“I knew,” said Charlotte. “I knew the instant I saw him, the instant I looked into his eyes. But I wouldn’t let myself believe it.”
“I noticed his unusual eyes,” Lady Lithby said, “but it meant nothing to me. I never met Captain Blaine. Even if I had, I’m not sure I would have believed it, either.” She smiled, and Darius clearly saw then the warmth that had won the hearts of both stepdaughter and spouse. “How sweetly you put it, my love: that your son had found you, after all this time.” She rose from her chair. “Well, let us try to make a start at finding him. Tell me again what Colonel Morrell said, exactly.”
Lord Lithby stormed through the gardens for a time. He stomped on a herbaceous border. He threw an ornamental urn against a stone wall, shattering it.
He paced one of the bridges across the moat, back and forth, back and forth.
Then he made his way to a shaded avenue, flung himself onto a stone bench and sat there, his head in his hands.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, grieving for his daughter. A long time, perhaps. He had a great deal to grieve.
A sound made him look up.
The bulldog Daisy stood before him, holding what appeared to be a piece of a tree trunk in her jaws.
“You ridiculous dog,” he said. “Who let you out to tear apart my gardens? Or did you come to help me do it?”
The bulldog shook her head, trying to shake the log to death, apparently.
“Lizzie sent you, didn’t she?”
Drool flew as Daisy tried to kill the log.
“I can’t play with you now, you silly creature,” he said. “I’m trying to collect my wits. Trying to calm myself. One is no good to anybody in an excitable state, and they need me to help—to find my
grandson
. My grandson. Pip.”
Daisy dropped the piece of tree trunk at his feet—narrowly missing crushing his toes—and bounded away. When Lord Lithby didn’t follow, she came back and repeated the performance.
“Ah, yes, Pip is your friend,” said Lord Lithby. “How many sticks do you kill for him, I wonder? But it’s rats, isn’t it? Good God. My
grandson,
earning his keep by killing rats at a halfpenny apiece.”
Daisy barked.
The average bulldog was fearless, determined, and persistent to a phenomenal degree, but it was also inscrutable. Other dogs made a noise about every little thing. A bulldog could remain stolidly mute in the face of the most extreme provocation.
When Daisy barked, therefore, she must be in a state of unbearable excitement.
Lord Lithby realized he’d said two unbearably exciting words.
Rats
and
Pip.
“Where’s Pip?” he said.
Daisy trotted away from him, paused, and looked back.
Lord Lithby rose from the stone bench. “Very well, I’ll follow you—and you had better not be taking me to the nearest rathole.”
Meanwhile in the library
After closely interrogating both Darius and Charlotte about the day’s events, Lady Lithby disappeared for a time. When she returned, she had her bonnet on and her carriage ordered.
Darius had been afraid of this: everyone going off in several directions and no plan in place.
“I think it would be best if we approached the search in an orderly way,” he said.
“That is what I am doing,” said Lady Lithby. “If Colonel Morrell has the boy or knows where he is, I shall oblige him to give him back.”
“I can do that,” said Darius. “In fact, I should like nothing better than
obliging
him to do something.”
“I know you would like to break his nose,” said Lady Lithby.
“No, I should like to break every bone in his body,” said Darius. “Then I should like to throw him out of a high window.”
“That is irrational,” said Charlotte.
“It is perfectly rational for a male to try to kill another male,” said Darius, “especially when the other male threatens those he cares about.”
“It is gallant of you to want to smash Colonel Morrell to pieces,” said Lady Lithby, “but that course would not be productive. You will only get his back up. You will act like men, daring and daunting each other. He will deem it a matter of pride not to tell you anything. He will not behave that way with
me.
In any case, whether or not he can help us find Pip, I must speak to him—and you must let me, sir, like it or not. You must allow me to do
something.
”
“And what are we to do, Lizzie?” said Charlotte.
“You might try looking for Daisy,” said Lady Lithby. “I let her out. I thought that if Pip is nearby, she’ll be the one to find him. And Pip, in turn, will know she oughtn’t to be running loose and will bring her back.”
Colonel Morrell reviewed his speech over and over as he rode home, trying to ascertain where he’d gone astray. He should not have called Lady Charlotte a fool—that much was obvious. Her refusal had floored him, and he’d spoken without thinking.
One mustn’t do that with women. Even he knew that.
Women were so difficult. Life was so much easier in the army. Rank and rules. One followed orders. One gave orders, and others followed them. If one failed to follow the rules, one suffered the consequences, and those were perfectly clear. Everything was clear, even when one dealt with muddleheaded superiors.
It was clear, at any rate, compared to civilian life.
But women…
He’d rather face artillery fire.
“Damn me to hell,” he muttered. “I cannot leave it like this. She’ll think—God only knows what she’ll think.”
He turned his horse around and started back for Lithby Hall.
He was surprised—but not completely, when he thought about it—when he saw Lady Lithby’s carriage coming toward him.
He saluted as she went by.
The carriage passed, slowed, then came to a halt. A gloved hand signaled from the open window.
Oh, no,
he thought.
He rode back to the carriage.
“How lucky,” said Lady Lithby after they’d exchanged greetings. “I was coming to speak with you. Perhaps you would be so good as to walk with me for a moment or two.”
This is not going to be good,
he thought.
How could he expect it to be good? He had insulted the daughter of the Marchioness of Lithby. He had called her a fool—and he was not sure what else he’d said in the heat of the moment, the heat of anger and disappointment.
He quickly dismounted, opened the carriage door, and offered his arm.
They walked on until they were well out of earshot of both the maid inside the coach and the coachman on the box outside.
“I wished to speak with you about your conversation with Charlotte,” Lady Lithby said.
“I guessed as much,” he said. “I assure you, Lady Lithby, it was not the conversation I’d intended to have. When you stopped me, I was on my way, in fact, to beg her pardon for anything I said that was out of order.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Lady Lithby. “I suspected that Charlotte heard a threat where there was none.”
“A threat?” he said. He reviewed what he’d said—for the twentieth time. “Good gad, you cannot mean she thinks I threatened to expose her. I told her quite clearly that my intention was completely the opposite.”
“She seemed to think your assurances applied only on condition of her becoming your wife.”
Women.
He did not grind his teeth. If he could restrain himself when with his uncle, he could restrain himself now.
“I made no conditions,” he said stiffly. “No gentleman would. If it sounded that way, I can only blame the heat of the moment. I did express myself badly, I am all too well aware.”
“I wished to make everything clear,” said Lady Lithby. “Some remarks you made might be misconstrued. I am concerned, for instance, that in your zeal to protect her, you made arrangements for the child.”
“Of course I have,” he said. “This morning I sent my servant Kenning to release him from his articles of indenture. I know it is an unhappy accident of fate, but the child’s present situation is an outrage. He is the son of a lady and a gentleman—a cad but a gentleman by birth. The boy shall have a proper home and an education befitting his station. I have everything in hand. You need not trouble yourself about it.”
“I must trouble about it,” said Lady Lithby. “We want the child.”
“You cannot be serious,” he said. “It will be impossible to suppress the matter if that boy remains nearby.”
“Charlotte does not want it suppressed.”
For the second time that day, he could not believe his ears. Had Society gone mad while he was abroad? Or was it only the Hayward segment of it? “She cannot admit to bearing a child out of wedlock,” he said. “I cannot believe you will let her do it. Your influence may prevent every door being shut to her, but she will be treated differently. Women far inferior to her on every count will look down on her. Perhaps few will dare to insult her openly, but you well know that Society has a thousand ways of cutting while wearing a politely smiling face. The idea of her being subjected to such indignities—No, it is unthinkable. Lady Lithby, you must dissuade her from taking this step.”
“She wants her child,” said Lady Lithby. “You must recall your servant from his errand.”
“Even if this were not completely mad, I could not call him off,” said the colonel. “Kenning has his orders. Everything has been arranged. He ought to be in Liverpool by now, if not on his way to Ireland.”
Daisy did not lead his lordship to the nearest rathole but to his home farm and the pigsty.
They were still a good distance away when Lord Lithby discerned the small, lonely figure sitting atop the sty fence. Some of the men working in the farmyard glanced that way from time to time, but that was all. Apparently, they were used to the lad’s comings and goings.
Once upon a time, Lord Lithby recalled, before Hyacinth’s time, he used to hoist his daughter up onto that very fence. They would contemplate the pigs and converse.
Lord Lithby’s throat tightened.
The dog reached the boy first, and though she was her usual silently inscrutable self, Pip must have sensed her presence because he turned and looked round.
Lord Lithby composed himself, squared his shoulders, and approached the pigsty. The boy’s gaze shifted to him.
As he neared, Lord Lithby saw that one eye was bruised and swollen, making the child look like a little gargoyle.
He joined Pip and folded his arms on the fence, in the same way he’d done so many times when his daughter sat there next to him.
“You must be Daisy’s friend Pip,” said his lordship.
Pip nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I am…Lithby,” said his lordship.
Pip’s eyes widened. Well, one of them did, at any rate. “I beg your pardon, your lordship.” He snatched off his cap and made to climb down.
“No, no, you are perfectly all right there,” said his lordship, gazing at the blond head. The pale hair displayed a tendency to curl and an unmistakable cowlick.
This was Charlotte’s hair, as it was when she was a child, when she wore it loose, when no pins tamed the cowlick and artfully arranged the curls.
“You are welcome to admire Hyacinth,” Lord Lithby said, as he would say to anyone who seemed to appreciate his favorite sow. “She is a fine pig, is she not?”
“I’ve never seen such a pig before, your lordship,” said Pip. “Everyone says she’s the biggest pig in the world. But I don’t know how they can know, when most of them have never traveled as far as Manchester. But they think Manchester’s the ends of the earth, practically, and Salford is on the other side of the moon. Actually it’s very close. It took Mr. Carsington and me only a few hours to get there, and we never went faster than a canter.”
Lord Lithby recalled what Mr. Carsington had said about the Salford workhouse. His
grandson
—in a workhouse! It was not to be borne. He wanted to kick the fence to pieces. He told himself not to be an idiot.
“That is a prodigy of a black eye you have,” he said.
“I got in a fight,” said Pip.
“It often happens that way, I find.”
“Mrs. Tyler is very upset about it,” said Pip.
“Women often make a fuss about such things.”
“She said she’d send me back to the workhouse, but I think she was speaking in anger,” the child said. “Even if she meant it, Mr. Carsington said he wouldn’t let me go back to the workhouse, and a gentleman’s word is his bond.”
“This is true,” said his lordship.
A silence.
“I know I oughtn’t to be here, your lordship,” the boy said. “I was supposed to go back to help Mr. Tyler today, but I needed to think. Pigs are good for thinking.”
“This is where I usually come,” said his lordship, “when I need to think.”
This is where your mother and I have always talked over important matters,
he could have added.
The most significant matter, the one they hadn’t talked about, sat inches away from Lord Lithby’s elbow.
“I still haven’t sorted it out,” Pip said. “Mrs. Tyler told me it was wrong to fight, and I said my mother was dead, and it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, isn’t it? And she said it was, but that wasn’t any reason to go about blacking people’s eyes and knocking their teeth loose. And I said what if she had a boy and another boy said something bad about her? Shouldn’t her boy defend her honor? And she said honor was for ladies and gentlemen. She said ordinary folks need to think about getting their living. She said, What if I broke my arm or leg or jaw and couldn’t work?”
“She has a point,” his lordship said. His face worked, but the child was looking at the sow while he talked and didn’t notice.
“But I can’t let people say mean things about my mother,” Pip went on. “Who’s going to defend her honor if I don’t? I
have
to. And if I have to do that, then I can’t be an ordinary person. But I can’t be a gentleman, either.” He frowned. “It’s a conundrum, sir, isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t,” said his lordship, his voice not quite steady. “Women don’t see things the same way men do. You were right to defend your mother’s honor.”