The Arrangement (37 page)

“And when he is found, he is to be told that I wish to see him.”

“Yes, my lord,” I heard the footman reply.

Raoul came back into the room, resumed his chair, frowned at me, and said abruptly, “You look as if you have lost ten pounds, Gail, and there was never very much of you to begin with.”

“Yes, well, living in constant fear is not a very effective appetite stimulant,” I retorted.

“It is almost all over now, sweetheart,” he said soothingly. “You call start eating again.”

I sighed and rubbed my temples. “You really think that Nicky is safe?”

“I’m sure of it. As a matter of fact, I am sending both of you to Devane Hall tomorrow. That is what I was talking to Barrett about when you came in. He is leaving immediately so he can get there first and make certain that things go smoothly for you when you get there.”

I dropped my hands and stared at him in shock. “You want me to go to Devane Hall tomorrow?”

The eyes that met mine were a clear, pure amber. “Yes. I think it is important to establish Nicky as the rightful Lord Devane immediately. You don’t need to go about in the neighborhood if you don’t wish to, Gail, but you should be in possession of the premises.” He smiled. “I will even have Mr. and Mrs. Macintosh driven down from Deepcote to join you. Perhaps Mr. Macintosh’s cooking will start you eating again.”

“Oh,” I said. Then, tonelessly: “That will be nice.”

“Devane Hall has turned into a tidy little property,” Raoul said. “You will have no more occasion to worry about Nicky, Gail; his future is fixed. And you don’t have to worry about your legal relationship to him either. I have contacted my solicitor and we have begun the paperwork to have you declared his guardian. I will be the executor of his property until he reaches his majority, but under the law you will remain his mother, sweetheart.”

I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Is it really necessary for us to leave tomorrow? It will be so upsetting for Nicky to leave in such a rush.”

He answered my real concern, “I can’t come with you tomorrow, Gail, but I will join you as soon as I see to a few things that need my attention here. I’m not deserting you, sweetheart, I promise you.”

Powell came into the room. “My lord, I just thought you might like to know that Master Nicky has been found and he is all right. He will be coming to see you within the next ten minutes.”

I shut my eyes as relief flooded my heart.

“Thank you, Powell,” Raoul said.

I opened my eyes, and as soon as Powell had gone I said sharply, “I don’t want you to talk to Nicky about…about what I just discussed with him, Raoul.”

“I have no intention of interfering in your relationship with your son, Gail.”

“Then what do you want to talk to him about?” I demanded.

“I wish to talk to him about his responsibilities as the new Lord Devane. Specifically, I wish to talk to him about his responsibilities toward his sisters.”

It took me a moment to realize that Raoul was referring to Harriet’s children.

“Mr. Cole will take care of them,” I said. “He has a
ton
of money.”

Raoul replied, “It is not just a matter of money, Gail. It is a matter of branding these little girls as bastards.”

I sat staring at him.

“Is there something that can be done?” I asked at last.

“I will discuss that with Nicky.”

“Raoul, Nicky is eight years old!”

“He is also Lord Devane, and during his lifetime he will be responsible for the welfare of a great many people. One is never too young to learn that one’s responsibilities are a part of one’s privileges.”

I couldn’t quarrel with him. I didn’t want to quarrel with him. All I wanted was for him to hold me and tell me that he loved me so much that he couldn’t live without me, and that regardless of my unimpressive origins, he wanted to marry me.

But there was small chance of that, I thought as I got wearily to my feet. He was sending me off tomorrow and he seemed remarkably cheerful about the idea. Of course, he wasn’t planning to break off our affair. He would come to visit me at Devane Hall as he had promised, I had no doubt of that, and he would expect to continue where we had left off at Savile.

What he didn’t know, of course, was that once I left Savile I would never lie with him again.

A knock came at the door and a small voice said, “Did you wish to see me, sir?”

“Yes, come in, Nicky,” Raoul replied.

Nicky looked surprised when he saw me. “Hello, Ma . , .” His voice trailed off. His face was white and pinched-looking and his hair and the shoulders of his coat were wet. I glanced out the window and saw that it had begun to rain.

“Well, I’ll leave you two together, then,” I said quietly.

Both males looked at me and nodded and neither of them replied.

* * * *

I did not go down to dinner that night. I did go upstairs to the nursery to say my usual good night to Nicky, and I found a very subdued scene. Harriet’s girls were gone, of course, and the Melville boys, who hadn’t yet been told what had happened that afternoon, were very unhappy that Nicky would be leaving the following day.

I said as little as I could, just kissed Nicky good night as I always did. The fact that he called me Mama and clung to me for an infinitesimally brief second made me feel considerably better.

Then I went back to my room, finished packing my paltry belongings, and went to stand at the window to look out at the rain.

Raoul came at midnight, when the rain was pouring down, sending the heavy wet scent of the garden wafting through my open window.

“Aren’t you chilled, standing there?” he asked as he came in and shut the door behind him.

“No. I have always liked the smell of summer rain,” I replied.

“You’re all right about going down to Devane tomorrow, aren’t you?” he asked. “You can stay one night on the road and Barrett will be there when you arrive. You shouldn’t have any trouble moving in, Gail.”

A rush of cool air had come in through the window when the door opened and I absently rubbed my hands up and down my arms for warmth. “I must confess that I don’t quite understand the need for such a rush, Raoul.”

“I feel it is important for Nicky to be in possession of the premises.”

“You don’t really believe that Cole is going to take this to law, do you?” I asked. “As you yourself pointed out this afternoon in the library, even without the parish register there is too much evidence against Harriet’s claim.”

Raoul shrugged and turned to lock the door. “Who knows what a man like Cole will do when he is enraged?”

I shivered. “That is true. Perhaps you ought to send one of those Bow Street runners along with us to keep a watch on Nicky, just to be certain that he is safe.”

“As a matter of fact, I am planning to do just that,” Raoul surprised me by replying.

I said sharply, “Then you
don’t
think that Nicky is safe!”

“I do, but it never hurts to make certain.”

I crossed my arms tightly across my chest. I was not happy.

“Gail…” Raoul was approaching me. “Please don’t think that I’m deserting you, sweetheart. I’ll come to Devane myself sometime next week, I promise. I just cannot get away at the present time.”

“Yes, Raoul,” I said tightly. “I understand.”

He put his hands on my waist, bent his head, and nuzzled the place where my neck and shoulder joined. I felt the faint roughness of his beard scratching my tender skin. I linked my arms around his waist and leaned my body all along his, letting my head fall back so he could have access to my throat.

His fingers moved along my ribs. “You’re too thin,” he said again. “We’ll have to get Mr. Macintosh to fatten you up.”

“You make me sound like a Christmas goose,” I murmured.

He chuckled, a deep, baritone sound that sent shivers all through me.

Our lovemaking that night was slow and deeply intense. Every move we made, every word we said, was indelibly engraved upon my heart. The unhurried thrusts of his body rippled through mine, letting me hold on to the feeling of him, the smell of him, the taste of him, giving me time to memorize saying goodbye to the whole heart-shattering experience that was loving Raoul.

It was not the same for him. Raoul was an aristocrat with an aristocrat’s view of sexual matters. He saw nothing wrong with shunting me off to Devane Hall and then maintaining our arrangement under the cover of his visits as executor of George’s will. He would expect to arrive at Devane Hall the following week and find me willing to pick up with him where we had left off.

But I could not—would not—do that to Nicky. There would be enough scandal about the way Nicky had come to inherit Devane Hall as it was. I would not add to the talk by letting the neighborhood know that I was having an affair with the Earl of Savile.

Nor could I explain my feelings to Raoul right now and risk losing my treasured last moments with him. Instead, I ran my fingers over his face, the way a blind person might do to learn it, and agreed to all that he was telling me about how I should go about taking charge at Devane Hall.

I lay there awake long after Raoul had gone back to his room, listening to the rain and fighting off the feeling of desolation that threatened to overwhelm me.

The bitter truth was, all that I wanted out of life was to be Raoul’s wife. I couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than to live with him always, to help him take care of his beloved house, to have his children, to wake up every morning with his tousled golden-haired head on the pillow beside mine.

But I had to accept the fact that this would never happen. My name had been somewhat cleared by the revelation that I had not had an affair with George, but the daughter of a country doctor, a woman who had earned her own living by giving riding lessons to Cits, such a woman was not the kind of person who married a great nobleman like the Earl of Savile. I understood that. It was just that the knowledge of it was breaking my heart.

There was at least one good thing about the trip to Devane. Nicky and I were enclosed together in a chaise for hours on end and we had a chance to settle some things between us that badly needed settling.

“I’m sorry I ran away from you yesterday, Mama,” he started by saying in a polite, brittle little voice after we had left the causeway behind us and started on the road that would eventually take us to Hatfield village and Devane Hall.

We were seated beside each other on the dark blue velvet squabs of the chaise, but the stiffness in Nicky’s shoulders made it clear to me that he preferred me to keep as far to my side of the coach as I could, while he would keep to his.

I said quietly, “You were upset, darling, and you had a perfect right to be upset. I understood that. I still understand that. But you know, what has happened is not as dire as it may appear to be. Deep down inside, you are still the boy you always were. Nothing can change Nicky from being Nicky, you know.”

“His lordship said the same thing to me yesterday,” Nicky said in the same brittle little voice as before.

I was silent, trying to decipher what it was that I heard in that voice.

“Are you still angry with me for not telling you before?” I asked.

“No. I can understand that you could not break your word to your sister, Mama. I’m not angry.”

It was true that he didn’t sound angry. He had been angry yesterday, but not today.

I was frustrated as well as baffled. I wanted to put my arms around him and hold him against me and tell him that I loved him, but I sensed very clearly that he had put up a wall that he did not want me to breach.

We rode for perhaps an hour in intermittent silence, with either one or the other of us pointing out a particularly interesting sight on either side of the road. Finally, out of desperation to talk to him about a personal topic, I asked, “Did his lordship discuss your…er…sisters with you yesterday?”

I was going to have a very difficult time thinking of Harriet’s children as Nicky’s sisters.

Nicky’s skin looked almost translucent in the light from the window. The shuttered blue eyes, which had always been as clear as glass to me, had shadows under them.

“Yes,” Nicky answered. “He explained to me that I had an obligation to Maria, Frances, and Jane. And to the new baby as well. His lordship and I are going to discuss it more fully in the future, but he thinks I should give them the property at Merion. He says we should not turn our backs upon them and leave them dependent upon Mr. Cole.”

I frowned. “Why should you do that when their grandfather is perfectly capable of supporting them?”

Nicky replied carefully, “His lordship said it has something to do with recognizing them and making them respectable. After all, it was not Lady Devane’s fault that my father married her when he should not have.”

I didn’t have any reply, and we drove for perhaps another half an hour in silence.

Finally I could stand it no longer and I turned to my son. “Nicky, what is the matter?” I cried. “You are treating me as if I were some distant aunt whom you see but once a year and whom you do not very much like! I don’t care who gave birth to you, I’m still your mother! I don’t love you one little bit less than I did last week, when you knew nothing of this at all! And I don’t see why you should love me any less either!”

He turned to look at me. “Have you really loved me, Mama, or have I just been your responsibility—the way his lordship says Maria, Frances, and Jane are going to be my responsibility?”

I looked at him in stunned astonishment. His face was white as paper and the skin around his eyes looked bruised. But at last I understood what he was thinking.

I said matter-of-factly, “I am going to kill Raoul. Positively, I am going to kill him.”

Nicky’s eyes widened. “W-what do you mean, Mama?”

“I mean that he has pumped you full of all these noble sentiments about your duty to those who need your protection, and now you think that this is the way I have always regarded you.” I gave him a piercing look. “Am I right?”

His eyes dropped away from mine and he plucked nervously at the knee of his breeches.