The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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      She still hadn’t found the courage to tell Verity who she really was. She felt weighed down by her own folly as she helped the maids take down the dark veiling from gilt mirrors and statues and open the blinds in all the rooms kept half-dark until today. Holland covers were removed from the furniture in Virginia’s splendid boudoir and the last bequests were matched to the list Mr Poulson left, ready to be sent to new owners with a note or a personal visit from Eve, her father or the housekeeper to hand over a memento of a much-loved lady.

      Life was going relentlessly on all round her and Chloe felt the past threaten her happiness like a pall. She looked the same soberly correct housekeeper she’d been for so long, but felt nowhere near as serene and composed as she appeared while she awaited Luke’s return and the end of his quest to find Verity’s father.

      Luckily, none of the neighbours knew Luke enclosed long letters to her with the sealed packet he sent to his daughter every week. Eve always handed them over with a lack of expression that said more than Chloe wanted anyone to know about her relationship with the girl’s father. Yet with Eve’s middle-aged governess here now to keep her pupil busy and all of them respectably chaperoned, Chloe knew Luke was making her own continuing presence here as unremarkable as possible and could only love him all the more for it.

      ‘He’s courting you,’ Bran had pointed out when the latest letter came and Chloe hastily hid it in her pocket to read as soon as she could make an excuse to be alone.

      When she did, she sat pouring over every word and could almost imagine he was here, telling her who he’d met and what he thought of the part of Scotland where Daphne stayed at first, then some sharp observations about her paternal aunt, Lady Hamming, that the lady would certainly not enjoy if she read them.

      ‘His lordship is keeping me informed of some business he undertook for me whilst he is in Scotland,’ she had retorted as briskly as she could when Bran made that accusation, knowing her blush was giving her away so badly they both wondered why she was bothering.

      ‘His lordship is a good man, but not so good he’d write at such length to someone he was doing a favour, Mrs Wheaton,’ the shrewd little woman told her.

      ‘He can’t court me, I’m a servant,’ Chloe said numbly.

      ‘Are you now?’

      ‘Of course I am.’

      ‘The nobility and gentry might see what they expect to when they look through any of us as doesn’t slop their bathwater or knock over the silver, but you won’t fool the rest of us that easy, my dear.’

      ‘For all that, I’m still a housekeeper.’

      ‘And a very good one you are, too, but it’s not what you’re born to.’

      ‘As if most ladies of birth and expectations are not brought up to keep house, when they’re not too busy bearing heirs. Even if I was born a lady, why would I want to become a brood mare for some chilly lord?’

      ‘Because he’s a man in every sense of the word and would be whether he was born a lord or a labourer, perhaps? Don’t you go judging Lord Farenze by any other noble devils you’ve come across, Mrs Chloe. He suffered enough grief from a woman who wouldn’t see he’s got a good heart under that abrupt manner of his. Why don’t you ask yourself if he’d grumble and glare at those as wants to poke about in his life to pass the time if he hadn’t a wild, romantic yearning inside him to protect? He needs you, my girl, so are you going to make him happy or kick him aside like that heartless young madam he married when he was too young to know any better did, as if he was nothing?’

      ‘You’d trust me with the happiness of such a good man? I’m not sure I would. I come from bad blood, Bran, best for him if he has no more to do with me.’

      ‘Your girl’s bad then, is she?’

      ‘No, she’s as sweet as a nut all the way through, which makes her almost a miracle considering the nest of vipers I hail from,’ Chloe replied with a shrug.

      ‘Speaking for myself, I don’t judge a book by what’s next to it and you should try looking in the mirror sometimes.’

      ‘I do. How else can I be sure I look neat and tidy every morning?’

      ‘Look closer and you’ll see a stranger looking back—bad blood indeed.’

      ‘I’m not worthy of him, Bran,’ Chloe whispered as if to say it aloud admitted Lord Farenze really was courting his great-aunt’s companion housekeeper.

      ‘You won’t be if you cower behind that cap and your blacks for ever and won’t see what could be if you was to let it. He deserves better.’

      ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you.’

      ‘No, you’ve come up with a cartload of reasons why not, when he’s set his heart on you. He deserves a woman who’ll say yes to him and damn the devil.’

      ‘I have a daughter to consider,’ she argued stubbornly.

      ‘And he doesn’t? Don’t you trust him to be a good father to your Verity?’

      ‘Of course I do,’ Chloe admitted, then sighed with relief when Eve came to find out why it was taking them so long to count napkins and write down an order for more and saved her from even more uncomfortable questions.

      Looking at herself from where Bran stood, Chloe wondered why anyone would believe she’d been the bold, bad Thessaly twin, who defied anyone who stood in the way of what she or Daphne wanted or needed now. When her father decided to sell off his more tractable daughter, she recalled how cleverly he’d whisked Daphne away so Chloe had no idea where she was and found she wanted to lash out at him as fiercely now as she had then. How that fiery young Chloe would stare at the subdued woman she’d become. She had kept herself and Verity safe by refusing to live fully and love Luke for years and it was time to let that pent-up fury go and learn to live without it.

      Lady Chloe Thessaly learnt young that love was a snare. It left Daphne dead and her with a child to bring up. Little wonder if she refused to trust her feral longings for my Lord Farenze a decade ago. He’d been gruff and hurt then and must have resented wanting her until he glowered at her more often than he smiled. The battered and cynical aristocrat he pretended to be back then was so unlike the ardently romantic young lover she’d once dreamed of that it was little wonder she’d been horrified to discover he roused passions in her she’d thought stone dead.

       Chapter Sixteen

      As a delicate and vulnerable baby Verity had needed Chloe to concentrate all her energy on her, but did she truly need it now? She considered how a mother could cope with her child growing up. Mrs Winterley had treated Luke like a cuckoo in her nest his entire childhood because she wanted her own child to inherit, but now that James regarded his own mother as sceptically as his brother did, how must it feel to be rejected by the very being you adored? Chloe felt a moment of motherly sympathy with the woman before she disliked her all over again for doing her best to make the half-brothers hate each other. Little wonder it took years for Luke to recover his faith in human nature with such a stepmother. Then his self-centred fool of a wife did her best to convince him he was cold and unlovable and compounded the damage before running away.

      She recalled how warm-hearted and passionate he could be and blushed. Telling herself to keep her obsession with the master of the house a secret, Chloe set her maids the tasks of washing and cleaning the paraphernalia of mourning, then storing it in the darkest attic they had. When they were all busy, she took a half-hour of peace and quiet for herself and sneaked into the library to shut the door on the world.

      No need for the entire household and Brandy Brown to know she always kept one or other of Luke’s letters in her pocket to re-read when she wanted to feel he was close by; or that sometimes she just wanted to set out for the north to find him and to the devil with appearances and duty. She sat back against the cushioned comfort of the little