Chapter Twenty-One
You’re avoiding me.”
Kit looked up from the chickens she’d claimed needed to be checked on. As if chickens needed supervision in the middle of the day when they’d already been fed and the eggs had already been collected.
Thinking of eggs made her smile. While Graham was right in that she had been avoiding him since she’d seen him in the chapel, she’d always known where he was.
From the dining room window she’d watched as he tried to help the children collect the eggs. He’d sent chickens scattering across the small, fenced-off poultry yard until the children had shown him the hinged nesting box Benedict had designed.
The birds had all settled since then, happily pecking and scratching at the ground within their fenced area, in no need of anything from Kit. Yet she stayed. It had been an excuse to come outside when he’d ventured back into the house.
And he knew it.
That didn’t mean she had to actually admit it, though. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Really?”
She glanced up to find his eyes opened comically wide while his mouth dropped open in exaggerated shock. The urge to smile hit her, and she forced her gaze back to the strutting chickens.
“I’d have thought,” he continued, “with all that reading that you reportedly do, avoid would have been a word you would’ve come across already.”
Laughter threatened, and she bit her lip to keep it in, trying to push herself closer to annoyance. “I know what the word means. It simply doesn’t apply in this case.”
“Ah.” He strolled closer until he was shoulder to shoulder with her, looking down at the chickens scratching happily in the dirt. “They look to be in fine shape.”
She couldn’t suppress the smile this time. “And what do you know of chickens?”
He rubbed the back of his hand. “That their aim is impeccable.” He dropped his hand and gave her a boyish grin. “And that their eggs make for a marvelous addition to breakfast.” He turned toward her. “Why don’t we go for a walk?”
“Why?” Surprise had her swinging sideways until she was facing him, looking up at him, too close to him. As close as she’d been last night, only this time she couldn’t blame moonlight and lack of sleep. Well, she could probably still blame lack of sleep. Even after she’d found her bed, she hadn’t slept much.
“Because”—his voice held a slight roughness that raked over her skin, leaving tiny bumps in its wake—“in my world that’s what a man does when he wants to know a woman better. They sip tea in the parlor, dance in the ballroom, and take a walk through the park. As I’ve already dined at your table and waltzed through your garden, a walk is the last weapon left in my arsenal.”
Kit curled her lips between her teeth to keep from laughing. Why was she always wanting to laugh around this man? What was it that seemed to make her giddy, like a woman at least a decade younger than she was? “An arsenal, is it? Am I under attack?”
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation.
Then he offered her his arm in a move she hadn’t seen directed toward her in many years. There’d been a time when she expected to go nearly everywhere with her hand tucked delicately in the crook of a gentleman’s elbow. That had been long ago, and since then she’d had to depend only on herself for balance and security.
It was tempting to link her arm with his, but the man would be leaving. Tomorrow. Maybe even today. It was possible he could have left yesterday, but he hadn’t gone back to check the bridge since that first day. Neither had she.
It was ridiculous. They were only delaying the inevitable.
By this time tomorrow, he would be out of her life. Perhaps there was some safety in that. Perhaps she could indulge herself just a little, walk with this man, talk and get to know each other as adults. She was already going to miss him when he returned to London. What was one more memory?
She would walk. But she wouldn’t take his arm. It was a compromise with herself that allowed her to do something she knew to be foolish.
She linked her hands together at the small of her back and stepped past his arm and toward the wild, overgrown part of the estate’s parkland. “There are some interesting views along the lake on the side opposite the glen. The former owner built a grotto on one side. It’s quite remarkable.”
He fell into step next to her. “A grotto?”
Kit nodded. “It’s a strange little rock cave tucked into the side of the woods, but I’m intrigued by it. Every time I go I wonder about the person who would commission such a thing.”
“Does the current owner like it?”
Kit pursed her lips together in thought. “I don’t think he’s ever seen it. Rumor is, he won the estate in a card game and then forgot about it completely.”
“Ah.”
The drawn-out sound of understanding made Kit look up at him. “What do you mean, ah?”
“He doesn’t know about the children.”
Kit looked away from his knowing eyes. No, the owner didn’t know about the children, didn’t even know the women were the ones taking care of the house. Nash was the official caretaker on paper.
“How is it,” Graham said slowly, “that three women come to raise a passel of children out in the middle of the countryside?”
“Good fortune?” she mumbled. They’d been building to this question with every conversation they’d had over the past few days. Now that he was leaving, he must have decided to push the subject since he wasn’t going to get another chance. He knew bits and pieces, knew she didn’t come from the type of life she was now living.
Tucked away as they were in the country, neither she nor Daphne had ever bothered to change their mannerisms or ways of talking to match that of the surrounding countryside. It had turned out to have a rather nice benefit in that all of the children sounded a bit more refined than the other village children. That would serve them well when they set out to work for a living.
He could come to those conclusions on his own, probably already had. It was something more that he wanted to know, the deeper questions that didn’t quite make sense.
Silence fell as they walked. Kit watched her toes appear and disappear from beneath her skirts. Could she redirect the conversation like she had before? Now that he’d had the courage to bring it up, would he be willing to let the topic drop? Probably not. But that didn’t mean she had to answer.
But then he redirected the conversation himself. “Where did you grow up? I know you’re from London, at least partially, but what part?”
Was that what he wanted to know? How far from grace she’d fallen? How much would she have to tell him before he filled in the holes in her story? He’d have been at school when everything happened, when the gossip had flown around Town like the Tower of London ravens, proclaiming a death sentence on her social aspirations. But that didn’t mean the stories hadn’t lingered.
“My father lived in Paddington. What about you? Where did you grow up?”
“Mostly Grandridge Hall in Staffordshire. Then Harrow and Cambridge before doing a bit of traveling.”
Based on his plethora of stories the other day in the library, a bit of traveling was not an apt description, but she forgave him the understatement.
They left behind the maintained areas of the grounds and entered the barely discernible path through the woods. Flowers and vines that had been left to their own devices bloomed around them, creating a glorious arch in a riot of color. Their sweet scent filled Kit’s lungs, bringing her a measure of peace.
As much as she missed the life of the city, she also loved the peace of nature. It had been too long since she’d walked these woods just for pleasure. It had even been a long time since she’d visited her favorite tree. She’d forgotten how getting away from the house restored a measure of precious sanity.
This was a bad idea. She could already feel her guard lowering as her heart seemed to slow to a sluggish, peaceful beat. Her blood lazed through her veins until all she wanted was to find a patch of grass and rest like she’d done at the picnic. Had it really only been yesterday?
Graham kept talking about other things, like his favorite places in London. Had the Egyptian Hall been there when she’d lived in London? Had she ever eaten ices at Gunter’s? Did she know that eating the head off a rose in the garden did not taste the same as eating a rose-flavored ice?
The picture of a small boy eating a rose after trying an ice made her laugh. She couldn’t resist asking about it. “How old were you?”
He grinned. “Nineteen.”
She laughed and couldn’t find the way to shut her mouth once more. She gave in to the urge to talk and remember, unable to deny herself these last few moments before her life went back to the way it had been. Had it been a mere three days ago that her routine was solid and predictable? And now here she was going for a stroll when she should be buried in other tasks back at the house.
The trail broke out of the trees into a clearing beside the lake, revealing the rough sides of the grotto. With a laugh, Graham jogged the last few paces to run his hand along the bumps and dips of the side. “This is amazing.”
They explored the grotto, but it was too dark to see much. On a cloudless day in the midafternoon, the light would stream through the openings in the grotto, making it easy to see around. But all too soon they were back in the foliage, making their way toward the house. Kit found herself slowing her pace further, not wanting to return to the practicalities and the endless stress, the worry and constant need for vigilance.
“How did you end up here, Kit?” Graham asked softly.
Kit swallowed, knowing he wasn’t going to give up the question this time, and it would either be answer or send him away with a fight. “Lord Wharton—”
“I thought we agreed you would call me Graham.” He slid a hand across the back of his neck. “I’m sleeping on the floor of your kitchen, after all.”
“Graham,” Kit said with a small smile. She took a deep breath and decided not to insult his intelligence by skipping out on his question. She trusted Graham. She had no worries about what would happen when he finally left Haven Manor and returned to the real world. He would keep their secrets, keep them safe.
She took a deep breath and blew it out before answering. “Life doesn’t always take the paths you think it will.”
He sent her an inquisitive look but said nothing as they strolled forward.
“I thought my life would be fairly simple. Take my bows in society, find a suitable husband, have children, and raise them to take the same path I did.”
“And what happened?”
Kit swallowed. This was the hardest part. The part she relived in nightmares, the reason she worked herself to exhaustion in the hopes that she’d be too tired to see the one time in her life that Daphne’s face hadn’t worn a sweet smile. “The man I chose wasn’t suitable.”
Graham’s heart threatened to explode, but he forced himself to breathe easily and keep moving. There were so many implications to her statement, but he didn’t want to draw the wrong conclusions. “Did you marry him?”
“No.” She shook her head, and a few tendrils of hair escaped from the tight chignon at the base of her neck. One hand lifted to tuck the strands behind her ear, and her blue gaze drifted up to meet his for only a moment. “He wasn’t actually interested in getting married.”
“What was he interested in?” Graham considered all the men he knew, the nefarious and the less-than-honorable. What drove them? Power. Revenge. A ridiculous need to prove to themselves that they were better than someone else. What had been the reasoning of the man who’d sent Kit into exile?
“I don’t know. Not really.” She sighed. “Status? Notoriety? He wasn’t in line to inherit anything of note and that made him unimportant to a lot of people.”
The way she was dragging this story out was killing him, leaving him to guess and suppose and come to conclusions that left him horrified and wanting to run back to London and punch someone. He suddenly hated that he’d waited until the last possible moment to push for this answer. He was ripping down her walls and then he’d be leaving. He had to. He’d left Oliver in Marlborough with nothing but a note that he was going for a ride in the countryside. And there was still Priscilla to consider. He couldn’t simply ignore that problem.
But he also couldn’t leave without knowing what had happened. “Kit.” He stopped and turned her to face him, leaving his hands clasped on her shoulders and lowering his face until he looked her in the eye. “What happened?”
“Daphne was ruined,” she whispered.
Graham almost let her go, because bringing Daphne into the story had surprised him more than anything. It was hard to imagine Daphne getting into that sort of circumstance, but what did her apparent indiscretion have to do with Kit’s choice of potential husband?
Kit swallowed, her throat jerking with the motion. “He thought she was me.”
The story spilled out of her in half-formed sentences and words that ran together until they were as difficult to decipher as little Geoffrey’s. He had a feeling she’d never told this story before, and as difficult as it was to decipher, he was fairly certain he got the idea.
“He seduced her?” Graham asked as his brain tried to fill in the pieces Kit was leaving out. Dear God, please let her have been seduced. The alternative made his stomach clench.
“Yes. She’d never gotten much attention before, didn’t really know what was happening until it was all over. But everyone thought she was me. Everyone.”
“The man?”
She nodded. “And the people who saw them kissing through the window and then sneaking out of the ball together. He’d planned it all. Intended to ruin me. I don’t know if he hated my father or simply hated the fact that the daughter of a baron was getting so much attention. The girl he married soon after despised me, so maybe he did it out of some twisted form of caring for her. His motive doesn’t really matter. The fact is that he planned to ruin my life. And he succeeded.”
He noted her little slip in letting him know that she was the daughter of a baron. The confrontation in the parlor at the ball made more sense now, but he didn’t care who her father was at the moment. What mattered was that she finish the story so the horrid knot in his throat could loosen, so he could try to find a way to right what had obviously been a horrible wrong.
“Gossip doesn’t last forever.” Graham slid one hand from her shoulder and cupped her cheek, catching a lone tear on his thumb as it slid down her face. She looked pale, fragile. As if acknowledging the past was going to be the one thing that could finally break her indomitable spirit.
“No.” The word rasped out of her throat. “But children do.”
Graham swallowed. Benedict. It should have been obvious, of course. Benedict was the first, he was the one who had started it all. Of course he would belong to one of the women.
Kit’s shoulder shuddered beneath Graham’s palm, and the tears came faster, along with shaky hitches in her breathing. “Daphne had nothing. Nowhere to go, no one to help her, and all of it was my fault.” She fell into near sobs. “She didn’t want to go that night and I made her. I sent her in my place because I didn’t want anyone to gain something I wanted for myself. I destroyed her.”
Graham’s chest hurt. Physically hurt as he listened to her pour out years’ worth of feelings. He was afraid to move, afraid to even breathe in case he stopped her. Somehow he knew that once she rebuilt that wall, he’d never find his way over it again. And she would rebuild it. Because he wouldn’t be here to stop her.
“I remember the day she came to me. Daphne is always joyful, always smiles. But that day she was crying. She was scared. She didn’t know what to do. Her father was livid. They didn’t have the money to convince a man to marry her in her condition, and no one would believe it if she went to the child’s father, so she came to me. I knew she was my responsibility then. It was my fault she was in this situation, my fault that her life was ruined.”
Graham couldn’t be silent anymore. “No, Kit, no.”
“Yes. She was there because of me. He targeted her because of me. When Daphne came to me, my father was already acting as if I didn’t exist, afraid of what it would do to his fledgling connections, so I convinced him to give me my dowry and I would disappear. Then Daphne and I ran.”
“And you ended up here.” Graham didn’t know the rest of the story, how Jess and Mr. Banfield fit into the whole thing, but he was willing to bet that every last child in that house had come from a mother in as desperate a situation as Daphne. A mother with nowhere to go, nowhere to turn, riddled with the judgment and gossip that only the most powerful in England could dole out.
How many times had he heard the whispered stories and inwardly chided the women for allowing themselves to get in such a situation? How often had he shaken his head, shrugged his shoulders, and said they had to live with the consequences of their actions? Suddenly, when it was personal, when he really knew the people involved, it didn’t seem so simple.
“Lord Whar—” She cleared her throat. “Graham. I hope I don’t need to tell you how important it is to keep this quiet. Secret. These children . . . their very existence could ruin their mothers.”
Their mothers. Not the fathers. The so-called gentlemen who had played a part in the creation of tiny human beings would suffer little to no consequences.
The women were another matter and she was right to be worried about them. It wasn’t unheard of for an aristocrat’s illegitimate child to take a certain place in society. People like Graham’s friend Aaron. But Graham had never considered the mothers. Now that he did, shame on behalf of his peers and himself washed over him.
She took a shaky breath and swiped at her damp cheeks. “It’s not just the children. Nash has put himself in danger as well. And his family. His wife . . . she was the first woman we were going to help, but she married Nash instead. When he was put in charge of finding a caretaker for the house, he made sure the owner had little to no interest in it. It wasn’t in good enough condition to sell, and the owner didn’t want to put the work in. He just needed someone to make sure it didn’t get any worse.”
It bothered him that another man’s name rolled off her tongue so easily when she’d stumbled over his, but Graham pushed past it and focused on what she was telling him. The image she created brought a small smile to the edge of his lips. “And he thought three women and some children were up to the task?”
“We were only two women and one child at the time, but yes. If word got out, though . . .”
She trailed off but didn’t need to finish the sentence. Mr. Banfield’s professional reputation would be in tatters if it became known that he was allowing so many people to live in a house entrusted to his care.
He focused on the woman before him, her strength, her character. She’d been beautiful to him before, but now he was enraptured. He saw her story differently than she did, and suddenly all he wanted was to make her see it that way, too.
“You are,” he said slowly, “the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”
Her eyes lifted to his, water still pooled along the lashes. “Didn’t you hear anything I just said?”
He nodded. “Yes. I heard the story of a woman who wouldn’t leave her friend’s side, who sacrificed her future to throw their lots together. A woman like Ruth.”
More tears spilled down her cheeks, and he gently caught them with his thumbs. “I heard the story of a woman who looked at life and decided that others deserved a second chance and didn’t have to meet the same fate. I don’t know the particulars of what you’re doing here, but I can guess, and what I see can’t have been easy. Never mind the fact that you’re running an estate that would normally require a staff of at least thirty people.”
She sniffled. “We’ve let a few things slide.”
He grinned at her. He couldn’t help it. “I am in awe of you, Kit.”
There was so much more he wanted to say, so much more he wanted her to realize, but the words failed him. He looked down into her blue eyes and none of his thoughts could solidify into words.
So he told her how special she was in the only other way he knew how.
He dropped his lips lightly to hers. As the softness of her lips touched his, clarity flew through his mind. This kiss was an assurance that she was still a beautiful, desirable woman, that time and circumstances had not stolen that away from her. It was a promise that he saw her as more, that he wouldn’t forget her when he rode Dogberry back into town.
Perhaps it was even a suggestion of what was to come, a promise that he would return. Because he wanted to. Here, in her, he’d found everything he hadn’t even known he’d been searching for. God had put her in that ballroom to start him on this journey, and he didn’t think he could go back to seeing life the way he used to.
Very aware of the story she’d just shared, he kept the kiss light, a mere press of lips to lips, even as his heart rioted for more. His arms ached to circle her and pull her close, but he made his hands stay on her shoulders even if he couldn’t stop his fingers from tightening.
Her sigh drifted across his lips, and he drank it in, tasting the tears she’d cried.
As their lips pulled apart, he rested his forehead against hers. His breathing was rough and harsh, as if he’d been running across the countryside. They touched nowhere except his hands on her shoulders and his head against hers, but he felt her in every pore of his body. She was a part of him now. He didn’t know what the future held, but knowing her was going to change everything he did for the rest of his life.
“Why did you do that?” she whispered.
He swallowed. “Because you needed to know how special you are and I couldn’t find the words. I still can’t. But you had to know, I had to show you, how utterly captivating you are.”
His eyelids fluttered open to find her staring at him, her face so close he could see the way her eyelashes clung together in wet spikes, the redness that rimmed the whites of her eyes, and irises such a beautiful expanse of blue that he’d never be able to see a cloudless sky again and not think of this moment.
“Thank you.”
He’d been bracing himself for her to argue, restate again all the reasons she was at fault for what had happened to Daphne. Her simple gratitude left him at a loss.
She went up on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his once more in a fleeting kiss that rocked him to his core. “You’re special, too. I’ve never met a man like you, Graham.”
Then she stepped back, forcing him to slide his hands from her shoulders. He searched her face, trying to decide if the small smile that curved her lips was one of resigned sadness or the beginning of healing, but before he could determine which it was, she turned and walked up the path with the quick, confident strides he’d become accustomed to seeing as she walked around the estate.
Just like the night before, she left him devastated, unsure of what to do next. And just like the night before, it was a long time before he followed her.
When he did, she was nowhere to be found. And as Graham looked around at the faces he encountered upon his return to the house, he knew that it was time.
It was time to go, at least for now, because suddenly he didn’t know who he was anymore. And if he was going to make a difference here, if he was going to come back—no, when he came back—he needed to do so with assurance that he was doing what was right.
He put his flimsy excuses aside and saddled Dogberry slowly, hoping she’d come out as everyone else had to say good-bye. But she didn’t. And soon he was riding out, but he couldn’t stop himself from looking back.