Page 49 of The Cornish Bride

Chapter Twenty-Two

Morvoren did know what to do, as it turned out. Once they’d arrived back at Ormonde, and Kit had sent Ysella to her room in disgrace with orders not to come out of it again for a week, Sam went with him to see Morvoren in her room.

“You’re back,” she exclaimed, looking up from the book she was reading. “How was Bath?” Kit had taken her there to take the waters when she’d first been with child and had suffered from a lot of sickness, so this was where Kit had told his mother to say they’d gone. Sam knew, because Morvoren had confided in him, that she had only pretended to drink the sulfurous waters to please Kit.

She looked very becoming with her hair loose to her shoulders and a pretty, pale-blue shawl wrapped around her. Some color had returned to her thin cheeks and an air of health hung about her that had not been there when they’d left such a short time ago.

“Ah,” Kit said, taking the chair beside her bed. “A small white lie. We haven’t been to Bath.”

Morvoren inclined her head to one side much as a dog will when being talked to. “I had a suspicion you hadn’t been.”

What? How had she known? Sam distinctly remembered Kit asking the dowager to tell Morvoren that they had gone to Bath on business to look at some agricultural machinery Kit was thinking of buying.

Morvoren, who seemed to be taking all this very calmly, smiled at their discomfiture. “I’m not stupid, and neither are the servants. Loveday has brought me every bit of gossip from the servants’ hall while you’ve been away, so I know Ysella has been missing. And I can see, Kit, that you have been in some kind of fight by the state your ear is in.” She indicated the stool beside her dressing table. “Do sit down, Sam, you look like a spare part standing there fiddling with your cuffs.”

Sam pulled the upholstered stool nearer to her bed and sat down, trying hard to leave his cuffs alone.

“I didn’t want you getting upset about Ysella,” Kit said. “Not with you having been so ill.”

Morvoren sighed. “Oh, Kit, darling, I’m well on the road to recovery now, have no fear. I should be up and about if it weren’t for Doctor Busick. My legs will atrophy if I have to stay in bed much longer. And being upset over Ysella would not have set me back at all but given me something to think about. I’m so bored having to sit here all day and sew or read. And you know how much I hate to sew. Now, tell me what’s been happening to her, because otherwise, all I have to go on is the gossip from the back stairs.”

So, Kit, with Sam adding in his own bits here and there, recounted the tale of their rescuing of Ysella. When he at last ground to a halt, having informed his wife that Ysella was now confined to her room, a silence fell.

Sam watched Morvoren as she frowned down at her hands as though deep in thought. An intelligent and resourceful woman, as well as a sensible one, she must surely have an answer to their problems. Hopefully.

She reached out and took Kit’s hand, but her eyes were fixed on Sam, a speculative gleam in them. “Let me sum up the problem,” she said, her gaze brimming with a mixture of determination and compassion. “Ysella fancied herself in love with a man who has turned out to be a cad. Who has been proven by his own words to be nothing but a fortune hunter. A man who only wanted to marry her because he thought she had a sizeable inheritance coming to her. Thanks, in part, to Fitz. And, because it was revealed to him that you could delay her coming into her money until she’s thirty, he promptly withdrew his offer. Whereupon this degenerated into a rather childish fight resulting in you and him taking part in a duel—which is quite illegal nowadays, and a very silly thing to have done.”

She bestowed a frown on Kit, then glared at Sam. “I would have expected you, Sam, to have persuaded my husband of the foolishness of fighting a duel with not just the illegality of the thing, but also all the risks involved.”

Sam opened his mouth to say that he’d tried, but she held up a hand. “No. Let me have my say. You wanted my advice in this, and that’s what you’re going to get.”

Sam shut his mouth, feeling put in his place. In the light of what he now knew about Featherstone’s attempted perfidy, perhaps he should have tried harder. Neither of them had told Morvoren how close Kit had come to being murdered.

“But the nub of the matter is that while Ysella was with the man she fancied she loved, he persuaded her to consummate their love and she is now no longer a virgin.”

Heat rose up Sam’s face. Morvoren could be a tad too blunt at times, but that was her upbringing. She didn’t possess the gently bred reluctance to talk about all things personal that most women had. Not that he had much experience of women or their conversation himself.

“So,” Morvoren went on. “You are now quite rightly worrying that she might be with child. I can tell you that the chances of that are probably minimal, but that depends on a number of things. To ascertain a more accurate idea of her risk, I would need to talk with her myself.”

“I’ll see to that,” Kit said, a hint of annoyance in his voice. Having told Ysella he didn’t want to see her again for a week, Sam could see how he didn’t want to have to go back on his word so soon after saying it.

“I can fetch her here if you like,” Sam offered.

Morvoren shook her head. “This is women’s talk. You can fetch her when you two leave, but neither of you is staying while I talk to her. It will be too embarrassing for her and for you. We will be discussing intimate matters. I also intend to help her find an answer to her problem—the problem of not being able to return to her London season in view of what’s happened to her.”

“Do you have any ideas of what we should do?” Kit asked.

Morvoren shrugged. “A few. But I need to talk to her first. She needs to be in agreement with my suggestions before I share them with you. I think it best if I see her straightaway.”

*

Ysella tapped onMorvoren’s bedroom door, heard a sweet voice bid her enter, and did as she was told. She found Morvoren sitting propped up in bed with a book open in her lap. She looked almost back to her old self, although still a little thin.

Ysella inwardly cringed with hot embarrassment. The certainty that she’d never be herself again washed over her. Gone was the old Ysella and in its place was the unforgiveable strumpet who her beloved Kit hated so much he’d said he didn’t want to see her again for a week.

Morvoren smiled and patted the bed. “Come and sit here, beside me. No, not on the chair. Here where I can hold both your hands and comfort you.”

Faced with such obvious compassion, Ysella burst into tears and flung herself into Morvoren’s open arms, the book squashed between them. Eventually, her sobs began to lessen and she pushed herself upright again. She must look a sight with her eyes all red-rimmed and her face blotchy. No one would ever love her again, now she was not just spoiled but ugly as well. What an idiot she’d been.