Chapter Fifty-Two
LUNCH AND THEN DINNER; Brooke was beginning to think Harriet was never going to leave her side that day. Brooke didn’t mind at all. She was also used to Harriet’s nonstop chatter, but today it didn’t seem at all nervous the way Brooke remembered it from her childhood. Today Harriet was just keeping Brooke’s mind off him. And it mostly worked.
“Your father would like a word, some bit of formal speech now that you’re having your Season.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Not today, of course. I’ve explained that you’re upset. He doesn’t deal well with ‘upset.’ But sometime this week? It will keep him from coming downstairs to see for himself whom you’re receiving.”
“I’m not receiving anyone.”
“You will. I’m accepting every invitation I have, and there will be a lot more after it’s announced that you’re a true debutante now.”
“Don’t overdo it,” Alfreda had cautioned during this discussion. “She needs some time to get over the fact that the wolf let her walk out his door.”
“Nonsense,” Harriet disagreed. “She needs distractions, lots and lots of distractions so she doesn’t have time to think about that—”
Alfreda had interrupted to tell Brooke, “Give him a week and he’ll be knocking on your door.”
She gave him two weeks, two hectic weeks, but she didn’t see Dominic at even one of the events Harriet had taken her to, and then she finally found out why from his friend Archer. Dominic had returned to Rothdale almost immediately after their—broken wedding. His leaving London and apparently giving up on her made her even sadder. She wished she were back at Rothdale, too. So many memories she had from her time in that wild, beautiful north country, the fun she had getting to know Dominic, riding Rebel across the moors, finding Storm. How many times could one heart break?
But her mother did her best to fill her days with distractions. She was surrounded by suitors at each event, and they were certainly knocking on her door. She did become as popular as Harriet had predicted.
Brooke was able to avoid that talk with her father for at least a week by tiptoeing past his door—why was it always left open?—or running past it when she heard him talking with a servant. But he did finally bark her name, forcing her to enter that room. He still hadn’t recovered from this trip to London. She still wasn’t willing to help with the aching joints keeping him abed, especially now that she knew her mother didn’t even like him, and Harriet had balked when Brooke had suggested it a few days ago, claiming, “You don’t want him downstairs scaring away your suitors.”
But maybe she did. She wasn’t exactly interested in any of those suitors yet.
“You have some names for me?” Thomas had demanded when she reached his bedside.
“Names?”
“Your mother has assured me that if we leave you to it, you’ll make a better match than we can arrange for you. So tell me who you’re considering? And speak up, gel. I’m bloody well hard of hearing.”
This was last week and she couldn’t remember a single name that day because she wasn’t ready for this debut now, she couldn’t stop thinking about Dominic, and she still just wanted to cry. So she gave him the only name she could think of, even though she’d only seen the man one other time since that ball she’d attended with Dominic.
“Archer Hamilton.”
“Really?” Thomas had seemed surprised. “I know the Hamiltons, the marquis and I belong to the same club. Good stock, influential, rich. His son will do, even if the boy’s not in line for the title. Who else?”
She’d actually invented some other names, which he promptly refused with a “No, don’t know him” and “No, don’t know him either,” and then said sternly, “Stick with the Hamilton pup.”
She’d assured him she would when she certainly wouldn’t, but it let her get out of there. She had other things on her mind after she’d read Ella’s hidden letter. Then the tears stopped after she got that gift from Dominic a few days later.
The note with it simply said, For your birthday. No salutation, no well-wishing, and no signature. But only Dominic would commission the picture in that locket for her, and he must have done it before the cancellation of their wedding and arranged, before he left town, for it to be delivered to her when it was finished. Inside the locket was the tiniest painting of the head of a white dog—or wolf. Storm. She was incredulous that he’d still sent it on to her instead of just throwing it away. But that’s when she decided to win him back by finding proof that Ella didn’t intend to die—at least not before she had her baby first. If her mother would just stop accepting invitations long enough so she could . . .
* * *
“You’re not having fun, are you?” Harriet asked that night at Brooke’s second ball.
Brooke sighed. “Not really. I know this is the logical thing to do, continue as we would have, but too much has happened and . . .”
“Good grief, don’t cry again.” Harriet quickly led Brooke out onto a terrace where there were only a few people. “What you’re feeling will pass, I promise you. I had so hoped these entertainments would have cheered you up by now. Another man could make you forget about that man if you’d just give one of them a chance.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
Harriet put an arm around Brooke’s shoulder and squeezed. “I should have known a broken heart wouldn’t mend in just a few weeks. Go ahead and cry, precious. We’ll say it was just dust in your eyes.”
Brooke almost laughed, but did admit, “I wasn’t going to cry again. I have been distracted, though, by that letter of Eloise Wolfe’s that had been hidden in her fan. It was from an abbess, telling Ella she already had a wonderful family from the quaint town of Sevenoaks in Kent who would take her baby and love it as their own. The abbess expected Ella to arrive soon at her foundling house, where she could deliver the baby peacefully.”
“No one has a baby peacefully,” Harriet insisted. “It’s an utter impossibility.”
“I’m sure a peaceful environment was what the abbess meant, but in either case, it doesn’t sound like Ella was going to kill herself, though Dominic thinks she did and that’s a very big part of his rage. I’m not so sure now if that was really her intention.”
“You think she went off to have the baby in secret first?”
Brooke blinked. “Maybe, or she intended to but died before she could give birth.”
Harriet’s eyes widened. “Are you saying there’s a possibility that I have a grandchild somewhere in England?!”
“Shh, not so loud, Mother. I don’t actually think that a’tall. I think her death was really an accident that day. Her body was found at the time and identified, so it was her. And there wasn’t time for her to have her baby first. She fell in love with Robert during her first Season and died that fall nearly two years ago, before anyone even knew she was pregnant from that indiscretion.”
Harriet sighed. “That’s two grandchildren I’m never going to get to meet. I do want some, you know. I’ve truly been looking forward to it.”
Since Harriet ended that by giving Brooke a pointed look that clearly said, Hurry up and give me some, Brooke quickly continued, “But if I’m right and she didn’t die by choice that day, that could change Dominic’s perception of the matter entirely. After all, Ella was a willing participant in her seduction, so Robert was only half to blame for that, even if he did mislead the girl. And if I could prove that to him, it might remove the hate he has for our family.”
“Oh, precious, don’t count on that. Men view these matters differently. Robert damned himself in Lord Wolfe’s eyes when he refused to marry his sister.”
“I would still like to prove my suspicion. That abbess may still have a letter from Ella, inquiring about delivering her baby to the nuns for adoption. She could well have planned to go home after that with some story of lost memory, et cetera.”
“Or go off to really kill herself afterward, and if that’s in her letter, then it’s not something you would want to show to the wolf.”
“She wouldn’t confess that to a nun,” Brooke insisted. “But the abbess might know in either case.”
“Very well, where is that foundling house? We’ll pay them a visit tomorrow just to be sure.”
Brooke smiled gratefully, even though she knew she was putting too much stock in the outcome. Ella might well have intended to sail to the foundling house that very day and only to pretend to be lost at sea so no one would look for her, but got caught in the storm instead. Brooke wouldn’t be able to suggest anything beyond that to Dominic, not when she remembered him repeating Ella’s words from those missing diary pages that he’d burned, that she’d intended to “seek peace and solace in the sea.” Ella did want to die, had felt she had no choice, but she apparently hadn’t wanted to kill her baby with her. She’d wanted to have it first and be assured it would have a good home before she ended her life. Dominic needed to at least know this, if it was true, that her death was an accident. That alone might help him to heal from that loss.
And give her a reason to see him again. . . .