“You are insisting? How will you insist, dear Mama, when I cut off your allowance?”
Perhaps it was the French disease or the drink, but Hart’s memory was growing faulty. “You cut off my allowance years ago, Hart. I manage on my portion.” Which, thank her sainted papa’s shrewdness, no venal, grasping son could touch.
He turned his back on her, making the bald spot on the back of his head apparent. He’d hate that, if he knew she could see it. Hart Collins was so vain, so unhealthy, that he’d see even the normal impact of time as victimization.
She did not wish her son were dead. In the manner he went on, he’d meet his end soon enough.
“I’ll need money.”
Of course he would. The old baron’s solicitors were a pack of jackals well up to dealing with Hart’s tantrums and bullying. Not one penny of estate money would get into Hart’s hands until the very day it was due him.
“I have a few jewels.” Those had belonged to her grandmother. “You will leave in the morning, Hart, and I’ll write to some people I know in the South, who would welcome you to their house parties.”
He was no longer welcome in Rome, and neither was he safe in Paris or Marseilles. His duns in London had already found him at the family seat in Cumbria and were becoming impatient.
The baroness unfastened the pearl necklace her grandmother had given her upon her come out and held it out to her son. In the flickering candlelight of the once-elegant parlor, the jewels looked like a noose.
Perhaps the English countryside would shelter him for a time. It was just a thought, not a wish, not even a prayer.
Ethan slept badly, but got up early and heeded the impulse to get out of the house. Confinement never improved his mood, so he made for the stables after a quick breakfast. Miss Portman and her charges were not in evidence at breakfast, which suited him splendidly.
As he took his second-favorite mount out for a bracing hack in the cool of the earliest morning, Ethan forced himself to consider he might owe Miss Portman an apology. On general principles, it irked him to apologize to anyone, particularly when he wasn’t quite sure where he’d transgressed.
One thing he’d realized as he surveyed the remains of supper: there had been nothing to drink except wine, and Miss Portman did not enjoy wine. He should have seen to it she was offered something else. Had she not been so provoking, he might have been a better host.
He let his gelding come down to the trot after they’d cleared every stile and fence between the house and the home farm. Maybe Miss Portman was peeved at him because he’d teased her for her degree of education.
But that explanation didn’t feel quite right.
The horse halted without Ethan cuing him, as the realization sank in that Miss Alice Portman did not care one bean—a vegetable, mind you—how much Ethan teased her. She minded bitterly the way Ethan disregarded his children.
Bloody, bleeding hell.
He did not know what they ate.
He did not know what they learned.
He did not know how they passed their days.
He had not known his youngest had been harshly beaten, or why.
As the horse started walking forward, Ethan knew in his bones he was facing an opportunity—a challenge. He could continue as he’d gone on, largely trying to ignore that his wife had borne two sons, or he could transcend his pique and be the kind of parent his sons deserved.
The kind of father he himself had not had.
Which decided the matter, foot, horse, and cannon.
He did not want to be a father at all, but he was damned if he would do to his children what the old earl had done to him. The man had presided over his family as a benevolent dictator, but had been so badly informed regarding his own children he’d tossed Ethan away on the strength of ill-founded suspicion alone. Banished him.
That line of thought was worse than bleak, so Ethan patted his horse, turned for the stables, and mentally rearranged his day. He’d start with the nursery and find some way to talk to his children. It couldn’t be that hard, after all. Miss Portman did it easily, didn’t she?
But as he made his way through the house, he was accosted by a chambermaid hurrying down the stairs, eyes wild, cap askew.
“Oh, Mr. Grey, I don’t mean to be getting above myself, but you best come quick. Mrs. B. is off to the village and Cook’s abed and Mr. B. is down to the mill.” She reached for Ethan’s arm, then dropped her hand and dipped a little at the knees, as if she were resisting an urgent call from nature.
“I’m coming,” Ethan said, keeping the irritation from his voice. “What exactly is the problem?”
“It’s the new governess,” the girl moaned as she turned back up the steps toward the nursery wing. “I think Miss Portman is dying!”
Four
Ethan didn’t even knock. He opened the door to Miss Portman’s bedroom and was hit immediately with a blast of warm, stale air. The curtains were opened, but the windows, which should have been cracked to let in some of the breeze, were closed tightly.
But he knew this scene—the bedclothes badly tangled; the air uncomfortably still; a hot, painful tension in the room.
“Close the drapes all but a little,” he quietly directed the maid. “Open the windows, then bring me up some lavender water with ice, and a pitcher of cold mint tea. Sugar the tea. We’ll need clean sheets as well, and some buttered toast, and the laudanum. Move quietly, or I’ll know the reason why.”
On the bed, Miss Portman tried to roll away from the sound of his voice.
“Miss Portman?” Ethan approached the bed soundlessly and kept his voice down. “Alice?”
The sound she made when she tried to draw in a breath was terrible, a wheezy bleat that struggled against itself.
He did not sit on the bed, as he knew all too well that giving Miss Portman any cause for anxiety would only exacerbate the situation. He did, however, note the location of the nearest pitcher and basin. And by the scant light coming through the drawn drapes, he saw Miss Portman had had a bad night.
Her braid was a disaster, her skin was pale, and beneath her closed eyes, there was still that grayish, drawn look of extreme fatigue.
“Alice?” He sat carefully on the bed, and her hand appeared from the covers to rest over her stomach.
Another horrible indrawn breath, and then, “No.” It meant, he knew, no talking, no moving, no company. No hope, too, when the fear was at its worst. He reached out a hand, just to be sure, and laid the back of it to her forehead.
No fever, thank God, because this much discomfort might also signal some physical ailment.
“Alice?” He smoothed her hair back, noting she tolerated that well enough. “Alice, can you talk to me?”
“Go away.” She tried to roll away, to draw her knees up, but then her eyes flew open. “Oh no…”
Ethan’s wife had not fared easily early in her pregnancy with Jeremiah. He knew what that particular variety of “oh no” presaged, and in an instant had her sitting up beside him.
“Look at me,” Ethan ordered. “You’re at Tydings, you’re safe, and your charges are likely stirring across the hall.”
Another breath, just as tortured. “Want to die,” Miss Portman murmured to her knees.
“I know.” Ethan settled a hand on her nape and took a more soothing tone. “Look around you, Alice. You’re having a bad moment, but it will pass. Don’t try to breathe, just let it happen. See your things there on the desk, your robe across the foot of the bed. Your spectacles are here on the night table. I expect you picked this rose when you were out strolling with Joshua and Jeremiah.”
As he spoke, Ethan rubbed his thumb slowly across her nape. He matched his breathing to hers and felt her gradually calming. “Better?” Ethan asked.