Gabriel: Lord of Regrets (26 page)

“For now. But how old were you when Reynard came across you and so casually destroyed your whole existence?”

Not her whole existence—she still had her art—but Reynard had destroyed her innocence. Also her chance for a lifetime at Gabriel Wendover’s side.

“We need not rehash this now.” Polly turned to sit on the raised hearth, the fire crackling at her back. “You came to see how I fared with my work. I’m doing well enough, so you can go and find me another commission.”

“When this one is complete, I shall.” He lowered himself directly beside her. “Have you considered my proposal at any greater length?”

He and Gabriel shared a certain tenacity. On Gabriel, the quality was dear; not so, Tremaine. “No, I have not. I am busy here, Tremaine, and your proposal isn’t what’s occupying my mind.”

She hadn’t, in fact, given it a thought since waking in Gabriel’s portrait gallery several weeks ago.

“It should be,” Tremaine replied, slipping an arm around her waist. “I can see the way you regard your marquess, Polly, and he seems to return the sentiment, but you won’t let yourself have him, and we both know it. You’d be honor bound to disclose that Allemande is your daughter, and you won’t shatter his illusions like that. The kind thing would be to tell him now that he’s wasting his time courting you.”

“I’ve tried,” Polly said miserably. “Tremaine, I’ve told him to his face there is no future for us, but he’s just finding his balance here at Hesketh, and I’m familiar, and we were friends of a sort.”

“Do you believe what is coming out of your mouth?”

His arm felt like a weight across her shoulders, like a yoke of lies and despair. “No.” She studied her slippers, where she’d thought of painting an image of Gabriel’s smile. “Well, yes, a little.”

“He is familiar to you,” Tremaine said. “You’ve pined for him at length. Now you can get him out of your system, and it’s harder than you thought.”

“Must you be so honest?” And presuming and bold and bothersome.

He smiled at her, a crooked, genuine smile that some other woman might find charming and Polly found sad. “You’re too hardheaded to accept anything but honesty from a friend, Polly Hunt.” He drew her against him again and kissed her forehead. “You must do what makes you happy, but as you weigh and measure and sort your options, please recall that I would never knowingly make you unhappy.”

“And there’s the difficulty,” Polly murmured. “You won’t make me unhappy, but you can’t make me happy, either.” Not that her happiness was anybody’s responsibility but her own.

Tremaine let her go. “I will settle for making you rich, famous, and content. Were you happy to see Allie?”

“Not subtle, Tremaine.”

“Answer the question.”

“I was devastated to see Allie, and overjoyed. She thought I wouldn’t be pleased to see her.” Which was awful, the exact opposite of the truth, and possibly a good thing.

“She worried, as children will, and now she’s reassured. You are too, I think.”

Polly merely nodded. Perhaps she’d paint Hildegard’s image on her slippers, another female held captive by maternal responsibilities.

“So you’d have me depart for Three Springs tomorrow?” Tremaine fired the question with exquisite casualness.

“You know I want all the time with Allie I can get, but the sooner you go, the easier it will be on her and me both.”

Tremaine got up and left Polly sitting alone on the hearth. “The sooner I go, the sooner I leave the field clear for North—or Hesketh—to break your heart.”

“I suppose you’d best be on your way, then. Except he won’t be breaking my heart, Tremaine, though I very much fear I will be breaking his.”

“You owe him the truth, Polly.” Tremaine paused at the library door. “He might surprise you.”

“By offering me pity instead of judgment?”

“He’s not a bad sort.” Tremaine appeared to study the molding, which was a pattern of strawberry leaves and pearls. “Though why I should argue on behalf of my rival is beyond me. I doubt he’d do the same.”

“He’s a very good sort,” Polly said, rising lest she be tempted to remain in the library alone. “Better even than he knows, and he deserves a wife who can give him children, and whose past will stand the closest scrutiny. I would fail him, eventually, and that would break my heart.”

“So you’ll break his heart instead,” Tremaine said, his tone jaunty. “He won’t mind that in the least. Let me escort you back to bed, and all that nobility of spirit you’re tormenting yourself with can keep you warm the livelong night.”

Polly kept her silence, lest her honest and somewhat violent sentiments provoke Tremaine to more great good cheer at her expense.

The door closed, and on the reading balcony above, where a pair of brothers had tippled their papa’s brandy and stolen looks at his “scholarly” edition of a certain work of Hindu erotica, Gabriel sat forward and scrubbed a hand over his face. Tremaine St. Michael had risen a few grudging points in his estimation by proving as honorable as he was shrewd.

But as for Polonaise… Her words had confirmed Gabriel’s earliest, long forgotten hunches regarding the relationships between the Hunt womenfolk, and redoubled his determination to ensure Polly at least had somebody to share her secret burden with.

If she allowed it. Polonaise was further gone in her determination to leave than Gabriel had realized, self-sufficiency having become a habitual penance with her. The situation would soon grow desperate, particularly when the woman he loved had barricaded herself of a night in her bedroom tower.

Fortunately, Gabriel’s most loyal vassal was barricaded in there with her.

***

“You always tell me the truth.”

“This is so,” Gabriel allowed, but with Allie up before him on Soldier, he couldn’t see her face, and it was easier to parse truth when one could observe the speaker’s expressions.

“I want you to tell me the truth now,” Allie said, and she did twist around to enforce her words with a glare. “Nobody else will.”

“If I know the truth, I will share it with you. I may not know it.”

“You do.” Allie heaved a sigh the size of all England. “Everyone knows it but me, and nobody talks about it. Mama and Papa are going to have a baby.”

“I don’t think that’s a secret,” Gabriel said, but he knew this child, and though she was a child, she was also a Hunt female and winding up to something. “A baby often follows the vows. How do you feel about this development?”

“I don’t know. I’m supposed to be happy to have a little brother or sister.”

“But?”

“Mama could die. It’s one of the things nobody talks about.”

“Sara is in good health, and she will receive the best care.” Platitudes the child would no doubt resent. “Why do you think she might die?”

“Ladies do. They aren’t like Hildegard. Do you know, if Hildy is five years old, she already has hundreds of pigs in her family, and that’s just the babies?”

“You are not a piglet,” Gabriel said, mentally starting on the math, because Hildy invariably had at least twenty offspring each year, and about half of those were female.

“She has sisters too, and they have babies, and that means she has thousands in her family. Thousands, and they’re all related, but I get only a mama and a papa who aren’t my mama and papa.”

The air in Gabriel’s lungs seized, because in all his tossing and turning the previous night, it hadn’t occurred to him that Allie herself shared Polonaise’s secret.

But she did. She
was
the secret and a keeper of the secret both, and that was… not fair. Not fair to her, not fair to the mother who loved her.

“And this baby of Sara and Beck’s will not be your true brother or sister, but rather, a cousin.”

“Nobody admits that,” Allie said, anger creeping into her voice. “A cousin is not a brother or a sister, but I’m supposed to act like it is. Babies cry and soil their nappies and spit up, and as if that isn’t bad enough, I’m supposed to pretend this is my brother or sister. I don’t like lying.”

“Lies make for a great deal of confusion,” Gabriel said, also a great deal of sorrow and loneliness and possibly some good art. “Lies can be meant kindly.”

“My mother, my real mother,” Allies said flatly, “doesn’t love me. Or not enough. I thought she did, but then she comes here, where it’s very grand, and she spends all her time painting, and her letters are dumb.”

“Tell me about her letters.”

“They sound like Lady Warne’s. Like I’m supposed to care how much Lady Marjorie likes horses, when I don’t even know Lady Marjorie.”

Oh, my poor Polonaise. My poor Allemande.
“And what do your letters say in return?”

“They’re dumb too. Aunt doesn’t care about Hermione and Boo-Boo and Heifer. She left us, you see, just when Mr. Haddonfield came along to look after my other mama—Sara—and we could have gone off together and been painters.”

“Gone off together?”

“Yes.” Allie reached forward to pet Soldier’s sturdy neck. “We all looked after one another, don’t you remember? You and Mama and Aunt and me? But you had to leave, and Mama fell in love with Mr. Haddonfield, and he’s nice, but he’s not my papa. Aunt and I should be looking after each other.”

And was Beckman also more problem than solution for the child? “Why do you call him Papa?”

“I don’t want to hurt his feelings and he calls me Princess and he’s very nice. But he’s
not
my papa, though he’s married to Mama.”

“Who is not your mama,” Gabriel added, seeing the child’s dilemma more clearly than he wanted to.

“I know what a bastard is,” Allie said, her tone waxing forlorn. “I am a bastard. My real papa was not married to Aunt when he made me with her. I cannot join the best gentlemen’s clubs.”

“Were you planning on White’s or Brooks’s?”

“I was planning on running away,” Allie informed him. “To you. But I didn’t know where you were.”

Sweet, holy, bellowing infant Jesus in His celestial nappies. “What would running away solve, Allemande?”

He’d run away any number of times as a child and made it off Hesketh land exactly twice, and only in his later attempts, because the weather had been fair and the groom trailing him particularly indulgent.

“If I ran away, I could be myself,” Allie said. “I wouldn’t have to pretend I’m happy about a baby cousin, I wouldn’t be at Three Springs so Aunt could come home, and I was going to try to find you, because Papa—Mr. Haddonfield—you know who I mean—said you would let us know where you landed.”

“You thought about leaving Three Springs with your aunt,” Gabriel reminded her. “You’ve discarded that plan?”

“I thought we’d go…” Allie’s voice became small and hurt. “Mr. Haddonfield is looking after Mama and giving her a baby, and looking after all the animals, except Heifer, who is
mine
.”

“And always will be.” As a part of Gabriel’s heart would be.

“But Aunt left me there, and now Uncle Tremaine looks after her, and I’m supposed to just… lie.”

What did one say to a brokenhearted child? What did one say that was honest?

“You miss your aunt. That’s to be expected, and she misses you.”

“She said she missed me.” Allie twiddled a lock of Soldier’s coarse, dark mane. “She called me her dear, dear child, right in front of everybody, but then last night when we were brushing each other’s hair, she asked me what I was going to paint when I got home. She’s not coming home, I know it.”

The child fell silent, a miserable stretch of heartache during which Gabriel knew not what to say. While he mentally fumbled for something comforting and honest, both, Allie resumed her lament.

“When I was very little, my real mama and my mama took me for a lemon ice and explained that I must always call my mama Aunt when we reached England. They explained that bastard business, and they said we would always be together, me, my real mama, and my mama. We would love one another, and that was what mattered.”

“So you’re angry at her? At your real mama?” The very mama who was sacrificing her own chances at happiness so her daughter could resent her endlessly.

“I am
furious
. I can’t be angry out loud, though, or she’ll never come back even to visit when that baby shows up.”

The baby, who would be lucky to survive infancy, based on Allemande’s tone. “How would you like your life to be, child?”

“Heifer and I would live here with you and Aunt. I’d call her Mama, and you Papa. I’d have a pony and paint and write letters to Hildy. I wouldn’t have to lie. I wouldn’t
be
a lie.”

Her unhesitating answer said she’d thought at length about this question and her dreams were… absolutely reasonable, also contrary to her entire family’s vision of how her life should unfold.

And she wanted to call him, Gabriel Wendover,
papa
.

“May I think about this for a few minutes?”

“You want to talk to Hildy about it.” Allie fell silent while she afforded him the courtesy of time to think up an answer for what had no answer, not as far as a lonely child was concerned. Gabriel was still thinking when they got to the stable yard and he lifted her from the saddle.

He was about to hand off the reins to a groom when he changed his mind.

“Let’s put Soldier up,” he suggested. “Unless you’re too cold?”

“The stables are always cozy.” Allie skipped into the barn ahead of him, leaving Gabriel to cast one glance at the cold, pewter sky and follow her in. He waved off the grooms, because certain discussions demanded privacy. Allie assembled brushes and fell into a routine they’d perfected over two years of caring for the horse.

And each other.

He passed her the bridle. She dipped the bit in water, rinsed it off, and tied up the bridle for hanging on a peg.

“I want you to know something,” Gabriel said as he attached the cross ties to the halter. “Something you will never, ever have to lie about. Not to anyone. Nor would I lie about it.”

“I’m listening.” She was too small to heft the saddle onto a rack, but she could dip and wipe off the girth, and did so as Gabriel stowed the saddle, then crouched down to her eye level.

“I am your friend,” he said. “You were my first real friend, and I will always be your friend. No matter who your mama or papa or aunt or artist friends are, no matter that you love your idiot cat best in the whole world, no matter that you will love your pony as much as that cat. I am your friend, and you must never run away, because then I would not know where you were. I always want to know where you are, Allemande, and that you’re safe, even if you’re not precisely happy.”