Gayle Wilson Read online

  She looked down on the tiny face, relaxed now in sleep—an infrequent occurrence. Perhaps she had lost the battle to save Amelia, but her sister’s baby had proved to be far more tenacious in maintaining his fragile hold on life than he had appeared.

  The wet nurse—thank God for her, Sarah thought—had been both skilled and patient. After two weeks of unflagging care from the two of them, it seemed that the baby would survive. But it also now appeared that David Osborne had not been in the least concerned with the outcome of their struggle.

  “He’ll have you to look after him,” David said easily, his engaging smile touching the corners of well-shaped lips. “You’ll make a much better job of it, Sarah, than I should.”

  “I can’t take him home,” Sarah said. “You don’t know—”

  “Unfortunately,” Osborne interrupted, “I do know. I know your father, my dear. Well enough to assure you I don’t plan to show up on his lordship’s doorstep and present him to his grandson. As much as I’d like to see his face if I did,” he said, his smile widening, apparently amused at the thought.

  “But what am I to do?” Sarah asked.

  Her eyes were drawn again to the baby’s face, which was really not unattractive when it wasn’t reddened and scowling with crying. At eighteen, Sarah had little experience with babies. And more than enough experience with her father’s mad rages. She, too, was having a hard time imagining showing up on his doorstep, bringing Amelia’s illegitimate baby home.

  “You’ll think of something, I’m sure,” David said. “I trust you implicitly. I know Amelia would have as well. As a matter of fact, I’m certain she had much rather leave the upbringing of her son in your hands than my less competent ones.”

  Sarah took a breath, deep enough that the infant she was clutching stirred. She looked down in time to watch his eyes open. They were as blue as Amelia’s. As blue as her own. That midnight hue was a Spenser characteristic, its prevalence among her ancestors documented in the portrait gallery at Longford. The baby yawned, tiny rosebud mouth stretching wide to reveal pink gums. His eyes seemed focused on her face. As if he were interested in it. As if he were trying to communicate with her.

  To tell her that David was right? That Amelia would much prefer her son to be in Sarah’s inexperienced hands than in the irresponsible and profligate care of his father? A father who had demonstrated an inability to care deeply about anything other than his own pleasure.

  After ruining Amelia’s life, David had been cruelly inattentive to her, at least during the last weeks of her difficult pregnancy, when Sarah had been with them. And uncaring, it seemed, about her death. Sarah had had to make arrangements for the funeral, although David had rather strangely sent for a priest when he learned Amelia was dead. Since her sister had not been Catholic, the entire episode seemed out of place.

  Almost as out of place as this baby would be at Longford, Sarah thought. It seemed, however, that she had no choice but to take him there. She had promised her dying sister that she would take care of him—a deathbed oath made on her mother’s grave.

  Sarah could have, as yet, no idea how much keeping that simple pledge would change her life. And when she finally did, it was far too late to turn back.

  Chapter One

  England, 1813

  After returning from his first survey of his inheritance, the hew earl of Wynfield gave in to a rare display of despair. He sank down gratefully in the chair behind his father’s huge desk and put his head in his hands.

  Those who had served under Justin Tolbert would have been surprised by that gesture. His men had never been allowed to see anything but Wynfield’s steady confidence and courage. He had demonstrated both in numerous battles, especially when the odds weighed heaviest against his regiment’s success.

  He hadn’t been Wynfield then, but simply Colonel The Honorable Justin Tolbert. The title and the inheritance that went with it had, during his years of service, belonged to his brother. And now everything of that inheritance was gone, except the title Justin had never wanted or expected to bear.

  The once verdant fields of the home farm lay fallow. The tenant cottages had been allowed to decay into a state of disrepair that would not only be expensive to remedy, but was dangerous as well. The gloomy picture his late father’s man of business had painted for him in London had not begun to approach the reality he had faced on his homecoming.

  Homecoming, he thought bitterly. What a bloody hell of a homecoming this has proved to be. It had begun, almost as soon as he’d stepped foot on shore, with the terrible news of Robert’s death, followed by that brutal assessment of his financial ruin.

  Justin had cherished the dream of returning to this lush corner of England. It had carried him through the deprivations of the long war the British had waged against the Emperor. He had lain in his tent at night dreaming of the very landscapes he had visited today, laid waste now by neglect and mismanagement.

  First had been his father’s neglect, which he supposed he had been aware of on some level while he was growing up, although he had been too young and unthinking to realize the implications. At the old earl’s death, his brother Robert had inherited not only his father’s title, but apparently his weaknesses as well. For excessive drink. And for betting impossibly large sums on impossibly stupid wagers.

  Robert and their father had been immensely popular with the proprietors of the London gaming hells. Judging by the reception Justin had received today from his gapemouthed tenants, they had frequented those far more often than they had their ancestral holdings. After his father’s death, Robert had evidently not come back to Wynfield Park at all, preferring to spend his time in the capital or in one of the fashionable resorts, wherever the wagering was the most reckless. And once his brother’s downward spiral had begun, it ran its course very quickly.

  Less than two years after inheriting the title, Robert was dead, the victim of a senseless, drunken duel. It had been an “affair of honor,” for which none of Robert’s friends could quite remember the originating insult. What they had all remembered, with appropriate horror, was that his brother’s less inebriated opponent had managed to put a bullet into Robert’s heart.

  That had been the first blow of Justin’s homecoming. The second had been the realization of his current fortunes. The estate, which had been in his family for over two hundred years, was now so heavily mortgaged that it was virtually worthless.

  Even if the physical work of restoring it had not loomed so hopelessly large, given his current state of health, there were no funds with which to make improvements. And no one willing to extend further credit that might have put his inheritance on the path to solvency again. All of that had been explained to him in London, but until he had seen the devastation with his own eyes—

  “Shall I ask Cook to hold back dinner, my lord?”

  With the first word of his butler’s question, Justin lifted his head out of his hands. His hazel eyes considered the figure in the doorway. A door he damn well wished he had remembered to close, he thought bitterly. The last thing he wanted was for the story to get about that he was shattered by the situation he was facing. Keeping up appearances had been one of his father’s primary concerns in life. Justin could only suppose he had inherited something of that desire as well.

  He truly didn’t want his neighbors’ sympathy, despite the seriousness of his plight. He also knew that if he were to have any hope of pulling things together, he must appear full of confidence, even before his own servants.

  “I shall only need time enough to change,” he said.

  “Very good, my lord,” the old man intoned solemnly.

  After Blevins began to walk away, however, it appeared he was struck by another thought. He turned back, meeting Justin’s eyes with an almost speculative gleam in his.

  “If I might be so bold...” he said in preface. When Justin didn’t deny him permission to speak his mind, he continued, “Your lordship might prefer to dine here. I have often brought yo
ur late father’s supper to this very room. If the earl did not wish to be troubled to dine more formally.”

  The butler’s eyes were steady on his face. Justin could detect no pity in their rheumy depths or in his voice, although he knew Blevins would certainly be aware of what he had discovered on today’s disheartening tour. And perhaps even aware of how badly his leg ached.

  It was strange how a limb that was no longer present could hurt so damn much. Of course the stump of the amputation, which ended a little below midcalf, was as yet unaccustomed to the socket and leather harness of the new foot the London bootmaker had fitted for him. It was an appendage that gave Justin mobility, if nothing else. Certainly not comfort.

  The simplest movements, those that had once been natural and unthinking, were not only painful, but perilous as well. Justin had told himself, with the same dogged determination that had seen him through five long years of war, that in time he would adjust to the awkwardness and discomfort.

  And if he could not, then he would be damned if anyone would ever know. He had made that decision the moment the surgeon had given his clipped verdict that the shattered foot must come off. No one would ever be allowed to know how deeply Justin felt that loss. And no one included Blevins.

  “I shall need time to dress,” he said again, injecting a hint of coldness into the soft words. “I should be ready to dine within the hour. In the dining room, thank you, Blevins.”

  The old man’s eyes held a fraction of a second too long on his face, the prerogative of a valued family retainer. There was absolutely nothing untoward in his voice when he nodded agreement with those instructions. “Very good, my lord,” he said. He turned, leaving the study as silently as he had entered it.

  Behind him, Wynfield’s mouth tightened in disgust. He’d been rude to an old man who had only his best interests at heart. Perhaps he was more like his father than he had realized.

  Putting both hands flat on the desk in front of him, Justin pushed his body out of the chair, getting the unwieldy artificial foot under him. The pain in the stillhealing stump, which the damn thing had already rubbed raw, was a reminder of the number of times today he’d climbed down from the open carriage in response to some entreaty or inquiry from one of his tenants.

  It might have been request to take a look at a leaking roof or a fouled well. Or an invitation to comment on a fine new calf or even a baby. Nothing that couldn’t have waited until another day, but Justin had not once refused. That was his duty, of course. To see to the welfare of the people who lived on his lands. And no matter what else anyone might say about him, Justin thought grimly, he had never been accused of shirking his duty. Not even the unpleasant ones.

  Such as dressing for a dinner he would eat alone, when all he really wanted to do was take off this torturing contraption and lie down on his bed and wait for the pain to subside enough that he might fall asleep. What he was going to do instead was change his clothes and dine in lonely if elegant state in the dining room of an estate that was falling down around his head.

  “You stupid ass,” he muttered, his voice low enough that his derogatory comment couldn’t possibly reach the ears of any servant loitering in the hallway outside.

  He closed his eyes before he took a step. When he put his weight on the foot they had fashioned for him in London, he found the pain to be every bit as excruciating as he’d anticipated.

  “Proud, stupid moron,” the earl of Wynfield whispered, and then, with the same courage that had distinguished him on the Peninsula, he began the long, limping journey to his room.

  “Wynfield’s home.”

  Lady Sarah Spenser’s eyes lifted from the small curly head her gloved fingers had been guiding down the steps of the village church. Her prayer book was clutched in the fingers of her other hand, or she might have been tempted to lock them together to keep their sudden trembling from being so obvious.

  She settled instead for moving them in a small caress over Drew’s curls before she looked up. Within Lady Fortley’s eyes was a gleam of malicious satisfaction, probably there in response to the telltale drain of color from her own cheeks, Sarah thought. Apparently the old gossip had seen in her face exactly what she was hoping for when she had sprung her news.

  “Indeed?” Sarah said simply. “I hadn’t heard.”

  She lowered her eyes and allowed her fingers to increase their pressure on the back of Andrew’s head. Obediently the little boy descended another of the broad front steps.

  As Sarah was poised to follow, Lady Fortley added, “So tragically changed, of course. Poor man.”

  Sarah’s eyes rose again to her tormentor’s face.

  “Or perhaps you didn’t know that, either,” Lady Fortley slid, smiling, her voice imbued with an unctuous kindness.

  A patently false kindness, Sarah recognized angrily. However, she was no more capable of walking away from this conversation now than she would be capable of pushing Andrew down the stairs. Or of pushing Lady Fortley down them, which, God forgive her, was an action she could consider with no small degree of pleasure.

  “Changed in what way?” she asked, gratified by the calm serenity with which she managed to ask the question. After all, her heart was pounding so wildly she wondered it wasn’t making her mother’s cameo broach vibrate.

  “Why, so grievously wounded. You really had not heard?”

  Why should she have heard? She had broken all ties with Justin Tolbert more than four years ago. Shortly after she had brought Andrew back to England, and the gossip had begun.

  “I don’t know how he shall manage,” Lady Fortley continued, shaking her head. “Fortley says he’s probably come home only long enough to sell the place, though who he’ll find to buy it is beyond me. Gone to rack and ruin. Rumor has it that it’s heavily mortgaged as well. Mortgaged to the hilt, Fortley says.”

  Sarah’s eyes remained focused on Lady Fortley’s face, but it was her mind that was racing now. Caring for Andrew and her father and his properties had left her little time for indulging in a social life, even if the district had offered her the opportunity. She had vaguely been aware that the Wynfield estate was falling into disrepair, but because her own responsibilities were overwhelming, she hadn’t had the time or the energy to keep up with what was happening to her neighbors.

  Since she had been deliberately excluded from the affairs of the county, and since her father was no longer able to participate in them, she had had no warning of Justin’s return. Which was exactly what Lady Fortley had been counting on.

  “Perhaps then we shall finally see someone in the Wynfield pew next Sunday,” Sarah said.

  She allowed her eyes to hold Lady Fortley’s a moment longer, and then, touching Andrew’s curls again, she marched him down the remaining steps and toward her father’s waiting carriage. As she walked, Andrew ran ahead of her, free from any restrictions on his behavior now that they had left the throng crowded around the front of the church.

  Words and phrases from the confrontation echoed in Sarah’s head, almost keeping time with her steps. So tragically changed, of course. Poor man. Grievously wounded. Come home only long enough to sell the place.

  Justin, she thought, feeling the sting of unwanted tears and blinking to control them. This was her Justin Lady Fortley was talking about. Justin, whom Sarah Spenser had once loved more than she had loved her own life. The very thought of whom she had denied herself, as she had been denied every other pleasure, during the last four years. Denied everything but doing her duty and keeping the promise she had made to her dying sister.

  Nothing had changed, Sarah told herself, angrily rubbing an escaping tear off her cheek before anyone saw it. Nothing had changed because nothing could ever change. Like all the other unpleasant realities she had faced up to four years ago, she would in time learn to deal with this one. Justin was still as far away from her as he had been during the years he had spent with Wellington. Just as much out of her reach. And there was no sense crying about him like some lov
esick ninny.

  Nothing had changed, she told herself again, watching Andrew clamber up the steps of the carriage with the help of the footman. This event could not be allowed to disturb the even tenor of the life she had established for herself and for her sister’s son. Nothing at all had changed.

  Justin, her heart still whispered. Justin was home.

  As the earl of Wynfield rode through the wide tract of forest on the eastern edge of his estate, he felt nothing of the despair he had experienced last week. Instead, he had had a heady sense of freedom almost from the moment he’d swung into the saddle and touched his heels to Star. The animal’s unquestioning obedience to his unspoken commands was reassuring, and as they crossed the rugged terrain, Justin’s confidence had grown.

  Mounted on the gelding, his body didn’t betray him with its unaccustomed awkwardness. And if Star were aware of any difference in his master’s technique, he wasn’t letting on. The horse seemed as glad of the gallop as Justin was.

  He had already slowed his mount, however, not only to give the gelding a breather, but because the woods here were too dense for their previously exhilarating pace. Now that he knew riding was one pleasure that wasn’t to be denied him, he had nothing to prove anymore. Not to himself or to Star.

  He had almost reached a broad clearing in the very heart of the forest, a clearing he had forgotten, when he heard the shouting. Boys’ voices, he recognized. Thin and piping, and they were coming toward him. The sounds at first seemed ordinary, comfortingly familiar. After all, he and Robert had often sneaked off to play with the tenant children in these very woods, which joined the Wynfield lands to Longford.

  Probably not much had changed about the activities of the district lads in the intervening years, Justin thought, a remembering smile on his lips as he listened to the excited shouts, which were growing louder. In this same clearing, the boys of his generation had once built a fort and spent long summer afternoons playing at war.