Chapter 22 #2
Lady Pevensey’s round face had turned doughy with indulgence and lined with an expression of bitter self-interest. Lucasta, in contrast, was refined and elegant, graceful in bearing and manner.
Her straight, broad nose and the clean, firm line of her jaw reflected her strength of character and spirit, while the softness of her lips and eyes showed her compassionate heart and gentle nature.
He had heard her speak of her father with adoration, but her mother—or the woman she had thought her whole lifetime was her mother—Lucasta had revered as a near saint. This would be a blow beyond fathoming.
“We can leave, if it will be helpful,” the Luneberg girl offered, “but Lucasta will tell us everything anyway.”
Lucasta, nodding, found her voice again. “That is true.” Her hands grasped her friends’ tightly.
“And me as well,” Cecilia said, placing her hand atop those of the other girls.
Her ladyship looked only at her husband, her expression desperate and pleading.
“You’d broken things off with me,” she wailed.
“You had told me when things began that since you had your heir, you and Cecily meant to go your separate ways. But then she found out about me and insisted you reconcile. I thought—” She gulped, the tendons standing out in her pale throat.
Her eyes bulged with fear. “I thought, if there were a child…you could not cast me away.”
“But my father?” Lucasta exclaimed. “He and my mother were married. Unless my birth date is a lie as well?”
Lady Pevensey shredded a ruffle on her skirt with nervous fingers.
“I tricked him,” she said, staring at the ruined lace.
Her voice was low and hollow. “He was the nearest thing to hand, and I knew he’d never speak of it.
Felicity and I looked much alike at the time, and in the dark, when I had encouraged him to tipple, which he never did… ”
She closed her eyes for a long moment, then cast a look of piteous appeal at her husband.
“When you wouldn’t take me back, I had to crawl to Laurence and tell him, tell my sister what I had done.
They promised to take me in and claim the babe as their own.
Felicity was so desperate for a child, she would forgive me anything, and she always said it—it helped her that it was Laurence’s child after all. ”
“You told me it died,” the Baron said, still wearing a look of horror. “When I told you I would support it, but I could not divorce Cecily.”
His wife nodded, her face crumpling. “I-I wanted to tell you the truth when you finally proposed to me, after Cecily died. But Felicity was ailing, and they thought of Lucasta as their own, and we could finally be together in the open… I saw no reason to make it known.”
“No reason?” Lucasta echoed. “No reason I might have been told the truth?”
Her ladyship refused to look at Lucasta, addressing the Baron in a pleading voice.
“Aunt Cornelia visited once when I was…expecting, and she caught on. She guessed at the whole of it— You know what a fearful dragon she is for meddling. She promised to keep quiet, because of the shame, but I was never in her favor again.”
“He never told me,” Lucasta said, bewildered. “Not even on his deathbed.”
“That was the condition upon which he let me live with them, when I had no one else to support me,” Lady Pevensey said.
“I couldn’t tolerate my mother. She’s a worse harridan than Cornelia.
I won’t apologize for that,” she added, casting a look at Frotheringale that held more spirit than she’d shown during the entire interview.
“No, you’ve got the right of it,” Frotheringale agreed, wide-eyed. “Frightful harpy, m’grandmother is.”
“I promised Laurence that I would regard the child as wholly his and Felicity’s.
” Finally, her ladyship looked at Lucasta, or at least in her vicinity of her chin.
“He didn’t want anything to shadow her joy in having a babe of her own to cherish.
It was no loss to me. I was never motherly. ” She shrugged.
“That is true,” Lucasta said. “Felicity Lithwick was my mother in every way that mattered. A child could not ask for better parents than I had.”
The Baron, Jem thought, looked like he had just been given a facer.
The man dragged a hand through his hair.
“We’ll say none of this to anyone,” he said, glancing around the crowded room.
His eyes lit on his son, still lounging against the fireplace mantel, and the Baron watched him as if he now questioned even Trevor’s existence.
“If we keep it hushed up,” he said slowly, “perhaps we can persuade Cornelia to leave Lucasta something anyway…”
Trevor straightened. “What if I agree with your wife and consider her bastard child beneath me?”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Frotheringale said while the Baron spluttered. “I’ll still have you, Lucasta, even if you’re to inherit nothing.”
“Has everyone forgotten,” Jem said finally, “that Lucasta is to marry me? If you force her into anything, Pevensey, I’ll bring a suit against you.” He fixed a sharp eye on the Baron and then his son, the look he gave merchants he suspected of cheating him. “And you as well, Frotheringale.”
The Viscount paled under this threat, and the Baron gnashed his teeth. Trevor smirked. All three men understood that, with his deep pockets, Jem could wage a legal war that could last years and bankrupt them even if he didn’t win.
Lucasta rose. She looked ashen, but she held her chin high. When Jem went to her side she did not turn him away, but she didn’t look at him, either.
“If you will all excuse me,” she said, her voice steady and clear, though her lips trembled. “I have had a very trying—” She couldn’t finish the thought. Jem slipped his hand beneath her elbow and felt her shaking like the whiskers on a hare.
Everyone rose but her ladyship, who sat with her eyes fixed on her husband, frantic fingers mangling the lace of her skirt. Cecilia went to her brother, whispering something in his ear, while the Gorgons walked with them into the small entryway.
“We must discuss your forfeit, Queen Lucasta,” one of them said lightly.
“Not now, Annis,” Selina scolded.
Jem, with effort, drew his gaze away from Lucasta’s drawn, battered expression. “Forfeit?”
“For the first among us to accept a proposal of marriage,” Annis said.
“She must sing. In public. For money,” Minnie affirmed.
“No,” Jem said instantly. “Absolutely not.”
“Really?” Annis lifted her eyebrows in the haughtiest possible expression.
“You won’t allow it?” Lucasta gazed into his face with a questioning frown.
She looked at him as if she could see everything inside: his tangled guilt and loyalties about his family, the burden of worrying about their fates, the constant wearying decisions to be made about the business.
The fear that, with this new revelation, he could not in good conscience give Lucasta Lithwick his honorable name.
And the deeper, larger fear that, after all they’d been through, she would not find him the man she wanted, nor the man she wanted him to be.
No better than he was. Hadn’t she said that from the very beginning?
“Allow what?” Jem asked with apprehension.
“Allow me to sing. In public venues. Before an audience.”
His heart sank, and he pressed on her elbow to encourage her to continue up the stairs, away from the others. She went, pausing on a small landing above. Through an open door he saw a small parlor filled with more musical instruments than he knew how to name.
The room breathed Lucasta in every aspect, from the soft watercolor landscapes on the walls to the way the drapes were thrown back to admit light, the bundles of music heaped in baskets and neat piles, with here and there a dried flower adding a delicate fragrance to the air.
It was completely expressive of her mind, tidy but not rigid, and her personality, warm, gracious, welcoming, but also disciplined, ambitious, and possessed of a talent he couldn’t begin to comprehend.
“Lucasta.” He faced her, placing his hands on her upper arms. She was lithe and firm and strong, yet supple to the touch, and the urge to pull her against him was unbearable.
“I will offer you the protection of my name. I will give you every material comfort you ask for. I—It matters not that your birth was irregular.” How could he possibly hold that against her, when he had accepted his natural born siblings into his home and his life?
“But.” He drew a deep breath.
She held her eyes steady on her face, her expression open and watchful, the green in her eyes catching the light. But all the same he felt the tension in her, as if she were bracing herself for news she could not like.
“I cannot allow my family to be subject to scrutiny or public ridicule,” he said quietly.
“I have explained all this to you before. Judith is so fragile, and my father’s children— All they may depend on is the life I can give them.
I walk a fine line already, being born a draper.
If my wife were to be notorious, to be thought a public woman—you know what the perceptions are,” he said desperately.
“I wish they were different, Lucasta, I truly do. But this is the world we have, and even if I am to inherit an estate someday, my business is our livelihood. If we are scorned or looked down on, if no one patronizes my shops, we are destitute, and my whole family will suffer. Please understand.”
He rushed to say the last words, pleading for her not to withdraw. But he saw her face tighten, the lines around her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth, even the tendons moving in her neck as she swallowed. She drew her head back and looked him in the face. The expression in her eyes nearly killed him.