Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“My feelings are hard to describe,” Alice said, sitting back against the squabs of the Lorne traveling coach.
“Not giddy, though I am full of elated disbelief and relief and sheer joy, but more… I feel more like myself. Like the Alice I am meant to be. Whole and at peace and looking forward with only the normal anxieties of a mama and prospective bride and… I am babbling.”
She was also holding Cam’s hand, which a prospective bride was allowed to do, and traveling alone with him in a closed carriage, which was on the scandalous side.
And—Alice noted with significant relish—that mattered not at all.
Lady Josephine had been caught in time and would be prohibited from poisoning all the wells of goodwill and good cheer for miles in every direction.
She would never again set neighbor against neighbor, mamas against daughters, or swains against damsels.
“You are quiet,” Alice said, snuggling up. “You were wonderful, on the swing. Gabriella likes you very much.”
“I like her too. She’s brilliant and sweet and fierce and has the very best hair. Did you ladies make any plans for the future?”
“Yes and no.” Cam had been fairly quiet on the swing, too, but his mood was different now.
More brooding. “We agreed that we are mother and daughter. We agreed that you are a fine fellow. We agreed that a visit to Lorne Hall for all the girls will be an enjoyable day out. We agreed that people who think less of us because I did not marry my handsome, fickle cavalier cannot be allowed to decide our lives for us. Gabriella might regret that last part, and I will try to explain it to her, but we decided what mattered most for today.”
Cam kissed her knuckles, and though the gesture was affectionate, Alice sensed reserve even in his kiss. Distraction, perhaps. Preoccupation.
“You are pondering what we should do with her ladyship,” Alice said. “I don’t want to think about it. Bernard votes for a walled estate, and he is her son.”
“Your vote is the one that will decide the matter, Alice, and before you cast that vote, I would like to tell you a story.”
Oh dear. “Two stories in one day. This one has a dragon in it, too, I take it?”
“Of a sort.” Cam looped his free arm around Alice’s shoulders.
“More of a demon, in my estimation. The tale is short. Once upon a time, there was a young fellow. He was sweet, kind, charming, and—being a younger son—a soldier. He went off to Portugal—the war was just getting started—and fought nobly and well, but whenever he’d gather around the fire with his fellow officers, he was always pining for some female he’d left behind in the wilds of Yorkshire. ”
“Cam, no.”
“Yes. He wrote to her endlessly, though she never wrote back. He’d wanted to marry her before leaving England, but she was so young, and a soldier’s lot is uncertain, and one did not ask for a commitment when that might result in the lady of one’s dreams being yoked to an invalid, and so forth.”
“I do not care for this story.” All the joy in Alice sank into a small determined flame, one that would not be extinguished because of ancient history, however sad or difficult.
“I don’t care for it either, and the tale grows darker.
The young man hadn’t been in uniform very long before he was called to his eternal home, courtesy of the French army, and no letter from any young lady in York ever arrived for him.
He was brave, he was honorable, and, Alice, he was loyal to you.
I had the pleasure of serving with him, and I am not telling you a story so much as I am reciting facts you have a right to know. ”
The coach rumbled along, Cam’s arm was snug around Alice’s shoulders, and his hand wrapped about hers, and yet… Alice could not make sense of what Cam had just told her. Could not bear to see where the story led.
“Once,” Alice said, “when I was a girl, we had one of those winter storms that comes out of nowhere. The day was almost mild. The sunshine brilliant, everybody thinking thoughts of spring, and then… in minutes, I swear it was in minutes, Cam, the sky went dark, the temperature plummeted, and the snow came down at a blinding rate. The farmers lost livestock, and old Mr. Beckenbaugh would have died had he not been able to grab a cow by the tail and follow her into a byre.”
“Today is still a happy day, Alice. You and Gabriella are family now.”
And yet, Cam’s tone was solemn.
“I am family with my daughter now, true, but her poor father. I wrote to him over and over, Cam. Alex told me his posting, and I felt I owed him cheerful letters even though it wasn’t quite proper.
I was no great fan of propriety at the time.
I was in love. Then I needed to get in touch with him, but he never once wrote back. ”
The realization that two young people very much in love and trying to remain connected had been thwarted by Lady Josephine’s evil…
“He wrote to you too, Alice. I assure you of that. I saw him writing to you by firelight. Without mentioning your name, he spoke rhapsodies about your smile, your laugh, your joie de vivre. The rest of us grew tired of his panegyrics, and we resented you mightily for never sending him a line.”
The horses picked up speed, as did Alice’s thoughts.
“It never occurred to me that he’d written and that Lady Josephine had stolen his letters. Our mail sits in our slot at the posting inn, and she doubtless sorted through it at her leisure. The outgoing pile sits in plain sight, but I never… She is shameless.”
“She is dangerous,” Cam said.
That was a more accurate word. “I agree. She has no sense of right and wrong outside of what is right and wrong for her. In that regard, she is like a hungry, slithering creature, meaning no insult to serpents.”
Serpents at least had the decency to look like what they were. Lady Josephine, by contrast, was all gracious smiles, Scripture, and pleasantries, until she’d cozened from her victims a trust she would heartlessly betray.
“When you decide what’s to be done with her, Alice, you must bear in mind that she is a menace to all in her ambit.
Had Lord Throckmorton known your situation, he would have been back in Yorkshire on leave to marry you faster than a homing pigeon flies to his roost. Lady Josephine instead broke his heart, put you under her thumb, and saw Gabriella saddled with illegitimacy.
Those are egregious wrongs against people who did nothing to hurt her. ”
The sheer cruelty… The meanness and cunning. “I have no interest in revenge, Cam. Revenge feels too much like what Lady Josephine has been about all these years, playing God, appointing herself the judge, jury, and executioner of other people’s happiness.”
And their legitimacy, blast and damn her. Of course, Lady Josephine had wanted Alice to make a clean break with Gabriella. All the better to establish a clean break from the truth of her ladyship’s evil schemes.
“I agree,” Cam said. “Lady Josephine is a monument to moral bankruptcy. She’d count it a victory to move you to vengeance.
Perhaps what I’m asking you to consider is what justice requires.
If her ladyship’s scheme with Gabriella had succeeded, Mary or little Jeanine would have been next.
Mary would not have gone into service in a proper household, or not for long. ”
Grim thought. Mary would have no hesitation about putting her ladyship on a transport ship, or worse.
“While I consider her ladyship’s fate, might we discuss another topic?
” Alice was loath to consider anything about Lady Josephine, other than her permanent absence from the shire.
The thought of her was a foul miasma on Alice’s mental landscape.
“I mentioned your boys to Mrs. Dumfries, and I believe the girls overheard me.”
“My boys?”
“Your junior assistant clerks in training who lurk in doorways and patrol the parks and chat up your competitors’ clerks. Those boys. You must miss them.”
Something in Cam’s posture subtly shifted, becoming a tad less loverlike. “I have written to them.”
“Camden Huxley, you miss them. They are doubtless missing you.”
Cam shifted on the bench. He adjusted the window shade. He kissed Alice’s fingers again. “One does. They are absolute scamps, but one does miss them.”
One fretted over them, worried for them, and tended to their every need as well. “They should pay a visit to the Hall. A boy whose entire childhood is spent in the confines of London will develop weak lungs.”
“My boys do not have weak lungs.”
Alice patted Cam’s thigh. “Summon them for a visit, Camden, and perhaps to attend our wedding. They will have advice for you, and you must thank them and heed them as best you can.”
“Gabriella had advice for you?”
The subject was changed, which had been Alice’s objective. Cam was very protective of his collection of scamps, and they were doubtless protective of him, as family should be toward one another.
“Gabriella said I am to be kind but firm with you, as Mrs. Dumfries is with her charges. When you are overly tired, you must be allowed to nap or to read to yourself, and when you are sad, I must take you out for some air.”
“Will you nap with me?”
“Three times a day, my lord, for our entire honey-month and on every available occasion thereafter.”
Alice had taken the news of Lady Josephine’s perfidy—her original perfidy—well, in Cam’s opinion, while Cam had silently been howling, raging, and kicking mental tree stumps.
He paced the library, his temper only slightly abated.
To abuse trust like that, to condemn innocents to misery, to play skittles with other people’s lives, and all the while demand the respect due a proper, selfless lady… The whole shire knew Lady Josephine to be otherwise, and yet, she’d played her games for years, no consequences, no comeuppance.
“She deserves the noose,” Cam said. “And if the letters between Alice and DeSales are to be found at the vicarage, she might get it.”