“Your dear mother was a crier. Not a particularly sentimental woman, for all her softheartedness, but I knew we were in anticipation of another happy event when she took to napping and crying.”
“I see.” The earl smiled. There were depths to his parents’ intimacy he’d not yet glimpsed, he realized. Sweet depths, rich in caring and humor.
“Mayhap you do.” The duke’s answering smile faded. “And your mother was most affectionate when breeding, as well, not that she isn’t always, but she was particularly in need of cuddling and cosseting, much to my delight. If this woman is carrying your child, Westhaven, it puts matters in a different light.”
“It does.”
“I’m not proud to have sired two bastards”—the duke frowned—“though in my day, these things were considered part of the ordinary course. Times aren’t so tolerant now.”
“They aren’t,” Westhaven agreed, sitting down as the weight of possible fatherhood began to sink in. “I would not wish bastardy on any child of mine.”
“Good of you.” The duke smiled thinly. “The child’s mother is the one you’ll have to convince. Best not fret about it now, though. Things sometimes work themselves out despite our efforts.”
The earl barely heard him, so taken was he with the idea of creating a child with Anna. It felt right: in his bones it felt right and good. She would be a wonderful mother, and she would make him an at least tolerable father.
Papa.
The word took on rich significance, and the earl turned to regard his own sire.
“Weren’t you ever afraid?” he asked. “Ten children, three different women, and you a duke?”
“I wasn’t much of a duke.” The old man snorted. “Not at first. But children have a way of putting a fellow on the right path rather sooner than he’d find it himself. Children and their mothers. But to answer your question, I was fairly oblivious, at first, but then Devlin was born, and Maggie, and I began to sense my own childhood was coming to a close. I was not sanguine at this prospect, Westhaven. Many of our class regard perpetual childhood as our God-given right. Fortunately, I met your mother, and she showed me just how much I had to be fearful of.”
“But you kept having children. Fatherhood couldn’t have been all that daunting if you embraced it so frequently.”
“Silly boy.” The duke beamed. “It was your mother I was embracing. Still do, though it probably horrifies you to hear of it.”
“No.” Westhaven smiled. “It rather doesn’t.”
The duke’s smile faded. “More to the point, you don’t have a choice with children, Westhaven. You bring them into this world, and you are honor bound to do the best you can. If you are fortunate, they have another parent on hand to help out when you are inclined to be an ass, but if not, you muddle on anyway. Look at Gwen Hollister—or Allen, I suppose. She muddled on, and Rose is a wonderful child.”
“She is. Very. You might consider telling her mother that sometime.”
He shifted the conversation, to regale his father with an account of his time spent with Rose. It seemed like ages ago that His Grace had come thundering into the sick room at Welbourne, but listening to his father recount more stories of Victor and his brothers, Westhaven had the strong sense the duke was healing from more than just his heart seizure.
Westhaven took his leave of his father, so lost in thought he had little recollection of his journey home. Pericles knew the way, of course, but ambling along in the heat, the earl was preoccupied with the prospect of fatherhood. When he gained his library, he sat down with a calendar and began counting days.
He’d retrieved Nanny Fran from the duke’s household, and he wasn’t above putting the old woman up to some discreet monitoring of Anna’s health. By his calculations, he had not been intimate with Anna when she should have been fertile, but women were mysterious, and he’d taken no precautions to prevent conception.
It hit him like a freight wagon that in that single act, he’d probably taken away as many of Anna’s options as her brother and Stull combined, and he’d never once considered behaving any differently. He sat alone in his library for a long time, thinking about Anna and what it meant to love her were she carrying his child.
At the same time, Anna was sitting on the little bed in the room she’d used when she held the title housekeeper, thinking what an odd loss it was to not be even that anymore to the earl. She had found it heartening that she could earn her own keep. Looking after the earl and his brothers had been particularly pleasurable, as they took well to being tended to.
She, however, did not take well to being tended to. Not lately. For the past several nights, the earl had served as her lady’s maid, taking down her hair, bringing her a cup of tea, and spending the end of the day in quiet conversation with her. All the while, even on those nights when he rubbed her back and cuddled her close on the bed, she felt him withdrawing to a greater and greater emotional distance.
He wasn’t physically skittish with her, but rather very careful. Anna wanted to think he was almost cherishing, but there was no evidence of desire in his touch. And she bundled into him closely enough the evidence would have been impossible to hide. She clung to him for those times when he offered her comfort but felt all too keenly the comfort he was no longer interested in offering, as well.
She was losing him, which proved to her once and for all that her decision to leave—her many, many decisions to leave—were the better course for them both.
Better, perhaps, but by no means easier.
“I am being followed,” Helmsley said, taking a long swallow of ale. Ale, for God’s sake, the peasant drink.
“You are a well-dressed gentleman on the streets when few are about,” Stull said. “No doubt you attract attention, as I do myself. I want to know why you’re back in dear old London town, where you don’t fit in and you do depend on my coin.”
Helmsley rolled his eyes. “Because I am being followed. Big, dark chap, rough-looking, like a drover returning north without his flock.”
“And what would a drover be doing staying at the better inns, when they have their own establishments for that purpose?” Stull replied, draining his own tankard.
“You take my point.” Helmsley nodded, glad he didn’t have to explain everything. “I thought you should know.”
“You thought I should know.” Stull frowned. “But you’ve been gone nigh a week, which means you probably made it halfway to York before turning about and deciding to tell me.”
Helmsley studied his ale. “I had a delay on the way out of Town. Horse tossed a shoe, then it was too late to travel. He came up lame the next day, and rather than buy another horse, I had to wait for him to come right.”
“And you waited for how long before realizing you had company?”
“A few days,” the earl improvised. “I was traveling slowly to spare the horse.”
“Of course you were.” Stull scowled. “You’re up to something, Helmsley, and you’d best not be up to crossing me.”
“I am up to nothing.” Helmsley sighed dramatically. “Except imposing further on your hospitality. Now, why haven’t we collected my sisters yet?”
Stull banged his empty tankard in a demand for more ale and launched into a convoluted tale of arrests, accusations, and indignities. From his ramblings, the earl concluded Stull had yet to locate Morgan but tried at least once to abduct Anna almost literally from the Earl of Westhaven’s arms.
“So where does this leave us?” Helmsley asked.
He had been followed, but he’d also been struck with an idea: Dead, Anna was worth more to him than alive. The difficulty was, she had to die—or at least appear to die—before she wed Stull, or all her lovely money would fall into the hands of the baron. The thought that the baron might procure a special license and start his connubial bliss with Anna before Helmsley even saw her again had sent Helmsley right back down the road.