When the door shut behind her departure, Lorelei turned back to Ginny. “I should have sent word we were stopping by this morning. I feared you would have turned us down flat.” She lowered her voice with a quick glance to the door. “Honestly, Ginny, I thought bringing Corinne and Nathan to live with Thorne and me was best for the girl. Now I’m not so certain. I do know that Nathan and Corinne need friendly faces. What with all his crawling about, Peg and Bethie spend all their time chasing him down. Not that they mind. But Corinne is quiet as ever. I worry.” Lorelei sighed and dropped a second cube in her cup. “I asked her to accompany me. She declined, of course, but I absolutely insisted.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m glad you came. Irene and Celia were excited to see Nathanial,” she said. “Irene will be quite the mother.”
“Yes, she will.”Unlike Corinne to Nathan. The words hung unsaid in the air.
Corinne was Maudsley’s daughter from a marriage previous to Ginny’s own to the bastard. Lady Hannah Poston. It was believed Hannah had perished in childbirth, but Ginny suspected something far more sinister. How could she not? She’d lived through Maudsley’s hell.
“She hates me.” Ginny’s pained laugh spilled out as raucous and inappropriate as ever. “I mean, I’m her mother now, as ludicrous as it sounds.” An unnerving plight with only a handful of years separating the two of them.
“Nonsense. Corrinne’s just not the talkative type.” Lorelei’s spoon tinkled against the china. “I can hardly fault her. I miss my brother too. Horribly so. But he’s the father of her child.”
Ginny reached over and patted her friend’s knee. “He’ll be found, Lorelei. Just wait and see.” She paused, wondering how to broach this next subject. It was sure to cause a stir. She pulled in a deep breath, setting her cup aside. “Iamglad you stopped by this morning. There’s something I wish to talk to you about. Something I read in theGazettethat’s left me quite disturbed.”
Lorelei’s brows furrowed, and she set down her cup. “What is it, dear?”
Ginny snatched up the newspaper she’d set aside upon Lorelei’s arrival and snapped it open. She pointed to the article in question. “Look at this. Young girls are being kidnapped and sent out of the country. Forced into marriages. Some as young as five years old.” She shuddered, her heart pounding painfully against her ribs.
“Good heavens, Ginny. They wouldn’t dare take children of noble birth. What purpose would it serve?”
“How should I know? But the younger the girls, the more likely and helpless. I can’t imagine anyone getting Irene to kowtow without a fight. They’d have to kill—” Her stomach roiled. “A girl of her age would be much more difficult to convince to conform.”
“But girls of noble birth? That is much too risky.”
“But not impossible. Celia’s five, Lorelei. The thought of something happening to either one of my girls frightens me to the point of insomnia. I can hardly bear to let them out of my sight.”
Lorelei shifted to the settee beside her, wrapping an arm about her shoulders. “Oh, Ginny. Nothing will happen to Irene and Cecilia. Forgive me for saying so, but Maudsley is dead. You and the girls are quite safe now.”
Ginny knew she was right, but every day she woke breathing hard, pulse hammering, plagued with nightmares of finding Irene or Celia missing from their snug beds. “I can hardly make them sleep in their own bedchambers. I know my fears are irrational, but”—she choked back thick emotion—“it could happen. Maudsley had been entrenched in something horrendous. Even dead, I can’t help worrying his deeds will land on our heads. I’m convinced that if I learned what those deeds were, I would be able to sleep better. It’s the not knowing that cripples me. This is my family.” An understatement. She was scared witless. She strived to collect herself. “I’ve been thinking.” She took a leveling breath and rushed on. “If I can’t learn of my late husband’s evil-doings, I’ve come to the realization I must find a way to teach Celia and Irene to protect themselves.” There. She’d said it. Aloud.
Maudsley’s death should have reassured her, but it hadn’t. Even leaving the girls in their governess’s, Miss Lambert’s capable hands the night before, had left Ginny jittery and rushing straight home after the buffet had opened. She’d stormed into the house and dashed up two flights of stairs to the nursery. She was truly paralyzed with fear and desperate for a resolution that would calm her fears before she drove herself stark raving mad. She dabbed at the tears blurring her vision. “How? How can I teach them?”
Corinne slipped back in the parlor, followed by Kipling. “My lady—”
Ginny dashed away her tears. “Yes, Kipling. What is it?”
He cleared his throat. “Lord Maudsley is here.”
Terror gripped Ginny by the throat. She was vaguely aware of Lorelei’s and Corinne’s sharp gasps as black-and-white spots speared her vision. Her corset grew too tight. The air she tried inhaling eluded her as the spots turned to solid black. Her muscles slackened. She couldn’t speak.
“Heavens, Kipling.” Lorelei’s voice broke through Ginny’s fogged brain, her fingers squeezing Ginny’s hard. “Maudsley is dead.”
Yes. Yes. Maudsley is dead.Ginny struggled to gain a hold over the sheer panic that had her in its chokehold. Yet she trembled with violence. It took short, shallow breaths to beat back the reverence to see the deep shade of dark red streaking up her butler’s neck. “Of course, my lady. My apologies, my lady.”
Ginny’s gaze moved to the man standing in the arch.
Slowly Ginny rose, testing the validity of her weight on her legs, blood still rushing her veins, hot and throbbing, threatening to topple her but for her death grip on the chair. She put her free hand to her chest, unable to move from her rooted spot as she attempted to marshal her bearings.
The man was tall and slender with fair hair and piercing eyes of jade. The uncanny resemblance to her late husband took her aback and threatened to send her dropping to the floor in a dead faint. She counted the short breaths to stave off the compulsion. His skin was unnaturally darkened by a sun not common in England.
He entered the morning room, frowning. “I’m the Earl of Maudsley, my lady. I’ve been out of the country.” A small, self-deprecating smile tipped his lips. “I learned of my cousin’s demise some months ago, but I fear it has taken time to arrange passage home. I apologize for the sudden appearance.” His eyes moved over her blue-and-white-striped day frock and narrowed. Only slightly, but she read the disapproval at her lack of widow’s weeds. After all, she was an expert in the art of such reception.
Face flaming, Ginny lowered onto the settee shaking. “Of course. Of course, my lord. Please join us. You must be famished. Kipling, have Mrs. Couch bring in sandwiches for the… the earl.” Ginny couldn’t force his name past her lips.
With a sharp nod, Kipling slipped from the room.
The new earl matched Brock in height but that was all. It was just the shock of seeing one who looked so much like her late husband that had her shifting her gaze. And shuddering outright. “Would you care for tea?”
“I don’t wish to intrude.”
