Ernest Davenport, seeing their intent to leave, came up to speak, his eyes watering a little as he held the hand of his daughter.
‘I shall journey to see you for Christmas, Lillian.’
Lucas noticed how his wife’s fingers curled about that of her parent as if she was desperate not to let him go. ‘If you would wish to come sooner…’ she began, but Davenport stopped her.
‘Nay, the first weeks in a new marriage are for you and your groom alone. But I would just speak to your husband privately, for a moment?’
Lillian made a show of bidding her remaining family goodbye as Luc walked to the window with her father.
‘This unconventionality of telling my daughter little about the state of your finances will be obeyed by me only until I see you again in a fortnight. Do you understand?’
Lucas nodded. Davenport had kept his word thus far and he was thankful for it, but with Christmas less than two weeks away he knew that he was running out of time.
‘And if I hear that there has been anything untoward happening…’
‘I would never hurt your daughter.’
‘Your lawyer gave you my message, then?’
‘He did, sir.’ Lucas remembered David Kennedy’s less-than-flattering summation of Ernest Davenport’s parting words.
‘I notice that she is not wearing her wedding ring?’
‘No, it is here in my pocket.’ He had retrieved the band from Hawk’s uncle once the old man had lost interest in it.
‘It does not look like a piece that my daughter would be fond of. If I might offer you some advice, having it reset completely may be the wiser option.’
Lilly’s father and Hawk felt the same way?
Luc felt a strange sense of kinship with the man opposite. He was, after all, a father just trying to do his best by his daughter.
‘I shall certainly think about it, sir.’
Lillian shifted in her seat when the carriage began to slow almost two hours later, pulling off the road and slipping through intricate wrought-iron gates. It had been a silent trip to Woodruff Abbey as two of her maids had shared the space with them, the lack of privacy allowing nothing personal at all to be said and slanting rain the only constant noise of the journey. When they rounded the last corner, she saw that the house before them was like something from another century.
‘It needs a lot of work,’ Luc declared as he leaned across to look at it and Lillian thought she detected a hint of apology in his voice.
In the growing darkness she could only just make out the newly weeded verges around the circular drive and the piles of pruned branches heaped to one end of a low-lying addition. Could this have been where her husband had been in the last weeks? Trying to make something of his windfall?
‘The lines of the building are beautiful.’ In all her hurt she found herself reassuring him and was rewarded with a smile as a footman drew down the steps, Lucas’s hand coming to assist her after he had alighted.
Lillian was surprised by the bareness of the place as they walked in, though there was a certain beauty in the ancient rugs and the few pieces of furniture that were on display. An old dog roused itself from beneath a table and stretched, before coming to see just who the new arrivals were and three long-haired cats watched them from a small sofa placed by the stairway.
‘This is Royce, the mongrel,’ her husband said as he bent to pat the dog, its tongue licking the inside of his palm with a considerable force. For Lillian, who had never had much contact at all with animals inside a house, the plethora of pets was alarming. ‘He is at least fifteen years old, although Hope believes him to be older still.’
‘Hope?’
Lord, she thought, the tale she had heard of his children ensconced in some house suddenly taking on a frightening reality.
‘You will meet her and her sister tomorrow.’
Before she could answer an old man appeared, a similar-aged woman behind him pulling away the strings of a well-used apron as she too shuffled forwards.
‘Mr Lucas,’ she said, taking his arm with delight. ‘You are back already?’ Her glance took in them both. ‘And with your lady wife, too?’
‘Lillian Clairmont, meet Mr and Mrs Poole, my housekeeper and head butler.’ The appellations seemed to please the older couple and she was astonished by the fact that her husband kept up such friendly terms with the serving staff that he would introduce them like equals. The Americans were odd in such ways, she surmised, giving the woman a polite but reserved smile.
‘Well, I have your room ready, sir, and the eiderdown I embroidered myself over the winter months is just this week finished, so no doubt you will be warm and toasty.’
‘I am certain everything will be well prepared, but as we are tired would it be possible to send up a tray with some food?’
Goodness, in England these words were never used to serving staff-they implied a great deal of choice on behalf of the paid attendants. As a new landlord and employer, Lucas Clairmont had a lot to learn. The sneaking feeling that he could well be getting duped with his household expenses also came to mind, though the couple before her did not, in all truth, look like a dishonest sort, but merely rather strange and doddery.
The same headache that she had been cursed with all day suddenly began to pound and despite everything she was pleased to be led upstairs by her husband and into a bedroom on the second floor.
It was a chamber like no other she had ever been in, bright orange curtains at the windows and a red and purple eiderdown proudly slung across a bed that was little bigger than a single one.
On a table were bunches of wildflowers in the sort of glass jar that jam was usually found in and beside that lay a pile of drawings. Children’s drawings depicting a family in front of a house, two small girls in pink dresses before a couple holding hands.
‘Charity likes to draw,’ her husband explained, picking up the sheath of papers and rifling through them. ‘I think she has a lot of talent.’
He held up another picture of the same black-and-white dog downstairs, though this time Royce sat in a field of wildflowers, the sun above him vividly yellow. With no idea at all of the stages of refinement in a child’s artistic ability, Lillian had to admit to herself that it seemed quite well done. Indeed, the artist had exactly copied the slobbery mouth and the matted coat, though the angel complete with halo perched before it was an unusual addition.
‘Charity always draws her mother in these things,’ Lucas explained when he saw her looking. Finding the first drawing, he alerted her to the same angel balanced on the only cloud in the sky.
‘Her mother was your first wife?’
He shook his head and the whole picture became decidedly murkier. ‘No, their mother was my wife’s sister.’
Lillian sat down. Heavily. ‘You dallied with your wife’s sister?’
‘Dallied?’ His amber eyes ran across her face, perplexity lining gold with a darker bronze. ‘I did not know her at all.’
‘I thought-they say you are their father. How could you not have known her?’ Lillian no longer cared how her voice sounded, perplexity apparent in every word.
A deep laugh was his only answer. The first time she had heard him laugh since…when? Since he had held her in the drawing room in London and shaken away her feebly offered kiss. The chamber swirled a little, dizzy anger vying with horror as she realised well and truly that she was now married to a man who appeared to have absolutely no moral fibre. And that she still wanted him!
‘The children are my wards. I am not their father, but their guardian.’
‘Oh.’ It was all that she could say, the rising blush of her foolish deduction now upon her face as he crossed the room to fill a glass of water from a pitcher and drank it.
‘Do you want one?’ he asked as he finished and when she nodded he refilled the same glass and handed it to
