Her room was small in comparison to the boys’ and simply furnished with a bed, a chair, and a small bureau with a washbowl and pitcher, but it was palatial compared to the attic room she occupied at the Skeffingtons’. Better yet, the house was so vast that if she stayed on the third floor, she could easily avoid all sight of the owner and his family. In an effort to keep busy, she washed her hands and face, unpacked her night garments, and went to check on the boys.
Two other governesses were installed at the end of the hall, and as Sherry ushered the boys into the playroom, they appeared there with their own charges, two little boys of perhaps four. After friendly introductions, those governesses insisted on involving the Skeffington children in a game with the little boys, and Sheridan found herself with the last thing she wanted: time on her hands.
Left out of the playful ruckus created by four boys, she wandered around the huge, sunny room, past a large table covered with an entire army of wooden soldiers, then she bent down to pick up two books that had fallen out of the shelves. She put them back, idly picked up an old sketchbook lying atop the bookcase, opened the cover . . . and felt her heart stop. Beneath a childish drawing of what appeared to be a horse grazing in a field—or drinking water from a lake—was a name, awkwardly and painstakingly inscribed: STEPHEN WESTMORELAND.
Sherry slapped the cover closed and swung around, but her carefully erected defenses took another hit—this time a broadside: a few feet away, framed upon a table beside a wooden rocking horse, was a painting of a little boy with his arm slung round the horse’s neck and a grin on his face. The painting had obviously been done by a talented amateur, and the smile on the dark-haired child’s face was impish, rather than boldly caressing, but it was just as irresistible, and just as unmistakably Stephen’s.
“I think I’ll join the game,” Sherry burst out, turning her back on the painting. “What are we playing?” she asked Thomas Skeffington, the seven-year-old, who was already on his way to being seriously overweight.
“We have too many players right now, Miss Bromleigh,” Thomas said. “And the prize is a special sweet, so it wouldn’t be right for you to win it because I want it.”
“No, I do!” the six-year-old whined.
Appalled by their manners, which had actually shown a slight sign of improvement under Sheridan’s care, she sent an apologetic glance at the other two governesses, who answered with smiles of understanding sympathy. “You must be weary,” one of the governesses said to her. “We both arrived yesterday and have the benefit of a night’s sleep. Why don’t you rest for a few minutes before the festivities begin, and we’ll look after these gentlemen?”
Since it was already taking all her self-control to stop herself from opening the sketchbook again or studying the picture of the sturdy dark-haired boy with the heartbreakingly familiar smile, Sheridan took advantage of their offer and practically fled across the hall. Leaving the door open, she walked over to the chair near the bed and sat down while she fiercely concentrated on not thinking about the fact that this was the house where Stephen had grown up. However, three weeks of unabated anxiety and hard work, compounded by the events of the last half hour, had all combined to take their toll, and for the first time in weeks, Sheridan let herself daydream: closing her eyes, she fantasized that the invitation to the Skeffingtons had nothing to do with her, that she would be able to remain on the third floor, undiscovered for three days, and that Stephen Westmoreland was not going to be here.
Julianna’s appearance a short time later not only removed all hope of any such possibilities but also made it obvious that Sheridan was due for more than just periodic humiliation. “Are you resting, or may I come in?” Julianna asked hesitantly, and Sheridan pulled herself from her prayerful fantasy.
“I’d enjoy the company,” Sheridan said truthfully, and then because she couldn’t choke back the words, she added, “Is the Earl of Langford here?”
“No, but he’s expected momentarily, and Mama is up in the boughs with ridiculous notions about making a match between us. I don’t know how I’ll endure this weekend.” Anger flared in her eyes. “Why does she do this to me, Miss Bromleigh? Tell me why her greatest desire in life is to foist me off on the richest man with the biggest title, no matter how old or how ugly or how unpalatable I might find him! Tell me why she behaves like such a—a toadeater when she’s among anyone she regards as her social superior!” Sheridan’s heart went out to her as she watched the seventeen-year-old struggle to keep her shame and anger under control. “You should have seen her in the drawing room a while ago with the Duchess of Claymore and her friends. Mama was so—so pushing—and so eager to win their favor that it was horrid to watch.”
Sheridan couldn’t answer any of those questions without betraying her secret revulsion at the same attitudes Julianna found so abhorrent in her ambitious, cloying mama. “Sometimes,” she said cautiously, “mothers simply desire a better life for their daughters than they themselves have had—”
Scornfully, Julianna retorted, “Mama doesn’t care about my life. My life would be happy if she would leave me to my writing! My life would be happy if she would stop trying to marry me off like I was a—”
“A beautiful princess?” Sheridan provided, and it was partially true. In Lady Skeffington’s mind, Julianna’s face and figure made her a precious asset to be bartered in return for a more elevated place in Society for the rest of the family, and her daughter was sensible enough to know it.
“I wish I were ugly!” Julianna exploded, and she obviously meant it. “I wish I were so ugly no man would look at me. Do you know what my life was like before you came to us? I have spent it all reading books. That’s all the living I’ve ever done. I have never been allowed to go anywhere, because Mama has lived in daily fear that some scandal would attach itself to me and spoil my value on the marriage market! I wish it had happened,” she said wrathfully. “I wish I were ruined, so I could take the little portion Grandmama left to me. I would live in a tiny place in London and have friends. I would go to the opera and the theatre and write my novel. Freedom,” she said softly, wistfully. “Friends. You are my first friend, Miss Bromleigh. You are the first female anywhere close to my age that Mama has ever let me be near. She does not approve, you see, of the modern behavior of females my own age. She thinks they are fast, and if I were to socialize with them—”
Sheridan felt absolutely called upon to at least show she understood. “Then your reputation might suffer,” she provided, “and you would be—”
“Ruined!” exclaimed Julianna, but she sounded positively jubilant about the prospect. Her eyes lit with the irrepressible humor and spirit Lady Skeffington was trying so hard to suffocate as she leaned forward and confided in a comic whisper, “Ruined, Rendered unmarriageable . . . Doesn’t it sound divine?”
In Julianna’s specific circumstances, it did sound like a permanent reprieve, but as Sheridan knew, Julianna had no real idea of the ramifications of such a thing. “No, it doesn’t,” she said firmly, but she smiled.
“Miss Bromleigh, do you believe in love? I mean, love between a man and a woman, of the sort one reads about in novels? I don’t.”
“I—” Sheridan hesitated, remembering the exhilaration she’d felt when Stephen walked into a room, the delight that came from talking with him or laughing with him. And she remembered most of all the odd sense of rightness she’d experienced when she believed he derived intense pleasure from kissing her. For a while, she had felt as if she were playing her part in the natural order of things. She had felt . . . complete . . . because she pleased him. Or because she stupidly thought she pleased him. Realizing that Julianna was suddenly watching her too closely, she said, “I used to believe in love.”
“And?”
“And it can be very painful when it is one-sided,” she confessed and then was astonished her guard had dropped so far, merely by allowing herself to think of a kiss.
“I see,” Julianna said, her violet eyes too w
ise for her age, too knowing. She was, in Sheridan’s opinion, a talented writer and extraordinarily observant.
“I don’t think you do,” Sheridan lied with a bright smile.
Julianna proved otherwise with blunt simplicity. “When you first came to stay with us, I sensed . . . a deep hurt in you. And courage, and determination. I won’t ask you if it was unrequited love, though I feel certain it was, but may I ask you something else?”
It was on the tip of Sheridan’s tongue to sternly point out the wrongness of prying into another person’s life, but Julianna was so lonely, and so appealing, and so sympathetic, that she didn’t have the heart to do it. “Only if what you ask is something that will not make me feel uncomfortable,” Sheridan said instead.
“How do you manage to seem so serene?”
Sheridan felt anything but serene at the moment, and she attempted a joke, but her laugh was strained. “I’m a paragon, obviously. Courageous—determined. Now, talk to me about more important things. What are the plans for the weekend, do you know?”
Julianna reacted with an admiring smile when Sheridan adroitly switched the topic away from herself, but she complied by answering the question. “It’s to be a weekend spent outdoors, including meals, which seems quite odd, I thought. In any case, the children and their governesses will be seated at tables next to us—I know that part because I went out onto the lawn for a stroll before I came up here and saw how everything is being set up.” She had leaned down to remove a pebble from her slipper and so missed the look of dawning horror and hostility on Sheridan’s face. “Oh, and you are to play the guitar and sing with the boys—”
Instead of being stricken, Sheridan was slowly standing up, propelled to her feet by a boiling wrath beyond anything she’d ever known. Based on what Julianna had said, it was obvious that the entire party had been deliberately organized in a way that would keep Sheridan constantly in view. The guests were limited to those couples whom Sheridan had known the best. They were also close friends of the Westmorelands, which meant they could be relied upon to relish humiliating Stephen’s former-fiancée-turned-governess, but not to repeat anything they saw to the London gossips because that would embarrass the earl. She was not even going to be allowed to dine in peace. Far more infuriating, she was supposed to perform like a court jester for their amusement. “Those monsters!” she exploded, her voice hissing.
Julianna looked up as she put her slipper on. “The boys? They are across the hall.”
“Not those monsters,” Sheridan said unthinkingly. “The adult monsters! Did you say they were in the drawing room earlier?”
Oblivious to Julianna’s open-mouthed stare, the woman she’d just praised for her serenity marched forward with a militant look in her eye that would have given Napoleon Bonaparte second thoughts. Sheridan knew she was going to lose her position over what she was about to do, but then the Skeffingtons would dismiss her anyway after this weekend. Lady Skeffington was ambitious and sly, and it wouldn’t take her more than an hour to realize that her children’s governess was an object of scorn, in addition to being the focal point of the occasion. Lady Skeffington was perfectly willing to sacrifice her only daughter in hopes of being included in the Westmorelands’ social circle. She wouldn’t hesitate one minute to send Sheridan packing if she sensed the Westmorelands had a low opinion of her.
None of that mattered to Sheridan as she marched down the long staircase. She would sooner starve than let these haughty British aristocrats torture her out of some sick, distorted need for vengeance.
49
Blind to everything but her intention, Sheridan located the drawing room with the help of a footman, and there she confronted yet another servant who was stationed in front of the drawing room’s closed door.
“I wish to see the Duchess of Claymore at once,” she informed him, fully expecting to be informed that was impossible—and fully prepared to force her way inside if necessary. “My name is Sheridan Bromleigh.”
To her shock, the footman bowed at once and said, as he opened the door, “Her grace has been expecting you.”
That announcement removed for Sheridan any question that this party might have been organized for some purpose other than to punish her. “I’ll wager she has been!” Sheridan said scornfully. Feminine laughter stopped and conversations broke off the instant she swept into the immense room. Ignoring Victoria Seaton and Alexandra Townsende, Sherry walked past the dowager duchess and Miss Charity without a nod and confronted the Duchess of Claymore.
Her eyes blazing, she looked down her nose at the composed brunette she had once thought of as a sister, and her voice shook with the violence of her outrage. “Are you so poor of entertainment that torturing a servant titillates you?” she demanded scathingly, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “How much amusement did you honestly expect me to provide for you, besides playing and singing? Did you hope I would dance for you as well? Why isn’t Stephen here yet? He must be as eager as you to see it all begin.” Her voice shook with wrath as she finished, “You have all wasted your time, because I am leaving! Do you understand? You have put the Skeffingtons to an expense they can ill afford and dragged them here with their hopes all built up, when all you wanted was vengeance on me! What sort of—of monsters are you, anyway? And don’t you dare to pretend you haven’t planned this entire weekend for the simple purpose of dragging me here!”
Whitney had expected this visit from Sheridan, but she hadn’t expected it to begin with the angry aggression of a duel. Instead of gently explaining what she hoped to accomplish, as Whitney had intended to do, she entered the verbal swordplay with a thrust aimed straight at Sheridan Bromleigh’s heart: “For some reason,” she announced coolly, with a challenging lift of her brows, “I rather thought you might appreciate our efforts to bring you into Stephen’s sphere.”
“I have no desire to be in any such place,” Sheridan fired back.
“Is that why you go to the opera every Thursday?”
“Anyone can go to the opera.”
“You don’t watch the performance. You watch Stephen.”
Sheridan paled. “Does he know? Oh, please, do not say you’ve told him. Why would you be that cruel?”
“Why,” Whitney said very, very carefully, sensing that she was a hair’s breadth from finally hearing the truth about Sheridan’s disappearance and that if she made one mistake, she wouldn’t, “would it be a cruelty if he knew you went there to see him?”
“Does he know?” Sheridan countered stubbornly, and Whitney bit her lip to hide an admiring smile at the other woman’s spirit. Sheridan Bromleigh might be a servant in a roomful of nobility, but she bowed to no one. On the other hand, her caution and spirit were creating a standoff. Whitney drew a breath, hating to resort to blackmail, but she did it anyway and without compunction. “He does not know, but he will know if you cannot make me understand why you go to the opera to look at him, after jilting him at the altar.”
“You have no right to ask me that.”
“I have every right.”
“Who do you think you are?” Sheridan exploded. “The Queen of England?”
“I think I am the woman who appeared for your wedding. I think you are the woman who did not appear for it.”
“For that, I would have expected you to thank me!”
“Thank you?” Whitney uttered, looking as stunned as she felt. “For what?”
“Why are you asking me all this! Why are we caviling over trifles?”
Whitney studied her manicure. “I do not consider my brother-in-law’s heart and life a trifle. Perhaps that is where we differ?”
“I liked you much better when I didn’t know who I was,” Sheridan said in a voice so bewildered that it would have been comic in another context. She looked around the room as if she needed confirmation that the furnishings were firmly anchored to the floor and that the draperies hadn’t become bed linens. “You didn’t seem quite so . . . difficult and unreasonable. After Monsie
ur DuVille explained to me the day of the wedding why Stephen had suddenly decided to marry me, I did the only thing I possibly could. Poor Mr. Lancaster . . . dying without Charise there.”
Mentally, Whitney consigned Nicki DuVille to perdition for his inadvertent part in this debacle, but she kept her mind focused on their plan.
“May I leave now?” Sheridan said stonily.
“Certainly,” Whitney said as Victoria and Miss Charity looked at her in shock. “Miss Bromleigh,” Whitney added as Sheridan reached for the door, but her voice was gentle now, “I believe my brother-in-law was in love with you.”
“Don’t tell me that!” Sherry exploded, her hand clenching the door handle, her back to them. “Don’t do this to me. He never pretended to love me, never even bothered to lie about it when we discussed marriage.”
“Perhaps he didn’t acknowledge the feeling by name, even to himself, perhaps he still does not, but he has not been the same man since you left.”
Sherry felt unbalanced by the explosion of hope and fear, of denial and joy, inside her brain. “Do not lie to me, for the love of God.”
“Sherry?”
Sherry turned at the soft sound in her voice.
“On your wedding day, Stephen wouldn’t believe you weren’t coming back. Even after Miss Lancaster poured all her venom, he didn’t believe her. He waited for you to come back and explain.”
Sherry thought her heart would break and that was before the duchess added, “He kept the cleric there until late that night. He wouldn’t let him leave. Does that sound like a man who didn’t want you? Does that sound like a man who was only marrying you out of guilt and responsibility? Since he knew by then you weren’t Charise Lancaster, why would he have felt any guilt or responsibility to you? Your head injury was healed and your memory was returned.”
Sherry felt shattered at the thought of what she might have had . . . and what she had lost.