Hehadgone home after the Battle of Toulouse in 1814, though, taking his pregnant wife with him. He had taken her to Rose Cottage—a great deal larger actually than a cottage despite its name. And all his own. His anchor tothis world. The place where he would send down roots. The place where he would raise his family. Home. The dream of happiness had become even more of a reality when Katy was born—Katherine Mary Bennington. Ah, that achingly happy day following hours of pain for Caroline and anxiety for him. That dark-haired baby. That warm little bundle of squawking humanity.
His daughter.
It was a brief interval in his life almost too painful to look back upon. Therefore, he rarely did. But some memories went deeper than conscious thought. They weretherealways, like a leaden weight, or like an open wound that would not quite kill him but would never heal either.
Happily-ever-after had begun to slip away when Caroline, her confinement over, had become more restless than usual and peevish about the inferior size of the house and the dullness of the village on the edge of which it stood, and the insipid nature of their social life there. It had slipped further a little more than three months after Katy’s birth when Gil had been recalled to his regiment following Napoleon Bonaparte’s escape from his first exile, on the island of Elba, and his return to France to gather another vast army about him.
Caroline had wanted to go too, leaving the baby with her mother. He had refused. Following the drum was no life for a lady, though Caroline had done it for a few months before he married her when her mother brought her to the Peninsula after she had finished her lady’s schooling. And a baby needed her mother and a home and her father’s financial support and the promise of his return as soon as he was able. A baby actually neededbothparents, but life could not always be ideal. He had tried to make it as secure and comfortable as was possible under the circumstances.
By the time he had hurried home after Waterloo, alarmed by increasingly mutinous letters from his unhappy wife, she was gone. So was their daughter. And her nurse. But no one—not their servants, not any of their neighbors—knew just where they had gone or when they were likely to return. He had not seen either one of them since, though he did know that Katy was in Essex, living with her grandparents, General Sir Edward and Lady Pascoe, to whom, unbeknown to him, she had been taken before Waterloo, soon after his own departure for Belgium. Lady Pascoe had refused to let him see her, however, when he had gone to her home, frantic for news. Caroline, he had discovered later, had gone off to a house party at the invitation of old friends and from there to another party and another. Gil could neither pursue his quest to retrieve his daughter nor go in search of his errant wife before he was abruptly and unexpectedly posted to St. Helena. Doubtless thanks to General Pascoe.
Katy was still with her grandparents. Caroline was dead. Word of her demise had reached him on St. Helena.
Now, more than a year later, the situation had become more fraught. General Pascoe was back at home, and he and his wife were determined to keep custody of Katy. They had acquired a lawyer who intended to see that the whole matter was wrapped up right and tight—and legally—in their favor. They had two angry, threatening letters he had written from St. Helena to use against him in addition to Lady Pascoe’s account of the frantic, demanding visits he had made to the general’s home and the lies Caroline had told when she took their daughter to her mother. He would be made to appear to be a violent, uncontrolled man and an unfit father.
Gil’s first instinct upon leaving St. Helena had been toreturn as soon as he could to England, where he would rage at his in-laws until they relinquished his daughter into his care and he could take her back home where she belonged. A cooler wisdom had prevailed, however, and he had hired a lawyer of his own, a man recommended by his agent as the best of his kind in London. And Grimes—of the law firm Grimes, Hanson, and Digby—had insisted in the lawyerly letter he had written his client after the contract was signed that Lieutenant Colonel Bennington leave the matter of the custody of his daughter entirely in his hands and do absolutely nothing himself.
Doing nothing was the hardest thing Gil had ever had to do in his life. For a lawyer, even this one—the best of his kind in London—might not be enough. The general had considerable power and influence. So did Lady Pascoe. She was the sister of a baron who held a prominent position in the government. Both had been vehemently opposed to their daughter’s marrying the bastard son of a blacksmith’s daughter, even if hewasan officer of high rank. They would undoubtedly have withheld their consent had Caroline not already been increasing. That fact had drawn their tight-lipped consent, but it had done nothing to endear him to them. It was also a fact that had deeply shamed him. After becoming a commissioned officer, he had tried hard to behave like a gentleman even if he could never be one.
Gil’s offer to accompany Harry home and his agreement to remain with him for a while had been made at least partly for selfish reasons, then. It would take him back to England, not far distant from London, where he would be able to consult his agent more easily and the lawyer who did not really want to be consulted or pressed. Being back in England would give him a sense of purpose, of not simply doing nothing. But the offer had also been made out ofgenuine friendship and concern, for his friend could not travel alone orbealone despite what he might think. Yet he would not go to London, where his mother was living during the spring months.
The arrival of Netherby and Riverdale in Paris had seemed like a relatively minor annoyance at the time. Both had treated Gil with quiet respect, but he had assumed that they would return to their families and parliamentary duties in London as soon as they possibly could after conveying Harry home. Now it appeared he had assumed wrongly. It seemed very likely indeed that the whole of the Westcott family would descend upon Hinsford within days of their arrival and stay for who knew how long. How many of them were there, for God’s sake?
It was a daunting prospect and one that might well force him into a change of plans. Indeed, he would surely have changed them at Dover if this conversation had been held over breakfast. But now he was stuck, at least temporarily. He did not have a carriage of his own or even a horse with which to leave Hinsford.
“He is asleep,” the Earl of Riverdale said from the seat opposite, his voice little more than a murmur. “He is far weaker than I expected him to be after almost two years.”
“He will recover,” Netherby said, equally quietly. “If he has been too stubborn to die thus far, he is not going to do it now.”
“What is your opinion, Lieutenant Colonel?” Riverdale asked.
“It is my belief,” Gil said, gazing at his friend, whose chin had sunk to his chest, “that if Bonaparte were to escape again today and gather another army to lead against the allies, Major Harry Westcott would be volunteering to lead the first charge.”
“Not you?” the Duke of Netherby asked. “It has been whispered, Bennington, that you once led a forlorn hope and were promoted from captain to major as a result.”
Gil frowned. He never felt comfortable discussing his war exploits. There were thousands of men, many of them dead, just as brave as he. “I had men at my back who would not have allowed me to retreat even if I had wished to do so,” he said. “It was not the accomplishment of a single individual, but one of a large group. Most military actions are that way even if only one man is singled out afterward for commendations and honors. Harry was one of the best. If there was ever danger for his men to face, he was there to lead them into it. He looks weak now, but he has a ferocious spirit. It may be lying dormant, but it is not dead, I assure you. He will recover fully.”
“Or die in the attempt,” the duke said.
Gil looked across into his eyes, keen beneath the sleepy lids, and was surprised by the flash of humor from a man who was an apparently bored aristocrat from his blond, expertly styled hair to his fashionable and immaculately tailored clothes, from his well-manicured, beringed hands to the tips of his supple, highly polished boots. A bit of a dangerous man too, Gil suspected.
Two
Anna, Duchess of Netherby, received her husband, Avery’s, note on the same day it was sent from Dover. She went immediately with Jessica, Avery’s half sister, to share the news with Harry’s immediate family. One of them was Viola, Harry’s mother, whose marriage to his father, the late Earl of Riverdale, had been declared invalid when it had been discovered after his death that he had had a secret first wife still living when he married her. Viola was now married to the Marquess of Dorchester. Her younger daughter, Abigail, Harry’s sister, lived with them. Like Harry, Abigail was now officially illegitimate. Anna was able to inform both ladies that the travelers were back in England but on their way to Hinsford instead of London. She was delighted to be able to assure them also that Harry was bearing up well under the ordeal.
Jessica danced Abigail in a full circle, observing as she did so that it was probably far beneath her twenty-three-year-old dignity to react thus to the news that Harry washome—and it was a good thing her mother was not there to see her. Or Avery with his quizzing glass, she added with a theatrical shudder and a laugh. Anna and Jessica left half an hour later to take the news to Wren, Countess of Riverdale, Alexander’s wife.
Jessica’s mother, meanwhile—Louise, Dowager Duchess of Netherby, a former Westcott, sister of Humphrey, the late earl—took the news first to her mother, Eugenia, and elder sister, Matilda, and then to her younger, married sister, Mildred, and her husband, Thomas.
Abigail wrote to her sister, Camille Cunningham, who lived with her husband and children in Bath, and Alexander’s wife, Wren, wrote to her mother-in-law, Althea, and her sister-in-law Elizabeth. They were both in the country at Roxingley Park, where Elizabeth, Lady Hodges, was recovering from a recent confinement with her second child, a daughter this time.
Before evening drew on, everyone in the family knew, or was about to know, the glad tidings that Harry was home in England at long last.
Now, just twenty-four hours later, Abigail was seated in the Marquess of Dorchester’s traveling carriage beside her stepsister, Estelle. Her mother had married the marquess, Marcel Lamarr, nearly four years ago, and his children, the twins Estelle and Bertrand, had quickly become Abigail’s friends. Marcel—she called her mother’s husband by his given name, at his request—was now seated beside her mother and opposite Abigail herself in the carriage. Bertrand was riding a little way ahead. Conversation was not brisk inside the carriage. Yesterday’s glad relief had given way inevitably to today’s anxiety. Had Harry been strong enough for the journey despite what Avery had written in his note to Anna? Why was he still so weak even after allthis time? Would their coming to see him help or hinder his recovery? But how could they stay away? And how could Avery and Alexander be expected to leave him all alone, with just servants to care for him?
Abigail was aware that Marcel was squeezing her mother’s hand reassuringly from time to time. Estelle seemed to sense that chatter would not be welcome and quietly watched the scenery pass by through the window. Abigail, grateful for her stepsister’s tact, did likewise. At least Harry was home and safe from ever again having to face the dangers of war.
It was almost two years since Waterloo.Two years.But he was still alive, even after that ghastly surgery. And back home. It was concerning that he had chosen to return to Hinsford Manor rather than London, where he would have had access to any number of physicians. But Abigail could understand why he was going to Hinsford. It was home. It was where they had grown up. They had been happy there—no clouds in their sky, no looming storms on their horizon. No premonition of the life-changing catastrophe that lay ahead for all of them—the discovery that they were illegitimate because their father had already been married to someone else when he wed their mother.
