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Although Adam balked at the idea of "reporting" to anyone, he could hardly fault his fiancée's concern. Curbing his irritation at the wording of her request, he agreed to return when the problem was resolved.
Wondering what could have set off his volatile step-
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mother this time—and despite his instinctive resentment of Priscilla's assessment, grimly certain that it must have something to do with Helena Lambarth— Adam collected his curricle and drove home with all speed.
His stepmother, when he begged admittance to her chamber, practically fell into his arms. "Oh, Adam," she cried, leaving off weeping into her handkerchief as she ushered him to a seat, "I can scarcely breathe, I am so upset! You must talk with Harrison and discover the Truth."
"The truth of what, ma'am?" he asked, but his stepmother did no more than open her lips before another sob shook her. "I cannot speak of it! Talk with Harrison, I beg you."
Had that rascal Dickon done something truly awful this time?
Adam asked himself as he left his stepmother's chamber. He'd dismissed the lad's previous escapades as the follies of a boy with too much imagination and too little employment, but if the child were causing more commotion, he would have to go. Re turning to his library, he summoned the butler, who managed in a few terse sentences to convey the essentials of the dilemma.
Small wonder the staff was in an uproar, Adam thought, astounded by the news. He stood speechless while Harrison continued, "When the lad mentioned by chance that he'd lived in the workhouse, I immediately tasked him about it, then confirmed the truth of what he'd divulged with his sister and Molly. I have failed you, my lord, by not inquiring more particularly 185
into the references of employees brought into this house. If
you feel you must dismiss me along with them, I shall understand."
"I'll have no talk yet of dismissal," Adam replied, trying to reason his way out of the coil. "Have the pair given poor service?
Done shoddy work? Thieved?"
Harrison shook his head. "On the contrary, my lord, their work has been exemplary. If they both had not affirmed the truth of it, I never would have believed they came from such a place."
"So they did not deny or dissemble when you taxed them about this? Their honesty speaks in their favor. What would you recommend about their continued employment?"
Distress was clearly written upon Harrison's normally impassive countenance. "I've grown fond of the lad, I admit. But the staff is most upset, and I cannot have the household disturbed.
The two entered under false pretenses and I suppose they must go."
"Would there be a disturbance if they stayed?"
"I—I cannot say. I suppose it would be better if they left. I'll see to the lad's references myself."
"You would give the boy references, yet you want him dismissed?"
Harrison waved his hands helplessly. "I shall do as you direct, my lord.”
Could no one make a decision? Adam wondered with exasperation. But since his stepmother was incapable of
confrontation and the butler clearly wished to avoid it, as head of the household he would have to settle this business himself. So, much as he would
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prefer to avoid Helena, before he did anything, he ought to discuss the matter with the person who had introduced this problem into his house.
"Will you send Miss Lambarth to me, please?"
"At once, my lord," Harrison said, obviously eager to leave the solving of this imbroglio in his hands.
'Twas bad enough that his stepmother's ward had cut up his peace. Now she had disturbed the tranquility of his household.
What rubbed most, he thought sardonically as he waited for Miss Lambarth to appear, was that he might be forced to admit to Priscilla that she had been correct in the concern she'd voiced the first night she met Helena—that the girl's lack of breeding could cause difficulties for his family. An opinion that at the time, reading into it a criticism of his stepmother, he had fiercely resented.
He wasn't sure what he'd expected to see in Miss Lambarth's face when she answered his summons— Embarrassment? Shame?
Penitence? He was definitely not prepared for the rigidly upright figure who stormed through the door, her whole being radiating angry defiance.
Instead of the siren who'd enticed him, she now appeared a Valkyrie ready to do battle. He wasn't sure which guise was more arresting.
Given the girl's agitation, Adam decided it might be best to avoid a direct confrontation. Trying instead for a wry, half-humorous tone, he said, "Well, the cat is among the pigeons now.
I suppose the news is true?"
Apparently she'd been expecting hostility in return, 187
for the mildness of his remark seemed to surprise her. Her wariness dissipating a trifle, she said, "Yes, it's true."
"How did you come to hire employees in a workhouse?"
"I told everyone from the start that I didn't want a proper dresser who would look down on me. From remarks made by a clergyman traveling on the mail coach, I guessed that a girl from the workhouse, if she were honest and willing, would be grateful for employment and work more diligently than someone Harrison deemed 'suitable.' And so she has! Have you heard a word of complaint about Nell or Dickon since they came here?"
Adam thought of the grooms' protests about the mischievous boy. "Not really, but—"
"Doesn't Dickon practically worship Harrison and do whatever he bids the instant he commands it, always trying to do more to win his favor? At this moment, the child is hidden in my wardrobe, weeping his heart out knowing that the man for whom he has been toiling has rejected him. Knowing his disclosure means he and his sister will be forced to leave the place he has just now begun to think of as home. And why? Because he was idle or encroaching or dishonest? No—for the sin of having been orphaned.”
"That makes you angry," Adam said, impressed by the fierceness of her loyalty to and concern for the boy.
"It makes me furious! But I expect that's merely my
'unconventional' background, which instilled in me more respect for what a person does than for his
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position in the world. I am sorry for upsetting Aunt Lillian and disrupting your house. But I am not in the least sorry for hiring Nell and Dickon, nor do I have any intention of letting them go.
Since that apparently will cause problems here, I will have them go elsewhere until I can obtain other lodging for us, a search I shall begin immediately."
It was a golden opportunity to send the girl packing and put an end to his struggle to resist her—but he couldn't make himself seize it. "You would abandon Bellemère, after all the care she has given you?" he asked, pulling out that argument to mask his own reluctance to see her go. "It would break her heart!"
For the first time her defiant expression softened. "I don't mean to be ungrateful and I...I should miss her, too. But what else can be done?"
Relieved, he gave her a wry grin. "I expect she intended me to convince you to let Nell and Dickon go. Ah, Miss Lambarth, it truly would have been easier on everyone if you'd just let Harrison handle the hiring of your maid."
In an instant she changed from angry to imploring. Stepping forward to seize his hand, she cried, "My lord, if only you had been there! Seen how diligently they labored in the workhouse laundry! Their father died for England, their mother from
overwork trying to provide for them. Stranded and alone with no family to take them in, they had no choice but the workhouse, though it meant giving up what Utile hope they had of finding employment elsewhere."
Her gaze dropped and her voice faded almost to a 189
whisper. "I know what it is to be shut away, shunned by good Society, with no hope of assistance."
She stared into the far distance, seeing memories he could only guess at, while the hand she seemed to have forgotten seared his palm and sent heat through every nerve. But before he could think what to say—could bring himself to detach those slender fingers—she looked back up and, to his relief and regret, pulled her hand away.
"Once I saw Nell and Dickon and learned the facts of their situation, how could I not help them?"
He had come prepared to echo Harrison's advice and, at the least, finagle her consent to the firing of her unsuitable employees. But a wave of compassion for Nell, the boy—and for her—overcame him. How many years had Helena existed, shut away after her mother's flight? Feeling, with good reason, abandoned by the world and betrayed by those who should have cared for her.
It hadn't been right—not for her. Not for the two unfortunates she'd chosen to rescue. Perhaps his years in the army, where he learned to judge men not by birth but by actions, had instilled in him, too, a share of her "unconventional" opinion, but he had seen vagrants who enlisted for a shilling become outstanding soldiers,
and pampered sons of the nobility bolt at the first sound of the guns. It wasn't fair to dismiss Nell and Dickon, whose service in his household had been exemplary, for the misfortune of becoming orphaned.
And so he found himself telling her what, ten minutes earlier, he never would have imagined saying. "Don't leave, Miss Lambarth. Bellemère and Charis would be much more distressed by your going away than they could ever be by knowing that your maid came from the workhouse."
