just like Lord Ellesmere’s Apollo.”
Darien gave her a wicked smile as he handed her his rumpled shirt. “Are you comparing me to a Greek god?”
Vain, irritating man. Henrietta waved a hand toward his chest. “You must be aware of your…attributes.”
“I am,” Darien said smugly as he held out his arms. “But I didn’t think you were.”
Henrietta glanced at the marquess as Darien’s head disappeared into his shirt. His lordship’s ire had been replaced with a hungry, frightened look that she felt embarrassed to witness. Lord Langford had seen how close he’d come to losing son number three.
“So, class,” Darien said, his voice muffled as he emerged from the voluminous shirt. “Unfashionable dress, unfashionable opinions, and not enough money. Henry, I think you told me you have not much of a settlement.”
“True,” Henrietta agreed, arranging the ruffles of his shirtfront. She had the distracting urge to kiss his skin before it disappeared beneath his clothing. “I use my income from Jasper’s mills to improve Birch Vale, and Papa has settled most everything on Lady Mama and the babies, as he ought.”
“Ten thousand pounds for your dowry, Hetty,” Clarinda said mildly. “And the inheritance from your mother when you turn five and twenty?”
“Oh. I’d forgotten about my dowry. And I plan on using Mama’s inheritance to rebuild my mill, if Hodge sells to me. So that ten thousand is already spoken for.” Henrietta buttoned Darien’s waistcoat. Her stomach shifted again when she looked up to find everyone watching her. “What?”
“She comes with an estate, an interest in her father’s mills, and twenty thousand pounds?” The marquess wheeled on Clarinda. “How is it she is not married already?”
Clarinda shrugged. “Henrietta has only just been presented, and she has been too busy to entertain suitors.”
“She has some philosophical objections to marriage,” Darien said. “The law’s attitude toward women’s property, or some such.”
“The law’s habit of regarding women as property,” Henrietta reminded him.
This conversation was veering from the course she’d plotted for it.
“Whatever I bring to my marriage will become my husband’s, his to use and dispose of as he may please.
I have no wish to find myself in the position of Mrs. Pennyroyal.
Now, tell me how I am to tie this impossible cravat. ”
The marquess watched as Darien held a hand mirror in his good hand and directed this next and most important step in his toilette.
Henrietta did the best she could, slapping his hand away when he tried interfering.
But when she looked up, she found Darien watching her with an impossible affection in his eyes.
Her breath dissolved into a tight, warm glow in her chest.
“A bluestocking for my son?” The marquess lifted a brow.
“Another Wollstonecraft in the making,” Darien confirmed.
His lordship shuddered. “Bah. Well, anything can be got ’round with the right settlements. I could give her another ten thousand for her jointure, if she makes a respectable man of you, and five thousand apiece for your children.”
Henrietta paused with her hands at Darien’s throat, feeling the heat wafting from him to her fingertips. “You cannot be suggesting what it seems you are suggesting, sir.”
“Oh, look, here’s tea,” Clarinda announced as a maid opened the connecting door to Henrietta’s sitting room. “Shall we go through? Hetty’s parlor has the loveliest light, and Langford, I should like to offer you bread and some of this excellent butter.”
She processed into the sitting room, and the marquess followed. Henrietta made a hurried adjustment to Darien’s coat and tugged him to his feet.
“Your father—” she began.
But as Darien stepped into her parlor, he froze. The opposite door to her sleeping chamber stood open and Mary Ann leaned over the bed, cooing as she unwrapped a tiny infant, who stared at her with a newborn’s total concentration.
“Oh, Hetty,” Clarinda said from behind the tea service. “Mary Ann asked if she might bring up the baby. Is this a bad time?”
Darien didn’t move, his gaze fixed on the other room and the occupant of the broad four-poster bed. Henrietta stopped breathing as she watched the expressions move over his face.
The marquess frowned and looked at Clarinda. “I thought you were—?” He tried and failed not to look at her enlarged waistline.
“Henrietta has taken in a ward,” Clarinda said. “Lady Celeste’s daughter.”
“Where did she come by that whelp?”
“Found it in a parsley bed, of course,” Henrietta said, moving toward the bedchamber.
The marquess’s horrified tone was a bracing slap to attention. Darien had warned her that Polite Society wouldn’t accept her as a mother. But thanks to her spectacular display at her debate, she no longer had reason to think society’s approval within her reach anyway.
She cared what Darien thought, though.
“I am told Lady Celeste was called away to the Continent,” Clarinda said. “Hetty was so good as to give the child a home.”
The marquess, too, stared through the door at the baby. “Baseborn brat,” he said under his breath. “The only thing my son has ever produced. And in your house, Clarinda? I am surprised you allow it.”
Clarinda paused with her hand over the teapot. “My lord, every child’s life is precious. You know that as much as I.”
The hurt stood out in his lordship’s face, the same pain Henrietta had seen in Darien’s eyes. All four of them paused for a moment in tableau, bound by their shared knowledge of loss.
“If you will excuse me,” Henrietta said. “I want to see Celestina while she is awake. Newborns sleep all the time, did you know that?”
“You may…bring her in here,” Darien said, pausing near a chair. “My father can leave if he does not wish to see his grandchild.”
“That is not my grandchild,” the marquess said swiftly.