Chapter 21 #2
“Of course,” Heathbrook said, although he’d seen little sign of it.
“But they have also missed their home in Somerset, so being there has slightly changed their perspective of matters.” He softened his tone.
“And my fiancée’s mothering has gone a long way toward making them feel comfortable at Longmead again.
Madame Bernard suffers from rheumatism, so she and her daughter are presently staying at Longmead to be near Bath’s natural springs with their healing properties. ”
On his trip to London, he had weighed whether he should mention that, but Yates’s investigators would eventually have discovered it in any case.
Yates narrowed his gaze on Heathbrook. “But you do intend to marry Miss Bernard.”
“As soon as possible. Although my running up here and leaving her with the boys directly after hearing of Zack’s true lineage might .
. . er . . . have been ill-considered. Lily chose to tell Giselle the truth first. When I learned of it, I demanded more information, and unfortunately, Zack overheard the truth. ”
Yates blanched. “So, he knows.”
“Yes. Frankly, I don’t know what to do about it. I’d like to claim him, but it would destroy Lily’s marriage.”
“It would indeed. And after your mother brokered that marriage so carefully by offering the man a handsome dowry, you wouldn’t want to do that.”
Mother had paid money to get Lily out of his hair? “Didn’t Pritchard wonder about an unrelated countess offering him a dowry?”
“Well, she didn’t do it directly. She offered it to Lily’s parents, and they offered it to him. That gave him an extra incentive to marry, since he was enamored of Lily, and Lily seemed to like him well enough.”
“I suspect that Lily likes anyone who can buy her whatever her heart desires,” Heathbrook said dryly.
Yates sighed. “I would protest that statement except I saw firsthand how true it is. She fixed her sights on me at first because she saw how much property I owned.”
Heathbrook gaped at him.
“But I was not a sixteen-year-old boy, and my head was not easily turned by a pretty chit’s attempts to flatter me.” He stared hard at Heathbrook. “What of your Miss Bernard? Is she of Lily’s ilk?”
“Giselle?” Heathbrook laughed. “I had to work hard to convince that woman to marry me. She’s a veritable wonder. She could have any lord of any rank that she wants, and for some reason she seems to love me. She’s about as far from being Lily’s ilk as a woman can be.”
Heathbrook rose from his chair. “And speaking of that, I should probably get home before she changes her mind about accepting me.” A very real possibility, unfortunately.
“But I do need to know— are you going to continue to fight for custody? I do not wish to go on with the struggle, but I will if I must.”
Yates rose slowly. “How about this? I shall request that the court consider making us both common law guardians. It is frequently done and would meet the spirit of your father’s will, if not the actual letter.
Your father did not make allowances for people changing, and I’m afraid, neither did I.
But I can see that you have matured, and it makes no sense to me that you should have no say in how your brothers’ money is spent or invested. ”
“That would be good of you, Yates. Although to be honest, you’ve been taking care of their money for a while now. Assuming I find nothing wrong in these ledgers, I see no reason you can’t continue. We could meet once a month to look over things and make decisions.”
Yates nodded. “And perhaps when you and Miss Bernard choose to travel for your honeymoon or go abroad on a short trip, the lads might be allowed to visit here?”
Heathbrook was beginning to think his mother’s appellation of Frigid Freddy for Yates wasn’t entirely accurate. “They would like that, I’m sure.” He thrust out his hand. “Lord knows they’ll soon be too grown to want anything to do with us old chaps.”
Taking Heathbrook’s hand, Yates shook it vigorously. “I’ll consult with my lawyer about how we should handle the guardianship matters, and you should consult with yours. In the meantime, you’d best go soothe your wife-to-be’s apprehensions. Those boys could use a mother, at least for the nonce.”
With a nod, Heathbrook left, carting the ledgers back to his carriage.
As he told Tom to return to Longmead, he was happy he’d listened to his instincts about Yates.
The man would never be a close friend, but given that he held some important family secrets, he might make an excellent family advisor.
Heathbrook could certainly use one of those.
But how had he managed to judge his cousin so unfairly in the first place?
Perhaps it had begun because Yates had seemed so much like Father—sanctimonious and controlling, a man certain he was doing the right thing when really, he was marching over the backs of everyone who got in his way.
That sort of man always raised Heathbrook’s hackles. Too much like Father.
Then again, Heathbrook had to admit that Father’s instincts about Lily had been right. Perhaps if Heathbrook hadn’t been so bullheaded himself about things, he might have seen that. He shook his head, wondering what Father would have said to see him marrying a French woman like Giselle.
A faint memory bubbled up in his mind, of his father in Verdun, voicing his opinion of their landlady’s cousin: That Mademoiselle Bernard is a solid sort.
Madame Dubois was wise to have brought her on.
She brightens this dreary lodging house.
She’s not as beautiful as your mother, mind you, but she will make some man very happy.
Yes. She would. As long as that man wasn’t so foolish as to let her go. Especially if that man was doing it simply because his father had actually liked her.
Heathbrook stared out the window. Perhaps it was time to stop fighting his father in his head. Because Giselle was right. He was afraid to love. With Lily, he had let love take over his common sense, his duty to family, and even his instincts that had told him she wasn’t as wonderful as she seemed.
So, the thought of giving up everything to that unpredictable emotion again damned near terrified him. It made him wonder if he was wrong about Giselle, too. What if she proved to be another figment of his love-soaked imagination?
Except he wasn’t wrong. He knew Giselle’s character as well as he knew his own. She was brave and good and, yes, a solid sort who was everything he wanted in a wife. What was more important, she loved with her whole heart and never wavered.
He loved her already just for that. She was the kind of woman he could easily see spending his whole life with, having children with. In fact, he couldn’t even imagine his life without her in it. Such an imprisonment would be worse than any he had suffered in France.
So, why suffer? All he had to do was throw himself off a cliff into her arms, and his suffering would be over.
He would just have to pray that she caught him.
Waiting for Heath’s return had been difficult, to say the least. Not that Giselle had not enjoyed the time she had been spending with her family. She had thoroughly liked having the chance to be around her half sister without worrying who might wonder at their closeness.
Then there was Maman, who had never really had a chance to get to know Jon and Tory.
Now that Maman had heard about Tory’s pregnancy, she had been in her element, suggesting various possets and cures for morning sickness.
Tory had gone along with Maman’s suggestions gamely, though she had seemed a bit taken aback by all the attention from her father’s former amour.
The boys, of course, had reveled in the attention of Giselle’s relations.
Evan had talked “man to man” with the duke about a number of important matters she was not privy to, Kit was already nursing a serious infatuation with Chloe, and Zack spent his time asking Tory a million questions about what it was like to be expecting a baby. God only knew why.
Now it was the end of their second day. Everyone else had gone to bed, but Giselle could not.
She was too excited about her plan to enable Heath to claim Zack as his son.
Of course, it would only work if she married Heath, which meant much of it was up in the air, but she was hopeful that Heath would have had time to consider her parting words to him.
What was more, Heath’s butler had already informed her Heath was arriving soon, since he had sent a messenger ahead to say so. She paced the drawing room in her best evening gown and tried not to get her hopes up, but she desperately wanted to see him.
“What’s this I hear about Jon and Tory and Chloe visiting?” asked a voice from the door.
“Heath!” she cried, and ran to him, then stopped short as she realized how they had left matters.
He did not let her dwell on that. He lifted her in his arms and twirled her about just as he had done that day in the study, then finished the twirl with a kiss that was far more provocative than the one they had shared then.
A long time later she broke away from him to say, “Stop that! I have so much to tell you.”
“It had better not be a litany of all the gossip Jon and his family brought from London, because I’m simply too tired to listen to it. Too tired to do anything, to be honest.”
“I do not think you will be too tired to listen to this,” she said. “I have thought of a way you can claim Zack as your son without hurting Lily or her family.”
“What about without hurting Zack?”
“That is another matter entirely.” Swiftly, she described what had happened with Zack since Heath had left.
Aside from cursing the boy soundly when he heard that Zack had gone up in the tower again—forcing her to go up in the tower, which Heath seemed to find just as terrifying to hear—he took it all in stride.
When she was done, she began to pace. “So, here is my plan for Zack. What if we let it be known that when your mother went east to Broadstairs, she was actually planning to go across to France in a few months, so she could fetch the baby that I was soon to have by you? We could claim that she had to go to Broadstairs as soon as she could have been showing.”
She halted in front of him. “We can say your father refused to approve a match between you and me, so your mother took the baby and claimed it was hers by your father. She managed to escape France in time to avoid the war beginning again. But Zack, the baby she’d presented as hers and your father’s, was really mine and yours. ”
He blinked and looked as if he would say something, but she continued hastily.
“I was actually in Paris at the time you conceived the child. You and your father came to Paris without ever coming back here, so we can claim you were there by the time you conceived the child. Lily’s trip with your mother could be passed off as her needing Lily to help her with the child on the trip to France and back.
Jon was not in Paris yet—so he would not know one way or the other if you and I had already met.
My father is dead and cannot tell anyone that we had not met. It would all work.”
“Except for one thing,” he said softly. “You would have to bear the stigma of having a child out of wedlock. Your mother would suffer from that, too.”
“I do not care!” she cried. “I daresay Maman would not care, either, since she hardly knows anyone here, and she barely speaks English. And no one here knows enough about my family to go hunting up the truth about us, anyway. Even if they did, who would remember if I had been pregnant then? It was years ago.”
She frowned. “But for it to work, we will have to tell Maman, as well as Lily and your cousin, so that they can confirm it if anyone asks. Lily would certainly agree to it because she does not want Zack. But do you think your cousin would agree?”
“I think he would, actually. After talking to him, I found out that you were right all along—he really does have the boys’ best interests at heart.
And having gone through the ledgers he lent me on my way home, I can honestly say he has been a great manager of their properties.
” He rubbed his unshaved chin. “Of course, if we reveal that Zack is illegitimate, Zack would never be able to inherit the title if I were not to have a son.”
“I do not think he would care, but the chance of that would be remote anyway, with two elder brothers. He just wants to be able to call you Papa.”
“And you Mama.” He searched her face. “You would do that for me, risk having your name dragged through the mud, so I could claim Zack?”
“I am doing it for Zack, too. He says that is what he wants. Of course, he will have to be made to understand what it means for his future, so if he does not wish to endure the stigma himself, we can leave matters as they are. But if that is what he wants . . .”
Heath broke into a grin. “This is precisely why I fell in love with you. Because you give yourself wholeheartedly to everyone you care about. Because your heart is—”
“Wait, wait, wait!” she cried, not sure she had heard him correctly. “You fell in love with me?”
“I did.” He drew her back into his arms. “You were right. I was afraid of love, afraid I’d lose myself to it the way I’d done with Lily, who hadn’t deserved to have my heart.
Then I realized that you already have my heart.
And not because you’re beautiful, although you are ten times more beautiful than Lily.
But because you’re clever and kind and thoughtful and full of such joie de vivre that you make me happy every time I’m near you.
I love you, Mademoiselle Giselle Bernard, soon to be Giselle Oakden, the Countess of Heathbrook. Marry me, will you?”
“As soon as possible,” she whispered with a heart so full she feared she would die of happiness. After covering his face with kisses, she grinned at him. “How else can we make sure my papers are finally made legitimate?”
He drew back to arch an eyebrow at her.
“I am teasing you, mon amour,” she said with a laugh. “I do love you, you know.”
“Then perhaps you should prove it,” he murmured, and released her only long enough to go over and lock the drawing room door.
“Mon chéri!” she said in mock reproach. “I thought you said you were too tired to do anything.”
He returned to take her into his arms. “Too tired to listen to Jon’s and Tory’s gossip, yes. To make love to you? Never.”
“We are not married yet, sir,” she reminded him, half-teasing.
“You’re nearly a bride,” he retorted. “And that’s good enough for me.”
As he drew her over to the chaise longue, she decided it was more than good enough for her, too. No longer did she have to content herself with adequate.
At long last she got to have her heart’s desire.