After the Kiss (11 page)

“Has he been able to make sense of your correspondence yet?”

“Finished cataloging the library. He’s got a great respect for my collections. Says it’s one of the finest he’s ever seen.”

Michael restrained his irritation. Babby never got to the point by a direct line. It was more often than not a circuitous journey.

“He’s working on my files now. Oh,” he said, suddenly smiling at Michael, “you want that letter. I’ll see if I can’t hurry him up a bit.”

“Merely a thought,” Michael said blandly, wondering if he was successful at hiding his impatience.

“Am I at least going to get the second
Journal
out of it? If you recall, I was supposed to have purchased it the last time.”

Michael nodded. An oversight. The last thing he
had been concerned about was Babby’s purchase of an erotic book.

Babby smiled knowingly. “An attractive woman, as I recall,” he said.

Michael only smiled.

M
argaret closed the cottage door quietly. Penelope looked up, smiled a welcome, and returned to her cooking.

She’d been walking this afternoon. Thinking, too. She’d not come to any answer for the greatest of her questions, but she had decided to tell Penelope.

Margaret looked around the cottage. Here she had grieved for Jerome, and finally found acceptance. Within these four walls she’d felt loneliness, too, learning to live with the fact that her future stretched out in an unending fashion for the rest of her life. But it seemed she had been granted another future. Not loneliness, but joy.

“I’m with child,” Margaret said quietly.

Penelope turned, wide-eyed, from the cookfire. The spoon she was using to stir the stew dangled from
her fingers. At least, Margaret thought wryly, they had chicken in their meals lately. The problem was that she could not bear the aroma.

“You’re with child,” Penelope repeated dully.

Margaret sighed, feeling as if she hung on the edge of a cliff. Perched somewhere between disaster and exhilaration.

“I’ve been ill five mornings in a row,” she said. “And in the afternoons as well.” She sat heavily on a chair.

“I thought it strange, but…”

“You’d no reason to think I had lain with a man?”

Penelope nodded.

“I have,” Margaret said. There, a confession. “I met him when I sold the books.”

“Yesterday you almost fainted,” Penelope said.

“Yes, not the first time I felt that way,” Margaret said. She’d heard enough talk among her London friends to know the signs of breeding. But the greatest one was last week when Penelope had lain on her cot, holding a heated brick wrapped in toweling to her stomach, cursing women’s fate and the plague that visited them once a month. Except, of course, that she had been exempt this month. And would for many more to come.

“You’re with child.” Penelope repeated incredulously once more. The spoon wavered in the air.

“In all those years I was married to Jerome, I never bore him a child,” Margaret said, her voice faint. It was the strangest thing, but she could not seem to understand it fully yet. She was not barren, after all.

“One of the women in the village says that it is the rooster, not the hen, who is to blame if there are no eggs,” Penelope said.

Her comment startled a laugh from Margaret.

“What will you do?” Penelope asked.

Margaret smiled. “Become a mother,” she said.

“The villagers will talk, you know,” Penelope said worriedly.

Margaret nodded. “Yes, they will,” she said. One of her greatest concerns. Her child would be labeled a bastard for her actions, and it was the one thing that disturbed her in this sudden and unexpected joy. But how did she prevent it? That question remained unanswered.

“Will you let him know?” Penelope asked. “The man, I mean?” Her voice was tentative, the question one Margaret had asked herself enough times.

Should she tell Michael of their child? What would he do if she sent word to him? She did not doubt that he would wish to support her, make her his mistress. Doing so would label their child, just as Jerome had been. He had been deeply ashamed of his illegitimacy.

She placed her hand on her waist. Even now, her child grew inside her. She must find a way to protect him from scandal, a cruel world, and even his mother’s foolishness.

“No,” she said, answering Penelope finally. “There is no need to tell him.”

“What say you, Duke?” the Earl of Babidge said. “A fine acquisition, is it not?”

The Duke of Tarrant nodded. It was remarkably warm in Babidge’s library, but he felt ice coat his backbone.

He held the book he thought destroyed in his hands. One of three he’d received seven years ago.

He remembered even now the pride he’d felt. The government had not comprehended the enormity of its mistake. He alone had understood what the Empire would suffer if things were left as they were.

“Good God, Babby, where did you find such a thing?” A masculine laugh over his shoulder startled Tarrant. He turned and frowned at the man before lowering the book to the table. Perhaps it was a copy. They had shared a number of jests about the type of books they’d used. Certain to inspire interest, but those who read it would never think to look for anything deeper.

He opened the book to the middle, thumbed through it with fingers that trembled despite his resolve, noted the faint marks. It was the same.

He opened the front cover of the book and saw the newly inscribed name.
Jerome Esterly, Bookseller
. His finger trailed over Jerome’s flowing script as he mastered his rage. His bastard brother had always had a tradesman’s cleverness. Or a thief’s.

“Are you willing to sell it?” he asked, turning to the Earl of Babidge. The man was a bumbling fool. An inveterate gossip. The worst person in the world to be in possession of this book. What if someone noticed the marks?

“I haven’t read the thing through yet,” Babidge said, grinning at him.

Tarrant reluctantly surrendered the book to the man waiting beside him. An after-dinner entertainment, the viewing of Babby’s newest acquisition. How many people had already seen it?

Tarrant moved closer to his host. “Have you had it long, Babidge?” he asked.

“A few weeks only,” Babidge said.

“A most fascinating acquisition,” Tarrant said, forcing a smile to his face. “Where did you get it?”

Babidge’s face seemed to close up, his interest in the glass in his hand intent. “A delightful woman sold it to me. I intended to buy the second book from her
as well, but the sale was interrupted,” he said with a smile. “She’s caught the fancy of a friend of mine.”

“A woman?”

Even as he asked, he knew. There was only one person who could have had access to the
Journals
. Margaret. The shopgirl his bastard brother had married. The woman with the insolent eyes.

It was only a matter of time until someone discovered the link between them. Or that the books were his.

Tarrant turned away, his mind racing. A man’s recitation of one of the passages in the book incited a great deal of laughter. The book was more than simply risqé. It was so much more than that.

He could be hanged because of it.

There was a heritage to protect. His own. A lineage to continue. One of proud men and prized accomplishments. He did not regret his actions seven years ago. He would do the same again if such an opportunity were placed before him.

History would judge him well, even as his contemporaries would not understand. Those with narrow minds and the vision to match would not conceive of his original intent.

But the
Journals of Augustin X
must not be allowed to surface. Not now. Not ever.

“What on earth could Michael be thinking of? Jane Hestly? He can’t be serious. She’s got a fortune, all right, but she also has protruding teeth and that ghastly whiny voice. Not to mention that nose of hers.”

The Countess of Montraine looked irritated.

The sitting room in the Hawthornes’ London home was a cheerful place to be. Decorated in bright yellow
with green accents, it spoke of springtime on even the dreariest of days. Today, however, the atmosphere was most definitely not sunny, Elizabeth Hawthorne thought. Not as long as her mother was in a mood.

“He’s found the plainest girl in England.” Her mother frowned at Elizabeth. “My grandchildren will be unpresentable.”

“I believe that he simply wants it done and over.”

“Oh, mother, he cannot get married now! That will spoil all our plans. All the balls will be in her honor. It isn’t fair, truly it isn’t,” Charlotte whined.

“If he doesn’t wed soon, you won’t have a dowry, Charlotte. It will be used to support Setton,” Elizabeth said—a bit of truth that horrified Charlotte into silence. “Besides, you’re only eighteen. It isn’t as if you’re going to be left on the shelf.”

“Well, I’m nineteen and I do not care if my dowry is spent upon a new roof,” Ada said. “Marriage is but an enslavement of women.”

“There will be no talk of a Hawthorne woman on the shelf,” the countess said, with a frown at Elizabeth. “You shall all procure wonderful husbands. Viscounts, at the very least. Earls, however, are preferred.”

“There cannot be that many, surely,” Ada said.

“I have deduced that there are well over two hundred,” her mother said, eyes narrowed. “There are, however, only twenty dukes.”

“We need an emancipator for Ada and a blind man for Charlotte. That way he can free Ada from her imagined slavery and Charlotte can be assured of eternal devotion,” Elizabeth said, smiling.

“You are quite horrid, Elizabeth. Simply because you will probably remain forever a spinster does not mean
we
shall be.” Charlotte frowned at her, but only
fleetingly, in order not to mar her features permanently.

“Your sister is not at all doomed. Elizabeth is only seventeen. The one thing she needs to do is curtail her opinions. Of which she has many,” her mother said, sending an irritated look at her youngest daughter. “It is quite off-putting, my dear.”

Elizabeth smiled at her mother’s pronouncement. She’d heard the same criticism every day of her life.

She used her scissors to cut a dangling thread, and then replaced them in her embroidery chest. In truth, the embroidery was a way of keeping her thoughts restrained. She did wish her sisters and mother were different, people she might truly enjoy. She loved them, but before an hour was out, they had irritated her so deeply she felt like screaming.

Charlotte looked at her, apprehension furrowing her brow briefly. “He wouldn’t truly offer for her, would he? Oh, how horrible it would be to have an ugly sister-in-law! One could never talk about gowns or admiring glances or anything female.”

“I think it would be refreshing to have an ugly relative,” Ada said. “That way, the men would not concentrate so on a woman’s appearance, but more on thoughts. Thoughts are a mind’s path to greatness.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

“Besides, she is an intellectual, Mother,” Ada said. “She would be a welcome addition to the family. I quite like her.”

“You would,” Charlotte said. “You’ve studied Latin.”

“It is a shame that a woman must marry at all,” Ada said. “But perhaps our brother can be convinced to be a fair husband.”

Elizabeth sighed. Ada was forever going on about
the unfairness of women’s plight. Elizabeth doubted, however, that her oldest sister truly felt that way. Ada espoused different causes with the same frequency with which she changed her frock.

“I shall talk to him about this Hestly woman,” the countess declared.

“You know how he gets when he’s working, Mother,” Elizabeth warned. A bit of caution. Michael did not like to be disturbed.

“He would not allow me to address him on the plight of the Bedlam women the other day,” Ada said.

“You have a tendency to go on and on about your causes, Ada,” Elizabeth said. She glanced over at Charlotte. “And your giggling gives him a headache.”

“That is not at all the way to speak to your sisters, Elizabeth.”

She nodded. It did not do to argue with her mother. Not only because Elizabeth was unlikely to win any such match, but because the countess did not like to be challenged.

Michael had ascended to the earldom at the age of fourteen. Barely more than a child. He’d been left three estates, none of them prosperous, a dwindling fortune, and the responsibility of all of them. It was not an inexpensive proposition to launch three girls into the Marriage Mart all at once, but Michael had never said a word about the cost.

The only significant change he’d made, once he’d ascended to his majority, was to establish his own residence. Not for privacy, she suspected, than the fact that the cacophony of this house made it impossible for him to work.

“Is it true,” Elizabeth asked, “that the Kittridges are planning a huge event next week?”

Her mother frowned at her. “It does not signify.”

“The Kittridge ball will be huge,” Charlotte said plaintively.

“I understand that the theme is ancient Rome,” Elizabeth said. For the first time, Ada looked interested.

“How do you know such things?” Charlotte asked.

“I listen,” Elizabeth said simply.

“Women should talk,” Ada said, frowning. “Instead of remaining meek. Otherwise, men believe them to be devoid of the capacity to do so.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes again.

Babby’s new secretary had forwarded Margaret’s letter to him yesterday. Michael had studied it so intently that he knew each detail of it. A copperplate signature, a studied hand. In that, Margaret was more adept than his sisters. Her a’s and o’s looked too much alike, a slight imperfection that he nonetheless found intriguing.

It was a businesslike letter, one that searched out intent.

Her address was listed in the care of a Mr. Samuel Plodgett.

A further mystery. A puzzle. An undeniable temptation to a man who solved ciphers. That’s what he told himself as he stood in front of the address she listed, holding her letter in his hand. As if he could not bear to place it in his desk, but must carry it about with him.

He surrendered to his inquisitive nature with some irritation. He should be working on the Cyrillic cipher, his mathematical engine, sending letters to his
stewards. If nothing else, he should be penning a note to Jane Hestly. A necessary task, one of matrimonial pursuit.
It is my sincere wish that we might meet again
. A dance of words to warn her that he was embarking upon a serious mission, that of marriage.

Instead, he stood in front of a draper’s shop, frowning.

He opened the door and was immediately greeted by a friendly voice, one that belonged, evidently, to the shopkeeper. A round-faced man with a bright smile came forward from the back of the room.

The shop was crowded, evidently prosperous. Several women eyed him over bolts of cloth. It had not escaped his notice that he was the only man among the customers.