Three Weeks With Lady X (17 page)

Chapter Seventeen

I
need a bonnet,” India told her maid, Marie, after Fleming conveyed Rose’s wish that she pay a visit to the dower house. She never went out of doors with a bare head; it was one of the rules she had read in a book about being a lady. In the absence of maternal advice, she had practically memorized the book at an early age.

A short time later, she was walking down a gravel path, cursing herself for having chosen such an elegant—and thus tiny—hat. The warm breeze was already teasing her hair out of its place; she could feel tendrils around her neck. And with her hair, that meant the whole thing would fall apart by the time she reached the dower house.

She was about halfway to her destination when she encountered Thorn and Rose, strolling hand in hand on the path. Thorn held a child’s hoop in his other hand.

“Lady Xenobia,” he said, quite as if he hadn’t been sitting on her bed a mere hour ago. “It’s a pleasure to see you.”

Rose curtsied and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you again, Lady Xenobia.”

India wrenched her eyes away from Thorn’s face—he was the sort of man who commanded all one’s attention—and looked down at the child. Of course, she was still wearing mourning black.

But this time India saw no resemblance to Thorn. Instead, she saw grief lingering in Rose’s eyes. She knelt down and said, “Good morning. How is your friend Antigone this morning?”

“She is not a friend,” the child replied with dignity. “She is my doll, but I pretend that she is my ward.”

“I gather that Antigone has lost her mama and her papa,” India said. “I’m sorry. She looks very elegant in her beautiful pelisse, although perhaps a little sad.”

“She hasn’t had a mama for a long time,” Rose said. “But she is lucky to have me. That makes her lucky, lucky as a lark.”

“My mother and father died as well,” India said, responding less to Rose’s reply than to the emotion in her eyes. “I still miss them. It does get better, though it never really goes away.”

Rose’s lips pressed together in a way that India recognized: she, too, had realized quite young that crying didn’t help.

“I see that Mr. Dautry is carrying a hoop,” India said. “Are you very good at rolling it?”

“No,” Rose replied. “I do not have the control to make it stay up. I told Mr. Dautry this, but he bought it anyway.”

“I am quite adept with a hoop,” India said, straightening up. “Shall we try together? We can leave Antigone with Mr. Dautry. Do you have the dowel? Excellent! Now we must find a nice flat bit of path, because even the faintest bump will send it spinning off into the grass.”

“Antigone and I shall find our way back to the dower house and await you,” Thorn said gravely.

By the time she and Rose bowled their way back to the dower house, India’s hair had tumbled down her back, and her cunning Italian shoes were pinching her toes. But never mind: Rose’s cheeks were pink, and she was talking so much that India hadn’t said more than a word for the last five minutes.

India limped up to the front door and pushed it open, ushering Rose in before her. The entry led directly into a small, cozy sitting room, where they found Thorn reading a newspaper.

Rose ran to him, leaned against his knee, and told him of her last, triumphant bowl, in which the hoop had rolled all the way down the path until a tiny rock had sent it askew. He put the paper aside immediately, wrapped an arm around her, and bent his head to listen. It was such a tender scene that India’s heart caught.

Characteristically, Thorn hadn’t stood up as she entered, the way a gentleman ought. Instead, he looked her over, then drawled, “It looks as if you ran around the house three times backwards, India.”

Rose said in an urgent whisper, “Mr. Dautry, you must rise in the presence of a lady.”

“That is just what I was thinking,” India said, unpinning her little hat.

“Are you sure she’s a lady?” Thorn asked, rising. “She’s all pink in the face, and her hair is a mess. In fact, she looks a fright.” His eyes were alight with teasing laughter. “Dear me, Lady Xenobia. Please don’t tell me you’ll try to seduce Vander with that gown. You look like an old maid put by in lavender.”

“That is a most objectionable comment,” Rose exclaimed, before India could say anything. “What’s more, it’s not enough to stand up; you must also bow.”

“I generally don’t bother,” he said carelessly. “And Lady X knows it. I promise I’ll be gentlemanly around Laetitia, however.”

“Mr. Dautry hopes to marry Miss Laetitia Rainsford,” Rose told India, putting her hoop to the side. “I have been trying to give him the benefit of my advice, because my tutor was quite knowledgeable about matters of deportment and rank.”

“To my dismay, I’ve discovered that my ward could hire herself out as a governess tomorrow,” Thorn said. “Lady Xenobia, your face is as red as a tomato, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“It’s hot outside,” India said, frowning at him as she took a seat. “And before Rose feels the need to correct you again, I’ll point out that it’s quite impolite to compare a lady to a vegetable or, indeed, make her feel inadequate in any way.”

Thorn dropped into a chair. “Why should you feel inadequate merely because you are an attractive shade of red?”

Rose looked from Thorn to India. “I am going to put my hoop away in my room. I shall ask Clara to bring some lemonade, Lady Xenobia.”

“You have charge of a very interesting little person,” India said, after Rose left.

“She’s a dowager duchess in the making.” Thorn stretched out his legs and put his clasped hands behind his head. “Seriously, India, is that what you intend to wear tomorrow?”

“And if I am?”

“I thought we had agreed that you should entice Vander, otherwise known as the future duke?”

India stared at him. Somehow they’d fallen into a relationship that she’d never imagined having with a man, not ever. Perhaps it was like a brother and sister. Except . . . occasionally she glanced at him and he was so handsome that it made her shiver all over. “Do you speak to your siblings this way?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do they find you as maddening as I do?”

He grinned at her, and her annoyance went up two more notches. She, who had learned to keep calm in the face of domestic chaos, was always losing her temper around him. It was infuriating.

“My siblings adore me.”

“Odd,” she said flatly.

“Let’s discuss your gown. It’s more interesting.”

“Why don’t we discuss what you will wear instead?” She looked him over, nice and slow, to make her point. “Lady Rainsford will not appreciate that woodsman look you’ve adopted.”

“I shall throw on some decent clothes tomorrow. At the last minute.” When Thorn was amused, his voice dropped and took on a rough edge that made him sound even less gentlemanly.

“Rose looks much better,” India said, changing the topic to something less provocative. “Less drawn and less frightened.”

“I force her to eat apple tart for breakfast,” Thorn said. “Though what she really likes are Gunter’s ices. Every afternoon.”

India smiled at him.

“What did I do to deserve that?” Thorn asked, looking both quizzical and completely unmoved.

“Anyone would be happy to see how well you care for your ward,” India said. “Your mother would be—” She broke off, realizing she had no idea who Thorn’s mother was or what she would like.

“Never met her,” Thorn said promptly. “She was an opera singer, and presumably not maternal by nature, given that she left me behind with Villiers—clearly not a model father.”

“Oh.”

“What was your mother like?” he asked.

An image of the marchioness flashed through India’s mind, her hair long and free, dancing naked under the moon. What was there to say? “She was quite original.”

“From what I’ve heard, she was mad as a March hare.”

“An unkind assessment,” India said. She raised her chin defiantly.

“I investigated your background after I knew you would be around Rose,” he explained. “Before that, I had decided that anyone calling herself Lady Xenobia was obviously a crook, so I didn’t bother to inquire about your antecedents.”

“You’re not the first to have deduced that from my name,” India conceded.

“What father names his child Xenobia, instead of Margery or Blanche?”

She hesitated.

“I’m guessing that madmen are not as parental as one might wish,” he said, leaping into the silence.

“My mother had a tendency to forget I existed,” India heard herself saying. She’d never told anyone that uncomfortable truth. It wasn’t just that people would feel sorry for her; keeping silent made it feel less real. “But she did love me,” she added. She always told herself that.

“My mother did not feel the same toward me,” Thorn said easily. “According to my father, she thought I was a pretty baby, though. I looked better in those days, or she had a temporary flash of maternal feeling.”

“She left you in a warm, safe place where you would be cared for.”

“There is that.”

He had his arms stretched across the back of the sofa, and he was so good-looking that India’s heart skipped a beat. It was stupid, but there was something wonderful about the way he had made himself into Rose’s father. He would never leave behind a child of his.

“My parents died in London,” she went on. “But I didn’t know they were there or why they had left home. They had neglected to tell me they were leaving.”

His eyes darkened. “Did you think that they had abandoned you altogether?”

“I wasn’t sure.” It was a relief to put it into words. “Sometimes they would leave home, but they generally told me where they were going, and they’d never been gone for three whole days.”

“You never found out what they were doing in London?”

She shook her head. “No one knows. My father was driving the curricle because we didn’t have a coachman, and he went off Blackfriars Bridge. From what they told me, he tried to rescue my mother.”

“Neither of them survived?”

She swallowed, feeling the same old lump of grief going down her throat again. “He wouldn’t have wanted to live without her.” It was stupid, stupid, stupid, to feel that her father should have wanted to live for her. Half the time he didn’t even remember she was alive.

Thorn reached out and grabbed her wrist. Then he pulled her forward, and she toppled onto his lap.

“What are you doing?”

He wound his arms around her, and India stopped thinking about her parents.

“Your father and mother should have told you they were leaving,” he said into her ear. “They should have wanted to make sure you were safe. I can see that they weren’t wonderful parents. But I am absolutely sure that they loved you.”

“How can you know?” India said, her voice cracking.

“I’ve been in the Thames a thousand times,” he said. “The water is murky at the best of times, and it would have been stirred up by the carriage and horses. A person gets turned around trying to swim in the muck, and there’s a wicked current slashing around the curve just past that bridge. Boys would dive down and never come up, and we never knew what had happened to them.”

India’s eyes were prickling, and she turned her cheek against his shoulder. “I—I think they might have been leaving home for good.”

“Why do you think that?”

“We had no money, but my mother did have some jewelry.”

“You implied once that you had been hungry as a child. They allowed you to go without food, although they had jewelry they could have sold?” His voice was incredulous.

“The set was given to my mother by her grandmother,” India explained. “She couldn’t sell it.”

“She could,” Thorn said bluntly. “She should have.”

India’s mouth wobbled. She had thought that sometimes, but it was terribly disloyal. “She planned to give them to me. Except she must have changed her mind, because they took them to London, and obviously they were going to sell them. I realized later that they must have decided to go to the Barbados. They always talked of it.”

His arms tightened around her, and he asked, “Where was Lady Adelaide during your childhood?”

“She was married and living in London. She had no idea what it was like in the country.” India used to dream that a fairy godmother would arrive, bringing beautiful gowns, or perhaps just a clutch of eggs . . . but it never happened. One day rolled into another, and when one was worrying about food and the coming winter, anxiety made the days blur together. There were whole years of her childhood that she couldn’t quite remember.

Anguish tightened in her chest. Thorn must have realized, because he dropped a kiss on her hair just as the first sob struggled out of her mouth.

“I n-never cry,” she gasped five minutes later.

“It’s all right,” he whispered, his deep voice as soothing as the caress of his hand on her back. “There are parents who make terrible decisions, India, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love their children. I do not believe for a moment that your parents scooped up those jewels, planning to leave you behind.”

“Father loved the idea of sailing for Barbados,” India whispered.

“They would not have left without you.”

“Why did they take the jewels? They were kept behind a loose stone in the fireplace. When Adelaide came to take me away, I went to retrieve them. And—and they were gone.”

“Perhaps they were stolen,” Thorn suggested.

“No, Father had taken their leather bag as well. It wouldn’t fit behind the brick, so it was always left in a drawer in the side table. No thief would have known that.” She drew in a ragged breath. “For some reason, they took the jewels and left before daybreak without saying goodbye. But I’m—I’m used to it now.”

Thorn didn’t believe she was. He had never known his mother, and even so, the fact that she’d abandoned him had left a sting. India’s parents sounded even more irresponsible. “They loved you, and they wouldn’t have left the country without you,” he repeated.

“How can you possibly say that with such certainty?” She was starting to sound a little cross, which he took to mean that she was coming back to herself.

He’d bet his fortune that her parents fell in love with her the moment they saw her. But love alone didn’t make people good parents. He had a shrewd sense that Vander’s mother had loved him, but you couldn’t convince Vander of it.