“Not always easy, though, I suspect. Even when you’re not encountering ghosts. I paid a call on your father in his cell this morning. He did quite a bit of blubbering, asking for forgiveness and such, assuring me he’d been taken in by a pretty face and a woman’s wiles. I accepted none of his excuses. Murder, for God’s sake.” He shook his head, clearly disappointed and disapproving. “I can only be grateful that our parents are not alive to see what he has become. He has not aged well. I hate to contemplate what he might have spent these past twenty years doing.”
“Duping people, apparently.” She recalled the easy lie that had rolled off his tongue the morning he opened the door to her. “He seems quite proficient at it. Certainly Mrs. Mallard fell for him and his scheme. I doubt she is the first woman of whom he’s taken advantage.”
“I suspect you have the right of that. She has been charged as an accessory to his crime, a crime for which he will no doubt go to prison, if not the gallows. I shall, naturally, hire the best barrister in all the kingdom to defend him in hopes he will not make that long walk with the short drop, but I will not use my influence to spare him all punishment.”
Daisy could not work up the enthusiasm to care about a man who had proven himself so remarkably dreadful. “I was in his company only a short while, but I saw no redeeming qualities in his behavior.”
She and her uncle walked along in silence for several minutes as though each was contemplating the fate of the same man. Daisy wondered how different her father’s life might have been if her mother hadn’t died or if her uncle had handed Daisy over to him when he’d come to claim her. Would she have provided her father with a reason to become a better person, or would he have dragged her down into the mire alongside him? Would she be an inquiry agent now or someone without scruples who took advantage of people?
The quiet was disturbed by her uncle’s clearing of his throat. “My sister came to see me yesterday, quitedistraught by your reaction to the truth. To be honest, I was rather surprised you didn’t show up at my door to vent your displeasure with me.”
“I was somewhat drained after the confrontation with my father and then the conversation with my aunt. I planned to have my tête-à-tête with you after I regained my vitality.”
He chuckled low, then sobered. “I won’t apologize for what I did. I was the earl by then, but my obligation was to the whole of my family and to do right by each individual. With him, your life would have been misery. Of that I am convinced.”
“I don’t disagree, but still it was a shock after all these years of believing him dead to learn he was very much alive. And to learn of the great lengths you all went to in order to keep the truth from me. I was deceived by the people I trusted most. I’m struggling with that, Uncle.”
“Perhaps we handled it poorly, but it was all done with good intentions. For whatever that is worth.”
She felt a slight easing of the pressure from the weight that had landed on her chest with the arrival of the truth, but it still bore down on her, and she didn’t know if she’d ever again be entirely comfortable spending time in the company of these people.
“Has Charlotte ever told you about the man she almost married?”
Nearly tripping over her feet, Daisy was acutely aware of her eyes widening and her mouth going slack. Perhaps because he’d anticipated taking her off guard, Bellingham had immediately ceased walking to study her.
“I thought not,” he said quietly, reflectively. “She wasthirty. Considered to be permanently on the shelf at that age.Hewas an earl. I won’t tell you which one, so don’t bother to ask. Her dowry was five thousand. I know you considered that a pitiful amount when I named it as yours, but he is the reason. I wanted some reassurance that a man coveted you and not the coins.
“Be that as it may, her earl gained little by offering for her. The young swells were more interested in the younger, glittery debutantes. But she had caught his eye. He had no need of property for he had plenty of his own. He did not need her dowry as his coffers were full. He did not require political influence for he had it in abundance. Nor did he need to be associated with a powerful family, because at that time few were more powerful than his. I did not doubt his love for her, because she was the only thing of value he gained by marrying her. And she also loved him, immensely. Her face shone with her feelings for him. As you are well aware, my sister gives nothing in half measures. I knew he would ask for her hand before the Season was done, and I would grant it.”
He looked up at the sky before lowering his gaze back to hers. “Then one night, a constable came to the door to inform us that your mother had been found dead in a rather dodgy part of London. Too much opium, they surmised. The constable hadn’t even departed before my sister had roused all the footmen and ordered the carriages readied. Soon we were racing through the streets to make certain you were all right. When she saw you in that little cage they kept you in”—he shook his head—“she announced then and there that you would never again be let out of her sight.
“But her earl, you see, did not want to be responsible for another man’s child. He gave her the choice—him or you.”
He didn’t need to tell her whom her aunt had chosen. Daisy felt the tears immediately burst forth, so many that she couldn’t stop them from rolling down her cheeks, too many to brush away, although she tried valiantly. Her aunt understood broken hearts because hers had been broken. Daisy rather wished she didn’t know the truth of it. But it was the lack of truth telling that had made her angry to begin with. She had to be willing to accept all the truths. Even when they hurt, and this one hurt more than discovering her father was alive.Oh, Aunt Charlotte. It breaks my heart to have broken yours.
Because she had. With her not reaching across to take the hand offered. By not staying the night. With the last words she’d tossed to her aunt. Yes, Daisy had been hurting, but now she had a clearer comprehension regarding how much heartache Aunt Charlotte had been experiencing as well.
Finally, her uncle handed her his pristine white silk handkerchief before looking back up at the sky. “’Tis such a lovely day. I suspect Charlotte is strolling through Hyde Park at this very hour, taking in the sun.”
She was indeed, near the Serpentine. Daisy spotted her straightaway.
Although it was terribly undignified, and she was far too old to be doing it, she began loping over the green, waving her arm. “Auntie Charlotte!”
Her aunt turned and immediately quickened herpace, her worry evident in the creases that deepened on her face. “My dear girl, whatever is wrong? What’s amiss?”
They nearly crashed into each other, her aunt’s hands folding around her arms, steadying them both—steadying Daisy as she had for almost her entire life.
“I’m so sorry,” Daisy said. “Please forgive me for what I said the other night. I will stay with you whenever you want. I love you. I love you so very, very much.”
With a soft smile, Aunt Charlotte skimmed her gloved fingers over Daisy’s cheek. “My dear girl, I know all that. You’d had a shock, and I should have found a way to tell you sooner, more gently. You were correct. You had a right to know the truth of things. But why your change of heart now, so quickly, when I expected you to remain cross with me for at least a week?” She closed her eyes. “Bellingham.” She opened them. “Bellingham told you, didn’t he? About my earl. Blast the man. I wondered why my brother sent word that he would meet me at Hyde Park at this hour. He hates the outdoors. The only lord in all of England who does.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that you made that sacrifice?”
“Because it wasn’t a sacrifice. And I never wanted you to feel that you were responsible for my spinsterhood. I can’t imagine that life with him would have been any more rewarding than life with you. If he’d truly loved me, he’d have known how precious you were to me. The fact that he would ask me to choose—well, it made it very difficult to love him after that.”
So she’d given him up, along with all the satisfactions marriage would have given her. She might even have brought her own children into the world.
“I’m not going to call you Auntie Charlotte any longer.”
