Poor Nancy, he thought. She had been beautiful and a talented actress.
And a skilled lover. She had borne his child. And now she was dead. He folded the letter again and looked down at his daughter. She was gazing up at him, quiet and self-contained. And all of four years old.
Lord. Oh, dear Lord. What was he to do?
He turned his head to the two young ladies, who were still standing there, watching him. His eyes instinctively came to rest on Miss Craggs.
“She is my daughter,” he said. “Her mother has d-Her mother has gone away and she has been sent here.” He looked at her in mute appeal, like a child himself who did not know how to proceed.
“Uncle Warren!” Deborah said, shock in her voice.
Miss Craggs came closer, her eyes on the child. “She will want something to eat and a glass of milk,” she said. “She will need to remove her hat and her coat and have them and her bag taken to a room that will be hers.”
Of course! How practical and how simple.“Are you hungry, Veronica?” he asked.
“Yes, Papa,” the child said.
“Come along, then,” he said, clasping his hands awkwardly behind him.
Good Lord, his illegitimate child, his by-blow, was in his own home with his niece. His servants would be scandalized. His neighbors would be shocked. “Will you give your hat and your coat to Kemp?”
“Will you let me help you, Veronica?” He watched as Miss Craggs went down on her knees before the child, who stood up and allowed her outer garments to be removed. “What a pretty color your scarf is. There-now you will be more comfortable. But we will need to comb those curls of yours before you sit down for your milk and your food.” She touched the backs of two fingers to a tangled curl at the child’s cheek and smiled at her.
The viscount felt jolted, first by the sight of his daughter without the heavy outer garments-she was little more than a baby-and then by the smile on the face of his niece’s teacher. Good God, he thought, he had not noticed that the woman was beautiful. Though he knew even as he thought it that she was not beautiful, that it was merely something from deep within her that for the moment she had allowed to the surface of her face.
“Would you like to hold my hand?” she asked his daughter.
“Yes, please,” the child said, looking up at her and suiting action to words.
“Uncle Warren?” Deborah asked faintly.
“She is my child,” he told her. He felt almost as if he were realizing it for the first time. It was one thing to know one had fathered a child and to have accepted financial responsibility for her. It was another thing entirely to see the child, tiny and dainty and quiet, her eyes and her hair the color of his own.
“But-” Deborah said.
“She is my daughter,” he said firmly. “Shall we go up for tea and get warm again?” He offered her his arm.
“Is this Papa’s very own house?” Veronica was asking Miss Craggs.
Her own awkwardness and awe and even her excitement had been forgotten.
Although the great hall was the hall of her dream with the addition of a painted and gilded dome, and although the staircase was wide and magnificent and the drawing room large and splendid, Jane noticed them only with her eyes and not with her heart. And her own bedchamber with a separate dressing room was large and richly furnished and far surpassed anything she might have dreamed for herself. But she merely glanced at it when she hurried in to change her dress for dinner-to change from one drab gray dress to another.
Her time and her attention and her heart were otherwise engaged than in the perusal of a mere house and in the recognition of a dream come true.
She had never had anything to do with very young children. The girls who came to Miss Phillpotts’s school were older and more independent and did not really need her for anything outside her capacity as a teacher.
No one had ever needed her. The thought came without any self-pity. It was simply the truth.
Until today. But today she had seen a small child bewildered and frightened by the loss of her mother and by her arrival at the home of the father she had never seen before. And her heart had lurched with all the love she had never been called upon to give.
She had taken a comb from her own reticule in the drawing room and drawn it gently through the soft baby curls. And she had sat by the child and helped her to food and milk. And then she had taken her to the nursery, where a bed had been made up, and had helped her unpack her little bag, which had been full of surprisingly pretty dresses. She had taken the child down to dinner, although she would probably eat in the nursery on future days, and had helped her wash and change into her nightgown afterward. She had tucked her into bed.
A maid was to stay in the nursery next to the bedchamber and sleep on a truckle bed there.
“Good night, Veronica,” Jane said as she was leaving. Her heart ached with unfamiliar love and happiness. Someone had needed her for almost half a day and would need her again tomorrow.
“Good night, Miss Craggs,” the child said, peering at her with wide eyes over the blanket that had been tucked beneath her chin. “When will Mama be coming back?”
Ah, poor child. Poor child. “Mama had to go away for a long time,” she said, walking back to the bed and smoothing her hand over the child’s head. “She did not want to leave you, Veronica, but she had to go. She sent you here, where you will be safe.”
“Miss Craggs,” the child said, “don’t leave.”
“I’ll stay for a while,” Jane said, seating herself on the side of the bed. “You are quite safe, dear. My name is Jane. It sounds a little nicer than ‘Miss Craggs,’ does it not?”
“Miss Jane,” the child said, and closed her eyes.
There was a rather painful aching around the heart to hear her name spoken aloud by another person. Jane sat quietly on the side of the bed, waiting for the little girl to fall asleep. But after a few moments the child’s eyes opened and she lay staring quietly upward.
And the door opened softly, and when Jane turned her head it was to find Viscount Buckley standing there, his hand on the doorknob.
“She is still awake?” he asked after a few moments.
“Yes,” Jane said.
He came to stand beside her and gazed down at his daughter. A daughter he had had with a mistress. A child he had never seen until today. And a child he seemed not to know what to do with. What would he do with her? Jane felt fear for the defenseless baby who was still staring quietly upward.
“Veronica?” he said. “Is there anything you need?”
“No, thank you,” the child said, not moving the direction of her gaze.
“You are tired?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Go to sleep, then.” He leaned forward rather jerkily to lay the backs of his fingers against her cheek for a moment. “You are quite safe now.
I will arrange something for you.”
The child looked at him finally. “Good night, Papa,” she said.
“Are you coming, Miss Craggs?” he asked, looking at Jane.
“I will stay until she falls asleep,” Jane said.
He inclined his head to her. “Deborah is having an early night,” he said. “Will you join me in the library as soon as you may? I need to talk with you.”
Veronica was asleep no more than ten minutes later, not having spoken or moved since her father left the room. Jane got carefully to her feet, bent down after a moment’s hesitation to kiss the child’s forehead, and tiptoed from the room.
How wonderful it must be, she thought, how wonderful beyond imagining, to be a mother.
He sat in the library resisting the urge to refill his brandy glass for the second time. If he drank any more he would be foxed. The thought had its definite appeal, but getting drunk would solve nothing. He had learned that much in his almost thirty years of living.
Deborah was sullen and unhappy-and angry.
“How could you, Uncle Warren?” she had said just before going to bed.
“How could you let her stay here and announce for all the world to hear that she is your daughter? Mama will be furious with you. Papa will kill you.”
Yes, they would be a trifle annoyed, he conceded. But it served them right for foisting their daughter on him without so much as a by-your-leave.
