Harry tensed. His name. He wanted the bastard’s name. He’d sworn to avenge her.
“It was over very quickly,” she told him. “I was asleep and it was half done before I knew it.” She shivered. “So that’s it. Now you know everything.”
“Not quite everything.”
“I won’t tell you his name,” she said firmly. “He knows nothing about Torie and I want it to stay that way. A father has rights over a child, you know. He could take her from me and the law would allow it.”
“Nonsense. You’ll be married to me,” Harry told her. “And I would never allow such a thing to happen.”
She shook her head. “No, I won’t risk it.” And that was her final word.
H
arry brooded over the story that night, as he waited for her to undress. She was still too shy to let him help her disrobe and he wasn’t going to push it. He would sleep with her tonight and not wait for her to start sleepwalking.
He fetched a sheet of paper, a pen, and ink and sat down to write to Ethan. Someone at Firmin Court would know who that bastard was. That old woman, Aggie—she’d know. A few discreet questions would be all it took.
Ethan knew how to be discreet. He didn’t need to know any details, just find out who the visitor was who’d gone sniffing around the housemaids and been told off by Lady Nell.
When he’d finished the letter, sealed it, and sent it off to be posted, he knocked on Nell’s door.
“Come in.” She was sitting bolt upright in bed, that blasted nightgown buttoned to her chin.
“There’s not much point in starting the night separate,” he told her. “We both know where we’ll end up, so with your permission . . .” He waited for her assent.
She thought for a moment, then nodded and blushing rosily, flipped the covers back in a wordless invitation.
Harry stripped quickly and slid into bed beside her. “Now kiss me,” he murmured. She needed no further encouragement.
Fourteen
I
t was the most important letter Ethan had ever written, or was likely to write again. His whole future happiness hung on it. It was also the most difficult. This was one letter he wasn’t going to let the vicar read and correct.
Tibby was in England. Just a few miles away. The message had come the previous day. She’d come with Gabe and the princess and the two little boys. They were all staying at Alverleigh, the home of Harry’s despised half brother, the earl.
Harry wouldn’t like that, Ethan knew. But Ethan didn’t care. Tibby wasn’t over the sea in Zindaria; she was less than a day’s ride away.
My dear Miss Tibby . . .
No. He scratched it out.
My darlin Miss Tibby . . .
No. He scratched out
Miss
.
My darlin Tibby . . .
Would she think it was presumptuous? She was very proper, his Tibby. He groaned. She wasn’t his Tibby, that was the problem.
He put down the pen and wiped his palms for the fortieth time. He was sweating. In December.
He’d made a draft and corrected it as best he could without help. This was the final copy. He kept wasting paper trying to decide how to start. “Bite the bullet and get on with it, Delaney,” he told himself.
He picked up the pen and started again:
My dear Miss Tibby,
I have taken your words in your last letter to hart and I take leave to tell you that I will call on you at Alverly next Wednesday in the afternoon. I hope it is convenient.
Yours truely, Ethan Delaney
There. It was done. He blotted it carefully, then folded it and sealed it with a blob of red sealing wax. Red for danger. Red for blood. Red for love. In an old habit he’d thought long forgotten he crossed himself, kissed the letter, and whispered, “Godspeed.”
Then he pocketed the letter and headed outside. If he didn’t post it now, he’d get cold feet again.
t was the seventh day of their search. The weak winter
I
sun was sinking in the west and Nell and Harry were heading back to London. Nell sat hunched in the corner of the curricle, staring out at the passing scenery, silent and withdrawn.
They’d crossed off the last address on their list.
Between the four of them, they’d visited every parish workhouse, the foundling hospital, the asylum for female orphans in Westminster, every charitable institution who cared for orphans and unwanted children, and every wet nurse connected with every charity in and around London.
There was no sign of Torie at any of them.
In one last desperate effort, they’d decided to reenact Nell’s father’s journey from the house where she’d given birth to Torie, through the village where he’d died, and thence to London.
They’d spent some time in the village where he’d died questioning people. They established that no, he hadn’t had any basket or any child with him when he’d collapsed. And no, nobody in the area had suddenly acquired a baby.
Yes, it was certain he’d been seen coming toward the village from the direction of London.
Nell had laid flowers on Papa’s grave and they’d continued on their way, stopping at each hamlet and village and inquiring. It was hopeless, Harry thought. It was seven weeks ago now.
He just hoped the asking would help Nell to accept the loss of her daughter. His fear was that she never would.
They slowed to pass through a flock of geese being herded through a tiny hamlet that consisted of a lone church, surrounded by farms and scattered cottages.
As they passed the church, Nell sat up suddenly. “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop here. Stop!”
Harry pulled up the horses, but she’d already scrambled down from the curricle and was racing back toward the church.
“Here, hold the horses,” he said to a goose herder and tossed him the reins. “There’s a shilling in it for you.” And he hurried after Nell.
She stood in the entry porch of the church, staring at a basket of vegetables sitting there.
“What is it?” Harry asked her.
She turned a glowing face to him. “It’s a basket.”
He frowned and shook his head, mystified.
“People leave things on church doorways in baskets,” she said excitedly. “Babies. They leave babies. How many times have you heard of babies being left on the steps of a church?”
Practically never, Harry thought. It was fairly common in Spain, he knew, but they were convents, and nuns took children in. English vicars seemed less likely to do so in his opinion.
“We never thought to check the actual churches.”
Harry’s heart sank. Another recipe for slow heartbreak, he thought. It had been agonizing enough to watch her slowly killing herself with worry and to know there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“And this is St. Stephen’s,” she said feverishly.
He gave her a blank look.
“Papa’s middle name was Stephen. It might be an omen. He believed in omens. We have to ask,” she said and headed around the side toward the vicarage at the rear.
Harry followed. She was clutching at straws.
It was a small house, with a neat, well-kept garden, bare now in the cold season. The brass bellpull gleamed with elbow wax and polish. Nell pulled on it, dancing impatiently from toe to toe as the musical jangle echoed within.
A middle-aged woman with iron gray hair answered. “Yes?”
“Did anyone leave a baby here?” Nell blurted without preamble. “Seven weeks ago, a baby in a basket?”
The woman frowned. “Was it seven weeks? I thought it wasn’t near as long ago as that.”
Nell paled and staggered. She clutched the woman’s arms in a convulsive grip. “You mean there
was
a baby?”
The woman nodded, clearly rather taken aback by Nell’s wild-eyed intensity. “A little girl, poor wee thing.”
“Where is she now?” Nell demanded, panting.
The woman pointed and, almost without looking, Harry knew where.
“Where? Which house?” Nell stood on tiptoe, peering eagerly at the houses in the distance.
Harry took her arm. “In the churchyard, Nell,” he said quietly.
She frowned, puzzled, not understanding. “The churchyard. Who lives in the churchyard?” And then she knew. “Noooo,” she wailed, turning back to the woman. “It can’t be. She’s alive, tell me she’s alive.”
The woman’s eyes filled with sympathetic tears. “I’m sorry lass. Nobody knew she was there, see? The vicar had gone off to London for the night and I was at my sister’s, so there was nobody to hear the poor little creature crying.”
Nell gave a choked sob.
The woman went on, “It was a bitter night and the frost killed the last of my flowers. The babe, too. She was dead when we found her in the morning. So pretty she looked, like a little frozen angel in her satin-lined basket.”
“S-satin-lined ...” Nell fainted. Harry caught her before she fell. Refusing all offers of help from the woman, he carried Nell back to the curricle. She wasn’t ill, just brokenhearted.
She sobbed most of the way home, not normal weeping, but terrible wracking sobs that seemed torn from her body.
Harry held her hard against his heart. Each convulsive sob that juddered through her was like a cut to his body. If only he could have made it end differently. He held her and rocked her gently, hating being so damned helpless. He was furious. He needed to punch someone.
He’d come back. He’d do something about the grave, but for now, all he wanted to do was kill. He’d never known such anger.
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, but Harry burned to avenge the wrong done to her. He had nobody to punch. Yet. And when he did find the swine, it would be a damned sight more than a punch.
In the meantime, he had a precious, distraught woman to care for.
He took her home, gently undressed her down to her chemise, put her to bed. “I want to stay with you,” he told her and waited. He wouldn’t force himself on her.
“Stay,” she said in a thready whisper.
Thank God. He didn’t know how he would have left her if she had wanted to be alone. He quickly stripped and climbed into bed with her. She was shivering. She reached for him immediately and pressed herself against him as if she couldn’t get close enough. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered.
Something cracked deep within him. “Never,” he croaked. In her grief she had turned to him. She needed him. He was no damned use to her, but she still wanted him.
For a long time they lay together silently. Eventually she stopped shivering. He thought she’d fallen asleep when suddenly she said, “I keep thinking of her, crying, and nobody to hear. Such a horrible, painful way to d—”
“No.” He cut her off. “It wouldn’t have been painful at all.”
She pulled back. Swollen amber eyes fixed on him with painful intensity. “How could you know?”
He knew about all sorts of deaths. Soldiers did. But he didn’t tell her that. “In the war, in the Pyrenees one time, there was an unexpected blizzard. Later, we found some bodies. Soldiers. They’d fallen into a narrow gully and frozen to death.”
She shuddered. He pulled her close again and continued in a low voice. “They’d fallen on top of each other. The man on the bottom of the pile was alive, though he was half frozen. He told me later that in all that snow, they’d slowly fallen asleep. Nobody cried out. There was no pain at all, he said. In fact, the most painful thing, he told me, was his body coming back to life. Excruciating was the word he used. But slowly freezing in the snow was peaceful and quiet.”
She gave a long, jagged sigh and subsided against his chest. He felt her tears on his skin, but she made no sound. He wrapped her in his arms and cradled her against him until she finally slept.
She didn’t move a muscle all night. The sleepwalking had ended. The search was over.
N
ell spent the next day in bed, in a darkened room, grieving. She’d sent Harry away in the morning, pleading a migraine. She couldn’t face the world. Not yet. The pain of losing Torie was too intense.
That night she made bitter, silent love with Harry and fell asleep almost immediately afterward.
Next morning she feigned sleep until Harry left. How was she ever going to face the rest of her life? she thought despairingly and pulled the covers over her head.
The answer came to her from Aggie, from the terrible time after Mama had died. “Take it one day at a time, lovie. One step at a time if you have to. The living owe it to the dead to live; you owe it to your mam to live. You know she’d want it that way.”
The memory of those words had given Nell strength before, after Papa died and when she’d searched for Torie the first time. And later, when she’d walked, defeated and exhausted from London to Firmin Court. One step at a time. And later, when she’d found Papa had lost everything and she had no home, no money, and no family, she managed to keep going then, one day at a time.
No more. She couldn’t face another day. She couldn’t bear to go on. It was all too painful.
She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow. And smelled Harry’s dear, familiar smell. She lay there for a while, breathing it in, thinking about everything he was to her, everything he’d given her, everything he was that made her life still worth living. Gathering her strength again to go on.
She didn’t just owe it to the dead to keep living, she owed it to the living. To Harry. Because she loved him.
She rang for Cooper and pulled open the curtains, letting the cold light of day stream into the room.
She had promises to keep.
As
she went downstairs she heard the sounds of an argument coming from the drawing room.
“We are damned well not having it there!” Harry growled as Nell reached the door.
“If you weren’t so stubborn you would see at once why it is the perfect pl—” Lady Gosforth broke off as Nell entered the room. Lady Gosforth hastened to embrace her. “My dearest girl, I am so glad you’ve decided to join us. I’m so, so sorry to hear about your little one. How are you feeling?”