A Reckless Desire (42 page)

“So you have returned, Rivers,” the duke said, rising to his feet, ignoring Lucia entirely. “The Stanhopes were sorry to have missed you. Lady Anne was understandably upset that you weren't here. I fear you have missed supper, but I can send for a little refreshment from the kitchen if you wish.”

Lucia didn't flinch. She'd expected this slight from the duke, and she refused to let it intimidate her. She wished Rivers had mentioned that his rumored fiancée, Lady Anne Stanhope, had been among the dinner guests, but what mattered now was that she was gone. Lucia raised her chin a little higher, squared her shoulders a little straighter, and smiled as warmly as if the duke had smiled at her first.

Rivers was mortified by his father's reception. She could tell by the way he squeezed her hand, a kind of wordless apology and support. He took a slight step forward, holding their clasped hands in front so his father couldn't miss them.

“Father,” he said, “may I present Miss Lucia di Rossi? Lucia, my father, the Duke of Breconridge.”

She slipped her hand free of his and sank into the curtsey that was expected of her. It was also the curtsey that she'd practiced so often under Rivers's instruction, and she bent with the grace that she'd made her own. She was the noble-born Ophelia, she was the cherished Juliet, she was the honored Mrs. Willow, but most of all she was Lucia di Rossi, who loved and was loved by Lord Rivers Fitzroy. All gave her strength, even as she remained bent low on the carpet with her white Juliet-skirts spread around her.

But the duke still did not acknowledge her or her curtsey, instead looking directly at Rivers and ignoring her. She didn't have to look up to sense Rivers's growing anger, and her heart went out to him. How difficult this must be for him! She didn't want him to take her side against his father, but rather wished his father would accept their love, and with it Rivers, too.

“You've noticed that we're a smaller group than when you left this evening,” the duke was continuing as if Rivers hadn't made his introduction. “Poor Augusta wearied, and Harry took her home. Of course every care must be exercised with her these last days before she's brought to bed.”

“Father,” Rivers repeated. “May I present Miss Lucia di Rossi?”

“Good evening, Miss di Rossi,” Geoffrey said, coming forward to take Lucia's hand and lift her up. He had the same warmth in his blue eyes that Rivers had, and she couldn't help smiling in return. “I have heard much about you from my brother and my wife, and I'm honored to at last make your acquaintance myself.”

“This is my brother Geoffrey, Lucia,” Rivers said quickly. “Serena's husband.”

“He is Lord Geoffrey Fitzroy,” the duke said sharply. “Do not slight him before an inferior, Rivers.”

“It is you who are slighting Miss di Rossi, Father,” Rivers said, his voice rising. “Why you cannot put aside your pride and—”

“There's no reason for a formal introduction, Rivers,” Lucia said, placing a light restraining hand on his arm. “His Grace has met me before, you see.”

Abruptly Rivers turned to face her. “He has?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling to reassure him—and perhaps herself, too. She was going to need to give the performance of her life if this was all to work as she prayed it would. “Last week your father came to Russell Street with His Highness to see
Romeo and Juliet.
All the primary players had the honor of being presented to the royal party at that time.”

Rivers looked sharply at his father. “You didn't tell me you'd seen Lucia perform.”

The duke gave the slightest of shrugs. “Since I believed you had wisely ended your liaison with this woman, Rivers, I did not judge the matter to be of any consequence. I suppose it slipped my mind.”

“Forgive me, Your Grace,” Lucia said gently, “but that was not what you told me then. Before all of us, you said that seeing my Juliet had been an honor and a privilege, and you agreed with His Majesty that I had brought tears to the eyes of the sturdiest gentlemen among you.”

“Hyperbole,” the duke said with disdain. “If you were familiar with the ways of Court, ma'am, you would know that much is said, but little believed.”

That stung, but she didn't let it show, and it helped that Rivers protectively slipped his arm around her shoulders.

“Father, please,” Rivers said. “I have not brought Miss di Rossi here for your critique of her performance. Rather, I intend to marry her, and I hope you will give us your blessing.”

Serena and Celia made little cries of rejoicing and Geoffrey grinned, and Serena hurried forward to kiss Lucia on the cheek and link her hand loosely into Lucia's: a small gesture, but one that meant so much to Lucia.

But the duke's expression only darkened.

“You will not have my blessing,” he said flatly. “How can you possibly expect me to condone so unsuitable a match as this one?”

“Because I love her,” answered Rivers without hesitation, “and she loves me, and I can see no reason under Heaven for that to be unsuitable, even to you, Father.”

“Because it
is,
Rivers,” Father thundered. “Consider your station, and then consider hers. Her parents were
dancers,
kicking their feet in the air for the amusement of the crowds.”

“As was my mother, Brecon,” Serena said quietly. “She was also my father's mistress, not his wife, yet you forgave that for my sake, and for Geoffrey's.”

“Your father was a gentleman,” the duke said firmly, waving away her objection. “That made it easier to overlook your mother's other, ah, deficiencies.”

“Perhaps my father wasn't a gentleman,” Lucia said, “but he and my mother were married, and they loved each other very much.”

“They were foreigners,” the duke said. “French, and Italian, I believe. They were not English.”

“But I am,” Lucia said, undaunted. “I was born was brought to London when I was less than a month old, which makes me as English as anyone.”

“As English as any of us are, in any event,” Geoffrey said, coming to stand beside Rivers. “Pray recall, Father, that we have a good share of Italian and French blood in our veins as well, back to the de' Medici, and—”

“I do not require a lecture as to our ancestry, Geoffrey,” the duke said. “It is our future, not our past, that concerns me at present, and how this woman from the stage deserves no place in it.”

“That's not what Her Majesty believed, Brecon,” Celia said. With her customary poise, she glided from the harpsichord's bench to stand beside her husband, placing her hand lightly on his shoulder. “Didn't you tell me that after Miss di Rossi's performance, Her Majesty wished aloud for the young ladies of her Court to possess even half the grace of Miss di Rossi's Juliet?”

Lucia gasped. “Her Majesty said that of me?”

“She did,” Celia said, nodding so that the white plume in her hair nodded in agreement as well. “Or so Brecon told me that night. My husband may be a stubborn man, Miss di Rossi, but he is always truthful. If the queen herself judged you would be an ornament to her Court, how could we Fitzroys possibly believe otherwise?”

Overwhelmed with unexpected emotion, Lucia was speechless. She'd never expected to find such acceptance from Rivers's family, or such regard. She felt it like a force enveloping her, wrapping her in a kind of security that she'd never felt from her own family.

Except for the one person whose judgment would matter most to Rivers.

“I will not be hectored in my own house, Celia,” the duke said, the edge in his voice unmistakable. “You compel me to speak plainly. For his own good, Rivers deserves a lady for a wife. A
lady.
We all do, considering what may be at stake.”

He didn't have to say more. Everyone else in the room understood. He meant that much-wished-for future Duke of Breconridge, the unborn boy that hovered over every family gathering.

The little boy who, if the duke had his way, would never be born to Lucia.

“I will marry her, Father,” Rivers said, his words filled with angry determination. “I wished for your blessing, but if you refuse to give it, then so be it. I'll never again bring my wife to this house, where she is not welcomed, nor will I come without her.”

Lucia bowed her head with misery and regret. This was exactly what she'd feared would happen. She'd never wanted to come between Rivers and his father, and now she'd done precisely that.

The duke began to answer, but Celia stopped him.

“Brecon, please, don't speak in haste,” she said, her voice beseeching yet firm. “Remember what it is to love, and be loved. If you cannot, then you will lose your son.”

The duke's expression softened, his belligerence replaced by a genuine sadness that Lucia hadn't expected.

“There are cases, Celia, where love alone is not sufficient,” he said. “If my son persists on this course then I fear I'll have no—what in blazes is that?”

The knocking at the drawing room door was frantic, and one of the footmen opened it. The butler quickly ushered in another servant, in different livery, and the two of them made short, bobbing bows.

“Forgive me, Your Grace,” the butler said breathlessly. “But this man brings news that you—”

“It's Her Ladyship, Your Grace,” the other servant interrupted excitedly, forgetting himself. “That is, Lord Hargreave sends his compliments, and requests that His Grace come at his earliest convenience, as her ladyship's been brought to the bed of her babe.”

“The child!” At once the duke snapped to attention, Lucia and Rivers forgotten before the arrival of the latest grandchild. “We must go to them at once. At once!”

In the dashing flurry of activity, Lucia hung back, feeling thoroughly out of place.

“I should return to my lodgings, Rivers,” she said. “But come to me tomorrow, and let me know whether Gus bears a boy or another girl.”

“Nonsense,” Rivers said. “You'll come with us.”

Lucia shook her head. “I don't think your father would—”

“I'm asking you, not him,” Rivers said, and smiled crookedly. “Harry and Gus will want you there. Especially Gus. To be sure, I cannot force you to come, but I hope you'll choose to be with me.”

She smiled. “For you, Rivers,” she said softly. “I'll stay with you.”

It was one thing for Rivers's father to declare that they all must hurry to Gus's side, but quite another to see it done in the middle of the night. Hats, coats, and cloaks must be fetched. The grooms, coachman, and footmen needed to be roused from their beds, the horses harnessed and two carriages brought around from the stable. Celia and Father rode in the ducal carriage, while Lucia and Rivers rode with Geoffrey and Serena in theirs. There was little conversation among them, with everyone acutely aware of the importance of the coming birth.

Nearly an hour had passed by the time the two carriages drew up before Harry and Gus's home, the only house on the square still ablaze with candlelight, and almost another hour besides since Harry had sent one of his footmen to Breconridge House. Nearly two hours, then, and more than enough time for Gus to be delivered of her fourth child.

Father himself was the first in the house, rushing up the stairs to the countess's bedchamber, with Celia hurrying to keep up. No one thought to stop him; it was his place to be first to see his newest grandchild. Next came Geoffrey and Serena, and then Rivers and Lucia.

“Even tonight, we follow by rank,” Rivers said wryly. They were several steps behind the others and out of their hearing, which was fine with him. “We can't help it, can we?”

“I feel sorry for Gus,” Lucia said, “having so many people crowding into her bedchamber at such a time.”

“After three children, she's probably accustomed to it by now,” he said. “The price of marrying Harry, I'm afraid.”

He tried to smile, but Lucia was well aware of the tension that seemed to fill the entire house. It wasn't just her own worry for what would become of her and Rivers, or even the very real concern for the much-loved Gus as she endured the hazards of childbirth. There was a sense that the fates and happiness of everyone in this family depended on the safe arrival—and gender—of this new, small person into the world.

And as she and Rivers reached the end of the hall and Gus's bedchamber, that small person let out a monumental wail over the excited voices of all the adults already there.

“Does that sound like a boy?” Rivers asked.

“It sounds like a baby,” Lucia said, drawing him forward.

Hand in hand, they entered through the open doorway. The room
was
crowded. In addition to all the Fitzroys, there were also assorted midwives and nursery maids, plus a physician. The two elder sisters of the new baby were there, too, brought from their beds by their own nursery maids. Also in attendance were a couple of large spotted dogs with feathered tails, bustling back and forth around the bed. In the center of all this swirling confusion sat Gus, flushed and exhausted but already washed and tidied, and propped up against a mountain of pillows and wearing an extravagant silk organza cap, new for the occasion.

Beside the bed stood Harry, the proud new father once again, looking thoroughly harassed in his shirtsleeves with his oldest daughter, Lady Emily, clinging to his leg. Next to him stood the duke, and in his arms was the well-wrapped bundle of lace-trimmed linen and squalling newborn babyhood that had drawn them all here.

“It's a boy, Rivers,” the duke announced over the general din of the others, his voice reverberating with joy and emotion. “At last, a fine, healthy son!”

“Well done, Gus, well done!” Rivers exclaimed. “You, too, Harry, you dog, though none of the hard work was yours.”

Gus, however, wasn't looking at him, or her new son, either, but at Lucia.