Ever His Bride (41 page)

“Mrs. Claybourne writes those travel stories
in
Hearth and Heath.”
The other women nodded to each other
as though they envied her activities.

Lady Meath put her hand on her husband’s
shoulder. “I think I might go with her on one of her treks. What
would you think of that, Randolph?”

Lord Meath knotted his brows, then nodded. “I
don’t see why not. A delightful notion, Elizabeth. You’ll take a
proper staff with you, of course.”

“Of course!”

Felicity smiled and shook her head gently,
trying to do what was best for Hunter. “I don’t think I shall be
traveling any time soon, Lady Meath, at least not to see gardens
and the like. But the very next time I do, I would be delighted to
have you along. You and your staff.”

“Well, of course, marriage to a man like Mr.
Claybourne must keep you very busy. And how very proud he must be
of your charity work.”

Felicity looked right at Hunter, but his eyes
were cast down to his shoes. “He is patient with my whims, and
generous to a fault.”

Lord Meath grunted and stood up. “The Meath
family has always contributed regularly to the Hermitage Tract
Society.”

“Oh, but Mrs. Claybourne doesn’t just collect
castoff clothing, dear,” Lady Meath said. “She actually visits the
slums, teaches at a school for beggars.”

Felicity blushed for Hunter, who still hadn’t
said a word or met her gaze.

Lady Oswin seemed especially taken with her
charity work. “How brave you are, my dear, to stay more than a
minute among those wretched people.”

“They’re not wretched, Lady Oswin; they’re
just poor. And frankly, it takes far more courage to leave the
school at the end of the day than it would for me to stay.”

“How is that?” Lady Meath asked.

Felicity felt her blood begin to boil at this
idle, parlor-game curiosity. “Imagine a room filled with
children—and this room is dark and damp, and it stinks of the sewer
that flows beneath it.”

“Dear me . . .” Lady Meath put a hand to her
mouth and looked around to the other women.

Felicity saw Hunter shift his stance,
centering himself on his heels as if ready to run. Perhaps she was
going too far, but an urge had come on her to set these people
straight—these scions of Britain, as Hunter had called them.

“And the children aren’t plump and pretty,
but bone-thin, and their clothes are ragged, unlaundered. Their
cheeks aren’t pink, but hollow and gray; and their eyes don’t
sparkle, and they speak in tiny voices.”

“Poor little things.” Lady Oswin’s eyes had
grown large.

“And they hold your hand and cling to your
neck, and listen to stories of places where happy children romp
through play yards and the air is fresh. And then it’s time to
leave the school, to shake off their clinging hands and the
sorrowful looks—to set them all aside. And then you return to your
enormous home which has rooms that will never be slept in because
there are too many; you eat a huge supper of pork and pudding and
then slip under a clean sheet and a warm counterpane. But you can’t
sleep because you wonder if little Amy has gone to bed hungry
again, if she’s cold, her family turned out into the streets . . .
.”

Felicity had seen the growing looks of horror
on the faces of her hosts and their guests, but couldn’t seem to
stop talking. Tears were coursing down her cheeks. And Lady Meath
was weeping into her silk hankie. She was terrified of even
glancing Hunter’s way.

“How simply awful!” Lady Meath uttered.

“So you see, Lady Meath, that’s why leaving
the school every day is far more difficult than staying.”

“Those poor children,” Lady Meath said,
touching the kerchief to the corner of her eyes. “Imagine growing
up under such circumstances!”

“Poppycock!” Lord Meath blustered. “A useless
lot!”

Lord Spurling laughed. “I agree, Meath. The
only thing they seem to be good at producing is more of their own
kind.”

Felicity was fuming. But Hunter stood like a
statue, still holding his brandy in both hands, staring into some
far distance—not lost in thought, only waiting. He was waiting for
her to betray him.

Well, you’ll wait out your whole lifetime,
Mr. Claybourne, before that will happen.

“Excuse me, Lord Meath,” Felicity said
firmly. “Some people escape their ill-fortune. If we teach them the
methods, and supply the means, most will escape to a better life.
And that’s why I spend my time at the Beggar’s Academy.”

Lord Meath dismissed her with a wave of his
hand and a tolerant look at Hunter.

Lady Oswin sniffled loudly. “Do you, by any
chance, ever need another hand, Mrs. Claybourne? I would like very
much to feel that I’ve done my part.”

“And me!” Lady Meath said.

“Elizabeth, really!”

Felicity looked from Lord to Lady Meath and
tried to picture the woman picking her way through the muck in the
streets of Bethnal Green, her pink face pinched and her arm
clutched against her chest for fear of contamination.

“Please don’t misunderstand me, your
ladyships, but I’ll say what a wise man once told me: that charity
is self-serving if it’s done to make
you
feel good.”

“Oh.” Lady Meath looked thoughtful for a
moment, but Lady Oswin nodded eagerly.

Lord Meath grunted. “Damn foolish
sentiment!”

Felicity could feel Hunter’s gaze on her, but
now was not the time to meet it.

“Don’t be a such a prig, Randolph!” Lady
Meath took Felicity’s hand. “Perhaps I could give the school a try,
then?”

Felicity smiled and felt triumphant. “Very
well.”

The room exploded in conversation about the
Poor Laws and the recent potato famine. Hunter kept himself
purposely out of the discussion, not trusting his views any more
than the steadfastness of his temper.

Soon the guests were playing word games and
Lady Oswin was singing to Lady Spurling’s pianoforte, and the
evening wore on until he felt he would burst with the waiting.

But his wife was oddly peaceful in her
dealings with him, a hand to his elbow, a shuttered gaze. He
wondered what she was thinking, what she had whispered to the other
women to draw them into her scheme of righting the wrongs of
Bethnal Green.

Meath shook Hunter’s hand as the evening
ended. “I’ll be out of town for a few weeks, Claybourne, but you
and I will get together before the final selection. There are
others on the Board who have additional names to submit, but we
will sway their numbers, and you will be our next Commissioner of
Railways.”

“I am honored, sir.”

“My pleasure, son, and a good night to you,
Mrs. Claybourne. Your views on the poor are positively erroneous,
but you were the delight of the evening.”

Hunter watched Felicity’s face grow crimson
as she murmured her farewells. He helped her into her damnable
shawl, then into the carriage, but didn’t enter himself.

“I’ll find my own way home,” he said.

“You worried for nothing, Hunter. I said
nothing. I will say nothing—”

“Good night, wife.”

He watched the carriage fade into the dark
street, and started walking blindly along the crescented perimeter
of Regent’s Park. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he was
certain that any road he took—from this moment onward—would lead
him inexorably back to Bethnal Green.

F
elicity couldn’t
sleep, knowing that Hunter was out there somewhere, stumbling
around in his dark mood. She had upbraided herself so often since
seeing the book fall from her shawl that she was now weary of it.
The whole exercise of “curse and what-if” was useless anyway.

Hunter was a grown man, no matter where he’d
sprung from. He should know better than to brood— but she loved the
rogue, and now she would have to patch it up with him, and convince
him that she was no threat to his name or to his fortune.

How like a man to be so much a little
boy!

She had changed from her evening gown to her
nightgown, and then had felt restless and had changed into the
button-fronted shirt and tieback skirt that she wore when she was
working around the house. Hunter’s book was now in her skirt
pocket, where it would be safe until she could get rid of it while
he was witness to it, so that he had no doubt the threat was gone
from his life forever.

She found herself in one of the downstairs
parlors, sorting through folds of fabric she had been collecting
for her newest project. She had recently uncrated three of the
newfangled sewing machines and was determined to start a small
factory here at the house, where mothers of the slum children could
make clothes for their families and then sell the rest to aid the
family income.

The clatter of hooves and gravel in the drive
sent her racing to the window, and her heart into her throat. It
was Hunter, riding beyond the house toward the stable.

He was home and safe! She listened for his
footsteps, but they never came. After fifteen minutes, she slipped
her cloak over her shoulders, lit a lamp, and headed for the
stables.

It was quiet inside, and the horse that
Hunter had ridden was curried and put up for the night. She could
hear the snores of the stable lads from the loft above her head.
But where the devil was Hunter?

In the distance, echoing softly across the
vale, she heard a ringing thump, and then another, and then nothing
for a time until the sounds repeated themselves.

She followed the thumps into the woods until
the sound turned to thwacks, and at last resolved to the solid
stroke of an ax blade against wood.

A lamp burned in a small clearing, just
beyond the stream where Hunter had rinsed her skirts of the stink
of Bethnal Green. Dear God, if she’d only known then. . . But
tonight was new and the air was clear and sweet and starry, and she
doused her light, feeling bold enough and enchanted enough to steal
the moment and spy on her husband.

So this was what he had been doing at night,
before, when he would stalk off into the woods and return coatless
and sweating. He was standing in profile to her, his shirt and coat
hanging in the crook of a tree, an ax resting across his naked,
sweat-slick shoulder. He was intent on his work—frowning, probably
cursing her under his breath, but he was magnificent, and she felt
a rush of love and admiration that made tears swim in her eyes.

She brushed them aside as he stood a wedge of
oak upright on a large tree stump. He swung the long-handled ax
over his head, gave a mighty grunt, and drove the blade downward.
One piece of oak magically became two. Then he picked up another
wedge.

The ax came down with another of his grunts,
and then she had had quite enough of rippling muscle and glistening
sinew.

“Good evening, Hunter.”

He started, then looked up toward her voice,
blinded by his own lamp hanging on the branch between them.

“Damn it, woman. What do you want?”

He sounded utterly disgusted. She would have
to change his mood. “Just a little of your time, Hunter.”

“Go away.” He set another wedge on the
stump.

“It’s after two in the morning. I’ve been
waiting up for you. We need to talk.”

“I’m finished talking. Leave me.”

Every finely fashioned muscle above his waist
flexed and glistened as he took the next swing. The wood split
cleanly.

“You may be finished talking, Hunter, but I’m
not.” She threw off her cloak and entered the circle of light,
aware of his anger and his impatience, and entirely taken by the
tethered power in his arms as he leaned one hand against the ax
handle.

“Go back to the house, Felicity. It’s
dangerous here. One never knows where the chips will fly.”

Hunter watched and fumed as the irritatingly
distracting wood nymph who haunted his thoughts ignored his threat
and knelt near his lamp, gathering twigs and sticks and putting
them in a pile. “What are you doing?”

“I’m here to convince you that your secret is
safe with me.”

“You can’t possibly.” Her hair was alive in
the light breeze, wispy tendrils that tempted his fingers and
reached out for him. But he needed to keep his distance while he
calculated the damage she had caused with her meddling.

“I haven’t been plotting your downfall,
Hunter.”

“We have nothing more to say to each
other.”

“Did I ever tell you that my
great-grandfather was a viscount?” She stuck a twig into the lamp’s
flame and held it there until the end of it flared.

“I don’t care if your great-grandfather was
George the First.”

“A third cousin, actually. Great-grandfather
Horace, Lord Mayfield had estates in two counties.” She knelt down
beside her heap of twigs and nursed the flame until a small fire
rose from the center. “Unfortunately, disaster and bad business
sense seems to run in my family. His ships sank, and his crops
failed, and his mills burned to the ground, and finally his son’s
gambling drove the family from a rundown manor house into a little
cottage in Cheshire, where my father grew up. He, himself, never
even owned a house, and now I live in train stations.”