Lady In Waiting (38 page)

No,
this
was who she wa
s
—
t
he lady's maid with the earbobs. She'd even heard the staff below stairs refer to her as suc
h
—
e
xcept it was the maid with the
bleedin'
earbobs.

Oh, perdition, she was stalling again. For more than two weeks she'd waited for this moment and now that it had arrived she could scarce move her feet toward the door.

Just move one foot forward. That's right. Now the next. You're nearly there. Hand on door. Press down. Now push.

There was a whine from the hinges as the door swung open.

Callu
m
was sitting beside the roaring fire, his elbows on his knees and head resting in his palms. He looked up at her when he heard the door. Slowly, he came to his feet, giving Jenny the distinct impression that at this moment he was every bit as given to nerves as she herself.

As she closed the door behind her, and turned back

295

around, Jenny did not miss his sweeping gaze,
that
seemed
to
pause curiously on her citrine earbobs. But she could not fault him for that. They were extraordinarily lovely.

"Lord Argyll," she said, her tone cooler than she had intended. Jenny bounced a curtsy. It was not a fluid motion, such as the sort Lady Viola had taught her, one conveying grace and manners. Rather it was an obligatory gesture, such as the sort a maid gave her better.

Callu
m
, his eyes almost squinting in confusion, belatedly bowed to her, sending his kilt swaying. "Will ye join me beside the fire, Lady . . .
Miss
Penny?

The gaffe was not meant to humiliate, she could see that. He was simply trying to be correct, in a very difficult situation.

Jenny hurried to the settee and sat down. Callum sat on the edge of the chair across from her, resting his elbows on his knees in the very same way he had done when she first had entered the room.

"We need to discuss what happened, ye and I." He stopped speaking for a moment and looked down at his steeple
d
fingers. "I should have come earlier, but as ye might have guessed, I required time to mink and come to terms with ye
r
.. . wee
l
, with everything."

Jenny folded her hands in her lap to quell the shaking of her fingers. "I understand, my lord."

Just then the door swung open again. Both of them turned their heads and looked, but there was no one there. Jenny rose, meaning to close it again.

Callum waved her back. "Leave it, lass, please. This shanna take long."

Jenny slowly lowered herself onto the settee, waiting for the question she knew he would eventually have to

296

as
k
—
why?
Jenny prepared the answer on her tongue and waited.

Callu
m
exhaled and stared down at his hands for what seemed like hours to Jenny. At last, he looked up again.

"Jenny, I made ye a promise once before. That if ye carried me bairn, I would marry ye."

Jenny started. This was not what she expected him to say at all. "My lord?"

"Oh, Jenny, must I ask it?"

"I suppose you must ask it, for I am not entirely sure what you are expecting me to say." Jenny leaned forward and patiently waited for him to continue.

Callum rose and, turning away from her, placed his hands atop the marble mantel and gazed down into the fife. "Are ... are ye with child?"

He didn't even look at her. Which, in hindsight. Jenny decided was a good thing, for at once her hand flew protectively over her belly, before she had the good sense to remove it.

Jenny came to her feet, girding herself as best she could. "You needn't fear, Lord Argyll. You need not be concerned that my condition will impinge on your plans to see the Argyll title extinct." Golly, she almost sounded like a real lady.

Then, she heard his breath hitch. Moving his elbows atop the mantel, he propped his head in his hands and exhaled slowly.

She felt cold all over. She had not said the words, but it was a lie just the same. Still, she would not use her babe to maintain her hold on Callum.

How could she? She did not wish to spend her life

297

seeing the resentment in his eyes when he gazed upon her . . . an
d
their child.

No, she would carry on and fill her child's life with love, the way her own mother had. Though she would raise their babe alone, she would open the shop, work hard with the babe on her hip if need be. She would bring the babe to visit the Feathertons, for they were bound by blood. She'd give her child the life he or she should have had. Might have had . . . had she confessed the truth to Callu
m
weeks ago.

She looked up and saw that he still faced the hazy mirror on the overmantel. Her heart sank for she knew he would not utter another word.

Tears began to itch the backs of Jenny's eyes, until she knew she had to leave the room, had to leave Callum before he saw through her and realized she did in fact carry his babe.

Turning on the ball of her foot, she started for the door, when to her shock, she saw the two Featherton sisters crouched on the floor behind the settee.

Lady Letitia, not the least concerned at being spotted by Jenny, quietly raised a finger to her lips, while her sister shooed Jenny back in the direction of Lord Argyll.

Eyes wide, Jenny turned and returned to Callum, hoping to give the ladies adequate time to crawl from their hiding place and through the drawing-room door unseen.

There was a thickness growing inside her throat as she reached out her hand, wanting so much to touch Callum. Instead, she let her hand hover there above his shoulder for several moments, before slowly returning it to her side.

298

He was aware of her proximity for she could see the change in his stance. But still he did not turn to her.

"Callu
m
," she said, her voice strained and thin. "If you believe nothing else ... believe that I loved you." She turned then and started for the door.

The Feathertons were no longer hiding behind the settee, and so she made to leave the drawing room. As she reached the threshold, she halted and slowly turned back to gaze at Callum.

"And I love you still," she whispered.

Callum's back stiffened at her words, and she knew for certain that he had heard her.

In the reflection in the overmantel mirror, she saw that his eyes remained closed, but his lips moved.

Jenny remained rooted to that spot and stared in disbelief as his lips mouthed the words she longed to hear: "And I love ye."

Her heart sprang into her throat. She ran from the room and retreated down the passageway, where at its end she found her mother awaiting her with open arms.

Chapter
Nineteen

A
moment later a flash of movement lured Jenny's eye. Wet-cheeked, she raised her head from her mother's comforting shoulder just in time to see Callum stride from the drawing room.

"Lord Argyll?" Lady Viola stepped from the study and into the hall. "I would have a word with you, if I may."

Jenny and her mother stepped back into the thickly shadowed alcove beneath the stairs so as not to be observed.

"Of course, my lady." Callum turned and followed his grandmother into the study. The door closed behind them, and the click of its brass lock reverberated down the narrow passageway.

What, pray, was Lady Viola going to say to him? Jenny wondered. Lud, she felt a little wobbly just considering the possibilities. Well, there was no sense waiting around and wondering. She meant to find out.

Remembering Meredith's demonstration of how conversation in the study might be overheard through the dining-room wall, Jenny broke from her mother's grip and started for the next open doorway.

300

"Jenny, you can't. Leave them their privacy." Her mother's eyes pleaded with her.

Jenny quirked her lip. "I might have considered doing so had the ladies given me the least bit of privacy only moments ago. But they did not. Besides which, whatever Lady Viola says affects me, you can depend on that. So, I own, I feel I am justified in listening."

When Jenny stepped into the dining roo
m
, she was quite startled to find Lady Letitia already standing with her ear to the wall.

The old woman beckoned her forward. "Sister is about to begin, hurry,
hurry."
Lady Letitia pressed the side of her head to the wall once more, and as she concentrated, her eyes wedged in the corner nearest the wall, her mouth fell open, and the tip of her tongue lifted to touch her top row of teeth.

Jenny hesitantly moved forward and, resting her hand on the dado chair rail, settled her ear against the sand-colored wall.

"Please come and sit beside me, dear boy," came Lady Viola's soothing voice through the wall.

Jenny stared with amazement at Lady Letitia. Every word was perfectly clear. "I daresay, it's as though we're in the room with them."

Lady Letitia hushed her. "They may be able to hear us as well," she whispered harshly.

"Oh, right." Jenny eased her ear to the wall again.

Lady Viola began tentatively. "You have spoken with Jenny."

"I have ... briefly. Though before ye utter another word, ye should ken that nothing has cha
n
ged since
I
..."

No sound came from the wall for several seconds,

301

until Lady Viola filled the silent gap. "Since you learned that she was a lady's maid."

Again, there was a long pause and both Jenny and her employer pushed their ears flat to the wall, straining to hear his reply. But none came, for it was Lady Viola who next spoke.

"Do I have it right, lad, that you feel she betrayed you?"

"Aye, and she did."

"But you trusted Jenny."

"I did. But 'twas more than that. I believed in her. Chris
t
... I
loved
her." Callu
m
's voice was thick with rising emotion. "But still, she lied to me."

There was a tinkling of glass and sound of liquid filling a vessel. "Dinna ye see. She's just like my mother."

"Jenny is like Olivia? How so?" came Lady Viola's terse reply.

"Because she claimed to love m
e
—
b
ut still she lied, even though she knew why honesty and truth mean everything to me."

"You oversimplify, Argyll, but still I do not see how Jenny and your mother compare."

"Dinna ye? My mother loved me too, or said she did, but she still lied ... lied in a way that tore my heart from my chest. When I saw her leaving, she kissed me and promised she'd come back and I believed her, because she said she loved me."

Again a heavy silence met the wall that stood between Jenny and Callu
m
. "From the day I realized that me mother was never co
m
in' home, I vowed never to trust another. Never to open myself up to the depth of pain betrayal brings.
And never to lie."

"But was Jenny's lie so grand? She only pretended, at

302

Sister's and my bidding I'll have you know, that she was a lady. Does it matter so much that she is in servic
e
— rather than a lady true? I would think you, a man intent on seeing his family's title made extinct, would not be so concerned with the blueness of another's blood."

Jenny sucked the seam of her lips inside her mouth and waited with bated breath for what he would say next.

"Nay, ye've got it all wrong," Callu
m
said, his words hitting the wall as though they'd been exhaled with some force.

"I dinna give a damn if Jenny is a maid or the queen herself."

Callum must have risen. For the heavy sound of boots pacing the wooden floor edging the room was plain.

"You forgave me for keeping my identity from you. Is there not room enough in your heart to forgive Jenny as well?"

"
'
T
i
sna what she lied about, my lady. God, 'tisna that at all. She lied to me, knowing that someday I would learn of her deceit. And still she did not confess."

The rap of a walking stick tapped the floor on the other side of the wall. "Why do you suppose that was?" Lady Viola asked.

"Because she never really loved me."

Jenny gasped and her heart twisted in her chest as his damning words reached her ear.