Vicar's Daughter to Viscount's Lady. Louise Allen
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on her morals and she was not sure how to explain it to him in any case. How could a man understand the impact his dazzling, treacherous brother had had on her? She was the lonely, dutiful, unhappy eldest daughter of the vicarage and Rafe had been the fulfilment of a fantasy.
‘No, in Suffolk. I live—lived—in a village near Ipswich. I am a vicar’s daughter. My two younger sisters, who could not bear life with Papa any longer, ran away some time ago. I remained. I am expected to support my father in his old age.’
‘How old is he, for God’s sake?’ the viscount demanded. He was certainly to the point, she observed, through her haze of misery.
‘Fifty-three.’ Bella took a wary sip of the red wine in her glass.
‘A long wait for him to become decrepit, then. I gather he is not a joy to live with. More soup?’
‘No. No more soup, thank you, and, no, he is not.’ It was futile to lie. Lord Hadleigh needed to understand. ‘He believes that females are natural sinners, the cause of wickedness, and it must be beaten out of them if necessary. “Woman is the daughter of Eve. She is born of sin and is the vessel of sin”.’ She quoted the sampler she had worked with her sisters. ‘My middle sister eloped with a young officer, her childhood sweetheart, the youngest ran away and I was seduced by a viscount. Papa was quite correct, it seems. I do not know where either of them is,’ she added with a pang. Bella put down her spoon with an unsteady hand and braced herself for this viscount to express his disapproval.
‘So, with two sisters gone by the time Rafe happened along, you were ripe for escape?’
That was not the outright condemnation she had expected. Did Rafe’s brother understand after all? It was hard to tell whether he was sarcastic or sympathetic. How to explain the magic of the week of February sunshine that had come with Rafe, like a harbinger of joy? How to convey the sheer wonder of having such a man—handsome, attentive, sophisticated—pay her attention?
‘He had fallen in love at first sight, he said,’ she began, haltingly explaining it to both him and herself. ‘He was in the country, staying with his friend Marcus Daunt at Long Fallow Hall a few miles away. He admitted he was on a repairing lease because he was not feeling too well. The last thing he had expected was to fall in love, he told me.’
‘That must have been the infection beginning,’ Lord Hadleigh said. ‘I wondered where he had been. He was in London when he died.’
It seemed odd that he did not know his own brother’s movements. And how strange that she had not sensed that he was ill; somehow the baby made a connection between them that should have been tangible, however much she hated him. ‘When was it? Did he…was there much pain?’ The room blurred as she struggled to get her emotions under control. This was her baby’s father; even after everything, she did not want him to have suffered agonies.
‘He was in some pain at first, they tell me, but he slipped into unconsciousness very quickly. Miss Shelley—’ He got to his feet and came round the table to crouch down beside her, his movements lithe. He was fit, she thought vaguely, and fast. ‘I am sorry, that was too abrupt. Here, drink some wine.’ He picked up the glass and wrapped her fingers around it, guiding hand and glass to her lips.
She drank a little. ‘Thank you. I am all right. I wanted to know, it is better than imagining things.’ She made herself go on with her story as he went back to his seat. It was hard to look at him: he was so like Rafe and yet, so different. He seemed kind, he seemed caring. So had Rafe—at first. Beware, the voice of experience whispered. He’s a man. ‘We loved each other—I thought—but I warned him about Papa, who became angry if I and my sisters so much as spoke to the curate.’
‘Viscount Hadleigh is hardly the curate,’ the current holder of the title observed drily. He got to his feet, removed her soup plate and began to carve a capon. ‘Are the side dishes within your reach?’ He handed her a plate with meat and served himself.
‘Thank you, yes.’
‘Go on, Miss Shelley. He loved you, you loved him, but your father would object because he wanted to keep you at home for his own comfort.’
‘We spoke of marriage and made plans. Rafe would go back to London, organise the settlements and return to present Papa with a fait accompli—he was even going to employ a good housekeeper and bring her with him so Papa would not be abandoned. It all seemed perfect, that day. I was head over heels in love and…We became lovers. He asked and I…He said I could not love him, if I refused. So I did as he asked me.’
She could not go on. She was not going to describe the horror of it all disintegrating about her. The nightmare. She had loved Rafe, she knew she would have learned to please him in bed if she had had the chance, if he had cared for her in return and had wanted to teach her. But—’That is all,’ she concluded abruptly and looked up to find Elliott Calne’s eyes studying her with something painfully like pity in them.
Elliott was silent, twisting his wine glass between long fingers.
Further intimate revelations seemed beyond Bella, but good manners insisted she try to make some kind of conversation. She could not just sit and sob, however bad she felt. ‘Forgive me,’ she ventured, ‘but were you and your brother close?’
‘You mean, I presume, how like him am I?’ That question appeared to amuse him. The smile appeared, and goose bumps ran up and down her spine. It was some form of sorcery, that smile. In combination with those eyes it should be illegal. ‘Not very, except in looks. I am the boringly well-behaved younger brother, after all.’
Boring hardly seemed the word. Bella made herself focus on him, not just on his resemblance to Rafe. Nor, she guessed, was well behaved an accurate description. There was an edge to Elliott Calne’s observations that suggested a cheerfully cynical view of the world and a lack of shock at her story that made her suspect that he was quite familiar with the pleasures of life.
‘You are?’
‘For a long time I was the poor younger brother as well. That does put a slight crimp in one’s descent into debauchery, unless one has no concern about debt or one’s health. I enjoy sport, I enjoy working hard, being fit. I prefer to make money, not to squander it. Then when I had it I found that working for my wealth made me value it a little more than, perhaps, Rafe did his inheritance.’
He raised his eyes fleetingly to study the room and she glanced around too. Under the opulence there were small signs of decay, of money skimped on repairs and spent on show. Bella noticed a patch of damp on the wall by the window, a crack in the skirting, and recalled the potholes in the carriage drive. The fingers of Elliott’s left hand tightened on the stem of his wine glass, the ring that had been Rafe’s sparking in the candlelight. She realised that his eyes were on her and not the room. He glanced away again, went back to his silent thoughts.
Bella put down her knife and fork and studied the face that was so like, and yet unlike, his brother’s. Rafe’s face had been softer than this man’s, though the searing attack of Rafe’s anger had been sharp; she felt that Elliott’s would be more ruthless and controlled under a façade that was more light-hearted than Rafe’s. She shivered and he caught it at once; he was watching her more closely than she had realised.
‘Are you cold?’ She shook her head. ‘Still hungry? Shall I ring for cheese, or a dessert?’ The perfect host, yet this was very far from the perfect social situation and Bella suspected that much more was going on in that sharply barbered head than concerns over her appetite.
‘No, thank you, my lord.’ She was as warm and well fed and rested as she was going to be; now was the moment to say what she had resolved upstairs when she woke.
Goodness only knew how he would respond, but she was prepared to be utterly shameless. After a lifetime of doing what she was told, thinking of everyone else’s welfare, needs and whims before her own, she was going to stand up and fight for her child. After all, the world would say she had put herself beyond shame. ‘My lord.’
He looked at her,