“I thought you were in the army together,” she said.
“We were,” Luke told her. “We all joined up together.”
“Couldn’t get rid of them,” Harry grumbled as he held a chair for Nell to be seated. “Gabe and I tried but they followed us.”
“Followed? Interesting word,” Rafe drawled. “My father bought me my colors, and then you and Gabe talked Great-aunt Gert into buying yours and then if I recall Luke decided he might as well come, too.”
“Mmm, yes, well, someone had to come to keep you lot out of trouble,” Luke said, piling a plate with sliced ham, sausages, and eggs. The other two men laughed.
“Drag us into it, more like,” Harry said. “Looks like an angel, but he’s a demon for trouble, my dear, I warn you.” He placed a plate in front of Nell. “Apple fritters. Cook thought you might enjoy them, but if you’d prefer a more standard breakfast . . .”
“No, thank you, these look delicious.” And they did, with crisp lacy edges, oozing with apple and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. For once she felt hungry.
Satisfied, Harry heaped his own plate and sat down.
“So, Lady Helen,” Rafe said, “My felicitations on your approaching marriage. Though perhaps felicitations is the wrong word. Sympathy, perhaps. It’s about time someone came along and civilized this brute.”
Nell gave him a sharp look, unsure of whether there was some hidden edge to what he was saying.
“I don’t think he needs civilizing at all,” she said and took a mouthful of apple fritter. “I am very well satisfied with him the way he is.”
Luke fell back with an expression of feigned shock. “Good Lord, a woman who doesn’t want to reform a man,” he exclaimed. “Do you know how rare you are?”
Rafe Ramsey gave her a long look. “Lady Helen, you can’t possibly wed Harry.”
She eyed him guardedly and said nothing.
“You must marry me instead,” he said.
Nell blinked, unsure of where this was leading. The pale blue eyes regarded her blandly, but she thought she saw a lazy twinkle in them.
“Are you trying to steal my betrothed from me?” Harry said and poured Nell some more hot chocolate, apparently unconcerned.
“Naturally,” Rafe responded. “Who wouldn’t? A charming lady who has no intention of reforming a husband after marriage? What man wouldn’t want to snap her up?”
“Ah, but if I married you,” Nell told him seriously, “I’m certain I’d have to change my mind about that.”
There was sudden silence, then a roar of masculine laughter. Rafe tried to look affronted, but he soon succumbed to laughter as well. He gave Nell a wink and she smiled shyly back. It seemed Harry’s friends had accepted her.
“I’d know that sound anywhere,” declared Lady Gosforth, bustling in. “Rafe, my dear boy, and Luke, it’s been too long.”
They leapt to their feet and made beautiful, elegant bows that Lady Gosforth ignored, kissing them each fondly on the cheek. She waved them back to their seats, firing questions at them about their various relatives and at the same time issuing instructions to Sprotton.
Nell listened quietly, enjoying the exchanges. It was clear this was a routine event. Lady Gosforth treated Harry’s friends as if they were her own relatives and they were obviously fond of her, too. For a girl who’d spent so many years without family or the company of people her own age, it was heartwarming to watch.
But as the laughter and the exchanges about people she didn’t know continued, Nell’s mind wandered. With Rafe and Luke combing the various parish workhouses, they had a better chance of finding Torie. She sneaked a glance at the clock on the overmantel. It was getting late.
She saw a movement outside the door. It was Cooper, bringing Nell’s pelisse and bonnet down, as requested, for an eight o’clock departure.
Harry must have seen her, too. He set his cutlery together, drained his coffee, put his napkin to one side, and said, “It’s time we were off.”
Immediately his two friends did likewise. It was obvious they’d been soldiers, she thought. Immediate attention to the matter in hand.
Lady Gosforth watched in dismay as Nell stood as well.
“You’re not taking this girl out all day again today, are you?” she said to Harry. “She has a trousseau to prepare.”
“The shopping must wait,” Harry said. “There are legal and business matters we must complete first. To do with the estate,” he added, when it looked as though his aunt would question him further.
His aunt made a scornful noise. “As if Nell would be interested in that. The girl needs clothes, for heaven’s sake. You two boys must agree with me, I’m sure.” She looked at Luke and Rafe for support.
Rafe carefully picked a piece of invisible fluff off his immaculate coat, frowning with extreme concentration. Luke had produced a small book from his pocket and consulted it earnestly. Neither appeared to hear her question.
Lady Gosforth snorted. “You boys stick together, as usual, I see. Well, my dear, it’s up to us women—”
Nell said urgently, “I’m sorry, Lady Gosforth, but I really must go with him.”
“Very loyal of you, my dear,” Lady Gosforth said, rolling her eyes. She turned back to Harry with a look that made it clear who she blamed for the ruination of her plans—and it wasn’t Nell. “How on earth can I get this girl’s trousseau and wedding dress prepared in time if you keep dragging her off all day? The wedding is in less than three weeks!” She gave her nephew a militant look. “I don’t care what you say Harry, I’ve made appointments for Nell with my mantua maker, my milliner, the boot maker—”
Nell sent Harry a look of desperate entreaty. He could see she was on the verge of blurting everything out. She’d wanted to tell his aunt what they were doing. It was only right if they were going to be bringing Torie into Lady Gosforth’s home, she said. She might object.
She might indeed, Harry thought, remembering his own first experience with his aunt. Few people would condone illegitimacy. Aunt Maude had made an exception for a blood relative then, but he was well aware that it was Gabe who’d forced her hand. Nell’s baby was no relation to her.
He gave Nell a tiny shake of the head and told his aunt, “Very well, you can have Nell for two hours today from one o’clock onward.”
“Two hours?” His aunt gave a disapproving huff. “You expect me to arrange a trousseau in two hours?”
“No, but you can get have your mantua maker here at one o’clock when we return for luncheon and she can take all Nell’s measurements. That will give you something to start on.”
“But Nell will want to choose, you foolish boy. The whole point of new clothes is the pleasure of deciding, isn’t it, my dear?”
Nell stared at her, wanting to scream with frustration. Lady Gosforth was being very kind but Nell just wanted to leave and look for her daughter. Now! She didn’t care about clothes.
But generosity had been thin on the ground in Nell’s life recently, and she couldn’t reject Lady Gosforth’s kindness, especially when she’d put everything aside for Nell’s benefit. Torn, she looked at Harry, not knowing what to say or do.
He stepped forward. “Her maid can do it,” he said. “She can shop for Nell.”
Cooper, standing quietly in the doorway, gasped. Her hand flew to her mouth in shock.
Nell, too, was stunned, but it was a brilliant solution. Nell had limited interest in clothes at the best of times and none at all at the moment, but Cooper . . . Cooper would love it.
“Her
maid
?” exclaimed Lady Gosforth, appalled. “Harry, don’t be ridiculous!”
Nell raised her brows at Cooper.
“Why not?” Harry continued. “You said yourself she was talented. She’ll know what Nell needs.”
Cooper, incredulous but eager, nervously nodded back at Nell.
“But you can’t. A maid is all very well,” declared Lady Gosforth, “but she simply can’t—”
“It’s the perfect solution,” Nell interrupted. “I truly don’t have the time at present to go shopping, but Cooper does know what I need, and she has excellent taste. I’m sure she will also benefit from your advice, and that of Miss Bragge,” she added tactfully. “You don’t mind, do you, Cooper?” Nell asked, waving her in.
Cooper’s eyes shone with excitement. “Oh no, m’lady. You won’t be sorry, trusting me in this, m’lady, I promise you.”
“Excellent,” Harry said briskly, as if the impatience to go was all his. “Now I’m sorry but we really have to leave.”
“But I was looking forward to taking Nell shopping,” said Lady Gosforth, disgruntled.
Nell pulled her arm from Harry’s grip and ran back and gave the elderly lady a hug. “And I would love to go shopping with you, too, dear Lady Gosforth,” she told her. “But this truly is urgent business. I’m sorry, but we will have a lifetime in which to go shopping, won’t we?”
“Yes, my dear, I suppose so. It’s just, your trousseau—”
“Will be a beautiful surprise.”
Lady Gosforth considered the thought and brightened a little.
“We’ll see you at one, Aunt Maude,” Harry said and escorted Nell to the waiting curricle.
His friends each had a curricle and pair, she saw. Their grooms had been walking them up and down to keep the horses from getting cold. “What splendid horses,” she commented as Harry lifted her up. She swiveled in her seat and eyed the two pairs critically as he climbed in after her.
Rafe and Luke, who were waiting for their curricles to be brought up, stared. “Good God,” Luke exclaimed. “Don’t tell me she likes horses as well? She
is
the perfect woman.”
“I know,” growled Harry, wrapping an arm around her and hauling her along the seat to his side. “But she’s mine. See you at one.”
Nell gave him a sideways glance and a shy smile.
The perfect woman?
She knew it was just part of the banter he had with his friends, but his gruff possessiveness warmed her. As did the hard band of muscle clamping her to his side. It stayed there long after his friends had disappeared.
As they continued their search for her daughter, Nell vowed that next time she woke to find him in her bed she would not be such a coward.
“So, who was Torie’s father?” Harry asked out of the blue. The question had been eating at him ever since he’d understood what had happened to her.
Beside him, Nell stiffened. They’d just left one of the cottages in which an abandoned baby girl had been placed with a wet nurse. Yet another baby girl who wasn’t Torie.
“You don’t need to tell me any details,” he said quickly. “Just who he was.”
“No one,” she told him.
“Nell.”
“You don’t need to know. There’s no point.”
No point? Of course there was a point. He kept his voice calm. “Why do you say that?”
“My father tried to call him out after—you know. He used the pretext of cheating at cards—it would have made a scandal if it had been over me. Papa wanted above all to protect my reputation.”
It would have been a damn sight more to the point if Papa had protected his daughter in the first place, Harry thought with quiet fury.
“But Sir—he—the man—refused to fight Papa. He called him a poor loser, but he knew what it was about.”
“So he knows about the bab—”
“He knows nothing,” she said vehemently. “He doesn’t even know I fell pregnant in the first place. Papa challenged him months before I realized my . . . my condition.”
“I see.”
She gave him a square look. “And if I gave you a name, you’d probably want to do the same as Papa, wouldn’t you?”
Not quite, Harry thought. He wouldn’t challenge a piece of scum like that to a gentleman’s duel on some pretext and then give up when the scoundrel declined to fight. He would just beat the bastard to a pulp.
She must have read the truth in his eyes, for she nodded. “Only two people know who fathered my child and Papa was one of them. He—the man knows nothing about it and that’s the way I want it to stay. It’s better for everyone, Torie especially.”
Harry could see that. She wouldn’t want her daughter to know she was the child of rape. Who would?
But the question still gnawed at Harry. Who the hell was the swine?
T
hey returned to Mount Street at one o’clock. As well as luncheon Harry had arranged to rendezvous with Rafe and Luke to see what they’d learned.
Nell was feeling disheartened and gloomy. The list of places to search that Harry had made when they’d first begun their search was getting shorter. They’d covered so much ground and still there was no sign of Torie.
And she was upset and angry with Harry. “How can you tell it’s not Torie?” he’d asked at the last place. Adding, “All babies look alike to me.”
All babies were not alike, and she was furious with him for suggesting it. She’d flared up at him and snapped his head off for the remark and they’d come home the rest of the way in silence.
But with silence had come reflection, and with reflection a terrible realization.
His comment was innocent enough; she knew he hadn’t meant anything by it. The problem was it had ripped off a scab, one she’d been trying to ignore. And underneath, the fears and doubts were festering.
Would she, in fact, recognize her own child? Her heart told her she would, but the more cribs, the more tiny chubby faces she saw with fuzzy domes and solemn expressions and rosebud mouths, the more the doubts started to creep in . . .
Babies changed so much in six weeks.
A
fter luncheon, which was eaten in an atmosphere of quiet tension, Nell was whisked off by Lady Gosforth to be measured for her trousseau.
She liked pretty clothes as much as the next person, but now, the whole process chafed at her. They measured every imaginable part of her, the thin, ferociously stylish mantua maker wielding a tape measure and rapping out numbers in French to her assistant. Then her feet and calves were measured and a template drawn. And then her head likewise, and a number of hats commissioned, including one for riding.