Bridget had been but five the first time she’d seen her father strike a servant. A maid had sloshed tea over the cup as she’d set it down before him and she’d been rewarded with a sharp slap for her misstep.
From that point on, she’d noticed details she’d been previously too small to note: the fearful glances servants cast whenever her parents and siblings were about, the occasional bruise or awkward gait as young maids went about their work. And she had realized from that moment the abuse her family’s staff suffered inside the Hamilton household.
Having herself been spurned by her own family and witness to their cruelty, she’d taken the whole of the peerage guilty of those same affronts.
Until she’d met Lord Chilton.
Dinner now served in Lord Chilton’s household, Bridget, as housekeeper, found herself at the leisure only afforded to the senior members of a household staff, until her meeting with Mr. Lodge. Tonight, he’d show her about the stores and discuss the ordering of necessary household items. Until then, with a large round key ring containing keys for every door, she continued familiarizing herself with the baron’s household.
It was a privilege afforded only the most elevated servants and would invariably aid in her search for the first edition Chaucer, and both those truths made her hate herself all the more.
Bridget paused beside a doorway and admitted herself to another room—a portrait room. She made to exit the darkened space, lined with heavy gold frames, and yet froze. Beckoned forward, she hesitantly entered and drifted over to the nearest portrait.
She cocked her head, easily recognizing the smiling butler, Mr. Lodge. With a boyish glimmer in his eyes and a loose black curl tumbled over his brow, there was an air of innocence to him. Perplexed, she moved on to the next. A young woman, no more than fifteen or sixteen years with golden blonde curls and a dimpled cheek stared back. By the fine robin’s egg blue of her gown and the diamond, heart-shaped combs tucked artfully in her hair, she was a lady of noble origins. Earlier reservations forgotten, intrigue pulled Bridget from portrait to portrait. Some figures forever memorialized within those frames were children, many years away from adulthood. All finely dressed. She lingered before the portrait of Mr. Winterly.
“The man-of-affairs, too,” she mouthed.
The garments and hairstyles of every last person captured there all spoke to recent portraits done. And yet…only a nobleman’s family was memorialized within those frames. Or that had been the way, as she herself had known it, in the Hamilton household.
A gold frame from the corner of her eye snagged her notice. Drawn to the child there, Bridget stopped before it. Craning her head back, she examined the small boy. He could not be more than nine or ten years of age and he was not unlike so many of the other figures whose likenesses had been preserved within this room. And yet—she angled her head left and right, squinting in the dark to better study him—there was something different about him…this wisp of a child. Tiny of frame, and with high-set ears and slightly slanted eyes, he was set visually apart from the other subjects whose paintings hung about the room. His smile, even with his significantly crooked teeth, however, bespoke of a similar kindness and warmth to the other strangers she had previously examined.
A vise squeezed at her heart as she thought of a different child she’d been forced to leave in coming here. It was just a day she’d been a way from Virgil, but since he’d been abandoned to her care, there’d not been a single day they’d spent apart. Was he sad? Was he happy? She preferred to think of him grinning like the nameless boy in the portrait, filled with excitement for the adventure he’d embarked on.
She forced her gaze away from the joyous child and her eyes slammed into the adjacent portrait. Her breath caught.
Lord Chilton.
Never breaking contact with the powerful man frozen on that frame, she wandered several steps closer until she stood directly beneath his likeness. A few inches past six feet, the dark-haired gentleman with his aquiline nose and high brow had the air of greatness. With Society’s standard views of perfection, his chiseled cheeks and rugged jaw were too sharp to ever be considered classically beautiful as those sculptures done by Donatello but it lent him an air of realness. One that was matched by the glitter in his eyes. Going up on tiptoe, she closely scrutinized their emerald depths. For there were warring sentiments in his eyes: a warmth that had the power to reach all the way through the canvas to a viewer and a fierce glint, so very contradictory to the ghost of a smile on his lips.
Who was this man? Ruthless business owner, as her brother had purported him to be? One who’d cut down the man or woman who entered his home to deceive him? Or kind-eyed gentleman who kept an eclectic mix of images inside his portrait room?
Hands on hips, Bridget did a slow sweep of the room, trying to make sense of it all—and she gasped. Her gaze collided with the dark-clad figure lounging against the doorjamb. His lips were moving and even as his words pulled in and out of focus, she struggled through her shock at finding him here, to make sense of his body language. “…wondering about…”
She shook her head frantically and took several lurching steps closer to Lord Chilton and then stopped. Smoothing her palms over her skirts, she waited as he approached.
He stopped before her and, folding his arms at his broad chest, stared expectantly back.
Over the years, she’d come to accept that some women were born beautiful like her sister, Marianne. Some men were born athletic, as Archibald. And then others, such as her, were born wholly imperfect with scarred visages and flawed hearing. Never more had she regretted the loss of that sound than she did in this instant.
“Or mayhap I was wrong, then?” he drawled. His lips turned up in a lazy grin; it dimpled his right cheek and did funny things to her senses. “It would not be the first time since we’ve met.”
Bridget waged a silent debate with herself. She could brave her way through his questioning or she could offer the truth. “Forgive me, I did not hear your earlier query,” she admitted quietly. Her stomach muscles clenched. “I’m partially deaf.” As soon as that admission slipped out, she curled her toes into the soles of her serviceable black boots.
Surprise lit the baron’s jade-green eyes.
“My left ear,” she said weakly, uselessly motioning to the respective one in question. As though there could be another, you stupid chit. She braced for his inevitable pity or scorn. After all, how many times had her own siblings played cruel games at her expense or had she been railed at by her parents for being the shame of the Hamilton family?
The baron worked his gaze over her face. “That is why you did not hear my approach yesterday morn,” he observed in somber tones.
Bridget nodded, the movement stiff and jerky. Where was his icy derision? “My right ear is perfectly fine,” she spoke on a rush, to assure him of her worth. The disabled had little place in Society. Her own family hadn’t even wanted her underfoot. “I simply have to…compensate in other ways,” she finished lamely.
Lord Chilton let his arms drop to his sides and nudged his chin at the closest painting: the golden-haired, flawlessly perfect English beauty whose painting she’d studied earlier. “I suspected you were wondering about the paintings.”
That was it. A statement to her purpose and thoughts in being here. Not any questions or pitying statements about her partial deafness. Warmth unfurled inside her breast and fanned out, spreading to every corner of her being. How very beautiful it was simply being…any other young lady. “I was,” she confessed.
“They are my siblings.”
She blinked slowly and then whipped her gaze about the room, silently counting: one, two, three, four, five—
“Twelve,” he supplied for her. “My siblings. I’m one of the Duke of Ravenscourt’s many bastard children.” So that was the reason behind that mocking address of Bastard Baron, as Archibald had shared. The baron’s lips peeled up in an ugly remnant of an empty smile devoid of all warmth and a chill scraped along her spine. How easily this hardened man before her had replaced the gently smiling one of moments ago. It proved the artist who’d painted Lord Chilton’s likeness, a master at his craft. “Thus far, I’ve found ten brothers and one unwed sister.” He paused. “Two were already married before I’d identified them as kin.”
With more and more evidence of his kindness, she strolled back to Mr. Lodge’s painting near the front of the room, unnerved. “Mr. Lodge?” she asked, shooting a glance over her shoulder.
“My brother.”
And Mr. Winterly, too, then.
“Winterly, my man-of-affairs and business partner, as well,” he said as though he’d heard hear unspoken question. “All of them,” he confirmed once more, with a negligent wave about the portrait room. He pulled out a pair of elegant leather gloves and drew them on. Those articles served as another statement of his wealth. They stood a marked juxtaposition, however, to his long, tanned, callused fingers. “I’ve made it my business finding all the men and women my bastard of a father sired, and setting up futures for them.”
“Where are they all?” she asked, unable to quell the bold wondering. He was her employer and a peer of the realm, she’d no place putting intimate queries to him, and, yet, a need to know outweighed propriety.
Lord Chilton motioned her forward and proceeded to escort her about the white, Italian marble floor. It did not escape her notice that he’d deliberately positioned himself away from the painting of the small boy. “Theodore and Leonard have established their own businesses,” he indicated two blond gentlemen, elegantly attired, somewhere in their twentieth years. “Several work on my various properties as stewards. One is a Bow Street Runner. My sister is at finishing school. Others are just boys at Eton or Cambridge.” They reached the painting of the tiny child with his crooked, joy-filled smile.
“And what of him?” she asked softly, not knowing what it was in that small boy’s visage that called to her. Bridget registered the absolute silence and, believing her hearing had failed her once more, she faced the baron.
The ruggedly beautiful planes of his face were contorted in an anguished mask. He gave his head a shake. She stood an interloper in his private grief. His slight negation indicated he neither wanted, nor expected any questions about the boy…of like age to her Virgil, but the evidence of his quiet suffering ravaged her until she ached to wrap her arms about this man—a mere stranger. It’s not my place to know…a thief in his household who means even less than nothing to him.
Wanting to rid him of the sorrow there, she cleared her throat. “They are so fortunate to have you as their brother,” she said softly, speaking to herself more than anything. Hardly believing such a truth was possible. The only thing her own kin had ever wanted for her was to forget her existence and be free of her completely.
If it was possible to love a man one had known for just a day’s time, Bridget was certain she lost every piece of her heart to the one before her.
“They control their own future,” he said with a modesty most nobles would never be able to manage in the whole of their existence. “I merely provide the posts or opportunities and they fulfill their responsibilities admirably.” Lord Chilton spoke with such casualness she may as well have imagined his earlier grief. But it had been there. As one who’d known pain, she recognized it in another.
Or did he truly not know the impact he had on those siblings fortunate enough to call him kin? She moved closer until only a foot of space separated them. “Do not diminish what you do for your family,” she spoke with a firm resolve that demanded he see that truth. “Whether they are servants in your employ or young girls and boys receiving an education, you have provided them a future, my lord.”
His midnight lashes swept low; those thick, long lashes that most would have traded their smallest little fingers for. Lord Chilton’s gaze remained fixed on her mouth and, for one heart-stopping, endless moment, she believed he’d kiss her. Which was utter foolery. None would ever dare a hint of an impropriety with the scarred Hamilton. But in this instance, she could almost believe that this man not only could…but wanted to. Her pulse hammered loudly in her head.
“Vail.”
She wetted her lips. “M-My lord?” her breath emerged breathless to her own ear.
“Given your role in my staff, I’d ask you to call me by my given name.”
Vail. She tested it silently in her mind. Even as he spoke the truth to her elevated position in the household and the close dealings she’d have with him because of her status, propriety still didn’t give her leave to use it. And what was more, with every day spent here betraying him, she’d even less right to his name. “I can’t,” she said, dropping her eyes to his immaculately folded white satin cravat.
He brushed his knuckles along her jaw, bringing her gaze back to his. “A woman who challenged me upon our first meeting, I certainly expect can take to calling me by my Christian name, at least in private.” A tempting smile, a dangerous one, tilted his lips at a roguish angle. No woman, herself included, would be wont to deny this man anything in this given instance.
“Bridget,” she said reluctantly.
“Bridget,” he repeated, wrapping those two syllables in a husky baritone. A name her parents hadn’t even bothered to give her but who’d instead ceded the chore to her nursemaid. “It suits you,” he murmured and their gazes locked.
Her heart raced with a thousand and one questions for those three words he’d so casually stated. But every nerve thrummed to life at his nearness as he dipped his head lower. Bridget’s breath hitched and she fluttered her lashes. He is going to k—
“There you are, Mrs. Hamlet.” That loud booming voice had the same effect as jumping naked into the lake outside her family’s Yorkshire estate. She and Vail backed quickly away from one another.
His brother, Mr. Lodge, a perpetual smile fixed on his face, sprinted over. “I thought we might begin our inspection of the stores,” he said with such innocence he revealed no indication that he’d stumbled upon Vail and his housekeeper moments away from…from what? To conceal her trembling fingers, Bridget clasped them at her back.
Then the kindly butler glanced to his brother. “Vail,” he blurted. Color suffused his cheeks. “My lord,” he swiftly corrected and dropped a formal bow.
“Gavin,” he said quietly. “I assured you it’s entirely fine to—”
The younger man glowered at him.
Bridget watched their exchange with fascination; that a powerful nobleman could and would willingly cede an argument to preserve his sibling’s pride was a kindness she’d believed a member of the peerage incapable of.
Mr. Lodge pulled his shoulders back. “I’ve seen your horse readied, my lord.”
“Thank you, Lodge,” he said, deferring to the formality his brother displayed. “Mrs. Hamlet.”
Bridget sank into a deep curtsy. “My lord.” And yet, as she stared after him, an unexpected wave of disappointment that their exchange had come to an end gripped her.