The Black Sheep's Return (11 page)

Either this picture of the perfect daughter to the Earl of Bowland, whom Miss Bradstock had considered a deplorable choice of husband for her unlucky niece, was false or Lady Freya had changed beyond recognition. She suspected the latter, for how could any child grow up into a normal being under the blight of the late Lord Bowland’s overblown pride and belief he was the greatest aristocrat ever to waste his rent rolls and his wife’s dowry on useless pomp and puffery?

It wasn’t in Miss Bradstock’s nature to pry into the business of others, or at least so she told herself when the urge became so strong she was nigh bursting with curiosity about where her niece had been before she turned up on her doorstep one fine morning. Prying or not, she hadn’t been able to resist listening at the door when Lady Freya’s pompous brother turned up to find out what had really happened to her. Although she hated to agree with the dull and unadventurous young idiot, Bowland was right to suspect there was more to his halfsister’s tale of being waylaid and taken in by kindly strangers than she intended to admit. Even such poor and simple folk would have got
a message to Bowland that his sister was safe and recovering from an attack that would have left most females broken in mind and body.

The dilemma of not wanting to argue with a tale the girl might have invented to hide her dishonour and the disgrace the world would heap on her meant Miss Bradstock watched her guest with unusual discretion after Bowland’s visit. Even an ageing spinster had an idea of the shock and horror such an attack would have on even the strongest-minded female, but she saw none of the giveaway signs of flinching away from male company or nervously starting at shadows. Some mornings she thought the girl
had
been weeping, but it had gradually dawned on her that there could be a very good reason for it if she had.

‘Hmm,’ she said now, with a long and challenging look at her ashen-faced guest. ‘You don’t seem to have even the trace of an appetite this morning, so never mind pecking at your breakfast like an invalid. We’ll adjourn to my private sitting room where we will be undisturbed at this hour of the day and then you can tell me all about it.’

Freya managed to swallow the nausea that threatened to send her bolting from the room
and sipped her tea very slowly, then met Great-Aunt Carolina’s sharp dark eyes.

‘Very well, Aunt,’ she said with at least some of the Buckle arrogance she now found so hard to deploy even when she wanted to.

She owed the lady honesty, she decided with a gusty sigh, little doubting she would shortly be setting out on another journey as a consequence. Who knew where it would take her this time? she mused, as she followed the bustling little lady upstairs and through her bedchamber to the room beyond. Miss Bradstock locked the bedchamber door behind them and as there was no other access to this room but through the larger one beyond at least she knew they could be assured of privacy for their most important conversation so far.

‘Well, my girl, and what a fine pickle you got yourself into during your wanderings about the countryside, did you not?’ Miss Bradstock said as soon as they were settled and Freya felt the greasy weight of sickness lift once more and let stark reality back in.

‘So it would seem,’ she admitted carefully, bracing her shoulders for the inevitable tirade that must meet such an admission.

‘Did those villains ravish you?’ her great-aunt asked the question Bowland hadn’t been
able to make himself say outright and offered her a coward’s way out of her dilemma that Freya refused to take.

‘No, I spoke the truth when I told my brother I managed to run fast and far enough to shake them off when they would have done so,’ she said, all her best Lady-Freya defences in place now she had revealed her ‘pickle’ had very different origins from the rape she found the idea of so repulsive she shuddered and felt the acid bite of nausea threaten once again.

‘Here,’ Miss Bradstock said impatiently, holding out one of the very plain dry biscuits she had ordered cook to make to settle an imaginary stomach upset of her own, since she dare not let the woman put two and two together and admit they were for her niece instead. ‘My sister swore by these when she was
enceinte
. Eat one very slowly and you’ll soon be well enough to explain how the kindly strangers you met on your travels left you with a child in your belly, despite preserving you from arrant rogues and would-be ravishers of innocence.’

‘I don’t know if I can explain all that,’ Freya said with a rueful shrug as she did as she was bid and found her rather fierce relative was quite right when her stomach settled at last.

‘Don’t you think I was ever young, girl?’ Miss Bradstock demanded with a hard challenge in her fathomless eyes that made Freya take a second look at her hostess and decide, yes, she had clearly been very much a woman in her time. ‘I was handsome,’ the lady claimed without a trace of false modesty. ‘Not beautiful, but decidedly handsome. The family considered me fast, which is probably why I ended up having so little to do with them.’

‘Were you really fast, or were they so stuffy you couldn’t bear to live as they wanted you to?’ Freya couldn’t help asking, although she should be worried her own dark secret was out instead of wondering how many Miss Bradstock’s fearsomely respectable appearance concealed.

‘I was a disgrace to the Bradstock
and
the Buckle name,’ the lady said proudly.

‘Were you really, ma’am? I never heard so much of a whisper of it from either side of the family.’

‘You don’t think they would advertise it, do you, girl? You’re more naïve than you have any right to be if you did, given what you must have been up to lately.’

‘I suspect you weren’t anything like as black
a sheep as I am about to become,’ Freya admitted ruefully.

‘He was married,’ Miss Bradstock replied baldly, and Freya recognised the pain of loss in her eyes, since it was a twin of the desolation she saw in her own when she looked in the mirror nowadays. ‘Yours?’ her aunt asked.

‘Widowed,’ she admitted matter of factly.

‘Then why didn’t he marry you? Never mind differences of rank and fortune,’ her aunt said impatiently, as if convinced such things mattered to the daughter of an Earl, when Freya had found over the last few weeks that nothing mattered much beside missing Orlando every second of every day she woke up without him and the world was still grey, whatever the weather outside had to say to the contrary.

‘I would have walked barefoot round the world in his footsteps if he’d only asked me to,’ she admitted gloomily.

‘He’s a fool, then,’ Miss Bradstock declared and Freya was tempted to agree.

‘He had his reasons. I would never have left if I didn’t consider them valid.’

‘Then you’re a fool as well. There’s nothing more important than love when you have a bastard in your belly to prove it.’

Freya smoothed a protective hand over her
still-flat stomach and wanted to rage and argue, but it was the honest truth of how her baby would enter the world and she had come so close to retracing her steps these last few weeks. Remembering how she had taken the risk of such an outcome, she refused to go back on her word. Anyway, it was better for her baby to have a loving mother and a much-regretted and falsely dead father than one who would resent its coming for tying him to a woman he couldn’t love. Which was all very well, but now she needed her fortune and some native cunning to bring that false future about.

Anyway, Orlando was no more real than Perdita Rowan and from the moment he told her to call him Orlando, she knew it wasn’t his true name. Nobody else questioned his alias and the deepest parts of the forest were a refuge for those who wanted to hide from the world for their own particular reasons. Orlando and Keziah’s reasons must be good, as they were good people, but how could she take her own unborn child back to live a lie when its father couldn’t even tell them what his true name was or bestow it on them? What little he had left to give had been enough for Perdita for that magical week they spent loving outside
reality, but it wasn’t enough for her precious child.

Lucky for her that she had chanced on an honourable outlaw, she supposed, and couldn’t resist a tender smile at the thought of him torn and troubled and rampant for so many days before he gave in to temptation and her eagerness to be ruined and made her his lover. Even now she refused to see anything sordid in their coupling and deeply regretted the lifetime of loving they would never have. Whether she would admit it to his face if he stood in front of her now was another matter. Whoever he turned out to be, could Lady Freya forgive the bungling idiot his lack of faith in her? Probably, she admitted to herself with a gusty sigh.

‘This bastard is more important to me than anyone else now,’ she said, meeting her relative’s eyes steadily, trying to make her determination to protect her child plain without abusing her hostess’s hospitality more than she already had.

‘So we’ll just have to make plans for a new life and inform Bowland he can’t and won’t get us to change them at his bidding.’

‘I certainly must. If you feel able to back me whilst I do so, despite everything you know about me now, I shall be most grateful for your
support, Aunt Carolina,’ Freya managed to say steadily, although she was tempted to sob like a child at such stalwart support when she had been dreading another rejection from her family and after she had got to like and respect this member of it more than she did any others.

‘The fortune your grandfather left you gives you more power than you realise, my dear. It’s time it was used for a better purpose than keeping Bowland’s wife in unbecoming silk gowns for the rest of her life.’

‘I doubt I could spend it all if I tried, so my brother is welcome to most of it.’

‘Nonsense. You will need to be rich and eccentric to get away with the plan I have in mind and I have no mind to live in penury while you nobly support everyone in comfort but yourself and your child. It’s very clear to me you need me, my girl, and the babe you’re brooding even more so, if you’re not to make a complete shambles of the whole business as you have everything else since your mama insisted on bringing you out when you were far too young to leave the schoolroom.’

‘But I can’t stay here,’ Freya said, puzzled that her most unusual relative could think that possible when she was known here as the lady’s noble, but very single, niece.

‘Of course not, but dull respectability has grown devilish tedious.’

‘So I imagine,’ Freya replied faintly as the possibility she would have some sort of family around her, apart from her coming child, slotted into her mind and got comfortable there.

‘Even surrounded with a pack of fools as I am, we only have a few weeks to be done with this place before you start to show and everyone knows what you’ve been up to, my girl. There’s no time to lose, so we’d best get busy if we’re to depart on a protracted visit to our Irish relatives in a hurry we won’t deign to explain to the British ones.’

‘And are we?’

‘Are we what?’

‘Going to visit our relatives in Ireland?’

‘Of course we ain’t—whatever would be the point in that? Misdirection is the secret of a sound campaign.’

‘This love of yours, was he a military man by any chance?’

‘Navy. I don’t hold with the military, far too light minded as well as full of idle blockheads and time-servers.’

‘I dare say,’ Freya said faintly and listened
intently to the scheme Miss Bradstock had thought out with a thoroughness that would awe most admirals.

‘A
re you certain it was my cousin Richard who wrote to you and not a crafty fraudster?’ the Duke of Dettingham demanded of the quiet gentleman who’d been admitted to his study so late in the day most of his household were already fast asleep.

‘Yes, your Grace,’ Mr Frederick Peters asserted quietly.

‘So, after six years of silence, I’m expected to believe my cousin would write to a complete stranger and not to me?’

‘Perhaps he believes your correspondence could be intercepted more easily than mine, your Grace.’

‘With the enemies you must have gained over the years in your profession, I can’t help
but question your logic, Peters. How do you know for certain this isn’t a hoax?’

‘I know Mr Seaborne’s hand too well for that, your Grace.’

‘For heaven’s sake, stop “your Gracing” me. We both know you don’t respect me because of the bed I was born in.’

‘Perhaps I respect you despite it, your Grace,’ Mr Peters suggested with such a straight face the Duke shot him a very suspicious look indeed.

‘Calvercombe and I have retained you to find my cousin and Miss DeMorbaraye these last three years and I can’t help but think you knew more about either of them than you’re willing to admit even now. Given all that, I hope you can see why it looks more like contempt from where I’m sitting?’ he said in such a coldly silken tone that the temperature in the comfortable room seemed to drop about ten degrees.

‘Nevertheless it is not so, but I’m afraid I made some solemn promises to your cousin that must trump my duty to yourself and the Earl,’ Mr Peters admitted uncomfortably.

‘And what would those promises be?’

‘Not to tell anyone I knew him well enough to make one in the first place. As for the others,
I still feel bound by them and cannot reveal their nature. The safety of others depends on my discretion and one day I hope you’ll understand why I had to keep silent until he gave me permission to say even as much as I can now.’

‘And you expect me to believe he’s suddenly changed his mind about trusting me with even this little of his secret life and decided he wants to come back into the fold? I can’t help but find that very hard to believe.’

‘So does he, if I read him rightly,’ Frederick Peters replied with a frown.

‘Then you’ve seen him recently if you talk of reading him aright?’

‘He finds me now and again,’ Peters explained. ‘Never where I might expect him to and not in the same place twice.’

‘He always was good at being someone else,’ Jack said cynically.

‘And I wonder if he knows what a challenge awaits him here, besides the obvious one of needing to beat off his enemies before he returns home,’ Peters stated.

‘My cousin never used to care whom he offended,’ Jack mused, staring at the massive family portrait the Seabornes sat for last summer, with the space where Richard Seaborne
should be that they all pretended not to notice, but had felt so acutely at the time.

‘It’s not his own safety Mr Seaborne is desperate to secure,’ his uncomfortable visitor admitted as if divulging a state secret.

‘D’you think I hadn’t worked that out myself, man? No doubt he’s with Lord Calvercombe’s cousin Annabelle and any little Seabornes they’ve made between them. It’s a good match and both their families would be more than happy with it if they would only come home.’

‘The situation is complex, your Grace.’

‘Then are you going to tell me what it is, or keep me guessing for another six years?’

‘Perhaps we should wait for Lord Calvercombe so I can tell the tale only once and there’s less risk of being overheard?’

‘And maybe you should get on and tell me which tiger my cousin has by the tail this time, since I’ve been employing you to find what you already knew but didn’t deign to tell me for so long.’

‘I wanted to, but Mr Seaborne insisted nobody must know about our acquaintance. I suspect he believes it safer for you and the rest of his family not to know where he is.’

‘Since neither Lord Calvercombe nor I are
puling infants or aged breakdowns, I speak for us both when I tell you we’re prepared to take that risk.’

‘I can’t reveal where he is or the name he uses now, but Mr Seaborne gave me permission to tell you why he’s determined to hide away until he’s certain it’s safe to resume his true identity.’

So Frederick Peters told the Duke of Dettingham the full horror of Annabelle DeMorbaraye’s plight one dark evening in the Strand when Mr Richard Seaborne rounded a dark corner into a little-used court to find a young woman at bay as a pair of thugs tried to beat her insensible and kill her unborn babe.

‘Luckily the desperate fight that ensued between Mr Seaborne and two of the most dangerous villains in London was as noisy as it was deadly and I heard the commotion on my way back from visiting a client. The lady recovered enough of her strength and considerable will-power to shout for help and between us we managed to scare the villains off, although I suspect one was mortally wounded during the scuffle with your cousin. Unfortunately Mr Seaborne took a knife wound to his ribs, so the lady insisted we go back to her lodging to make sure it was properly cleaned
and a physician sent for. They were married a month later and I was a witness and after the wedding they left London for I know not where.

‘Mr Seaborne has found me about once every six months ever since to gather news of his late wife’s enemies and hear what’s happening in his family, but he made me promise never to reveal our meetings to anyone or let it be known I had even met him. Given the attack and rumours I heard of them being harried further while they remained in London, it seemed a wise promise to give. Nobody suspected a connection between a humble lawyer and Mr Seaborne, so I’ve been safe enough from the villain behind it all.’

‘Does my cousin know who the reprobate is, then? And, if so, why hasn’t he brought the coward to book long ago?’

‘This is a far darker business than it appears and the stakes are very high indeed—’

‘Hold a moment,’ Jack interrupted again. ‘You just said Rich’s
late
wife?’

‘I am sorry, your Grace, but Mrs Richard Seaborne died three years ago in childbed.’

‘Poor Rich, is he a father as well as stepfather to his wife’s child, then?

Mr Peters nodded his assent.

‘By marrying her when the girl was already big with child, I suppose the gallant idiot meant to claim paternity?’

‘I warned them it would complicate matters, but Mr Seaborne insisted it was the only way to protect her from further attacks.’

‘He always was a hot-headed fool, despite his dark and dangerous reputation.’

‘You knew that Mr Richard Seaborne far better than I did, although I have to admit he is resolute to the point of stubbornness. Despite his insistence on muddying the waters, I have managed to unearth proof your cousin was out of the country on one of his many so-called business trips to the Continent during the entire term of the late Mrs Seaborne’s elopement and first marriage. Her first husband’s paternity of the boy cannot be in doubt under the law, despite their best efforts.’

‘At least Rich found a purpose in life with Annabelle DeMorbaraye, babe and all.’

‘Indeed, the late Mrs Seaborne was a truly exceptional lady.’

‘So why has he decided to break his silence now, three years after she died? Why did he really agree to let you tell us this tale at long last, Peters? And please don’t try to hoodwink
me it’s mere chance he’d decided to emerge from the shadows at long last.’

‘I have no idea, which is always a difficult thing for a man in my profession to admit. Mr Seaborne seems to have finally come to the conclusion he cannot hide himself and his family much longer, but why he made that decision now and not last month or in a year’s time is beyond me. He seemed preoccupied, but that could be because he fears for the late Mrs Seaborne’s son. He looks on himself as the boy’s father, even if that was beyond even a Seaborne to achieve.’

‘Why so fearful, then?’ Jack Seaborne demanded with a look that told his visitor it was high time he explained the power and resources of the boy’s enemies and when he’d finished not even Jack could argue his cousin had been wrong to disappear in the face of such odds.

In a very different world from Cousin Jack’s wide domain, Rich stared moodily into the fire the dog days of summer had made it intolerable to light inside the house he and his family would have to sleep in tonight. So he was in the clearing where they had all sat eating their breakfast that first morning Perdita walked in his life,
watching his woodsman’s fire and brooding on his own stupidity and cowardice. If he wasn’t such an idiot Perdita might be next to him right now, content to be with each other and never mind anything else. Browned by the sun and replete with loving as she struggled to mend the children’s oft-snagged clothes, or badgered him to tell her stories of his fanciful adventures, with Hal and Sally eagerly listening in, they would have whiled away the summer—loving when they could and living well the rest of the time.

Most of those tall tales were true and he looked back to his days of smuggling spies into France and trading wine and secrets wherever the best deals in both were to be done without regret. His sporadic disappearances from polite society had gone almost unnoticed since he made no secret of his boredom and took a close interest in lovely women. The latter made the gossips shake their heads and wonder which beauty he’d lured into some silken den of iniquity to be pleasured until he was tired of her this time.

He was hardly likely to tell Perdita or his children about that and perhaps it was as well they didn’t know what an idle gentleman Richard Seaborne once was. Bonaparte’s Continental System had edged his shady deals out of
the reckoning even before he met Annabelle, but he supposed living a secret life was second nature by then. Anyway, he’d been Orlando Craven for so long now the thought of going back to the duties and responsibilities of his real life made him wonder if he truly wanted to be Rich Seaborne again after all.

‘Idiot,’ he chided himself, shifting the skewered fish he was cooking over the fire so it wouldn’t burn.

Missing Perdita was the heaviest load to bear of all and he missed her every moment of the day. Indeed, he couldn’t imagine a morning ever dawning when he
didn’t
wake up needing her almost unbearably. He was so gruff with the loss of her that even his children avoided him whenever they could and ran off to find Keziah. The spectre of Keziah’s daughter Cleopatra lingered at the edges of his life like nagging toothache and nothing seemed as secure as it had a few short months ago. Letting Perdita go was the act of a blind fool. The loss of her finally showed him he was a lonely man without even the courage to fight for what was dearest to him, then defy the world to ever take it from him. It was high time he found a way to keep his children safe, then went after Perdita, for all their sakes.

And suppose he’d got her with child? He felt sick with revulsion at himself for risking such a calamity, then pushing her out of his life as if she didn’t matter. He threw half His fish to patiently waiting Atlas and felt ill at the idea of Perdita facing life pregnant and alone. His hands knotted into fists and an urge to drink himself into oblivion almost overcame him at last. Impossible for a man with two children depending on him for everything to lose himself in the bottom of a bottle.

He was torn between taking them to his mother or Persephone, so he could go and find his lover, and the knowledge he would make Hal a target the instant he walked out of the forest as Rich Seaborne. Even if he found her, Perdita probably wouldn’t want him in her life now if He came wrapped in gold leaf and pouring diamonds and pearls into her lap by way of an apology. He couldn’t risk exposing his son to danger when Martagon sat in Hal’s house with all those ancient titles at his fingertips and the power of the Lundy title to awe and bully others into doing his evil bidding for him.

The idea of Jack’s blistering contempt when he heard what Rich had done to a lady who came to him in desperate straits made him
squirm as well. Rich found himself guilty of being the craven he’d christened himself when he wed his first Love and hid, instead of facing her enemies and risking more than he could bring himself to lose. Love was the devil, he decided, as he counted the sleepless nights and haunted days he’d endured since he packed Perdita up like an unwanted parcel and sent her on her way. He’d loved Annabelle: instantly, passionately and for life. So when Perdita Rowan stumbled into his life, he’d told himself wanting wasn’t loving. All the excuses he could make for taking her innocence so he could slake his frantic need of her rang in his head and mocked him now—all straw in the wind now it was too late to admit he loved her too.

He felt so tired and heavy with missing her he could almost see his dead wife shaking her head at him, the reproach in the vivid silver-blue eyes she’d passed on to her son making her a ghost he didn’t want to meet, after he’d longed so bitterly for her to haunt him for three long years. He should have seen the gallant spirit and ardent nature of the waif who stumbled out of the night as the mate whom loving Annabelle should have taught him to recognise.

Thinking of the cool lady his Perdita had been at first, uncertain of her own attractions and thinking herself unlovable, made him feel more of a villain. She had been so lost that first night with her slender ankle puffing with injury and her poor, scratched, filthy and painfully raw feet battered by her trek through the forest. His heart turned over at the very idea of what she’d escaped that day and the fragile fact of her elegantly made limbs under his exploring hands came back to him, as if he only had to close his eyes and she would be there. He let out another sigh and wondered how she’d react to his pleas to let him back into her life if he did manage to find her.

Knowing her, she would send him her best haughty look, pleat her fine brows with a faint look of puzzlement as she tried to recall who he was and say no until even he gave up and went away. But even though he knew it would be a battle to woo her back if he did track her down, his heart ached for her; his body yearned at the memory of her wrapped up in learning all she could about loving for the brief, ill-mannered snatch of time he’d allowed them. Life here had once felt so simple, the limits of it a welcome sacrifice. Now it was the rack he must stretch on until Jack
and Alex Forthin could tease out the lies and villainies of Francis Martagon, supposed Marquis of Lundy, despite his attempts to hold fast to power with both hands, then take it off him and restore Hal to his rightful place in life.