“There’s almost always blood the first time. There won’t be the next time for you,” he said. “And I spilled my seed outside of you, so you don’t have to worry. We are back at your house now. You should go inside.”
Now? Leave him, leave the carriage?
“But how will I get into the house?” she asked.
He finished buttoning his fall and moved over to sit in the seat facing her. He ran one of his large hands through his hair.
“How do you usually sneak back into the house?” he asked.
For the first time, she felt exposed and pulled her skirts down over her legs and her chemise and her stays back up and put her breasts back into the cups of the stays.
“I don’t,” she said and tried to arrange the torn fabric of her bodice so that it covered her.
“Don’t worry,” he said in his deep, comforting voice, and she looked up at him.
“I won’t.” She smiled. She didn’t want him to worry. She didn’t want to add to his unnamed burdens.
He was digging in the pocket of his waistcoat and pulled out a sovereign. He put it in her hand.
“Give that to your butler and tell him to keep his mouth shut. He’ll let you in and find a way to get you upstairs.”
“But ...” she said. “But Chelsom would see me. Like this.”
“You look beautiful,” he said.
She could feel herself blush but still blundered on. “But I have known Chelsom all my life. He’s known me since I was a baby. He’s not going tonottell my mother.”
He smiled. “You’d be surprised how much silence a sovereign can buy.”
Her unquenched excitement, the late hour, his not understanding her dilemma—suddenly her eyes were brimming with tears.
“Now, Arabella, Arabella,” he said and leaned forward. “You’re a woman. You’re not a little girl. There’s no need for tears.”
And then the coachman outside said, “Lord!” in warning and the carriage door was flung open and there was indeed a very great need for tears.
A Fury had opened the carriage door. And it was her mother. Catherine. Duchess of Middlewich. Lips white. Shaking. She said not a word but lifted her skirts and heaved herself into the carriage and reached and grabbed Arabella’s arm and dragged her out the carriage door and onto the pavement, all in one continuous motion. And as Arabella fell from the carriage, the horses started moving and by the time Arabella had her feet under her, the carriage was halfway down the street and she could see Giles’ arm reaching out and pulling the flapping carriage door shut.
Five
Catherine held Arabella’s arm and her gaze swept over her. Catherine saw her precious child, lips swollen from kissing, hair mussed, dress torn. And then she turned Arabella halfway around and saw the blood on the back of her dress.
Catherine looked at Arabella’s face.
“Please tell me that it is the time for your monthly courses and that is the reason for the blood on your dress.”
Arabella pulled her arm away and put her shoulders back. “It isn’t. Time.”
“Oh. Oh, Arabella.”
And then a hack pulled up, and Catherine’s stomach roiled.
Three men spilled out. Her husband, James Cavendish, the young Duke of Middlewich, was the first man out of the hack, followed by her two sons-in-law, David Vaughan, the blond Viscount Tregaron, and Thomas Drake, the dark-haired Earl Drake.
Catherine swore. There could not be three worse people to witness this scene.
The three had been at their club, drinking and playing cards, and had almost certainly come to the Middlewich town house for one last taste of James’ excellent and illegal Scottish whisky before David headed to his town house where her pregnant stepdaughter Mary was already likely asleep and Thomas went to the former Lovelock family town house where her other stepdaughter Harry was almost certainly wide awake, either poring over mathematical texts or rocking six-month-old baby Hypatia back to sleep with a lullaby consisting solely of six-digit prime numbers.
The three men were not drunk, but they were not entirely sober, either, Catherine could tell. She stood in front of Arabella and started pushing her toward the steps up to the front door of the town house. But she was not quick enough.
