The Black Sheep's Return (14 page)

‘Damn it all, Summers, where the devil are they this time?’ Rich shouted to his equally villainous-looking and unshaven companion as he grew impatient with waiting and rode into the broken-down, and deserted, stable yard.

Apparently Cleo had a lover who might hide her here and Rich tried not to think of the humiliations the woman piled on her husband as they trailed her and his precious children through the West Country and found how many of those she had. Reuben was too proud to want pity and Rich too plagued by desperate anxiety that they were too late to offer it to him.

‘She was here, but your children managed to escape from her somehow. The idle fool who owns this place is off searching with Cleo and he’s welcome to her. I want no more of her.’

‘I don’t blame you, but do they know where she is?’

‘Gloucester—some lout was in the tap last night complaining that two urchins broke into
his cathedral and were chased out, along with a woman claiming to be their mother.’

Rich cursed long and inventively as he realised how close he’d been to finding Hal and Sally and wondered desperately who had them this time.

‘Time for action, not cursing,’ Reuben said brusquely. ‘If we ride hard, we can catch this woman before they come to harm. We’re overdue some luck, my friend, even if you don’t deserve it for sending a far better woman than mine could ever be away like that.’

Rich gave a grim shake of his head at his own stupidity. ‘I’ve regretted doing so every moment of every day since she left, if that makes you feel any better.’

‘A little, my friend,’ Reuben mocked and Rich hadn’t the heart to point out Cleo was the cause of all this, not his treatment of Perdita.

‘Never mind the rights and wrongs, we need good horses, a meal and a shave if the good folk of Gloucester are to realise we’re not beggars or rogues and answer our questions.’

‘Time for all that when we’ve a better idea where your babes are, Orlando,’ Reuben goaded him and Rich did his best to shake the tiredness from his bewildered brain as he
turned his weary horse towards the best posting house in the city and prayed his children were safe.

‘Some unexpected guests appear to be arriving in a great hurry, your Grace,’ the butler at Ashburton informed Jessica Seaborne impassively later the same day.

Jess concluded Hughes was as close to being shocked as he ever betrayed from small hints she’d learnt to pick up since becoming Duchess of Dettingham.

‘Invite them to join me as soon as possible then, if you please, Hughes. I don’t feel like stirring from here unless it happens to be the King or Queen come to call on us unexpectedly,’ she replied calmly enough while she wondered why these visitors seemed to be in such a hurry they couldn’t slow down and stop shocking her butler.

‘I can see from here that it’s not their Majesties, your Grace, although some would say one thinks herself almost as important,’ Hughes muttered as he watched the visitors descend hastily and went to invite them to enter the family sitting room, so Jessica concluded they were respectable and not here to steal the plate and her personal jewellery.

The coming addition to the ducal nurseries might have kept her home twiddling her thumbs while her husband and Alex Forthin were off cousin hunting again, but they weren’t the only ones having adventures after all. She brightened at the idea of company, however pompous, and levered herself off the sofa, smoothed her delicately sprigged muslin gown over her rapidly expanding baby bump and hoped whoever it was didn’t require a curtsy, since it seemed unlikely she would ever get up again.

‘Good Heaven’s above—Lady Freya!’ she exclaimed as one of her least-favourite young ladies entered the room looking unhappy to be here, as well as very pale indeed. ‘Do come and sit down. I’m sure Hughes will bring us refreshments,’ she said, since the girl looked sorely in need of a seat, although she turned even whiter at the mention of food.

‘Thank you, your Grace,’ Lady Freya said with un-Buckle-like gratitude and beckoned to her companions into the room so the Duchess of Dettingham could meet them.

Jessica only just stopped her mouth gaping open when two almost-angelic children crept into the room clinging to the dark skirts of a lively looking elderly lady she was certain she
had never met. Disarmed by two sets of childish eyes round as saucers at the splendour of Ashburton’s gilded halls, she smiled and did her best to make them feel welcome in what was actually quite a modest room in her husband’s grand Tudor mansion.

‘May I introduce my aunt, Miss Bradstock, Master Craven and Miss Craven to you, your Grace?’ Lady Freya asked with a warmly encouraging smile for the little ones that astonished Jessica.

‘Now you’ll have to let go of me long enough to make your bow, young man,’ Miss Bradstock told the boy with the right amount of sternness to remind him he was five years old and mature enough to meet a Duchess without acting as if she ate little boys for breakfast.

‘Good afternoon, Master Craven,’ Jessica said solemnly, dipping just low enough for all of them to feel she’d made the effort and no lower, given her current centre of gravity and permanently wobbly ankle.

‘Good day, your Grace,’ the boy managed with quiet dignity that argued he’d been trained to know his own value as well as that of others. His bow had such a flourish to it that Jessica’s gaze sharpened on him as she decided
he reminded her of someone—she just wasn’t sure exactly who at the moment and wondered if Hughes might know.

‘Come out from behind me now your brother’s remembered his manners and stop pretending to be shy, young missy,’ Miss Bradstock ordered the little girl clinging so determinedly to her skirts the lady couldn’t curtsy to Jessica without more risk of toppling over than she ran herself.

Engaging little Miss Craven giggled and put a small hand over her mouth as she finally let go and wobbled precariously, before losing her balance completely and plopping down on to the floor in a welter of meticulously mended cotton skirts.

Lady Freya laughed, raised the child to her feet, then smiled as she met green eyes dancing with mischief as if she might join in at any moment. Jessica blinked and could hardly believe this was the stiff and insufferably proud young woman who so blighted the summer house party Jack had held here to select his Duchess from the fairest and finest young ladies of the
ton
three summer ago and picked the least likely of them all as his bride.

‘One day you’ll get it right,’ Freya promised her charge, then set her on her feet as Jessica’s
gaze sharpened on the little girl now and finally took in her distinctive features and mass of fine dark-gold curls before she met Miss Bradstock’s shrewd gaze and received a faint nod as if to confirm her wildest suspicions.

‘A
nd here comes Hughes with our tea,’ Jessica remarked calmly while she struggled with all sorts of unlikely conclusions under the calm of an expert hostess. ‘Oh, and cake as well, I see. What a clever man to know how very much I should like one right now,’ she said with a sidelong look at her little visitors as they obeyed the chiding look Lady Freya shot them and clasped their hands behind their backs as if they hadn’t been about to grab one off the plate the butler ordered the footman to place on the low table next to her Grace’s sofa.

Stifling her laughter as the endearing little girl did her best to look so appealingly hungry she couldn’t possibly
not
deserve cake, Jessica solemnly offered her older guests tea
and waited for Lady Freya to prove once again how radically she’d changed by sending her hostess an appealing glance to remind her how good the wayward Miss Craven was being and she surely deserved a treat. Now who would have thought such a tender heart beat under Lady Freya Buckle’s conviction she was one of the most important ladies in the land? Jessica smiled at the two apparent angels and invited them to take a plate and eat their cakes and drink the milk Hughes had brought in especially for them, while their elders sipped their tea and chatted about nothing in particular.

‘This is the very best sort of milk, my love. You need not worry it will taste bad,’ Lady Freya told the girl, who looked about to pull a face and refuse, thirsty though she clearly was.

‘See, Sal, I’m drinking mine and it’s not nasty at all. It’s almost as nice as milk from Kezzie’s brown cow,’ her big brother encouraged and Jessica thought the closeness between the two very touching.

Being from a large family herself, Jessica had no difficulty seeing they were
not
two angelic beings who lived in idyllic harmony. She decided they had been very well brought up by someone though, and the possible identity of that someone was exhilarating. Finally
they might discover where Rich Seaborne had been all these years. The weight of anxiety that would lift off Jack’s shoulders would be enough to make her heart sing, but her fondness for wayward Rich Seaborne made it a terrific effort to sit here as if calmly sipping tea with such a surprise package of visitors was an everyday occurrence.

If Rich had cut himself off from friends and family and his privileged life for the sake of these rather delightful little demons for some reason only he knew, it stood to reason he would move heaven and earth to get them back again. Why Lady Freya Buckle and her aunt had custody of them at the moment was beyond her, as was a great deal about a haughty minx like Lady Freya turning into a perfectly bearable young lady she would like to know better.

‘I wonder if you are too old to play with my little daughter and her cousin? He’s only a baby, but Thomas Henry thinks he’s capable of conquering the world if he chooses, so I’m quite glad he can only crawl about his nursery as yet,’ Jessica mused aloud.

‘How old is your little girl, your Gracefulness?’ Miss Craven asked at a pause in her
determined consumption of milk, now she’d been persuaded it was good to drink after all.

‘Just two years old, Mistress Craven,’ Jessica made herself reply solemnly, although she was longing to laugh out loud at such a novel form of address and, considering how seldom anyone called her graceful, decided to treasure it instead.

‘
I’m
three and a quarter,’ the little girl proclaimed importantly and looked happy to queen it over another after being born after her brother and being told about it far too often.

‘Gracious, you are a big girl,’ Jessica said admiringly.

‘Well, I am five and three quarters,’ her brother told her even more importantly, adding an intriguing fact to the buzz of them being added up and wondered over in Jessica’s head while she managed to look even more impressed.

‘It would probably be asking too much for you to join your sister in the day nursery, then,’ she said, as if pondering the huge problem of finding him suitably mature company. ‘There
is
a rather fine rocking horse in there, of course, and I believe the games and toys my husband Jack and his cousin Rich used to play with when they were boys are stored
away somewhere, waiting for Thomas Henry to be big enough to play with them instead of sucking them to see if they taste nice.’

‘My name is Henry as well,’ the boy declared and somehow Jessica wasn’t at all surprised Rich had named this bright boy after his father, even if he wasn’t of his begetting.

‘Should you like to visit him for a few minutes, then, to make sure you won’t be too bored in such young company?’ she asked as if he was really the mature gentleman he quaintly thought himself to be.

‘I believe I should,’ he agreed, with a look at Lady Freya, as if she was his anchor and he had no intention of letting her disappear when his back was turned.

Intrigued, Jessica rang the bell for someone to conduct her youngest guests upstairs and awaited whatever surprise came next.

‘Then you must certainly do so, Hal,’ Lady Freya encouraged him with a smile that understood his fears. ‘I shall stay as long as you want me to.’

‘Good, ’cause I don’t ever want you to go,’ he said with a rare demonstration of love and vulnerability that touched Jessica and no wonder she caught a glimpse of tears swimming in Lady Freya’s unusual golden-brown eyes.

Well, no wonder they were there in
this
Lady Freya’s eyes. Jessica would have laid odds on the one of three years ago being incapable of unselfish tears and decided she must learn to give the benefit of the doubt more often in future.

‘Off you go then, my loves,’ Lady Freya managed to say lightly enough, but Jessica suspected there was more sorrow behind her encouragement they should find happiness in the company of others than joy. ‘Aunt Carolina and I will both be here when you get back,’ she added as even impulsive little Miss Craven looked doubtful for a moment, then nodded happily and went with Hughes to be conducted to the nurseries like important visitors, rather than the mere children other noble households were inclined to dismiss their brightest hopes as, until they were old enough to make a bow or curtsy to the world.

Jessica let silence gather for a moment, offered the decimated plate of cakes to her visitors again and waited patiently for some sort of explanation. Lady Freya nibbled absently on her sponge cake and looked thoughtful now the children weren’t here to shield them from each other. She also looked a lot better and, if Jessica hadn’t known better, she might sympathise
with the uneasy stomach and revulsion to food at certain times of the day and cravings at others that always afflicted her during pregnancy. Unthinkable that Lady Freya Buckle would let herself be taken advantage of and left with child by a rogue. Jessica told herself it must be carriage sickness and dismissed the notion from her mind.

‘You must wonder why we are here,’ Lady Freya finally ventured.

‘You are very welcome, of course—’ Jessica began, only to be interrupted.

‘Please don’t lie, your Grace. I don’t see how I can be when I behaved so appallingly towards you last time I was here. Words cannot be enough to apologise for my ill-natured pride and arrogance towards you on that occasion and far too many others,’ Lady Freya insisted and Jessica concluded the changes went far deeper than a realisation of how unpopular she had been when she visited Ashburton with her domineering mother that summer.

‘So
that’s
why you didn’t want to come here,’ her aunt said impulsively and Jessica could see the puzzlement she was beginning to share in the lady’s troubled grey gaze.

Evidently Lady Freya had no idea she was bringing at least one of Rich’s children as near
home as made no difference and Jessica felt her heart sink after its wild dance of joy at the thought of Rich back here and his family with him. Something deeply significant must have caused this turn about in Lady Freya’s every thought and action to reveal the person under all that chilly pride. If that something was Rich, as she was beginning to suspect, how would the lady react to being deceived about Richard Seaborne as surely as the rest of the world had been these last six years?

‘I behaved very ill towards her Grace when she was still Miss Pendle, Aunt Carolina,’ Freya explained and caught the anxious look the other women exchanged. ‘I was jealous of her and bewildered by the Duke’s complete uninterest in me. Mama and I were quite sure he only invited everyone else to his house party for the sake of form, you see? To us it was unthinkable he’d choose any but the youngest and most well-bred of the young ladies gathered for his approval. That proves more about us than about the Duke of Dettingham, who had the excellent sense to choose a wife on more personal criteria.’

The Duchess blushed at the thought of how personal their reasons for marriage had become one heady June day more than three
years ago now. Freya envied her only the strong love and commitment between her and her Duke now. The way she and her strong-minded mother had set out to find her a suitable husband had been wrong and sure to end in disaster and Freya was deeply grateful Jack Seaborne had been so unimpressed by her now. He had behaved as if she wasn’t here when she was at her most pettish and demanding in a doomed attempt to gain his wandering attention. She wouldn’t trade her week of passionate fulfilment with Orlando for a lifetime of marriage to a man who didn’t even like her, let alone love her as he clearly had his chosen Duchess.

‘The old Earl made your mother a very poor bargain as a husband, Freya my dear,’ her aunt intervened with an excuse to soften her bad behaviour. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself for being too young to know Beatrice was battling to marry you off before anything happened to her and left you to your half-brother’s dubious mercies. She couldn’t realise or let herself see that mutual advantage was a bad basis for marriage when being a Countess meant so much to her.’

‘A shame I couldn’t reason all that out for myself though, don’t you think? It would have
saved the years it took me to realise I couldn’t marry for convenience and children.’

‘You only had examples of ill-advised marriages to learn from, Freya,’ her aunt told her acerbically and she nodded meekly, surprising herself with the conclusion she was the luckiest Buckle of all to find love, even if she then lost it almost as soon as she had found it.

‘Jack and I have been scandalously happy together, despite your behaviour so long ago, so maybe you helped drive him into my arms, Lady Freya,’ Jessica Seaborne said with a wicked smile that invited her to find that a blessing as well.

‘I can’t imagine I did much to endear me to either of you even so.’

‘Maybe not, but we’re all three years older and wiser now and you have changed a great deal. Can I call you Freya? Lady Freya is such a correct aristocrat I might find it difficult to be friends with her and I’m astonished to be able to tell you I would very much like you as my friend now, Freya.’

‘Thank you,’ Freya said, realising how short a friendship it would be and regretting it.

‘Then do call me Jessica. I can’t get used to being a Duchess and my grandmama-in-law scoffs at the thought I stand in her shoes, since,
as she points out whenever she thinks I’m getting too sure of myself, I can barely stand at all for the state occasions she enjoys most.’

‘Standing about for hours and hours at Court and kow-towing to all those poor, dull princesses, when it would be far better if they married before they all go as mad as their poor papa from sheer frustration? I should think you are deeply relieved
not
to be asked to take on her royal duties, my dear Duchess,’ Miss Bradstock said, her scorn for the sort of state the ancient Dowager Duchess revelled in designed to counter Jessica’s insecurity about her damaged leg and agreeing to be Jack’s lame Duchess, despite her misgivings.

‘I do like you, Miss Bradstock,’ she said with a delighted smile and Freya wished she had found her new friend sooner.

‘There’s a couple of gypsy-looking rogues coming galloping across the parkland this time, your Grace,’ Hughes declared with a long-suffering sigh. ‘Shall I call Hopley to open the gun cases and arm the footmen?’

‘Not yet, but get the keys from the Duke’s study, would you? Lest they should be needed in a hurry,’ Jessica replied coolly.

Freya reminded herself this wasn’t her
house, so she couldn’t grab the nearest weapon and use it to protect those she loved from all comers. Nevertheless she sped to the doorway and got ready to run upstairs if there was any threat to the children and be ready to fight it with whatever came to hand.

‘I will retrieve his Grace’s Mantons from his study while I’m there, your Grace,’ Hughes said as if it was an everyday occurrence and left the room to arm himself.

‘I always expect him to get his tongue in a knot with all those your Graces, but he never does,’ Jessica observed calmly.

Freya could quite see why Jack Seaborne had seized her and refused to let her out of his sight until she agreed to be his wife now. As chatelaine and protector of his realm, his lady was calmly assured and Freya only wished she felt half as serene herself.

‘They could be after the children,’ she cautioned and hesitated between rushing upstairs to protect them and staying here to judge how serious the threat could be.

‘And that’s a story I can’t wait to hear,’ Jessica replied a little distractedly as Hughes returned with the elegant but deadly weapons and handed one of them to the mistress of the house. ‘I had four brothers,’ she explained as
she tested the weight of the pistol and seemed satisfied with its fine balance.

‘They must be more fun than mine if they taught you to shoot,’ Freya said ruefully.

‘Having met Lord Bowland, I can safely promise you that they were.’

‘Dull as cold porridge,’ Miss Bradstock agreed and Freya fought an attack of the giggles she told herself was nine-tenths nerves.

Now they could hear two sets of hooves on the hard-packed track across the park and Freya drew in her breath and braced herself for whatever shocks were to come. Aunt Carolina had been right to insist they came here. Every last man would fight to protect four vulnerable children and their Duchess, never mind if Lady Freya Buckle had done nothing to endear herself to them last time she was at Ashburton. Her heartbeat thundered in time with the noise outside as she caught a glimpse of Reuben Summer riding a fleet-footed hunter as if the devil was on his tail.