Barbara Metzger (5 page)

"No,” Carissa said, turning away. She realized she must sound too abrupt, especially in light of his attempt at cordiality, so she explained, “That is, he rejoined his regiment whilst I was breeding. He was ... gone when Philippa was born."

Lesley understood that Kane hadn't merely gone to the Peninsula, and regretted his thoughtlessness. “I am sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean to bring up a painful topic."

She brushed that aside. “It was nearly five years ago, my lord, and you could not have known.” Still, her stiff back told him she would not welcome any questions as to Mr. Kane's regiment or her difficulties in providing for herself and the child. Lesley knew the army wouldn't help. His admiration for the female was growing, until she picked up a broom and started swatting at his dog.

While Lord Hartleigh sat holding the swaddled infant, Carissa had been bringing what order she could to the unkempt kitchen. Her housewifely heart wouldn't let her do otherwise. Why, she couldn't find a clean plate to serve Pippa a slice of bread. “Come, darling, help Mama tidy up a bit.” Pippa carried glasses, bottles, cups, and more bottles, one by one, to the sink. Carissa was tossing spoiled foodstuffs, green cheese, a chicken carcass, other items too desiccated to be identified, into a pile by the back door. Byrd or the cleaning staff he was hiring could remove the mess later.

When she went to add a sack of sprouted potatoes to the heap, however, a dog was making off with the chicken bones. Not just any dog, but a long, low, filthy hound, one she recognized well. “You!” Carissa exclaimed, reaching for the broom. “You ... you garden wrecker! You marauding mongrel! Begone, I say."

Instead of fleeing in terror, the hound dove past her, the chicken remains firmly clenched in its slavering jaws, and raced toward sanctuary under the kitchen table by Lesley's booted feet.

"That ... that monster is
your
dog?” the widow asked, grabbing Pippa up and onto the sink, out of harm's way. “I should have known.” She held the broom to her heaving bosom in case the beast decided he'd rather have bones with some meat on them.

Lesley frowned. He couldn't do much else, with the baby asleep in his arms. “You are entirely safe, Mrs. Kane. He wouldn't hurt a fly."

The dog was so fat and stubby-legged he couldn't have caught a fly. The animal's top half was a large hunting hound. The bottom half—well, there was no bottom half, just baggy-kneed, splay-footed stumps. It was as if someone had lopped off an arm's length of leg. The creature was so low, the bottoms of its drooping ears were ragged from dragging on the ground. Its eyes were sunken in folds of skin, more bloodshot than the viscount's, and the whole thing was covered in mud so thick Carissa couldn't tell what color it was. Frankly, she did not care.

"That beast is the bane of the neighborhood,” she accused. “It terrorizes the butcher's boy and steals lunches from school-children. It has destroyed more greenery than a plague of locusts. Get rid of it."

"Glad? He never hurt anyone, and he's just a born digger."

"Glad? As in Glad no one has taken a meat cleaver to him yet?"

"No, short for Gladiator. I found him digging himself out of a pen at a country fair. He was to be first course in a bear-baiting. Old Glad didn't stand a chance, being so slow, and he was smart enough to know it. I couldn't let the poor chap be tossed back in, could I?"

"He would have given the bear indigestion, I suppose.” The brutal sport was supposed to be outlawed, but Carissa knew it still went on. She could just imagine the uproar at the fairgrounds when the promised entertainment made its escape. “They let you simply walk away with him?"

"Why, no, Byrd took his place. Knocked the bear out with one punch, too.” Lord Hartleigh was grinning now, and she couldn't tell if he was teasing or not.

"But did you have to bring him home?” she asked.

He was still smiling. “At the time I was residing at Hammond House, and I couldn't think of anything that would annoy my stepmother more. Of course, I grew more creative, but when I took up residence here, I couldn't leave the poor fellow to her tender mercies. He'd have had better odds with the bear."

Carissa had to laugh at the picture in her mind. Besides, something about the viscount's smile brightened even this gloomy room. That devilish dimple he flashed must have broken many a heart. Which reminded her: “Cook will be disappointed that the gossip columns are so far off the mark. Lord Heartless indeed! Why, you are as tenderhearted as a fairy godmother. Rescuing worthless mongrels, talking sweet nonsense to an infant, keeping that unlikely, inept manservant. And I saw you trying to win a smile from Pippa by wriggling your eyebrows, my lord. You are nothing but a sham."

He winked at her. “Don't tell anyone, I pray you. My reputation is the only thing that protects me from every matchmaker in town. At least it was the only thing, before Sue."

"But don't you need to marry, to ensure the succession? I thought all noblemen were constrained to pass on their blue blood."

"In my own good time, Mrs. Kane, and when I find the right woman. I have cousins enough meanwhile."

"But you seem to like children."

"I do, don't I?” He was as surprised as she. “Perhaps it is time to start looking after all. After Sue is settled, of course."

Byrd returned with a cleaning crew and supplies, as per Carissa's instructions. Permanent staff would be sent round on the morrow for interviews and such, but there was nary a wet nurse to be found. The biddy at the agency had none on her lists, Byrd reported, and no one at the pubs knew of any mum willing to take on another ladybird's hatchling, either. He'd checked a lot of pubs, Byrd had, trying not to disappoint Mrs. Kane.

The babe seemed none the worse for a second helping of warm milk, but if Mrs. Kane thought Sue would do better on breast milk, breast milk she would have, by George. Lord Hartleigh tossed his caped greatcoat over his shoulders, then paused. A cow he could have found easily, but this?

In the end he decided to try some other agencies, and Carissa decided to go along with him. There was no place to set the baby, with all the workers and their buckets and mops, and no place for Pippa to play. Besides, Carissa wanted to make sure his lordship hired a capable, kind woman, not just one with large bosoms. They needed to purchase some infant gowns and soft fabric for nappies, too. Byrd drove the carriage.

The viscount went into the first employment office alone. He came out alone, glowering. “The blast"—a glance toward Pippa—"blessed busybody in charge there practically accused me of immoral and unnatural conduct! She didn't believe I had a child in my keeping!"

Carissa hid a smile. “You do have a reputation, my lord."

She went into the next agency, with the baby. And came out with angry spots of color on her cheeks. Recognizing the crest on the carriage outside, the proprietor of this establishment had accused Mrs. Kane of being Lord Heartless's latest harlot, too sunk in depravity to nurse her own infant. “Why, I never!” she exclaimed, handing the infant to the viscount so she could fan her heated skin.

"What, never?” he asked, grinning at her discomfiture.

"That anyone could take me for a ... a..."

"Remember the children,” he teased, horrified himself that some fool thought he'd make this hitherto colorless, shapeless, moralizing female his mistress. Dash it, he had a reputation to uphold.

Byrd suggested the foundling home. Perhaps they had a surfeit of milch maids. Or perhaps his lordship would reconsider and leave the little blighter there and end all this rumgumption. In response to that bit of unsolicited advice, the viscount tossed a coin to a waiting urchin to hold the horses.

Now Byrd could sit on the squabs with Mrs. Kane's daughter and the baby, since the institution held too many dangers and diseases to take them inside. Pippa was sucking her thumb and the baby was whimpering—or was that Byrd? He removed his hat to mop at his brow, and Pippa's big brown eyes widened at the seagull tattooed on his bald head. The baby started crying in earnest. Byrd took out his flask. Pippa took out her thumb. “I'll tell Mama."

Inside, conditions were worse. Children were everywhere, and so was the filth and stench and noise and misery. In answer to the viscount's request, the gray-haired, gray-complected matron explained that the infants were weaned onto cow's milk as soon as they arrived, and there was never enough of that to go around, nor willing hands to feed the poor mites. Some lived; some did not. She shrugged weary shoulders.

Carissa dabbed at her eyes when they returned to the carriage, and hugged her daughter closer to her. Lesley's pockets were lighter, but his heart was heavy. “My daughter will never, ever be sent to a place like that. I will keep her myself rather than worry that she might land in such conditions."

Carissa was rocking the infant, letting Sue suck on her knuckle. “You cannot keep her, my lord. It wouldn't be fair, for she would always be reminded of her blighted birth. A loving couple can give her a good life, away from those who would blame Sue for her parents’ sins."

"You do not know my world, ma'am.” Lesley did not enjoy being referred to as a sinner, no more than he liked to consider his daughter a bastard. Both were true, of course, but he did not need to hear it from a cit's chatelaine. “If I adopted her as my own, Sue would be the daughter of a viscount, with an Honorable in front of her name. That and a generous dot count far more than her mother's morals among the ton. ‘Struth, with a large enough dowry, the chit could look to the highest in the land for a husband."

"She would still be your love child."

"Fustian. I can give out that she is my ward, a missing cousin or something."

"Anyone can look in
Debrett,
my lord, or into her eyes. There will always be whispers."

"Bastardy is not the end of the world, Mrs. Kane."

"Not to one born with a title, a fortune, and no blot on the family escutcheon. To those of us in the real world, it is a considerable affliction."

"You appear to feel strongly on this matter, Mrs. Kane. Is it possible you speak from personal experience?” He nodded in Philippa's direction. “Was there really a Mr. Kane?"

"How dare you, sirrah, ask such an insulting question! As if I would do what Sue's mother—Of course there was Mr. Phillip Kane!"

Lesley was enjoying seeing the colors flare across her countenance. The female might be halfway passable, with this much animation. Of course, the black gown deadened her complexion, and the bonnet, hiding her hair again, accentuated the widow's rather pointed nose. “Yet you are not baseborn, I'd give odds."

She gasped. “You are impertinent, my lord. Indelicate and impertinent to be impugning my mother's honor. I know about the prejudice against those of uncertain parentage because such intolerance exists among the working class as well as among the Quality."

"And you are no more of the lower orders than I am, my girl. I wondered what seemed peculiar about you; now I realize it is your educated speech, your polished manners, the whole aura of refinement you carry with you. No housekeeper I ever met had the airs of an heiress."

For a moment he thought he'd gone too far. The woman was going to swoon or slap him. Or both.

Carissa took a moment to gather her composure. “As you said, my lord, I am not of your world. I may have been born to a different way of life, but now I am, indeed, of the working class. I am not an heiress; I am a housekeeper. Nothing more."

"And I would give a pretty penny to find out why. Was there no family to take you in when your soldier died?"

"That is none of your business, my lord. It is your daughter's future we are concerned with at the moment, not my past."

"The child will be provided for, never fear. I might not be the best father in the world, but my girl will not end in the poorhouse."

"No amount of money will excuse your immorality."

Not even the baby dared make a peep after that.

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It was amazing how two dissimilar minds could work in concert.

Insufferable prig, he was thinking.

Insufferable boor, she was thinking.

"My lord,” Carissa finally said into the awkward silence. Hartleigh's eyes were closed, but the rigid muscles in his jaw and the clenched fist told her he was not asleep. “I know of a home for wayward girls in the city. An unfortunate maid at Sir Gilliam's needed a place to birth her baby."

Carissa's voice trembled still, to think of something like that happening in a household she ran. It would not happen again, by heaven. A footman had been dismissed, and most of the maids went home at night now.

"I want no doxy tending my daughter."

"We have no choice. Neither did that maid, as a matter of fact. She was forced. Besides which, Sue's mother was obviously no better than she ought to be!"

"Sue's mother, Mrs. Kane, was a princess, by Jupiter."

"Who abandoned her child into the care of a drunken rake.” She hurried on, cursing her wayward tongue. “The home might have a girl there with milk enough for two babes."

Byrd had been awaiting directions, head swiveling between the two. “Lands, you're thinking to saddle us with another infant, missus? I'll be bunking in the stable, Cap'n, and you can find someone else to look after your threads."

Two infants in the house? Lesley thought he might have to move back to Grosvenor Square to get any rest. He nodded toward the housekeeper, though, signaling her to give Byrd the address.

Recognizing Mrs. Kane, the director of the girls’ home was inclined to be sympathetic to Hartleigh's tale of an orphaned ward. He was wise enough to be sympathetic to any potential patron, in fact. Reverend Garapie might not have believed the taradiddle, but neither did he accuse the widow of wrongdoing, nor the peer of philandering. Unfortunately, he did not have a solution to their problem. Most of the girls left the home as soon as their infants were born, the clergyman explained without mentioning what happened to either the girls or their offspring.

The only two nursing mothers now in residence were not suitable. One was sickly, which was why she remained, and the other was unbalanced since the birthing and could not be trusted with her son. The home was trying to locate her family to take her away. Reverend Garapie shook his head. “Such things happen, the good Lord knows why.” He kept sorting through the stacks of papers on his desk. “We do have two young women near term, however, my lord, Mrs. Kane. A week or so should do it, then a few days for recovery."