as far back as she could remember. And then she had been excited. Her teeth had chattered and her hands had shaken and her mind had whirled at dizzying speed as she had packed her few belongings into a valise she had had to borrow from Miss Phillpotts.
Now, after hours of travel, the luxury of a well-sprung, lavishly upholstered carriage was no longer able to mask the discomfort of the near silence that existed among its three occupants. An unnatural, uncomfortable silence. Deborah was sullen and unhappy. Jane did not blame her when she had discovered only this morning that her parents had gone away for Christmas and left her behind. But she feared that part of the sullenness was caused by the fact that she had been appointed the girl’s companion. Craggs, the teacher who was not really a lady.
The viscount was merely silent. Jane doubted that he felt uncomfortable.
But she did. Dreadfully so. She had had no experience with maleness.
Viscount Buckley seemed suffocatingly male to her. He was dark, not much taller than she, elegant. She imagined he was handsome by any standards.
She really had not seen many men. He seemed to her more handsome than any man she could possibly imagine. And very male.
She was uncomfortable and terrified.
“We are almost there,” he said, turning his head and looking at Deborah.
“You will feel better after a cup of tea.”
“I will not feel better,” his niece said sullenly. “I hate Christmas.
And I hate Mama and Papa.”
Jane looked at the girl. She wanted to take her hand and tell her that at least she had an uncle willing to take her in. At least she had someone to whom she belonged and somewhere to go. But such an assurance would not console, she supposed.
“If it is any consolation,” the girl’s uncle said, “they are not exactly my favorite people at this moment either, Deborah.”
“Meaning that you do not want to be burdened with me, I suppose,” the girl said, misery overlaying the sullenness. “Everyone knows you do not believe in Christmas, Uncle Warren.”
“Well,” he said with a sigh, “I shall have to see what I can do to exert myself on your behalf this year, Deborah. Ah, the house. It is always a relief to see it at the end of a long journey.”
Jane did not hear the rest of the conversation if, indeed, there was more. She had seen the house. Built within the last century, it had a classical symmetry of line combined with a deceptive simplicity of design. Built of light gray stone, it was rectangular in shape, three stories high, with a domed central portion and a pillared portico with wide marble steps leading up to double doors. It was larger and more magnificent than the house of her dream. And there was no snow, only bare trees and flower beds and grass of faded green. But it was all like enough to the dream house to catch at her breathing.
This was Cosway? This was where she was to spend the holiday?
She was aware suddenly that she had leaned forward and was gazing rather intently through the window. She was aware of the silence of her two companions. She turned her head and met the viscount’s dark eyes. She sat back in her seat again and retreated within herself, into that secret place far inside where it never mattered that no one noticed her or respected her or loved her. A secret place she had discovered as a very young child.
“You admire my home, Miss Craggs?” the viscount asked her.
“Yes, my lord,” she said. She felt the uncharacteristic urge to babble, to enthuse. She curbed it. “It is very beautiful.”
“I think so, too,” he said.
She felt his eyes on her for a few moments longer. She kept her own eyes firmly on the hands she had clasped in her lap. And then the carriage lurched slightly as it stopped, and the door was being opened and the steps set down. She felt excitement ball in her stomach again.
Was this really happening? To her?
Always as he drove up to the house, and more especially when he stepped inside the great domed hall, he wondered why he did not spend more of his time here. There was always a special feeling of homecoming when returning to Cosway. He loved the hall, especially in the winter, when the log fires in the great twin fireplaces at opposite sides gave welcome and the illusion of warmth. The hall was too large and too high, of course, ever to be really warm in reality.
“Ah, Kemp,” he said to his butler, rubbing his hands together as a footman took his hat and his gloves and waited for him to remove his greatcoat. “It is good to be home. I have brought my niece with me, as you see, and her companion, Miss Craggs. You will see that Mrs. Dexter assigns rooms to them? And that their bags are taken up? We will have tea served in the drawing room immediately.”
Kemp cleared his throat. “There was a, ah, delivery for you earlier this afternoon, m‘lord,” he said, nodding his head significantly to one side.
“I did not know quite what to do with it but knew you would be arriving yourself before the afternoon was out.”
The viscount turned his head toward one of the fireplaces. Beside it, seated on a wooden settle, quite upright and quite still, sat a small child so bundled up inside a large coat and woolen scarf and mittens and so hidden beneath an absurdly large hat that she looked more like a bundle of abandoned laundry than a living child. To the left side of her chest was pinned a square sheet of paper.
“She would not, ah, remove her gloves or her hat, m’lord, or allow either Mrs. Dexter or myself to remove the label,” the butler said. “The name on the label is Miss Veronica Weston, m’lord, care of yourself and this house.”
Veronica Weston. Oh, good Lord. Viscount Buckley crossed the hall, his booted feet echoing on the marble tiles, and stopped a few feet in front of the child, who looked up at him with eyes that he supposed were very like his own.
He had never seen her before. He had known of her existence since before her birth and had never tried to deny paternity or to shirk the responsibility of providing for her financially. But he and Nancy had parted company before she discovered the pregnancy, and she had moved on to another protector soon after the birth. He himself had never felt any particular human interest in his daughter.
“Veronica?” he asked.
“Yes.” She was looking very directly into his eyes. “Are you my papa? I am not to speak to anyone except my papa.”
Papa! He had never thought of himself by any such name. He was a father.
He had a daughter. He had never been a papa.
“This name is mine.” He touched one finger lightly to the label she wore on her chest. “You may speak to me. Your mama sent you here?”
“Mama went away,” the child said. “Mrs. Armstrong said I was to come to my papa.”
“Mrs. Armstrong?” He raised his eyebrows.
“She looks after me,” the child said. “But Mama went away and Mrs.
Armstrong said there was no money. I was to come to my papa.”
The label was thick. He guessed that there was a letter sealed up within it. Nancy had never neglected the child despite the demands of an acting career. Aubrey had assured him of that. But she had gone away? She had tired of the child?
“Do you have a letter for me, Veronica?” he asked, holding out one hand.
He was only just beginning to realize what a coil he was in now. As if things were not bad enough as they were.
The child looked down and laboriously unpinned the label from her coat.
She handed it to him. Sure enough, there was a letter. Nancy had been out of town for a weekend party, leaving her daughter with Mrs.
Armstrong, a neighbor who frequently cared for the child. Nancy had fallen from an upper gallery in the house she was visiting to the hall below and had died instantly. Mrs. Armstrong, with six children of her own, could not afford to keep the child when there was no chance of payment. She respectfully sent her to her father. She had been to the expense of hiring someone to write the letter for her and of sending the child on the stagecoach. She hoped she would be reimbursed for her pains.
