Esmée smiled a little weakly. She had forgotten how much her aunt talked. “Are you sure, ma’am, that this is what you want?” she asked. “I should not wish you to be embarrassed in any way by my presence.”
“Nonsense!” said Lady Tatton. “You are my niece, Esmée, and much loved, as I hope you are aware. We’ll just brazen out any gossip—my reputation is unassailable, you know—and you shall give me something to do in the spring.”
“Shall I?” asked Esmée. “What?”
Lady Tatton’s eyes widened. “Why, I shall bring you out, goose!” she said. “What else have I to do with Anne away, and her children all settled? You’ll be in half-mourning, of course, so we can’t cut such a
spectacular
dash, which, given your looks, we otherwise might have done. And you really are too old to be a debutant, in any traditional sense. But many gentlemen prefer older, more sensible girls.”
“I—I beg your pardon?”
Lady Tatton patted her arm. “I’m trying to tell you we shall find you a good, staid husband nonetheless,” she said. “Indeed, now I think on it, perhaps we oughtn’t wait until spring.”
“Oh,” said Esmée softly. “No, I don’t think—”
“Nonsense!” interjected Lady Tatton. “The sooner the better, before the gossip about Sorcha’s situation leaks out.”
Esmée pursed her lips a moment. “No, I am not at all sure I shall marry, Aunt Rowena.”
“Not marry? But what of that generous dowry dear Papa left you?”
Esmée was beginning to wish Cousin Anne had had a few more children to occupy Lady Tatton. “I’m to have it anyway when I turn thirty, am I not?” she said. “I shan’t need a husband then. Perhaps I shall become a bluestocking and retire to the country with a pack of hounds and a dozen cats.”
Lady Tatton seized her hand and kissed it. “I can see I mustn’t rush you!” she cried. “So we are agreed, then. We shall have quiet entertainments from now until spring—dinner parties and small, informal gatherings. You’ll have a lovely time, I promise you. In no time at all, you’ll have forgotten about this dreadful entanglement with Sir Alasdair MacLachlan. And if you should see him in town, my dear, you must at all cost turn your head and refuse to acknowledge him.”
“Why, I cannot do that,” she said. “He is Sorcha’s father.”
Lady Tatton pursed her lips again. “But he is not the sort of gentleman an unattached female
knows,
dear girl.”
Esmée stiffened. “I cannot be cut off from Sorcha,” she insisted. “Indeed, I won’t be. Really, Aunt, that is too cruel.”
Lady Tatton considered it but a moment. “Very well,” she said. “The child has a nurse, I daresay? Perhaps she can bring her to visit in the mornings. Sir Alasdair, I collect, doesn’t rise—perhaps doesn’t even
return
—until well past noon, so it isn’t as if he’d miss her. Trust me to think of something, Esmée. I would not for the world wish you or Sorcha unhappy.”
They concluded their bittersweet reunion with Lady Tatton going up to meet Sorcha, whom she declared a charming child. After clucking and cooing at the girl’s wound, and vowing it would be her unalloyed delight to take the child in as her own, Lady Tatton finally rose and kissed her nieces’ cheeks. She did not wish to leave Esmée behind, but finally bowed to Esmée’s wishes in that regard and promised to return for her in the late afternoon.
Lydia showed her ladyship out.
Esmée sat down, and began to cry.
Unaware that his matutinal habits were being impugned by none other than that high stickler of the
haut monde,
Lady Tatton, Sir Alasdair MacLachlan walked briskly up his front steps but a scant three hours after going down them, feeling much more in charity with the world. His spirits had been buoyed by two vastly dissimilar circumstances. He had just passed Hawes, his second footman, out on an errand, and learned of Sorcha’s demands for breakfast.
As to the second, he carried in his coat pocket two small jeweler’s boxes, the contents of which he’d spent the morning choosing, and if the indulgences had left his purse several thousand pounds lighter, so be it. In the full light of morning, it seemed a small price to pay.
Wellings greeted him at the door.
“I hear we’ve good news upstairs,” said Alasdair, cheerfully passing his hat and stick.
But Wellings looked instead as if someone had died.
“What?” cried Alasdair. “Good God, man! Is it the child? What?”
“We’ve trouble afoot, sir,” he said gloomily. “There is a lady come to—”
“You!” cried a sharp voice from the foot of his stairs. “Sir Alasdair MacLachlan!”
Alasdair turned at once to see Lydia escorting a well-dressed lady. “Good God!” he said again. “Lady Tatton? Ma’am, is that you?”
Her ladyship bore down on him like a seventy-four-gun man-o’-war. “You may well ask!” she declared. “And now that you’ve done so, I wish a moment of your time.”
Having already learned that women who invaded the sanctity of his home demanding a moment of his time rarely brought good news, Alasdair balked. “You have the advantage of me, ma’am,” he said. “Especially since you are already
in
my house.”
Lady Tatton put her nose in the air and marched into the parlor as if it were her own. Alasdair glanced at Wellings, who looked as though he were trying to swallow a boiled lemon.
What the devil was going on?
Alasdair passed his two packages to his butler, enjoining him to lock them in the study desk.
“And what may I do for you, ma’am?” he asked Lady Tatton, stripping off his gloves as he came into the parlor. “I take it you are here on a matter of some urgency since we scarce know one another.”
“I
don’t
know you, sir,” she said with asperity. “But this is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into, and I have come to sort it out.”
Alasdair stopped in his tracks. “I beg your pardon?”
“My nieces!” she snapped. “The ones you are holding hostage!”
It was as if the floor shifted beneath his feet.
Lady Tatton’s nieces?
Holy God. Somehow, he found the presence of mind to toss his gloves disdainfully down. “I was unaware, ma’am, that I was holding anyone hostage.”
“You have caused inestimable damage, sir, to Esmée’s reputation,” said Lady Tatton. “Do not you dare get on your high horse with me.”
Now he was rattled, and it took all his skill as a gambler to hide it. “You are the aunt, then, I take it?” he said lightly. “Returned at last from points afar?”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Of course I am the aunt! Never say you did not know!”
He twisted his mouth into a sour smile. “I did not know,” he answered. “But it makes little difference to me. Sorcha is my daughter.”
“And a sad shame it is, too!” said her ladyship. “Bad enough she be thought the daughter of that devil Achanalt, but you, sir, are beyond the pale.”
Alasdair was swiftly losing his patience. This was not the happy occasion he’d expected his homecoming to be, and he did not like the comparison Lady Tatton had just drawn. “I hope, ma’am, that I am not sunk so low as a man who would put children out on the street to starve!” he snapped. “Now, have you a point? If so, make it and leave me in peace. I’m sorry for the loss of your sister, but Sorcha’s paternity is none of your concern.”
“Nonetheless, Esmée’s welfare is,” she returned. “And you, sir, have all but ruined her.”
“Good God, what do you want of me?” he gritted. “I did not ask her to come here!”
“No, but you persuaded her to stay!” snapped Lady Tatton. “You knew she was innocent, and you knew she was desperate, and you took blatant advantage of those facts, without an iota of consideration for the damage you would be doing her good name.”
Now her accusations were striking too close to home. “Wha—” His voice faltered. “What has Esmée told you?”
Lady Tatton looked at him suspiciously. “That it is all her fault,” she said. “And none of yours. But I do not for one moment believe that. She is as green as grass, and you know it.”
Alasdair tore his eyes from hers and stared into the depths of the room. For a moment, it was as if time held suspended, its passage marked by nothing but the ticking of the mantel clock. “Then I shall marry her,” he finally said. “There need be no more talk of Esmée’s ruin.”
Lady Tatton gasped. “Good heavens!” she said. “Absolutely not!”
He returned his gaze to her face and forced his voice to hold steady. “It would make me the happiest man on earth,” he said. He would not have wished such a thing on Esmée, but now that it had come down to it, Lady Tatton’s cold recitation of his sins made it all the easier to do what he’d already known he must.
But Lady Tatton, it seemed, saw nothing easy about it. “Out of the question!” she snapped. “Unless you are telling me there is some reason why she would not make an eligible
parti
for someone else?”
Alasdair drew an unsteady breath. “Esmée would make any man proud,” he answered. “And whilst I know I don’t deserve her, I am the man accused of bringing about her ruin.”
Lady Tatton’s eyes hardened. “You would do nothing but make her miserable,” she retorted. “You’ve already ruined her mother. Why should Esmée be forced to throw herself away on a gamester and a womanizer? On a man whose family is barely two generations removed from the croft? Perhaps my sister was a bit capricious, but our bloodlines go all the way back to the Conquest! Moreover, Esmée’s beauty and deportment are beyond reproach. Yes, she would make any man proud. And if there is anything of the gentleman left in you, you will step aside, hold your tongue, and let someone worthy
have
her!”
Again, the long silence. Alasdair went to the window and stared down into the street. Again, he felt that quiet, quivering rage, and the impotent sense of something precious slipping from his grasp. That awful fear of losing something he’d barely known he wanted.
But Esmée was not about to be torn asunder by a carriage wheel. She was not bleeding to death. She was being offered an opportunity. A chance to become what she had been destined by blood and by birth to be. And he was…well, he was essentially what Lady Tatton accused him of being. He had no excuse for it, either.
As a young man, he had not been denounced or cut off by his father, as had his friend Devellyn. He had not endured the agonizing loss of a first love, as had been Merrick’s fate. There was no dark, Byronic secret in his past, as with Quin. He was just a charming wastrel. Because that was what he’d chosen to be. And now, as he approached—well, if not the autumn of his life, then certainly a bloody late summer—he had little right to cry foul over it, or to drag youth and beauty and innocence down with him, simply because he had formed some pathetically adolescent tendre for a girl he didn’t deserve. It would pass, and soon enough.
“You are persuaded, ma’am, that you can make a good marriage for her?” he finally asked, his voice hollow.
“I believe so,” she said. “Do your servants talk?”
“They do not,” he said firmly. “Moreover, they hold Miss Hamilton in the highest regard.”
“Then I shall have her married by Christmas,” declared Lady Tatton.
He detected, however, a moment’s hesitation. He knew it boded ill.
“And—?”
Lady Tatton sighed sharply. “Of course, Esmée is reluctant to go without her sister. So I really think it would be best if you just let—”
He turned from the window, his face a mask of rage. “No!” he rasped.
“That
is out of the question! Do not you dare to ask it of me.”
“I admit, it is an awkward situation,” she said. “But the child is my niece, and—”
“The child is
my daughter!”
he interjected. “Mine! And I am quite capable, madam, of raising a child and of giving her life’s every luxury. If Esmée wishes to leave me, take her, damn you! I can’t stop her. But my child? No. Never.”
Lady Tatton seemed to shrivel a little. “Well, the truth is, Esmée has put me off until this afternoon,” she admitted. “I believe she means, Sir Alasdair, to speak with you.”
“It is not necessary,” he said, the words tight and clipped. “Indeed, I wish she would not.”
“Just as I told her, but you know how she can be,” said her ladyship. “And unfortunately, I cannot tell what is in her mind. It
might
be something very silly. So if she should say or do anything foolish, I beg you to remember your promise. I beg you to set aside your selfish notions, and for once, do what is best for someone else. Esmée’s whole life has been fraught with disappointment. She does not need to find disappointment in her marriage.”
Alasdair felt himself trembling inside with rage. “In other words, you mean for her to wed someone sober and respectable?” he gritted. “Someone who will help her take her proper place in society? And whether or not this much-vaunted husband stirs any passion in her heart, or has any appreciation of her strength of mind, or any respect for her independent spirit, is to be considered wholly secondary? I should think that damned disappointing!”
“Well!” said her ladyship. “I seem to have struck a nerve.”
He had turned back to the window again, this time his hands clenched on the windowsill. “Lady Tatton, I fear you strain my limited civility,” he said. “You have at least half your pyrrhic victory. You may take one of your nieces, and marry her off to the first worthy suitor that crosses your path. Now kindly
get out of my house!”
He heard nothing more but the sound of the door latch clicking shut.
It was not long before Lydia returned to the schoolroom in another breathless, wide-eyed rush to warn Esmée that Lady Tatton had cornered Sir Alasdair on his way in the door. By that time, however, Sorcha had become fretful, just as Dr. Reid had predicted, and Esmée was obliged to pace back and forth through the schoolroom, patting the child on the back until she drifted off to sleep.
Heartsick over the choice which now seemed inevitable, and very much afraid her aunt had berated Alasdair unfairly, Esmée continued to pace, even after Sorcha was tucked into her little bed, and Lady Tatton’s coach had vanished from the street below. She walked and she waited, her heart in her throat. Waited for Alasdair to come to her, all the while wondering what he would say.