Three Weeks With Lady X (28 page)

Chapter Thirty

F
ive adults and one child kept silent until Lady Rainsford rushed through the front door past Fleming, who had ensured that no other servants had witnessed the scene.

Rose spoke before anyone else. “I am
not
your child!” she cried, looking up at India. “I don’t like that woman.” Her little face crumpled, but she managed to halt the tears. “I don’t like the way people keep speaking as if my father didn’t exist. My father was Will Summers, and just because he is dead doesn’t mean that he didn’t exist!”

Then she twisted out of India’s hold, taking a step toward Thorn. “You shouldn’t give me away like that,” she cried, her voice rising. “I don’t want to be their daughter. I don’t even know them!”

For his part Thorn was in the grip of a rage that was only barely in check. What was India doing, declaring that Rose was her daughter? And Vander? Why in the hell had Vander made the claim that he was married to India?

India was
his
. Not Vander’s.

She would never be Vander’s.

But he looked down at Rose and realized all that would have to wait, because Rose was his as well. She was the bravest little girl he’d ever known, but her lips were quivering and her eyes were terrified. Almost certainly Lady Rainsford had called her names before he arrived, ones that she didn’t understand. She had been surrounded by shouting adults—and she thought her guardian had given her away.

He scooped her up into his arms and turned away from the adults silently watching them. “I did not give you away, Rose, and I never will. It was all a misunderstanding.” He began walking toward the dower house. “Let’s go home and we’ll ask Clara for some hot cocoa. Where is Clara, by the way?”

“That lady came and told Clara to stay,” Rose said, a sob breaking from her chest. “She brought me back to the house. But Lady Xenobia came outside just as she arrived, and they had an argument.”

“Did my parents and Vander come at the same time as Lady Xenobia?”

“No, they came just before you. Lady Rainsford is most unpleasant.” Her legs clung to his side, but her rigid backbone told its own story.

“She is not a likable woman,” Thorn observed, in one of the world’s great understatements. He pushed open the door of the dower house. “What you need to know, poppet, is that you are and always will be your papa’s daughter. Did you know that I saved Will’s life once?”

She stirred in his arms, but he didn’t release her. He just strode over to the sofa and sat down, keeping her on his lap. “We were around eight years old. It was winter, and there were ice floes in the Thames.”

“Did you have to go into the icy water?” She sounded slightly less distressed. “Papa told me that he used to fish spoons out of the river.”

He nodded, tightening his arms around her. “If we didn’t jump in ourselves, our master would throw us off the dock.”

“That is a despicable thing to do,” Rose said. Her hand curled around his forearm.

“He was the same sort of person as Lady Rainsford,” Thorn said. “Not someone you would wish to know. The amount of food Grindel gave us depended on what we brought him. Some of the boys were too small and too frail to go into the water when it was icy, so the big boys had to earn food for all of us.”

“Eight years old is not very big,” Rose observed.

“Your papa was the type of boy who never gave up. He dove and dove that afternoon,” he told her. “He was certain that he had felt something at the bottom of the Thames, something big down in the muck. Something that might make Grindel happy enough that he would let us sleep indoors.”

There were no words adequate to describe Grindel. Not for the first time, Thorn wished the man were still alive so he could kill him in memory of the boys who hadn’t survived.

“I wish Papa hadn’t been stubborn,” Rose said. “Did he find that big thing?”

“The last time he went down, he didn’t come back up. I stood on the dock and watched the spot where he dove, and I didn’t see any bubbles. I didn’t know what to do. The Thames is dark and murky at the best of times, and in the winter, it’s like Hades down there.”

“What’s Hades?”

“A terrible place. A place where a boy might find himself cut to the bone by a piece of metal sunk at the bottom, or he might come face to face with—” He caught himself. “—with a fish.”

“A fish wouldn’t scare me!”

“We were city boys, and we knew very little about fish. For all we knew, they would nibble our toes.”

“Did you jump in after Papa?”

Thorn nodded. “I did. It was so cold that I felt as if the ice were eating my bones. I kept going because Will was down there somewhere. Finally I saw just a flash of his yellow hair, the same hair that you have.”

“What was he doing?”

“He was stuck,” Thorn said. “His foot was caught in a net dropped by a fisherman. I almost didn’t get him out in time, but we managed. And we made it back to the dock.”

The truth was that the Thames had damn well nearly taken both of them that day. He still had no idea how he got Will back to the dock.

“Did you have to sleep in the graveyard that night?” Rose asked. She had forgotten to keep her back stiff, and her cheek nestled against his chest as if she had always been his child.

“We did not. After your father warmed up, he unclenched his fist. And he was holding the top of a silver teapot.”

“You mean that little round piece?”

“Exactly.”

“Was that enough so that all of you could have supper?”

“It was. Grindel let us all sleep inside for the next week, because it kept snowing.”

“It must have been a very costly teapot,” Rose said.

“It had a crest on it, which meant its owners would be grateful to have it back. But the more important point is that Will and I shook hands the next morning, and Will said that he owed me. And that someday he would pay me back by giving me the most valuable thing he owned.”

“What did he give you?” Rose tilted her head back and looked up at him.

“You.” Thorn smiled down at her. “He gave me you.
You
were the most valuable thing that Will Summers ever owned in his entire life. He couldn’t stay with you, Rose. But he remembered his promise, and he mentioned it in the letter he sent to me.”

“Oh.” Her voice sounded terribly sad.

He put his cheek down on her soft hair, remembering Will and his stubborn, brave nature, seeing how beautifully it had come out in his daughter. “Now you are mine,” he told her, “by gift from your father. You mustn’t ever think that I would give you away, Rose. I am proud that you are mine.”

“But you put me in the dower house.” Her voice quavered. “And that lady said that I was hidden away, and she made it sound awful.”

Thorn had to unclench his back teeth before he shocked Rose with his opinion of Lady Rainsford. “I should never have agreed to it,” he said. “I will never do anything like that again.”

“But if you keep me as your ward, you can’t marry Miss Rainsford,” Rose said anxiously. “Her mother thinks that I am Lady Xenobia’s daughter.”

“I shall not marry Laetitia. I had already made up my mind about that.”

Rose nodded and began pleating his cravat with her small, nimble fingers. “Miss Rainsford wouldn’t have been able to read me bedtime stories.”

“Laetitia is quite intelligent,” Thorn said, stroking Rose’s hair. “I think she can’t see letters well enough. She probably needs spectacles.”

“Does that mean that Lady Xenobia isn’t really married to Lord Brody either?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Lady Xenobia can read.” The words hung in the air for a moment.

“That is true.” Thorn thought about India’s flamelike intelligence, the brilliant way she assessed problems before moving decisively to solve them.

Although he wished she hadn’t stepped forward and claimed to be Rose’s mother. She had made matters infinitely more difficult, though her claim was nothing compared to Vander’s. After all, once India and Thorn married, Rose truly would be her daughter. But she would
never
be Vander’s wife.

Rose dropped his cravat, hopped from his lap, and ran over to where her doll lay. “Will you tell Antigone and me stories about my papa over supper? Please?”

Thorn wanted to go to India immediately. He had to inform her that they were getting married, and to hell with what Lady Rainsford would think—though he was fairly certain the woman would never breathe a word about the afternoon. His father would ruin the Rainsford family without a second’s thought, and obviously she had understood that.

But Rose was at his side, Antigone clutched in her arms, her tears hardly dry. India would still be there after Rose went to sleep.

“Please?”

“Yes,” he said, standing up and taking her hand. “Shall we find Clara now?”

“You won’t leave while she is getting me ready for bed?”

That was just what Thorn had thought to do. He was desperate to find India and make love to her, this time as his affianced wife.

But Rose, who had been brave in so many circumstances, still looked haunted, and (for once) younger than her age. Her huge gray eyes were anxious. “I will be in the nursery waiting for you,” he promised. She smiled, and her dimple appeared.

Once Rose had been bathed and tucked in bed, Thorn set about plucking stories from thin air, stories about brave, intrepid mudlarks. Will starred as the bravest and best diver, the champion retriever of silver spoons and gold coins. Thorn said nothing of teeth, tin buttons, or rat skeletons.

Rose loved every detail. The pinched look in her face went away, and he could see that she was shaping a mythology around her father. That struck him as a good idea. When he had learned, at age twelve, that his mother was dead, he had been angry at her; it had felt like a second abandonment. Perhaps Rose would also feel anger at some point, but less so if she thought of Will as a hero.

Of course, Will’s death was entirely unlike that of Thorn’s mother. It was more like the death of India’s parents: tragically bad luck. He didn’t know why India’s parents were in London the day they died, but he’d bet anything that their trip had nothing to do with flight to the Bermudas. They might not have been attentive parents, but he couldn’t imagine them deserting her.

Hell, he couldn’t imagine anyone leaving her.

Including himself.

Now he had to make her understand that fact—and Vander as well. Thinking of Vander made his blood race. His jaw clenched, and a fresh wave of raw, uncontrolled possessiveness surged through him.

Losing control was unacceptable. But for the first time in years, he wasn’t sure he could keep his emotions in check.

It was twilight by the time Thorn strode into the house. He was tired and angry, worried about Rose and frustrated by the mess Vander had made of things. He nodded at Fleming and headed upstairs to find India, so focused that at first he didn’t even register a bedchamber door opening.

But the moment Vander stepped into the corridor, the tension that had coiled in Thorn’s gut for the last hours detonated. He literally saw red, lunging forward and slamming Vander against the wall. “What in the bloody hell did you think you were doing out there?”

“Do you mean when I saved the damsel in distress?” Vander retorted in a low, furious voice, jerking from his grasp. “I mean to marry India. It was simply a preemptive gesture.”

“I’ll be damned if you will!” Thorn exploded into motion and they came to blows with the force of a cannon firing, reeling back into Vander’s bedchamber.

They crashed to the floor, knocking over a small table, then rolled across the floor with undisciplined fury, the only sounds harsh breathing, occasional thuds as a blow landed, the slamming of the door when Vander’s foot caught it, a crash as another delicate table was upended. This one held a crystal decanter. It didn’t shatter, but its stopper came off, and pungent brandy poured out and soaked into the carpet.

“Why did you say you were married to India?” Thorn snarled, pinning Vander momentarily. Vander twisted from his grip, his shirt ripping away from its sleeve. Thorn slammed back into him, crushing him to the floorboards with his arm across his throat. “Damn you, answer me.”

“Because I
am
marrying her,” Vander shouted. With a violent lunge to the side, he freed himself again. “The whole household is buzzing with the fact that you have obtained a blank license in order to marry Lala; I’ll take that off your hands. I’m marrying India in the morning.”

Thorn’s answer was more a howl than a reply. Two minutes later, he had Vander pinned again. He hadn’t bested Vander at fisticuffs in years, but by God, he was winning this time. “India is
mine,
” he roared, knowing he was on the verge of losing his final shred of control, every lethal instinct honed in childhood loosed by fury.

“I safeguarded her reputation after you allowed it to be savaged by that harpy,” Vander bellowed back. “You can save Lala from a fate worse than death—living with her despicable mother—but I shall marry India. Because
I
was the one who stepped forward to protect her, you unmitigated bastard!”

Vander’s words struck with twice the force of his fists. Thorn’s hands loosened and Vander wrenched himself away, rolling to sit up, back to the wall.

Thorn’s right eye was swelling shut, and remnants of his shirt hung from his neck. He pulled his collar free and cast it aside. “You shall not marry her,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I don’t care what you announced: I am the only man who will ever marry India.”

“You slept with her,” Vander said flatly. “You cock-proud arse, you slept with the most desirable woman in England—don’t tell me you didn’t, because a blind man could see the way you look at her—and you didn’t ask for her hand? And when her reputation was trodden into the mud by the devil herself, you said nothing. Are you out of your bloody mind?” His voice had risen to a shout again.

“That’s none of your business,” Thorn replied. Every inch of his body trembled with ferocity.

“Bullshit!” Vander leaned his head back against the wall, chest still heaving. “I’d marry her with or without Lady Rainsford’s provocation, you jackass. I made up my mind to propose after no more than one look at her and a single conversation, let alone a kiss. And you slept with her as if she were a mere doxy, and then let her reputation be smeared into the ground.”