Guilty Series (48 page)

“I'm not cranky.” She gave Grace a pointed stare and yawned. “I'm bored.”

Grace ignored that challenging look. “I think we are going to finish our lesson on Shakespeare.”

The child's chin lifted a notch. “No, I'm going to play piano. I want to work on my new concerto.”

“No,” Grace answered with quiet firmness. “This morning, we are going to study Shakespeare. And take the insolence out of your voice, if you please.”

Isabel inhaled a deep breath, then pushed the air out between her closed lips, making a sound that would have banished any young lady from good society for weeks. “Moderate your tone, dear,” the child mimicked, her voice cracking in a way that sounded nothing like Grace. “Sit up straight. Eat your carrots. Walk, don't run.”

“I am happy that you have been paying attention to what I say,” Grace answered, sounding well pleased. “That is excellent.”

Isabel stuck out her tongue, then walked over to the window in a huff. She turned her back and stared out the window at the mews and the busy London street beyond it.

Grace turned her attention to the slate, reading the lines scrawled there.

Grace pressed her lips together, trying not to smile. A true and unusual analysis of Iago's character. Isabel really was a clever girl. Not that she needed to use her lessons in Shakespeare to express her rebellious mood. It was quite clear.

Grace wished Dylan would spend more time with the child. It had been two weeks since that night in the library when he had promised he would try to make time for his daughter. He now came up to the nursery in the afternoons before he started composing, but these visits were brief, fifteen or perhaps twenty minutes. He listened to her at the piano and talked with her about her lessons, but he did not play with her, or take her anywhere, or eat any meals with her. But then, how could he take her anywhere or dine with her when he stayed out all night and didn't go to bed until eight or nine in the morning? Sometimes, the servants told her, he did not come home at all.

Grace would have discussed it with him before now, but except for the late afternoon and early evening hours when he locked himself in the music room, he was seldom home long enough for her to discuss anything with him. Isabel needed his love and affection and fifteen or twenty minutes a day was not enough.

Grace set the slate aside and looked over at the girl by the window. “Take your seat, Isabel, and we shall continue with our discussion of Othello.”

The girl did not move. “We've been here forever. It must be nearly three o'clock by now.”

“It is barely half past two.”

“Oh, heavens!” Molly cried at the mention of the hour. “I promised Mrs. Ellis that recipe for Irish soda bread hours ago, and she wanted it for tonight's dinner.” Molly set aside her mending and stood up, looking at Grace. “If you don't mind, ma'am.”

“Of course not,” she answered, and the nanny left the room.

Grace looked over at the window again. “Your father will probably be coming in half an hour or so. Until then, we are going to do Shakespeare. After your father leaves, you may go into the other room and work on your concerto.”

The child did not turn around. “I already told you, I'm not doing any more Shakespeare. I hate him.”

“You don't hate Shakespeare. You've studied him enough that you were able to correct your father's quote from
Much Ado About Nothing
just three or four weeks ago. If you hated his work, you wouldn't know it so well.”

Isabel turned and gave her a scowl. “It was fun with Papa. It's not fun with you.” She returned her attention to the view outside. “What are you going to do about it? Take away my piano privileges? Do it. I don't care.”

There was another option available for this sort of behavior, one she remembered from her own girlhood, one she had used on her own younger siblings, one that if, judiciously employed, was far more effective than taking away privileges. Grace decided it was time to use it.

Setting her jaw, she marched across the room, grabbed Isabel by the ear, and pulled. The result was predictable and immediate. The child gave a loud yelp of protest but was incapable of doing anything more as Grace hauled her back to her desk.

She pushed the little girl down into her chair, none too gently. Isabel rubbed her ear with another scowl. “I hate you.”

“I am sorry for it,” Grace answered, “since I happen to like you very much, and I will continue to do so despite moments such as this.”

Grace turned toward her own desk and picked up the slate. “I trust that we may now return to Othello? In your essay, you make a valid point, Isabel. If one cannot be made to do something one does not want to do—”

“Then,” Isabel interrupted, “one has a very inefficient governess.”

The sound of a chuckle caused both Grace and her pupil to turn toward the far end of the room, where Dylan stood in the doorway, one shoulder against the frame, arms folded across his chest, watching them. The bruises on his face from that fight a fortnight ago were fading from purple to yellow, making him look even more disreputable than he already was.

Caught by surprise, Grace tightened her grip around the slate in her hand. He was early today.

“Papa!” Isabel shoved back her chair and ran to him. He straightened away from the door at once and leaned down, opening his arms to his daughter as any father might do. He gave the little girl a smile, and the faded bruises made Grace think that must be what fallen angels looked like when they smiled—charming, handsome, and battered.

He lifted the child up in his embrace without showing any pain, so he must have fully recovered from his pugilistic adventure.

“I'm so glad you've come!” Isabel cried.

“Lessons difficult today?” he asked.

“She's had me locked up in here for hours with Othello,” Isabel answered with a shudder. She wrapped her arms around Dylan's neck with exaggerated drama. “Please take me away!”

He glanced over at Grace as he set his daughter on her feet. “Has she been an army general again?” he asked, turning that smile on her.

Grace ignored that and glanced at the clock. “Isabel, you have spent exactly forty-two minutes on Shakespeare. Please do not exaggerate.”

“Don't believe her, Papa,” Isabel told him in a stage whisper loud enough for Grace to hear. “It's been hours. She is being very cruel to me.”

“Cruel?” He shot Grace an amused glance. “I don't believe it.”

Isabel proceeded to tell him just what a dictatorial horror Grace was for making her read
Othello
and why it was one of Shakespeare's dullest plays. “It's the worst, Papa,” she summed up. “Worse than all the Henry plays put together. I like the comedies ever so much better.”

“You won't have to worry about Othello much longer,” he consoled her. “Isn't it nearly time for your piano practice?”

“Yes. Can I use your piano today?”

“May I,” Grace corrected.

Isabel let out a heavy sigh as if to show her father how tedious governesses were. “May I use your piano today?”

“Yes, you may,” he answered.

“I am writing a concerto. Come and help me with it.”

“Isabel,” he said, “you do not need my help. You compose beautifully.”

“Duets, then?” she suggested. “Will you play duets with me?”

“I should love to play duets with you, but I cannot. Not today.” He bent down and kissed the top of her head. “I have to go. I have an appointment this afternoon.”

He started to turn away, but the child reached out and grabbed his hand. “Papa!” she cried. “You just got here!”

“I know, sweeting, but I have to go or I shall be late.” He withdrew his hand from hers, and he did not see the hurt on her face, for he was already walking away. “I won't be back until very late tonight, but perhaps we might play tomorrow.”

Grace glanced again at the clock. Today he had stayed exactly four minutes. These moments in the afternoon with him were the happiest part of Isabel's day, and all he could give her was four minutes. Grace set her jaw. Tonight, she was going to speak with him about this. She would wait until he came home, all night if necessary. This could not continue.

“Tomorrow, then.” Isabel walked in the other direction, back toward the window, ducking her head as she passed Grace to hide her expression, but it was too late. Grace had already caught a glimpse of the child's face. There was no scowl, no tears, just horrible, crushing disappointment. Isabel walked to the window and stood with her back to the room, looking out at London.

Grace could not bear it. She turned to follow him and stopped, for he had not yet left.

He was staring at Isabel's back, and he was not smiling. He took a step toward her, then stopped. His lips tightened, and without a word, he turned on his heel and left the room.

Grace ran out of the nursery after him. When she reached the stairs, she peered over the rail, just in time to see him turn on the landing. “Dylan!” she called after him. “Dylan, I need to talk with you.”

He stopped on the landing and looked up at her, his expression unreadable. “It will have to wait. I have an appointment.”

He did not wait for an answer but continued on down the stairs, where he disappeared from view.

Damn the man. Frustrated, Grace slapped the polished wooden cap of the newel post with her hand.
Tonight,
she vowed and returned to the nursery, where Isabel was still standing by the window.

With a heavy heart, Grace crossed the room to stand beside her, and she followed the child's gaze to the street below.

Dylan was on the sidewalk, waiting for his carriage, which had just entered the square. It stopped in front of the house, he stepped up inside, and the carriage rolled away.

The clock ticked away one minute, then two. Then Isabel spoke, still looking out the window. “He doesn't want me.”

“You do not know that,” Grace said at once. “He has not been a father very long. Give him a bit more time to get used to you.”

“He's had a month.”

Grace almost wanted to smile at that. To a child, a month was such a very long time.

Isabel gave a heavy sigh. “I hoped it would be different here.”

That statement puzzled Grace, and she looked at the profile of the little girl beside her. “Different in what way?”

“I don't know.” She sounded bewildered, plaintive. “Just different. Like real families are. Me and Papa, like a real family.”

Grace thought of her own childhood. She'd had a real family once, knew how important it was. “I know what you mean. But you and your father are a real family.”

Isabel shook her head. “He goes out every night and he does not come home until almost the middle of the morning. Where does he go?”

Grace bit her lip. She didn't think either of them wanted to know.

“If he loved me, he wouldn't go. He would stay here, and we'd have dinner together. He would play piano with me and tuck me in. He'd take me to the country and we'd eat apples together and he'd teach me to fence. I could have a pony and learn to ride.” She paused, then went on in a harder voice, “He goes out all the time, and he drinks a lot. He smokes hashish, and he takes laudanum. He gets in messes with women and has duels and fights and all sorts of things. I knew all about him before I came here. I thought once I was here, he would love me, and he wouldn't do those things. That he would change.”

Oh, my dear little girl,
Grace thought, looking at her with compassion. If only one could force another's affections. If only men could change. If only it were that easy.

Suddenly, the child tore her gaze from the view out the window and turned to her, lifting her chin. In her expression was that look of hard determination Grace was coming to know so well. “I shall make him love me!” she cried, slamming her fist into the palm of her other hand, her childish vehemence heartbreaking. “I shall!”

Grace pulled the little girl into her arms, moving her hand up and down Isabel's back in a comforting gesture. “I know you shall,” she said and hoped with all her heart that the child would succeed.

E
verything was in order. All the documents had been prepared in accordance with Dylan's wishes. They included his formal acknowledgment of his daughter, the change of her surname to Moore, the specification of Ian as her guardian should anything happen to him, and his new will leaving her everything he had.

Once he signed these documents, Isabel would be his legal daughter. Dylan stared at the sheaf of papers before him on Mr. Ault's desk, and though he knew the solicitor was waiting, he made no move to sign them.

It was not because of doubt. As he had told Ian that night two weeks earlier, there was no question that Isabel was his, and even his practical, sensible brother had admitted the truth of that. The question of her paternity was not what made Dylan sit here in the solicitor's office as the seconds went by.

It was that look on Isabel's face, the same look she gave him every day when he went up to the nursery. She wanted not just a few minutes a day and a duet or two at the piano, but so much more. She wanted him to love her.

Dylan stirred in his chair, restless and uncomfortable. He'd seen a similar look on other faces. Faces full of expectation and the wistful hope that he would change, be good, do what was right. Faces that reflected such eagerness to please him, such expectation of his love in return. Isabel was a little girl, but no matter their age, all females wanted too damned much. They pinned their hopes and dreams on a bad lot and expected to be happy as a result.