Kemp cleared his throat. “There was a, ah, delivery for you earlier this afternoon, m‘lord,” he said, nodding his head significantly to one side.
“I did not know quite what to do with it but knew you would be arriving yourself before the afternoon was out.”
The viscount turned his head toward one of the fireplaces. Beside it, seated on a wooden settle, quite upright and quite still, sat a small child so bundled up inside a large coat and woolen scarf and mittens and so hidden beneath an absurdly large hat that she looked more like a bundle of abandoned laundry than a living child. To the left side of her chest was pinned a square sheet of paper.
“She would not, ah, remove her gloves or her hat, m’lord, or allow either Mrs. Dexter or myself to remove the label,” the butler said. “The name on the label is Miss Veronica Weston, m’lord, care of yourself and this house.”
Veronica Weston. Oh, good Lord. Viscount Buckley crossed the hall, his booted feet echoing on the marble tiles, and stopped a few feet in front of the child, who looked up at him with eyes that he supposed were very like his own.
He had never seen her before. He had known of her existence since before her birth and had never tried to deny paternity or to shirk the responsibility of providing for her financially. But he and Nancy had parted company before she discovered the pregnancy, and she had moved on to another protector soon after the birth. He himself had never felt any particular human interest in his daughter.
“Veronica?” he asked.
“Yes.” She was looking very directly into his eyes. “Are you my papa? I am not to speak to anyone except my papa.”
Papa! He had never thought of himself by any such name. He was a father.
He had a daughter. He had never been a papa.
“This name is mine.” He touched one finger lightly to the label she wore on her chest. “You may speak to me. Your mama sent you here?”
“Mama went away,” the child said. “Mrs. Armstrong said I was to come to my papa.”
“Mrs. Armstrong?” He raised his eyebrows.
“She looks after me,” the child said. “But Mama went away and Mrs.
Armstrong said there was no money. I was to come to my papa.”
The label was thick. He guessed that there was a letter sealed up within it. Nancy had never neglected the child despite the demands of an acting career. Aubrey had assured him of that. But she had gone away? She had tired of the child?
“Do you have a letter for me, Veronica?” he asked, holding out one hand.
He was only just beginning to realize what a coil he was in now. As if things were not bad enough as they were.
The child looked down and laboriously unpinned the label from her coat.
She handed it to him. Sure enough, there was a letter. Nancy had been out of town for a weekend party, leaving her daughter with Mrs.
Armstrong, a neighbor who frequently cared for the child. Nancy had fallen from an upper gallery in the house she was visiting to the hall below and had died instantly. Mrs. Armstrong, with six children of her own, could not afford to keep the child when there was no chance of payment. She respectfully sent her to her father. She had been to the expense of hiring someone to write the letter for her and of sending the child on the stagecoach. She hoped she would be reimbursed for her pains.
Poor Nancy, he thought. She had been beautiful and a talented actress.
And a skilled lover. She had borne his child. And now she was dead. He folded the letter again and looked down at his daughter. She was gazing up at him, quiet and self-contained. And all of four years old.
Lord. Oh, dear Lord. What was he to do?
He turned his head to the two young ladies, who were still standing there, watching him. His eyes instinctively came to rest on Miss Craggs.
“She is my daughter,” he said. “Her mother has d-Her mother has gone away and she has been sent here.” He looked at her in mute appeal, like a child himself who did not know how to proceed.
“Uncle Warren!” Deborah said, shock in her voice.
Miss Craggs came closer, her eyes on the child. “She will want something to eat and a glass of milk,” she said. “She will need to remove her hat and her coat and have them and her bag taken to a room that will be hers.”
Of course! How practical and how simple.“Are you hungry, Veronica?” he asked.
“Yes, Papa,” the child said.
“Come along, then,” he said, clasping his hands awkwardly behind him.
Good Lord, his illegitimate child, his by-blow, was in his own home with his niece. His servants would be scandalized. His neighbors would be shocked. “Will you give your hat and your coat to Kemp?”
“Will you let me help you, Veronica?” He watched as Miss Craggs went down on her knees before the child, who stood up and allowed her outer garments to be removed. “What a pretty color your scarf is. There-now you will be more comfortable. But we will need to comb those curls of yours before you sit down for your milk and your food.” She touched the backs of two fingers to a tangled curl at the child’s cheek and smiled at her.
The viscount felt jolted, first by the sight of his daughter without the heavy outer garments-she was little more than a baby-and then by the smile on the face of his niece’s teacher. Good God, he thought, he had not noticed that the woman was beautiful. Though he knew even as he thought it that she was not beautiful, that it was merely something from deep within her that for the moment she had allowed to the surface of her face.
“Would you like to hold my hand?” she asked his daughter.
“Yes, please,” the child said, looking up at her and suiting action to words.
“Uncle Warren?” Deborah asked faintly.
“She is my child,” he told her. He felt almost as if he were realizing it for the first time. It was one thing to know one had fathered a child and to have accepted financial responsibility for her. It was another thing entirely to see the child, tiny and dainty and quiet, her eyes and her hair the color of his own.
“But-” Deborah said.
“She is my daughter,” he said firmly. “Shall we go up for tea and get warm again?” He offered her his arm.
“Is this Papa’s very own house?” Veronica was asking Miss Craggs.
Her own awkwardness and awe and even her excitement had been forgotten.
Although the great hall was the hall of her dream with the addition of a painted and gilded dome, and although the staircase was wide and magnificent and the drawing room large and splendid, Jane noticed them only with her eyes and not with her heart. And her own bedchamber with a separate dressing room was large and richly furnished and far surpassed anything she might have dreamed for herself. But she merely glanced at it when she hurried in to change her dress for dinner-to change from one drab gray dress to another.
Her time and her attention and her heart were otherwise engaged than in the perusal of a mere house and in the recognition of a dream come true.
She had never had anything to do with very young children. The girls who came to Miss Phillpotts’s school were older and more independent and did not really need her for anything outside her capacity as a teacher.
No one had ever needed her. The thought came without any self-pity. It was simply the truth.
Until today. But today she had seen a small child bewildered and frightened by the loss of her mother and by her arrival at the home of the father she had never seen before. And her heart had lurched with all the love she had never been called upon to give.
She had taken a comb from her own reticule in the drawing room and drawn it gently through the soft baby curls. And she had sat by the child and helped her to food and milk. And then she had taken her to the nursery, where a bed had been made up, and had helped her unpack her little bag, which had been full of surprisingly pretty dresses. She had taken the child down to dinner, although she would probably eat in the nursery on future days, and had helped her wash and change into her nightgown afterward. She had tucked her into bed.