“I have the morning off, and so I am walking into town to post some letters to friends in Paris.”
“There is no love letter there to some fortunate young man, I hope,” Wesley said as he walked alongside. Though he kept his tone buoyant and teasing his question was not really a joke. If Therese had a love back in France he wanted to know. If so, he intended to make her forget all about it.
“No, monsieur. There is no such fellow,” Therese answered.
“Would you like there to be?” Wesley probed.
Therese glanced at him questioningly from the corners of her eyes.
“I ask only because I need to know if I have a chance with you,” Wesley admitted boldly. “Would you mind if I accompany you into town?”
“There is no need for that,” Therese replied. “It is not far.”
“Wouldn’t you like company, just the same?”
Therese let out a quick sigh. “It is not necessary.”
Her reluctance puzzled Wesley. He didn’t consider himself a snob, but what servant would not welcome the attentions of the lord of the manor? Through the years he’d flirted with some of the maids and never before been rebuffed. And even among his own class, girls usually found his company pleasant. He wasn’t interested in any of those young women, though. Therese was the one he found himself thinking about day and night.
“Don’t you like me, Therese?” Wesley asked. “I hope you do, because I like you. I like you very much.”
“It is not fitting for us to be friends,” Therese responded tersely, keeping her sights glued to the path ahead of them.
“This is the modern world, Therese,” Wesley countered. “I’ve just spent the summer in America with Ian and perhaps I’ve picked up some more contemporary idea from our friends in the New World. In America no one has titles and it simply doesn’t matter. It’s what you make of yourself that counts over there, not some archaic title one was born with.”
“Well, we are in Europe, and here it matters,” Therese pointed out, still unable to meet his eyes.
“I see!” Wesley exclaimed. She really did believe he was toying with her, trying to secretly seduce a pretty young member of the staff for his own lecherous purposes. “I’m not like that, Therese,” he said persuasively. “My intentions are sincere. And I don’t care who knows it.”
Therese let out a light snort of disbelief.
“You don’t believe me?” he asked warmly.
She shrugged.
“Then allow me to prove it.” They were nearly to the front gate and no one from the estate would be able to see them. Wesley stopped her short and stared into her eyes. She shifted uncomfortably. When his face slowly began descending toward hers she stepped back abruptly.
“Stop!” Therese cried, banging on his chest with a quick, hard blow that sent him reeling back several steps. “Stop this moment!”
“Do you find me that repulsive, Therese?” Wesley asked, more hurt than angry.
“There can never be anything between us,” Therese insisted in a heated tone. “Never! Never!”
“You’re the snob, not me,” Wesley shot back. “I am not thinking about your station in life. I see only you, a beautiful young woman who haunts my every waking hour. But you don’t see me. You see only my title, and you hold against me something I have no control over.”
“It is not your title that makes it impossible,” Therese told him passionately. “It is not what is different about us that must divide us. It is what we share.”
“What might that be?” Wesley demanded.
“A father!” Therese replied, her voice rising to a near shout.
“What?”
Therese simply glared at him, as if waiting for him to catch up.
Wesley had heard her words but his mind had trouble making sense of them. “My father?”
Dumbstruck and slack-jawed with amazement, Wesley listened as Therese unfurled a story he would never have believed if he wasn’t hearing it from her own lips. Nineteen years earlier her mother had worked in Wesley’s aunt’s household. “There she met your father who seduced her. When she confronted him about her fears she was pregnant, he wanted nothing to do with her. You see, he had a wife and newborn son of his own. She went to Lady Daphne and admitted she was in trouble, but never said who the father was. She let her believe it was a commoner. Lady Daphne took pity on her and let her stay in her household, even taking her to France when she moved.”
Wesley’s mind reeled. He could hardly believe his father would do such a thing: the old hypocrite, always so proper and stiff. He never would have believed his father capable of such callous behavior.
He studied Therese closely and suddenly saw a family resemblance he had never noticed until this moment. The shape of her face was exactly the same as Maggie’s. Her arched brows were like Lila’s. And, with a shudder he realized that the blue of her eyes mirrored his own. How could he have missed these things before? Now in the grip of this new vision, there could be no question that her story was true.
Therese continued her tale. “No one but you knows that I am Lord Darlington’s daughter, except Lord Darlington himself.”
“My father knows you’re his child and yet he has kept you as a servant?” he questioned incredulously.
“I confronted Lord Darlington a few weeks after I arrived, telling him who I am. He didn’t deny it. But he refused to acknowledge me, even after knowing that my mother had died and I had no one left.”
“He wouldn’t give you the Darlington name, even after learning who you are?”
“No, he simply told me that if I mentioned to anyone who I am, he would send me home to Paris at once.”
A roll of thunder made both Therese and Wesley check the dark clouds overhead. “You’d better turn back,” Wesley suggested. “It’s about to storm.” As if on cue, wind whipped up around them, ruffling Therese’s skirts and Wesley’s jacket.
As light rain moistened her face, Therese and Wesley looked at each other, each studying the other. There were indeed storms coming, Wesley thought.
“Lady Lila,” Nora started. “Has there been any new information about the satires?”
“What?” Lila answered, distracted. She was seated on her settee lazily brushing her hair, while Nora set out her clothes for supper. Her head had been in the clouds lately, probably the fault of a certain young American. “Oh, those things. I haven’t heard a thing about them lately. Why do you ask?”
“Well, it’s just that I’ve been searching my mind about them. I need you to know I have been racking my brain to find out who could have betrayed your family in this way. And I can’t help but think it has to be Miss Jessica,” she suggested.
“Why?” Lila asked, wide-eyed with surprised disbelief.
“She’s always scribbling in that notebook and she’s so secretive about what’s inside. It seems to me that she’s taking notes for her satires. Doesn’t that make sense?”
“Not entirely,” Lila disagreed. “What would she stand to gain by mocking us like that?”
“She’s simply mean-spirited,” Nora countered. “Her type doesn’t need a reason to be cruel. It’s in her nature.”
“I think that’s harsh, Nora,” Lila insisted.
“Maybe it is. Just the same, she gets my vote as the most likely culprit.”
“It does feel odd not knowing who was behind them. Especially since it’s clear they were written by someone under our roof! It’s chilling to think someone we know and trust could do such a thing.” Folding her arms pensively, Lila pouted. “If only we could get a peek into that notebook.”
Maggie appeared in the open doorway. “What notebook?”
“Nora thinks Jessica is taking notes about our family in that notebook she always carries,” Lila explained.
“You think she’s our evil satirist?” Maggie inquired, stepping into the room and perching on the end of Lila’s bed.
“That’s my opinion,” Nora confirmed.
