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And he would have been leg-shackled to a chit of a girl who had been loose enough to throw her hat over the windmill for a handsome face in a scarlet coat and who then hadn’t the backbone to cope with what being an officer’s wife would mean. He had read the few bloodstained tatters that were all that remained of the letter that Piers had in his breast pocket when he was killed: nothing but anger and petulance. And yet his cousin had kept it against his heart and it was probably the last thing he read. No soldier deserved to have those words ringing in his ears as he fought and died. Coward…betrayal…I hate…I’m pregnant…fault…Laura.
There were not many young ladies by that name and fewer still who vanished from the social scene because of a family crisis at a distant estate. He had gone to find Lady Laura, telling himself that Piers would have wanted him to, driven by grief and anger at the fates and at himself. When he tracked her down, the word locally was that Lady Laura was not well and consumption was feared. That was enough to keep visitors away.
Avery had had to return to his duties abroad, so he had bided his time, watched the calendar, paid a skilful agent to spy, to intercept the mails before they reached the receiving office. The girl had sent the baby away, far away, he learned. After that it was simple. Wait a short while, then a few weeks’ leave and he was back in Vienna with Alice.
The agent was rewarded well for his discretion and for the reports he continued to send about Lady Laura Campion. She had returned to London society, but not heartbroken, not crushed by the shame or by giving away her child. Of course she’d had to do it, no lady in her position could have survived it becoming public knowledge that she had given birth out of wedlock. Her reputation would have been shredded if she had kept the baby.
But surely she could have kept the child close and found a respectable family where she could visit without suspicion to watch over her growing daughter? To have sent her to the other end of the country, to a remote dale and the hard life of a small farmer’s child, that argued a complete lack of concern for anything but a swift removal of an embarrassment.
Scandal’s Virgin they call her, Lambton had written. She’s the fastest of all the débutantes, she spends money like water and they say she leaves broken hearts behind her like so much smashed crockery. The chaperons shake their heads, the matrons are scandalised, the gossip sheets love her and the men pursue. The betting books in the clubs are full of her name—but no one can claim on the wagers because, it seems, she always stops just this side of ruin. An arrant flirt…
Avery could think of other words to describe Lady Laura Campion. Any guilt he might have felt at taking the baby vanished. If she had been heartbroken over Piers, if she had led a quiet, respectable life and married a decent man after an interval of mourning for Piers, then he would have experienced severe qualms about what he had done.
But Alice did not deserve a mother like that, a woman who showed no sign of mourning her dead lover or the loss of her child. He would move heaven and earth to make sure Alice never knew who she was. Sooner or later he was going to have to make up some fairy story for the child, create some perfect woman to be her mother and some satisfying, if romantically sad, reason why he could not marry her.
Not long now before he was in London and then he would see her, this witch who had so turned Piers’s head that he forgot his honour and his duty, this lady with the heart of a harlot who had sent her own child far away so she could wallow in pleasure and break hearts as she had broken his cousin’s heart.
*
‘We are leaving. Now. Today.’
‘What? Why?’ Mab dropped the laundry basket onto the kitchen table with a thump.
‘That man….’ Her voice was shaking so much she had to stop, grip the edge of the table and breathe hard before she could steady it. ‘That man forced Piers to go back to Spain before he could marry me. He called him a coward and he got him in such a muddle about his duty and his honour that he went—and he was killed.’
‘Lovey, he might have been killed whenever he went back.’
‘I know.’ Laura sank onto the nearest chair. ‘But he would have married me and Alice would be legitimate and Piers would not have died with that worry on his mind.’
‘He knew?’ Mab sat down, too.
‘I wrote and it would have caught the next ship out. I think, from the timing, he could have received it. Perhaps I should not have done it, but I was so frightened and all I could think of was that I had to tell him.’ I feel such a coward. It seems like a betrayal of everything I told you I could be as a soldier’s wife. I hate to worry you, but I am pregnant with our child. Please don’t blame yourself, we were both at fault, but write, I beg you, tell me what to do… There had never been a response, only the news of his death.
‘I dare not risk being near Lord Wykeham or I will say something I regret, I know I will. I cannot believe I kept my tongue between my teeth just now as it is.’ She covered her face with her hands as if the blackness could somehow bring a measure of calm. ‘The boy from the Golden Lion can take the gig into Hemel Hempstead and give a message to Michael to bring the carriage right away.’ She got to her feet and ran to the front parlour to scribble a note for her coachman, who was waiting at one of the big coaching inns and enjoying a quiet country holiday while he did so. ‘If you go to the Golden Lion now with this, I will start packing.’
Mab, her bonnet jammed on her head and her mouth set in a grim line, marched in and took the note. ‘Don’t you be putting your back out pulling that trunk out of the cupboard,’ was all she said before she banged out of the front door.
Laura pulled another sheet of paper towards her and wrote as swiftly as her shaking hand allowed.
Dearest Alice,
I am sorry I had to leave without saying goodbye to you. I will always remember you and think of you. Please understand that not everyone who has to leave you wishes to do so.
With all my love, your ‘adopted aunt’.
*
They had not brought much with them, for the cottage had been rented furnished and Laura’s pose as a widow in mourning meant she could manage with a limited wardrobe. By the time Michael arrived in the coach—the one she had chosen specifically because it had no crest on the doors—she and Mab had the trunk filled and a neat row of portmanteaux lined up in the hall.
It was not a good time of day to leave, for they could not get back to London in daylight and would have to put up at an inn overnight, but Laura dared not risk staying another day. As it was, there seemed little chance that Avery could discover who she was, even if he wanted to. The cottage had been rented through her man of business in her false name, she had received no post and Michael had told no one who his employer was.
The note for Alice was dropped off at the inn for delivery the next morning. By then Laura would be on the road again, heading for London, the Curzon Street house, appointments with modistes and milliners, the re-entry into her world—the world of the Season and the haut ton and oblivion in a whirl of pleasure.
Avery Falconer could advertise for a governess and then pack his bags and go back to arranging the affairs of Europe wherever the government chose to use his undoubted talents for autocratically directing the lives and destinies of others.
He had cared for his cousin Piers and yet, when the young man had crossed Avery’s line of what constituted honour and duty, he had bent him ruthlessly to his will. He loved Alice: Laura told herself that she just had to believe he would never break her daughter’s heart because he thought he was doing the right thing.
*
