“A year!” The earl's brows snapped together. “Mrs. Morris was indisposed that long?”
“She has not been ill
at all,
” Eve said.
“I am asking you to grant us a hearing,” Aidan said. “With both Morris and his mother present if they wish.”
“Oh,
no
!”
He held up a staying hand.
“And any witnesses he may care to call. And any witnesses
my wife
chooses to call.”
Eve could feel tension knot in her stomach. She wanted to plead with the earl
now
. She wanted to get him to see sense
now
. She wanted to go straight from Didcote Park to Cecil's to take her children home with her. She did not want a hearing at which Cecil could tell his lies again and force Aunt Jemima to tell lies for him.
The Earl of Luff sighed. “It seemed a perfectly straightforward matter,” he said. “It still seems straightforward. I am not going to all the faradiddle of calling a formal hearing, Bedwyn, with clever counsel arguing the case around and around in ever more dizzying circles. But I will allow an
informal
hearing if I must. It will have to be today, though. I have plans for the rest of the week. Two o'clock in the assembly rooms at Heybridge. Take it or leave it. I'll have Morris informed.”
Aidan got to his feet. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “We will be there.”
“But,” Eve protested, “I wanted this matter settled this morning. I cannot wait until this afternoon.”
“Then, ma'am,” the earl said curtly, “you must be happy with having it remain settled in Morris's favor. I will certainly be happy.”
She got to her feet. “This afternoon it will be, then,” she said.
A few minutes later they were back in the carriage and moving down the driveway away from the house. It was all very well to tell her not to expect the worst, Eve thought wearily, but how could she not do so? The law would seem to be clearly on Cecil's side. Love was going to be no argument.
“Eve,” Aidan said, “we are going straight home and you are going to bed. You are going to sleep.”
“I cannot sleep,” she protested.
“But you will anyway.” His voice was stern, his expression hard. “If you want those children back, you must sleep and make your mind more alert. I strongly advise that you allow me to do most of the talking, and that when you
do
talk, you not rely upon emotion alone.”
“How can I
not
be emotional!” she cried.
“He will win if you are,” he told her. “Take my word on it.”
She stared into his cold, harsh face and felt suddenly so all alone that she could bear it no longer. She turned sharply away, buried her face in her hands, and wept. She rarely gave in to tears, but she could not control them now, try as she would. She had forgotten how physically painful it was to cry. Her throat ached. Her chest felt as if it had been pierced by a dozen knives. Her heart felt as if it would break.
For perhaps a minute she was alone indeed. Then a hand settled between her shoulder blades and rubbed lightly back and forth. When her sobs had finally been reduced to hiccups and convulsive heaves, a large handkerchief appeared in her hand. She dried her face with it and blew her nose.
She had never, she thought, been more tired in her life.
It was as if he had read her thoughts. He leaned over her, one arm coming about her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, and he lifted her bodily onto his lap. Before her mind could quite register the shock, he had braced his booted feet against the seat opposite and settled her against him in such a way that her head nestled comfortably on one of his shoulders. She did not know when her bonnet had been removed or who had removed it but it was gone anyway.
“It will get better, love,” he murmured against her ear.
“Will it?” But it was a measure of her weariness that she did not need to hear his answer. At that moment she trusted him utterly. How wonderful it was sometimes to have the burdens of life lifted from one's shoulders.
“I promise it will,” he said.
The next thing she was aware of was waking up outside Ringwood when the carriage rocked to a halt.
C
ECIL
M
ORRIS WAS LOOKING SMUG, HIS MOTHER
nervous. Eve was pale and drawn, despite the fact that she had slept both in the carriage and in her bed after they returned home from Didcote Park. Mrs. Pritchard was visibly anxious, Miss Rice tense. The Reverend Puddle was seated between them and showing deep concern for both ladies. The parish constable and his four assistants—one of them sporting a swollen beacon of a nose and two purple eyes—stood about importantly as if they expected a brawl to break out at any moment. A rather large number of other interested persons were in attendance, though how they knew about the hearing Aidan had no idea.
The Earl of Luff was late, and when he did arrive, he appeared to be in a bad humor.
“Let us get this business settled without further ado,” he said, seating himself behind a table that had been set up along one end of the largest of the assembly rooms and glaring about him as if he were the one who had been kept waiting.
Cecil Morris was called up first to take the chair beside the earl's table and repeat his reasons for believing that custody of the orphans, David and Rebecca Aislie, should be granted to him. He did so, after taking an oath of honesty on a large Bible, perjuring himself with every breath. According to his story, he was inordinately fond of his young cousins, as he had been of their poor dead parents, while his mother positively doted upon them. He had been prevailed upon, against his better judgment, to allow his cousin, then Miss Eve Morris, to offer hospitality to the children while his mother recovered from a lengthy indisposition, but he had been disturbed to learn that she had abandoned them in order to jaunter off to London to enjoy the Season.
Aidan set a staying hand on Eve's arm when she drew breath to say something.
He had sought and won legal custody, Morris explained, and had sent the constable to fetch the children because the last time he had gone to visit them and assure them that soon they would be at home with their dear aunt, his cousin's new husband had threatened him with violence. He had feared that the other members of the household, some of whom were convicted felons, would do him harm—or worse, harm the children—if he went in person to demand their return.
“And as you can see, my lord,” he said, making a dramatic gesture toward the bulbous-nosed, purple-eyed constable's assistant, “my fears were not ill-founded.”
Aidan, feeling Eve's continued agitation, reached beneath the table and squeezed her hand.
“Who did that?” the earl asked, frowning at the assistant.
“I did, your worship,” Eve's housekeeper said from somewhere behind them. “And I would do it again to anyone who came inside my mistress's house without a by-your-leave, wanting to drag away poor innocent little babies just because
he
—that villain there—wants his revenge. I just wish it was his nose I had got at the end of my fist.”
“Sit down, woman,” the earl said sternly, grasping the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and looking weary.
“Well, you did ask,” she said.
“I did,” he agreed. “Now sit down. Lady Aidan, do you have any questions you wish to ask Mr. Morris?”
Aidan squeezed her hand again, but she ignored his silent plea to speak for her and got to her feet.
“Yes,” she said. “Becky and Davy were brought by stagecoach to Heybridge on September 5 of last year. It will be very easy to verify that date with stage records. Will you tell the earl, please, Cecil, how long they were at your house before my aunt's alleged illness forced you to allow me to take them?”
“How am I to remember that?” he asked her. “A month, two months, maybe longer.”
“My household records show,” Eve said, “that I hired Mrs. Johnson as a nurse for the children on September 6. The same records will show a number of clothes and other supplies being bought for them within that same week. Mrs. Johnson will testify, if necessary.”
“My dear mama was ill—” Morris began.
“And will you tell the earl about your visit to Ringwood two days before the anniversary of my father's death?” Eve asked him. “I will refresh your memory, if you wish. You thought at the time that you would be inheriting on that anniversary. In my absence, you had everyone in the house line up in the hall so that you could address them. Every one of my servants will attest to the fact that the children were included in that line. Will you tell us what you told them all?”
“I cannot remember,” he said. “That was some time ago.”
“Plenty of people can remember,” she told him. “You said that everyone—
everyone
—was to be gone by the time you came back to take up residence or you would have them all arrested for vagrancy.”
“Eve!” His eyes widened in shock. “I did not mean my poor young cousins. They were in the hall because they were to come home with me. But
that woman
”—he pointed at the housekeeper—“threatened me with a carving knife, and for the sake of the children I withdrew.”
There was a snort from somewhere behind. “If I had had a carving knife handy,” the housekeeper remarked, “I would have sliced your ears off for you, you lying little rat, and improved your face.”
“Woman,” the earl said sternly, “hold your tongue or I will have you removed. Return to your place, Mr. Morris. We will hear from Lady Aidan. Step up here, ma'am, and take a seat. Tell me why I should grant custody of David and Rebecca Aislie to you when there is no blood relationship between you and them.”
Aidan fixed his gaze on her as she seated herself and took the oath on the Bible, and willed her to stay calm, not to become distraught as she had so nearly become in Luff's library this morning.
She explained how on the death of their parents the children had been sent from one relative to another until they had arrived at Heybridge to be rejected yet again. There had been nothing left for them except an orphanage somewhere. But her aunt had come weeping to Eve, unknown to her son, begging her to take the children in. And so she had. She had hired a nurse and a governess for them and had spent as much time with them herself as she could until before long she had come to love them as her own. She explained how it had never occurred to her to seek legal custody of them since no one else wanted them.
“How do you explain Mr. Morris's actions of the past week if he does not care for them himself?” the earl asked. “He obviously felt deep concern over your absence and neglect of his young relatives. He went to some trouble to take them into his own home.”
“Revenge,” Eve said.
“I beg your pardon?” the earl asked.
She described how she had kept her inheritance by marrying before the anniversary of her father's death. She described again the threat Morris had made to everyone in her household two days before that date and his behavior on that morning until her husband had ordered him to leave Ringwood and never set foot on the property again.
“He threatened you with bodily harm?” The earl frowned.
“A joke, my lord,” Cecil Morris protested, jumping to his feet. “Why would I threaten my own dear cousin. It was—”
“Sit down, Mr. Morris,” the earl directed.
“He knows that I love the children,” Eve said. “He was humiliated at being thwarted and at having Colonel Bedwyn witness his threat to me. He saw a way of getting revenge on me through the children.”
“Mr. Morris,” the earl said with a sigh he did nothing to hide, “do you have any questions to ask Lady Aidan?”
“I do,” Morris said, jumping to his feet. “Where have you been for the past two weeks, Eve, while the children were languishing alone at Ringwood, abandoned by the woman who supposedly loves them so dearly?”
“I was in London at the invitation of the Duke of Bewcastle,” Eve said, looking at the earl, “to be presented to the queen and to society as the bride of Colonel Lord Aidan Bedwyn. I was there to attend a state dinner at Carlton House last evening, though I missed that in order to hurry home when I heard what had happened here. I left the children in the care of my aunt, Mrs. Pritchard, and of their nurse and their governess. I wrote to them daily. I missed them dreadfully.” She touched her heart with the fingertips of one hand. “I missed them here.”
“Very affecting,” Morris said with heavy sarcasm. “And tell me, Eve, what is Davy going to do for a father figure, so important to a growing boy? Your house is filled with women. Your
husband
is, I believe, about to leave you and never return. Everyone knows that you married him only so that you could hang onto Ringwood and your fortune.”
There was a buzz of indignation from the gathered spectators.
Aidan rose to his feet. “I would like to answer that question if I may,” he said.
Luff waved a weary hand in acquiescence. “Let us hear from you, then, by all means, Colonel Bedwyn,” he said. “I have never in my life heard such a fuss over two orphans.”
“For the last number of years I have fought my way across the Peninsula and into the south of France with Wellington's forces,” Aidan said, thankful that he had chosen to wear his dress uniform again, uncomfortable as it was, especially on what had turned into a warm, humid day. “And who knows that even now all the hostilities are finally over? Europe must be put together piece by piece again after years of warfare and pillage. My duty lies with the army. My home is Ringwood Manor. It is where my wife lives. It is where my heart will stay when I leave. It is where I will settle as soon as I am able. My wife's relatives and friends are mine, her servants mine, and her foster children my own. As far as I am able, even if only by letter for the next few years, I will be a father to young Davy—and to Becky.”
Eve watched him, pale and wide-eyed. And the devil of it was, Aidan thought, he did not
feel
as if he were lying.
He sat down. So did Morris.
“And you, ma'am,” the earl said, addressing Mrs. Morris. “What do you have to say in this matter? Do you want these children? Do you care for them? Do you love them?”