The Hidden Heart (10 page)

“I don’t require that he converse with me a great deal,” Gabriela explained earnestly. “It is just—he was my father’s friend! I wanted—I thought he would want me because of that. That he would want to raise me. I thought, in a way, that it would be a little like having a father again. I mean, I know what it must be like, at least a little, to have a mother, because you have been very like a mother to me. And I thought that he might be like a father. Or at least
something
like a father.”

Touched, Jessica slipped her arm around the girl’s waist and hugged her. “You are very like a daughter to me. But perhaps the duke simply is not capable of being that way with you. The housekeeper told me that he has had a great deal of sorrow in his life. His wife and daughter died four years ago, and apparently he has never recovered from the blow. I think it is that which causes him to avoid talking to you. I think it is painful for him because his daughter is dead, and he misses her.”

“Oh.” Gabriela looked at Jessica, and though there was still sorrow in her face, there was also a measure of relief. “Then it is not just me that he doesn’t wish to have around—it would be any girl.”

“I think it is not so much what he wishes as what he is afraid of—the hurt he would feel. But yes, I am sure he would be the same about any young person, boy or girl. And he is thinking of you, too. However rude and stubborn and thoroughly hardheaded he might be, I do think he wants to do what is best for you. He knows that he never goes out, that people do not visit here. It would be a very lonely life for you and would ill prepare you for your future. I am sure he is right, that it will be better for you to be with a couple. A father and a mother. When your father made his will, the duke was married. No doubt your father intended for you to be brought up by a man and wife, not by a widower.”

“I suppose.”

“And he is right that in a few years, when you are eighteen, you will need the expert guidance of a lady who moves in the highest circles of the Ton. A man would never be able to manage it, nor can a governess. I can tell you about some things, but you need an experienced woman there at the parties with you, helping and watching over you.”

“But I don’t care about some stupid old parties!”

“Not right now, you don’t. But, believe me, in a few years, they will be the center of your existence. I’m sorry. I know it is difficult for you right now. You want to have a home, to be where you belong, to have a family again. But it will be better to wait a bit and get a proper home, and not have to leave and go to someone else in a few years so that you can make a proper coming-out. The duke mentioned his sister-in-law, and from what the housekeeper told me, she seems to be a good woman. So that might turn out to be a much better thing.”

“Maybe,” Gabriela admitted grudgingly.

“Now, then, I think we’ve had all the excitement we are likely to receive today. It’s time we returned to our books.”

Gaby sighed and nodded, and the two of them turned and walked up the stairs.

It did not surprise Jessica that, throughout the rest of the day, Lady Vesey managed to disrupt the household. She kept the servants busy running up and down the stairs to her room to answer the ring of her bell. She wanted food; she wanted drink; nothing that was served was quite right; she needed her pillows fluffed; the bed linens had to be changed—the list seemingly went on forever.

Finally Leona realized, after several boring hours stuck in her bed all alone, that while she might have managed to remain in Castle Cleybourne, she was also completely unable to work any of her wiles on the duke. She had expected him to come to her bedside to check on her, which he had not done even once. When she inquired after him, the maid replied that he was busy in his study, going over the books with the estate manager.

By the middle of the afternoon Leona decided that she needed a change of scenery and had the footmen carry her back downstairs. She lay half-reclining on the blue velvet chaise longue in one of the drawing rooms, her skirts arranged attractively about her legs, with just the hint of bare ankle showing as she propped that injured appendage on a small pillow. Daylight was not her favorite lighting, as it tended to reveal all sorts of tiny lines that the kinder candlelight left hidden, but at least the drapes of the tall windows opened on a south prospect, and no direct sunlight fell upon the chair where she sat.

Still, she found, the duke did not come to visit her, and she grew more bored and irritable by the second. She was, finally, reduced to talking to Vesey, who wandered in to see how she was doing. He came up with the idea of sending one of the maids up to fetch the governess and the girl.

“It would be quite natural, you know, for the child’s cousins to take an interest in her. Children are always being trotted out to speak to boring old relatives.”

“And you are lumping me in that class?” Leona asked in a chilly voice.

“Not at all, my dear. Just saying I wouldn’t mind seeing the chit. Might give us a chance to make friends with her, so to speak. Be bound to make her feel important, talking to us.”

“Well, what does one say to a child?” Leona whined. “I have spent my entire life avoiding them.”

“Not your entire life,” her husband pointed out.

“You once were a child. You were around other children then, bound to have been.”

“And I am sure they were deadly dull. Vesey, you are of no help at all. And what about the governess? I don’t want to have to sit and chat with
her.
”

“Well, who else are you going to talk to, then? The servants? At least that redhead comes from a decent family. Uncle’s a peer.”

“And she is making a living as a governess? What twaddle.”

“No, it’s true. Some scandal about her father several years ago—everyone dropped her, of course. But a bit of scandal shouldn’t bother you, love.”

Leona grimaced. “I am sure it was not an interesting scandal. She is Miss Prisms-and-Prunes.” She sighed, thinking of spending the rest of the afternoon in Vesey’s company. “Oh, go ahead and send for them.”

Vesey was happy to comply, and a few minutes later Jessica and Gabriela walked into the room. They looked, Leona thought, neat as a pin and just as boring, but perhaps it would provide some amusement to watch Vesey make a fool of himself trying to win over the girl.

Jessica and Gabriela sat down on the love seat across from Leona, Jessica positioning herself between Gabriela and the chair in which Vesey had been sitting when they entered. She had considered not responding to Vesey’s arrogant summons. Gabriela had been frightened at the thought of having to be in the same room with him. But, Jessica reasoned, she and Gabriela could not avoid him for days on end. And if they did not go down to make their formal visit now, Vesey was all too likely to come up to the nursery to call on her. And she certainly did not want to have to be stuck with him there, where she could not take Gabriela and leave whenever she wanted. So, in the end, she had brought Gabriela down to the blue drawing room.

Apparently Baxter had taken it upon himself to inform Cleybourne of their impending conversation with the Veseys, for within two minutes of their entrance, the duke himself strolled in.

He cast a glance around the room. Lord Vesey, who had been about to move to a chair closer to Gabriela, quietly stayed where he was. Jessica straightened in her chair, facing Cleybourne with an almost defiant air, and beside her on the sofa, Gabriela cast a nervous glance at her governess. Leona, oblivious to everyone else, smiled at Cleybourne and adjusted her position on the chaise longue a little, just to emphasize the lovely, lush line of her reclining figure.

“Richard,” she said in a low, intimate voice, “what a naughty boy you’ve been, leaving me here by myself all day.”

“Hardly alone, Lady Vesey,” Richard replied, looking significantly at the others. “Miss Maitland. Miss Carstairs. Vesey.”

Gabriela turned to Jessica. “May I be excused now? I should go finish my lessons.”

“Yes, of course, my dear.”

Jessica stood up, too, as Gabriela jumped to her feet and hurried from the room. “I should go, too. Please excuse me.”

“No, wait, don’t leave,” Cleybourne said. “Stay here. I, ah, I wish to talk to Miss Carstairs.”

Jessica stared at him, too dumbstruck by his words to do anything but nod and sit back down.

Cleybourne turned and followed Gabriela out into the hall, catching up with her at the foot of the stairs. “Miss Car—Gabriela! Wait.”

Gabriela froze, one foot on the first step, and turned. Remembering her manners, she gave him a little curtsy and said, “Yes, Your Grace?”

“It seemed to me that you left the room because I had entered it,” Cleybourne began.

“I’m sorry. Was I rude?” Gabriela looked at him uncertainly. “I did not mean to be. It was just, well, I thought that you would not like it if I were there.”

A look of chagrin crossed Cleybourne’s face. “I was afraid that was your reason. I am very sorry I have given you that impression.” He paused, then went on a little stiffly. “I followed you out here because I wanted to apologize to you.”

“You did?” Gabriela looked at him in amazement.

“Yes. I realized that I—that I behaved very rudely to you this morning. It was just that I was startled to see you, and I—I didn’t know what to say. I have been thinking about it ever since then, and I feel, well, as though I have been something of a monster to you.”

“Oh, no,” Gabriela reassured him. “At first I thought that you did not like me, but Miss Jessica explained to me.”

So that was her name: Jessica. It suited her.
Jessica…
He tried the name out in his mind.

“Did she? And what did your Miss Jessica tell you?”

“She told me that you were giving me away because it is in my best interest—that I should have a married man as my guardian, so that his wife can bring me out.”

“Exactly.” Richard let loose a little sigh of relief, somewhat surprised that the governess had adhered to his story. “You will need a woman who can introduce you to society properly.”

He stole a quick glance at Gabriela. He had not yet really looked at her, merely catching glimpses in the distance. He had not wanted to see her. Yet he could not keep from looking at her now.

She was older than Alana would have been if she had lived. Alana would have been only seven, half this child’s age. Still, he could not look at her, or even think of her, without it bringing his own dead child to his mind. Alana would have been this age in seven more years; he tried to imagine what she would have looked like.

It was harder all the time to summon up Alana’s image in his mind. She had disappeared from his life more years ago than she had lived before she died. She had been lost to him longer than he had known her. Yet she had made a greater impact on him than anyone else had ever made—or ever would make now, he supposed.

Gabriela’s coloring was different. Alana’s hair, like her parents’, had been coal-black, and her eyes had been hazel. Her merry little face, with its chubby, rosy cheeks, had been far different, too. This girl looked up at him solemnly, gray eyes wide in her heart-shaped face, a frame of straight, light brown hair falling around it.

“But I told her I knew that was nonsense,” Gabriela went on, shattering his hope that she understood and accepted his reasons for seeking a new guardian. “It is bound to be easier to find a suitable lady to guide me through society in four years than to persuade someone to take over my guardianship for the next seven.”

“It would be better for you to stay with the same person,” he began persuasively, but his voice trailed away as Gabriela leveled a look of skepticism at him.

“And is that the reason you have not met me? That you are never anywhere I am? You have not even spoken to me.”

Though she spoke in an even tone, she could not completely dispel the note of hurt from her voice. Richard’s heart twisted within him.

“I am sorry,” he said again. “I was acting very selfishly. I—I did not stop to think how it must look to you. I assure you, my not seeing you had nothing to do with you or not wanting you.”

“Miss Jessica told me that you had a daughter, and she died. She said it was because of that. Is it? Because I’m not like her?”

“No. It is nothing about you. The fault is all in me. I was…I guess I was afraid of how I would feel, seeing you, being around you. Do you understand what I mean?”

“It would make you unhappy to see me?”

He nodded. “That is what I feared. That the sight of another child, even one of a different age, would remind me of Alana. And the pain would be worse.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you feel bad.”

He smiled faintly. “You don’t. The truth be told, it is not Alana you remind me of. When I look at you, I can see your father.”

“Really?”

“Yes. His eyes were quite like yours. He used to look at me in that quiet way when I suggested some idiotic scheme or other. He was generally more sensible than I. But then he would smile, and there would be a little twinkle in his eyes, and the corner of his mouth would go up—yes, just like that.”

Gabriela chuckled, her eyes shining. “Really? Am I truly like him?”

“Your eyes are very like his. Otherwise, in looks, you are much more like your mother. Who was, I might add, a very attractive woman.”