"Josh," she said, "why did you leave here?"
Some of the light went out of his eyes as they stood outside the door facing each other.
"Albert was dead and I was the heir," he said. "My aunt and uncle were devastated by grief and inclined to blame me, though murder was never mentioned. I blamed myself. I rowed beside him until he was within his depth, but I did not watch him all the way to shore. He got leg cramps and went under, I suppose. I could not stay here after that."
It did not sound sufficient reason to her. Surely his uncle would have wanted him to stay, to learn his future responsibilities. But it was none of her business.
"Whom did you want me to meet this time?" she asked.
He brightened, offered his arm, and climbed a steep hill with her until they reached another picturesque cottage with rosebushes climbing all over the front wall and a view down over the rooftops to the harbor. He knocked on the door.
The woman who opened it was young and personable. Her eyes lit up as soon as they looked on Joshua.
"Joshua!" she exclaimed, reaching out two slim hands to him. "Is it really you? Oh, it is. What a wonderful surprise."
Freyja guessed in some shock as Joshua presented her to Anne Jewell that this must be the governess who had borne his child. She was introduced as Miss Anne Jewell, yet she had a child, a little boy about five years old, who was blond and blue-eyed, with all the potential of being a lady-killer when he grew up. His mother had him make his bow to the Marquess of Hallmere and Lady Freyja Bedwyn before he ducked out of sight behind her skirts.
They did not go inside even though they were invited to do so. They all stood on the threshold for a few minutes, talking. Freyja fought outrage. It was true that she was not really betrothed to Joshua. Nevertheless, it showed poor taste on his part to bring her here.
"Now what have I done, sweetheart?" he asked as they made their way back down the hill in the direction of the harbor. She had not responded to any of his conversational overtures.
"Done?" she said in her frostiest, most quelling tones.
"You were not jealous, were you?" he asked, chuckling. "She is not nearly as gorgeous as you, Free."
She was truly angry then and wrenched her arm free of his.
"You might show more loyalty," she said. "She does, after all, mean more to you than I do. As she ought."
He stood still on the pavement and looked quizzically at her.
"Uh-oh," he said. "I perceive my aunt's malice at play here. And you fell for it, Free? Do you not know me better? She always did believe I was Anne Jewell's seducer and father of her son. I let her believe it. I have never cared for her good opinion."
Freyja felt horribly mortified then. For of course she had heard it from the marchioness and had not thought of questioning the essential truth of the accusation. How very foolish of her.
"You are not the boy's father?" she asked. "But he looks like you."
"And also like his mother," he said. "Did you notice that she has fair hair and blue eyes?"
"Do you support her and the child?" she asked. "That is what your aunt told me."
"Not entirely any longer." He smiled at her. "She takes in one or two pupils now, Free, and refuses to take any more from me than she absolutely needs, but the time was when she was not at all well accepted here. These people are kind but not always as tolerant as they might be. They are humans, not saints. She was destitute and had no family to go to."
Freyja drew in a slow breath and turned to walk on, her hands clasped behind her back. But he was beginning to look something like a saint, and she did not like it one bit. If she was to have any chance against him, she had to have something to despise.
"Let me guess," she said, wondering why the truth had not whacked her over the head long before now. "Albert?"
"Yes, Albert," he said. "And it was not with Anne's consent. She has altogether better taste than that."
They had reached the bottom of the hill and turned to stroll along the street that ran parallel to the beach. Becky and Davy were cavorting along the sands with a few other children while Eve and Aidan looked on. They all seemed to be shrieking and making merry. Prue was sitting up on the side of one of the beached fishing boats, swinging her legs and looking excited and happy while Chastity talked with an older woman and a young man hovered close to Prue as if to catch her should she fall. Constance and the Reverend Calvin Moore were at the far end of the street.
"Why did you not simply tell your uncle?" Freyja asked. "Ought he not to have known?"
"What would Bewcastle do," he asked her, "if he discovered that one of your brothers had impregnated your governess or Morgan's?"
"He would thrash the offender within an inch of his life," she said with conviction.
He laughed softly. "Ah, yes," he said, "I believe Bewcastle would. I also believe none of your brothers would put him in such a position. I cannot know how my uncle would have reacted, but I can guess. He would have gone to my aunt, and she would not only have dismissed the governess, but would also have driven her out of the neighborhood. Anne would have found herself destitute and with child and a vagrant to boot. She would have ended up in prison somewhere. Her son would have been fortunate to survive."
"And so you allowed the blame to be put upon you," she said.
"I have broad shoulders," he said, shrugging.
And probably very little money for the past five years-until he inherited the title, she thought. And yet through most of those years he had supported a child who was not his own.
"I find you rather stupid," she said scornfully. "Remarkably stupid, in fact. I am enormously relieved that we will never be married."
And she stuck her nose in the air and went striding off toward Eve and Aidan, trying to convince herself that she had just spoken the truest words she had ever uttered.
She hated him.
She really did.
How dare he be so foolishly noble!
How ridiculous all this was.
She wished fervently that she had not so impulsively decided to come here with him. She wished she were back at Lindsey Hall. She wished she had never gone to Bath. She wished she had never met the Marquess of Hallmere.
No, she did not.
"Sweetheart." He was coming along beside her, she realized. "You are doubly gorgeous when your temper is up. No, make that triply gorgeous."
She almost shamed herself by laughing. She lofted her nose into the air instead.
CHAPTER XVIII
Constance and Chastity sat down with Joshua during the afternoon and helped him draw up a list of guests to invite to the ball. Despite the splendor of the ballroom at Penhallow, he could not remember its ever being used. As his aunt had pointed out at breakfast, there were not enough families close by of sufficiently high social status to merit an invitation.
"We will invite everyone," he explained. "I suppose the inhabitants have not changed a great deal in five years, but you must help me make sure I have forgotten no one."
"A real ball," Chastity said, her eyes shining, "in the splendid Penhallow ballroom. I am so glad you did not allow Mama to talk you out of it, Joshua." She flushed, apparently at her own disloyalty. "And I am glad you did not allow her to force you into marrying Constance."
Constance flushed pink too.
"Perhaps," he said, his eyes twinkling, "Constance likes Cousin Calvin better." He had been right in his guess this morning, of course. His aunt was doing her best to promote a match between them.
"Oh, no, Joshua," Constance said gravely.
"Constance likes Mr. Saunders better," Chastity said.
"And you, Chass?" he asked. "Do you like Hugh Garnett?"
He had meant it as a teasing question, one over which they would all laugh. But she stared at him with stricken eyes, her face paling.
"I would not give my consent anyway," he told her hastily. "I am your guardian, remember?"