“Lady Chalfont. Miss Beasley,”but someday I will sayLady Ashthorpeinstead, “and Miss Kirby.”
The marchioness nodded. “Yes. Yes. Very nice,et cetera. But we have very little time to waste. I had hoped we would be beforehand, and we are, but only because Darnley drove like a demon. ”
She wasn’t here to upbraid him. Henry had had a far too inflated sense of himself to think the marchioness would come to inflict a mere scolding. But now the fact that she would rouse herself to leave London only added to his sense of danger.
“What is the urgency?” Henry asked. He remembered the letter from Sir John D’Oyly. “I have the message?—”
“Hastings.”
The marchioness snapped her fingers, and Henry noticed the young man standing by the window for the first time. Good God, where did his aunt find these Adonises to act as her secretaries? This one was of a piece with the one who had brought her letter. Tall and square-jawed, with nary a blemish to be seen. In any other setting, it would have been impossible to ignore him. But, of course, with Lady Chalfont in the room, he served as mere accessory to the marchioness.
The young man produced a document from a satchel.
“Sit, Henry. You need a chair for this.” But the marchioness did not wait for him to sit. ”Your son will be here shortly.”
Henry sat. Charles was, at last, coming. He was going to see his son.
Susannah’s hand gripped his shoulder. Of course, she understood how he would be overcome by equal parts joy and apprehension.
“This will not be a happy reunion, Henry.” The marchioness pointed a finger at Mina. “He comes to take away the little girl.”
Mina climbed into Henry’s lap and hid her face against Henry’s waistcoat.
He held Mina tightly. “Away?” Saltpeter, screams, cannons, blood.
“It was his birthday yesterday. He has reached his majority. The child, by law, is his. The will, Hastings.”
The young man handed the document to Henry, but he would not release Mina and fumbled with it. He could not read it anyway, his eyes were so blurred by smoke.
The marchioness sniffed. “The will has Charles as Hal’s executor. But it was badly done since Charles was only eighteen at the time of his brother’s death. No one had anticipated Hal would die so young, of course, but what is the purpose of a will except to guard against the unexpected?”
Susannah’s hand grasped his shoulder even more tightly, and she said quietly, “He’ll come, and he’ll see how happy Mina is, and he won’t take her away.”
“I heard news of Charles’ return to London and had him pay a call on me yesterday. He is a very rigid young man. Very self-righteous.” The marchioness raised her eyebrows. “Like someone else I know. But he is also very angry. He is absolutely set on the notion that the child does not belong in your care.”
Of course, Charles believed that. What else could he think of his father? The man he had known had been cold, immovable, unloving.
Henry stood abruptly, still holding Mina. “We will away. We’ll hide.” He looked at Susannah.
Her eyes were troubled.
“I vowed I would never run away, and then I did. I could have missed all this. I could have missed you.” She laid her hand on Henry’s arm. “One should never run from. Only run to.”
The marchioness laughed. “I like this girl.”
Susannah turned to her. “I’m not a girl, my lady.”
“Now I like you even more. Very few dare contradict me.” The marchioness leaned forward on her stick. “But you’re wrong. We all have a little bit of girl in us. Even me.”
She thudded her walking stick down on the carpet. “But, yes, you have a great deal of woman in you. I see it in my nephew’s sleepless eyes and the smug look of a man well-pleasured?—”
“The child, Aunt,” Henry said, putting a hand over Mina’s ear.
“Yes, the child. It’s the child I’m thinking of. Do you think I would leave London and all the pressing business of running the country for any other reason? But the child should be in the nursery so I may speak with my accustomed vulgarity.”
Susannah reached out to take Mina from Henry.
“No,” the marchioness said and pointed her walking stick at Susannah. “You will stay. I need another woman to talk sense to. Call for a nursemaid. And—” She snapped her fingers and pointed to the floor. “Let me speak to the child.”
