Mark gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and eased her away. “Tomorrow.” He paused. “How is she?”
Stella stilled, her eyes studying him as she stepped back. “Why?”
“Stella . . .”
She turned away from him, tightening the knot on the sash. “She is fine.”
“Still with your mother?”
“Why do you pretend to care?”
Mark took a deep breath to steady his temper. “Because I do, whether or not you believe me.”
She turned back to him, eyes flashing. “Do you? Do you even remember her name? Then you plan to visit sometime soon?”
The question she always asked. And the answer he always gave. “It would only confuse her. Olivia. It would only confuse Olivia.”
“Not if you start now. She is barely three years old. She is smart. And growing up quickly.” The defiance in her eyes faded into something more wounded, more vulnerable, and Mark realized he faced the genuine Stella for the first time that morning. She had stopped acting. At last. She reached for his hand, her warm fingers curling around his. “I know you care, and I also know how hard that is, given who you are. If you wish to stay away, I understand. But that is hard for me as well. And eventually, it will be even harder for her. To know that she is a ba—a by-blow. A scandal waiting in the wings.”
Mark winced, then kissed her cheek. “I will consider it.”
“That is all I ask.”
He suddenly felt the need to be out—in the air, in the fog. Out. Mark left Stella’s bedchamber and trotted down the stairs, pausing in the narrow entry hall to pick his top hat off the hall table. As he settled it on his head, he noticed a crack in the wallpaper, barely visible in the light of the candle Stella’s maid had left burning for him. He scowled, then picked up the candle, holding it high, as he looked about. Lots of cracks, and a deep yellowing he had never noticed before. Not that he had spent all that much time in the house since he had purchased it four years ago, just before she became pregnant, nor had he been in it during the daytime hours. Glancing up, he saw water stains on the ceiling and a distinct separation of the crown molding from the wall.
He set the candle down with a shake of his head. The house had been pristine when he had purchased it, but obviously Stella had not maintained it, nor had she brought issues with the house to his notice. Of course, she mostly used three of the eighteen rooms in the house—her bedchamber, the kitchen, andher maid’s room. Stella did not entertain guests at the house and mostly took her meals out at restaurants and parties.
Mark snuffed out the candle, closed the door behind him, and descended the front steps with a syncopated trot, his mind still on the house. Stella was an accomplished and popular actress, but when they had met, she had occupied a rat hole of a bedsit in Convent Garden. Despite her income, she preferred to save the money, and a good portion of it went to pay for the doctors who cared for her mother, ill at the time with recurring bouts of pleurisy. Both qualities had attracted Mark to Stella, and their association had benefited them both. She now had a reliable protector, a secure roof over her head, and he had a regular—and safe—place to satisfy his physical needs, as well as his less than traditional desires.
Neither of them had expected a daughter. They had taken all the expected precautions to prevent such an occurrence, but it had happened, and neither had a doubt that he was the girl’s father. Olivia’s dark, wavy hair, her long, narrow nose, and her wide-set, deep-blue eyes matched his own features—not her mother’s fair hair, brown eyes, and pale skin. Olivia also looked enough like his younger brothers that she might have been an offspring of his parents. She even toddled as they had, with a giggle that would have been recognizable at Embleton House.
He knew those last two qualities because—despite that he had kept it from Stella—Mark had often stood outside the house in Whitehall where Rose Ashley, now reportedly recovered, resided with the first-born grandchild of the Duchess of Embleton. Two extraordinary facts he hoped to keep forever hidden from the women in his life.
Secrets. Did not every man have his share?
*
Saturday, 16 July 1814
Sculthorpe Manor, Berkeley Square, London
Ten of seven in the morning
Why was hestill here?
Judith Amelia Lovelace, Lady Sculthorpe, a widow of two years and a dowager countess for six months, had stirred and stretched, luxuriating in the soft downy covers of her bed. Then she had rolled onto her side and been startled by the presence of the blond curls and bare shoulders of Lord Peregrine Gower.
Damn it, Perry . . .
Thin streams of early morning sun streaked through gaps in the window curtains, illuminating her bedchamber and casting odd shadows and dancing streams of sunlight over the burgundy linens and cherry-wood furnishings. Not Judith’s preferred taste in décor—far too dark—but she had become accustomed to them over the past two years. She had gladly surrendered her original suite of rooms with its rose, cream, and oak accouterments—also not to her initial liking—when her stepson became the earl.
In fact, little of the décor in Sculthorpe Manor had been chosen or arranged to Judith’s desires, something she had acquiesced to more than two decades ago. That had been the provenance of her former mother-in-law, and as the second wife of a second son, Judith had no voice in the way the household functioned... at least until her husband had unexpectedly found himself the earl. Now her older stepson held the title as well as his father’s bedchambers. And Judith had moved her life from the countess’s rooms down the hall to this smaller but adequate suite of rooms. After all, the bedchamber of her previous suite adjoined the earl’s and living adjacent to his stepmother had not been Edmund’s preferred arrangement, even prior to his marriage.
Nor hers.
Judith still smiled at the memory of his broaching the subject to her. His father, the fifth Earl Sculthorpe—herEdmund—had been dead and buried less than a week, and her stepson’s awkwardness about taking over his father’s title and rooms had been charming and sweet. But Judith knew all too well how these things worked. While not his mother—Edmund’s mother had died in childbirth with Daniel, her second child—Judith had been the only mother her stepsons had known. Her husband had wed the seventeen-year-old Judith for his second wife just before Edmund turned four. Now at a mere four and twenty, the newest earl headed a major aristocratic household consisting of his bride Margaret and his brother Daniel, as well as Judith and her three sons, his half-brothers. Although none of them had seen Daniel in months, he remained Edmund’s responsibility.
Quite a handful. But Edmund had done well. So far. Although she had changed bedchambers, Judith had remained countess until Edmund’s marriage to the lovely Margaret six months ago, and Judith tried not to interfere, offering advice only when asked. Judith herself had become the countess at twenty, and she had managed the Sculthorpe properties, including this house, for eighteen years. Passing those responsibilities on to Margaret and staying out of the way had not been easy but was the proper thing to do.
