Celeste didn’t know how she and Throckmorton looked together; she only knew how the guests gazed at them. Speculatively. Surely they didn’t think . . . but it didn’t matter what they thought. They would discover the truth soon enough. In the meantime she would see Ellery.
Ellery, whom she really truly loved. Ellery, who she had declared she would marry. And Throckmorton’s reaction had been . . . underwhelming. She’d been braced for a fight, and he had just shrugged and agreed. She should be experiencing jubilation. Instead, she felt wary. Uncertain. A bit deflated.
Throckmorton had taken the news so well, and she couldn’t help but wonder . . . why?
They traversed the passageways, climbed the stairs, and came at last to the door at the end of a broad corridor.
Throckmorton nodded to her.
She knocked and called, “Ellery, it’s me, Celeste!”
At first she heard nothing. Then the knob slowly turned, and the door creaked open no more than two inches.
“Celeste?” Ellery’s voice sounded earnest, manly. “Darling, is that you?”
She pressed her hands to the wood. “Ellery, I came to see you.”
“Not while I look like this.”
For some reason, she glanced at Throckmorton. He stood still and quiet, his face totally without expression. But his eyebrows must have been expressing an opinion again, for she sensed censure. Very well; Ellery was vain. But at least he had something to be vain about. She spoke to the door. “I don’t care what you look like.”
“The splotches are getting better. Soon I’ll be able to see you again.” He hesitated. “My hair may be cut in a new and original coiffure . . .”
“I don’t mind.” She didn’t mention that Throckmorton had told her why.
“And I’ve developed a limp.”
“I just want to see you.” She dared not admit it aloud, but she wanted rescue from the constantly hovering presence of Ellery’s brother.
“Throckmorton, are you there?” Ellery asked.
“I’m here.” Throckmorton sounded reassuring.
“You’re taking care of Celeste as you promised?”
“I am.”
“There you go, Celeste,” Ellery crooned. “Throckmorton has promised to care for you as you deserve, and Throckmorton always keeps his promises. You do what he tells you and go where he says. I vow you’ll be safe with him.”
Throckmorton touched her arm and indicated they should leave.
She pressed her hands harder on the door, feeling the weight of Ellery against the paneling, wanting to feel the reality of Ellery beneath her palms. “I wish . . .”
“I wish, too, darling,” Ellery said. “Go with Throckmorton, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Throckmorton put his arm around her waist and drew her away.
She wanted to refuse to go, but how foolish. To demand to be allowed to stay and talk to a door. To insist that Ellery, obviously unwilling, continue to communicate with her when he would rather soak in an oatmeal bath or sit with his injured leg up.
“Farewell.” Her voice failed in a most distressing manner.
“Farewell, my darling. Have a care for yourself.” Ellery sounded warm and sincere, but the door clicked firmly and he was gone.
She stumbled on the carpet runner in the corridor.
Throckmorton supported her with his hand under her arm. “You heard Ellery. You must have a care for yourself. It wouldn’t do to get hurt.”
“No.” She felt cross and out of place. Nothing was going as it should. She felt at odds with herself, not sure if she belonged in the garden, the drawing room or the schoolroom. She knew where her father would say she belonged. She knew where she insisted she belonged.
She glanced sideways at the man who held her arm.
But what would Throckmorton say? He was a mystery to her; apparently an ally, yet . . . yet he wasn’t the man she remembered. The man she remembered had used the force of his personality to make her attend the Governess School. He had insisted she would adjust, that the experience would be good for her, and assured her if she didn’t like it after the training was done, he would personally come to escort her back to Blythe Hall.
Of course, he’d been right. She had loved London, loved being part of a crowd of girls just like herself, and loved adventure.
But now . . . well, now she was home and feeling out of place.
What should she do? How could she find herself?
They neared the landing where the grand stairway descended and the smaller stairway rose toward the third floor. It was there she discovered her answer. She announced, “It’s time for me to meet the children.”
This time Throckmorton stumbled. “The children?”
“My charges. That is why I came to visit you this morning.”
“So it is.” He hesitated. “Yet I wish you to prepare for the garden tea.”
“The garden tea isn’t for another four hours.”
Taking her arm, he guided her toward the ground floor. “Listening to you talk to Ellery, it reminded me again of the importance of a good impression at the garden tea. Take whatever maids you wish to help you ready yourself.”
She looked back at the staircase. “But the children!”
“It would be better if we don’t introduce you just yet. Not until we discover what your true role will be.”
“But—”
“I can’t lie to you. The tea today may be difficult, filled with the pitfalls society creates to distinguish those who belong with those who don’t. When you appear today, I want you to be rested, freshened, bathed and fed.” At the corridor leading to her bedchamber, he bowed. “Your beauty, of course, accompanies you everywhere.”
He left her standing there, staring after him, unhappy and confused.
What oddness had gotten into usually urbane Mr. Throckmorton? Why didn’t he let her meet the children?
“Father, do you think Throckmorton is deranged?”
Milford looked up from his planting to see his daughter, the light of his life, standing beside him with a fancy tray and an anxious expression.
So. It had started already.
“I brought you your dinner,” she added.
“Thank ye, daughter.” He placed the trowel to the right of the azalea—he always placed it there, for trowels had a way of disappearing—stripped his gloves from his hands, then stood and stretched the kinks out of his back. He was probably too old to be doing the shovel and weed work, but he liked to get his hands in the Suffolk rich peat. He knew Celeste understood.
Ah, she understood a lot of things about him. How he’d mourned her mother. How he worried about her. What she didn’t understand was herself and her place in the world, and his heart ached when he thought of how hard she would fall when all was said and done. But no one knew better than him that a young person had to learn their lessons on their own.
“Deranged, is it?” He accepted the tray. “Throckmorton, is it?”
“He told me to call him that,” she said defensively.
“No, I mean . . . thought you’d be talking about Mr. Ellery.”
“Oh.” Celeste twitched at her skirts. “Mr. Ellery has a rash from strawberries.”
“Does he?” Seating himself on the stone bench under the willow tree’s drooping branches, Milford looked at the tray in his hands. Esther had sent him a round of bread, slices of Stilton cheese, dried apples baked in a pie, a crock of ale. Apparently the cook hadn’t had time to send out her usual elaborately arranged supper, with its sliced bread and carved furbelows of cheese. Maybe the job was getting to be too much for her. “A silly sort of complaint.”
“He’s itching!”
“Bet he won’t let anyone see him, hm?” Milford nodded at her betraying huff. “Got a bit of conceit, does our Mr. Ellery.”
“With reason.”
The sunshine flickered through the leaves and onto Celeste as she stood there looking so much like her mother Milford cleared a catch in his throat. ?
??Sit with me. Share my tray.”
She sat with a flounce of her skirts.
Aye, she acted like her mother, too. All female and indignation while a man had no idea what he’d done. Tearing off a chunk of bread, he offered it to her.
Taking it, she nibbled on the end. “I thought you’d be helping arrange the garden.” She gestured across the lawn and toward the knoll where dozens of maids and footmen could be seen scrambling to prepare for the tea.
“Done my part. Flowers are in full glory.” He didn’t have to look to see the zigzag of hedges, walks and walls that led up to the top of the hill. There, sometime in the last century, some fool with too much time and money had built a castle. Oh, not a real castle. Not even a useable building. It had been constructed to look like a ruin. The rich folks called that kind of castle a gothic trifle, and just thinking about it made Milford want to snort.
But seeing that it served as the centerpiece of the garden, he did what he could with it. Ivy grew over the stones. Here and there he’d planted a few wild roses to climb and provide color in spring, and yellow honeysuckle to give off a sweet scent. The rich folks liked it, climbing the steps and sitting on the benches to take in the prospect of the gardens all about and the countryside beyond.
It was the gardens below that made Milford’s heart swell with sinful pride. Each little walled garden bloomed with a profusion of scents and colors. Each walk was a pleasure, with oaks to provide shade and plants to please the eye and nose. And in the large central garden where even now the workers set up tables . . . why, there his gift for placing the flowers where they could reach for the sun or snuggle into the earth truly shone. Aye, the rich folks would be all over his garden today, the men stomping about with their big cloddish feet, the women shredding the blossoms with swipes of their wide skirts. They would exclaim at the splendor, and that was what he lived for.
He took a bite and admitted it was as excellent as ever. Esther fixed a fine loaf, dark and dense, just the way he liked it. She knew it, too. That was the problem with that woman. She knew her worth all too well. No need for a man to praise a woman like that. Not with her always praising herself.
There was some who would say she was a fine figure of a woman: about his age, tall, raw-boned, with a generous flesh spread about in pleasing proportions. Her hair was red peppered with gray, and her hands showed the results of years of labor in a kitchen. She wasn’t pretty; no, he’d have to argue with anyone who said she was. But when she smiled, she could make a man forget those features and want to bask in her gladness. Too bad she smiled so seldom at him.
He chewed slowly, swallowed, and decided he didn’t care. Celeste’s hand sneaked across to take a slice of cheese, and his mind returned to her opening question. “I think Mr. Throckmorton’s as sharp a man as they come. What makes ye think him deranged?”
“Lots of things.” Her fingers threaded together. “He danced with me last night.”
Milford looked at her sideways. “Ye’re a pretty girl.”
“Does he usually dance with pretty girls?”
“Usually talks business night and day.”
She nodded. “There you have it. He spoke to me of dancing and Paris. He took me on a tour of the house.”
“Wanted ye away from that party and Mr. Ellery.”
“No, he did it because of the rash, and because Ellery asked him to.”
Milford nodded again. “That’s what I said.”
“So you think he somehow gave Ellery that rash? That’s what I thought, too.” She swallowed.
He wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know how. He’d already told her what he thought of this plan to catch Mr. Ellery. She’d heard him. She wouldn’t want to hear it again, but he supposed that was why she was here now. To hear more sense from him. Different sense.
“I was supposed to meet the children this morning,” she said.
“Ye are the governess.”
“Instead, Throckmorton decided I should spend the time getting ready for the garden tea.”
Good ale. Esther couldn’t lay claim to making the ale, and he’d wager that got her goat. “Ah, what are ye doing for the garden tea?”
“Oh.” Celeste arranged her skirts again. “He invited me.”
Milford stopped eating. “He? Mr. Throckmorton? He invited ye?”
“So you see, Papa, it’s not so unlikely as you think, that I should dance and eat and be with Ellery.” She smiled at him saucily.
But he saw the uncertainty beneath her smile. “Mr. Ellery going to be there?”
Her face drooped.
Milford ate a bite of the pie. Apparently the rush in the kitchen hadn’t disturbed Esther’s hand with the crust. He hated to admit it, but she made the flakiest he’d ever eaten. Too bad her tongue was so sharp, and she was always honing it on him.
Celeste gazed out over the gardens. “Throckmorton seems much more pleasant than I remember.”
Milford paused, his hand halfway to his mouth. “Mr. Throckmorton?”
“He seems lonely, too, and rather wistful.”
“The elder brother?” Milford clarified.
“The only reason I can propose that he didn’t want to introduce me to the children this morning is just what he said—that he is so concerned that I make a good impression at the tea, he wants me to take my time getting ready.”
Milford tried to interrupt, and never had his slow speech served him so poorly.
In full flight, she continued. “It’s rather delightful, when you think about it, although not a bit flattering. I’m able to get ready in less than an hour. All I have to do is change gowns. In the meantime, I shall go meet the children on my own. He shall see what an efficient woman can accomplish.”
By the time Milford managed to form a protest, Celeste had kissed him on the cheek and hurried toward the house.
Shaking his head, he wished he could bear the pain he saw looming in her future. But there was no cure for it. She had hard truths to learn, and he couldn’t learn them for her.
10
“By George, Throckmorton, there’s that comely young woman with whom you’ve taken to traversing the corridors, and she’s holding two moppets by the hand.”
Colonel Halton’s comment pulled Throckmorton out of his enthusiastic discussion of the potential for aluminum in paint and jewelry—he owned part of the refinery—and right back to the garden where his mother’s tea was taking place. The gravel on the walk crunched beneath his feet as he turned to see Celeste, framed in the arbor flagrant with white climbing roses—and as far away from him as it was possible to be in the sprawling main garden.
She held Penelope and Kiki by their hands.
By Jove. Not four hours before, he’d given instructions . . .
“The children are . . . yours?” Lord Ruskin asked.
Throckmorton ignored the implied query. He had instructed the servants that Miss Celeste was to get ready for the tea. Nothing else, he’d said. The garden tea must take priority. The servants had glowed when he’d given his commands, imagining that he supported Celeste’s foolish scheme to marry Ellery. He’d even felt guilt about raising himself in their eyes when he meant to trip her up.
But those servants believed Celeste could do no wrong. None of them would think anything of her taking the children to the garden tea.
Well. She’d done the children no harm, so perhaps she wasn’t a spy.
Instead, she had brought Ellery’s illegitimate child to the garden tea to parade before the ton in an obvious attempt to ruin his betrothal.
Throckmorton would not allow that to happen.
Turning back to the gentlemen, he smiled the kind of smile that frightened his servants. “Excuse me.” Although it gave him a chill to do it, he clapped his hovering secretary on the shoulder. “Stanhope can fill you in on the other wonders of aluminum, and my ideas to expand the plant.”
Stanhope bowed to the assembled gentlemen. He handled situations like this with aplomb, blending in with t
he lords of high society as well as the London businessmen with whom Throckmorton dealt. A great many people—oh, admit the truth—all people enjoyed Stanhope’s company more than Throckmorton’s.
People were a lot of silly cows.
Looking at that familiar, friendly face, Throckmorton could scarcely believe Stanhope was capable of any misdeed, much less . . . no, it didn’t seem possible. “Stanhope is my right hand. Ask him anything you wish.” Sketching the briefest of bows, Throckmorton threaded his way along the paths and through the chatting guests toward Celeste. He really must turn her back before too many people saw the children.
Too late. The youthful Viscount Blackthorne stepped into Celeste’s path. Celeste dimpled and curtsied. She leaned down and spoke to the children.
They curtsied obediently, Kiki with a flourish that showed off her beruffled purple gown, Penelope neatly and efficiently.
The arrival of an illegitimate child did not require an announcement, so most of the guests must wonder about Kiki’s identity. What was Celeste saying about the child?
He glanced toward Lord and Lady Longshaw and Hyacinth. They stood staring at Celeste and the children. Now was no time for them to discover Kiki’s existence, not when they were feeling uncertain about Ellery’s affections.
Unfortunately, everyone would speculate about both the children and the reason for their appearance. Children did not come to the garden tea. Tea was an adult activity, filled with adult conversation and adult cuisine.
He glanced toward his mother for help, but she sat in the midst of her cronies with her back to him.
Celeste and the children took a few steps, Lord Blackthorne speaking animatedly to them.
The twice-widowed Earl of Arrowood leaped like a gazelle across a low hedge to place himself in Celeste’s path. The appropriate courtesies were exchanged. Kiki did a little dance of impatience, tugging at Celeste’s hand. Penelope stood quietly, her practical dark blue gown and plain pinafore a reproach to all the gauze and lace of the assemblage.
The little group moved forward, Lord Arrowood now also trailing in Celeste’s wake. With Celeste’s beauty, her accent, her open smile, of course she would attract the gentlemen, especially in such an informal setting where they could take the liberty of introducing themselves.