Lady Beauchamp's Proposal (42 page)

No, she still believed to the depths of her
soul that James should forget her. And as much as it pained her,
she was determined to give him the time he needed to do just that.
She didn’t doubt that he loved her, but he had a man’s needs—strong
needs. She was certain he would one day meet another pretty society
miss and fall for her. Perhaps not this Season or the next. But
sooner or later he would. He deserved a wife who loved him, and
children that he could claim as his own.

And that couldn’t be her, or this baby. For
better or worse, she would remain with Hugh.

Unless of course she gave birth to a baby
girl…

Although she encountered Blaire
infrequently, she couldn’t help but notice the way he looked at her
whenever he caught sight of her. The glaze of lust in his eyes. In
the last few weeks, Hugh and Blaire had even taken to joking about
commencing a Moonstone Club in honor of her grey eyes if she failed
to produce the male heir her husband craved.

The thought constantly made her feel sick,
even though her morning sickness had long since passed.

If she did give birth to a female child, she
would undoubtedly have to run away again. But not to James. Her
former friends—the women of the Widows of Waterloo Trust—someone
would help and provide her and her child with sanctuary. They had
to.

If she lost all hope, she would indeed want
nothing more than to throw herself off a cliff.

“My lady?”

Elizabeth sighed and opened her eyes. So
Hugh hadn’t returned home last night. The Bow Street Runner had
probably come to tell her that he’d been involved in a dust-up over
the outcome of a cock-fight, or a game of cards. Or he had been
found drunk and disorderly in Covent Garden, or in Oxford Street
when he’d tried to pick up a prostitute. It had already happened
once before this Season, and she’d had to buy the Runner off to
keep his silence to stop charges being pressed…but it hadn’t been
Constable Vickery.

She felt the baby kick again and she felt a
sudden twinge in her lower back. It wasn’t long before the baby was
due, Dr. Morton had informed her during his visit to see her the
day before. A week at most by his estimate. He’d given her strict
orders to rest, and that she was not to be subjected to anything
that would cause nervous excitement.

But now Constable Vickery and an unnamed
stranger were knocking on her door.

“Just send them in, Jenkins,” Elizabeth said
with another defeated sigh. As the butler disappeared into the
hall, she idly wondered how much spare money she had in the house.
Hugh sometimes hid some in a Chinese puzzle box locked in a curio
cabinet in his study, along with his stash of laudanum. Jenkins
usually knew where he’d hidden the key.

“Constable Vickery and…a gentleman, Lady
Beauchamp.”

Elizabeth smiled politely as the stern faced
Bow Street Runner, and his dark-suited companion, came to stand
before her on the drawing room rug.

“Gentlemen,” she said with a gracious
inclination of her head. Although the constable had not had any
qualms about running his gaze over her figure, the other
gentleman—a man who looked to be from her own class given the
exquisite tailoring of his suit and his bearing—looked nowhere but
her eyes.

The well-mannered stranger inclined his head
in return; his expression was solemn. “Thank you for agreeing to
see us, Lady Beauchamp. I hope you will forgive our intrusion at
this time. But we have come to you about a matter of grave
importance.”

“And you are…”

“Sir Farnsworth, my lady. I am a
representative from the Magistrate’s Office.”

“Oh…” Elizabeth was suddenly glad she was
sitting down. She clasped her ringless fingers together in her
lap—she had left her wedding band in her travelling trunk in
Edinburgh, and neither Hugh nor she had bothered to replace it with
a new one—and strove to keep her expression calm.
What on earth
could Hugh have gotten up to now?

Sir Farnsworth’s brow descended into an even
deeper frown. “Is there anyone else from your family at home with
you this morning, my lady? Or a close friend?”

Elizabeth swallowed nervously and shook her
head. “No…there is only me, Sir Farnsworth. Wh-what is this all
about?” She noticed that Constable Vickery was transferring his
weight from foot to foot and staring at the rug, rather than
looking at her now.
Something bad had happened.

Her heart began to pound furiously in her
chest and a sharp stabbing pain knifed through her lower back
again, momentarily taking her breath away.
The baby…

Sir Farnsworth cleared his throat. “I’m
afraid I must convey some rather distressing news, my lady. And
there is no delicate way to tell you this…your husband, Lord
Beauchamp, was found dead in Lord Blaire’s rooms in Curzon Street,
earlier this morning.”

Hugh was dead?
It was as if the world
had suddenly tilted sideways and everything appeared strange…not
quite real.

She shook her head, struggling to breathe as
another pain gripped her body. “No…you must be mistaken.” Hugh
couldn’t be dead. He had syphilis, but he was supposed to live for
a long time yet. She was supposed to play the role of dutiful wife
for another decade or more. She couldn’t let her hope for another
life—a free and happy life—take hold unless it was really true…

Constable Vickery spoke then, his gaze firm
yet compassionate. “I’m terribly sorry, my lady, but there is no
mistake. Lord Blaire’s staff and another acquaintance, a Lord
Kendal, identified your husband’s body.”

“But how…how did this happen?”
Hugh had
been so well lately. It didn’t seem possible. Am I really
awake?

“There will have to be an examination by the
coroner, of course. But at this stage it would appear that your
husband succumbed to an overdose of the drug opium. It seems Lord
Blaire and your husband, along with Lord Kendal, left a—shall we
say club—in Marylebone in the early hours of this morning, and
returned to Lord Blaire’s townhouse. It seems they all then
indulged in a rather dangerous cocktail of overly potent laudanum
and Cognac. Lord Blaire is also gravely ill.”

“Oh…I see.” Elizabeth dropped her gaze to
her lap as she was battered by a storm of powerful, conflicting
emotions—a strange bitter sadness, overwhelming relief. Hope…

Hugh was dead. Her vain, cruel,
self-indulgent husband had at last gone too far with his excesses
and had paid the ultimate price. She could scarcely believe it.

She was a widow.

But she wouldn’t think about James. She
mustn’t. She must clip this tremulous, budding hope within her. It
had been nearly nine months since she had last seen him. He had
most likely moved on like she’d asked him to.

But what if he hadn’t?

Another sharp pain gripped her back and shot
all the way round to her belly like she was caught in a vice. She
gasped and clutched the arms of her chair as warm liquid suddenly
gushed between her legs.

“Lady Beauchamp?” Sir Farnsworth took a step
toward her, but she held up a hand.

“I’m all right, good sir. It’s just the
baby…” She held her breath as another contraction hit. “I would
greatly appreciate it though…if you could ask my butler to send my
lady’s maid to attend me. And summon my physician, Dr. Morton.”

* * * *

Six weeks later

“It looks as though the rain has stopped at
last, my lady. There will be a beautiful sunset for certain, later
this afternoon.”

Cradling James’s beautiful and immeasurably
precious daughter in her arms, Elizabeth moved to where Nanny
Robinson—a young widow whose husband had not returned from the
field in Belgium last year—stood by the nursery window and looked
out onto the grey day outside. The nurse was indeed correct.
Although the cobbles in the street below were still stained to a
dark grey by the weeks and weeks of constant rain, and the lime
trees dripped in the square beyond, the clouds had thinned a little
and watery sunlight filtered through the veil.

Toward the direction of Hyde Park, she could
even see a small patch of pale blue sky. It was mid-September and
it seemed that summer had only just now decided to put in a very
belated appearance.

Elizabeth’s gaze drifted to her daughter’s
tiny face. Jane was beginning to stir from sleep, her eyes
crinkling and her sweet rosebud lips puckering as the light from
the window drifted across them both. Her spirits lifting, Elizabeth
smiled then glanced up at the nurse. She had an idea. “I think
after Lady Jane has had her afternoon tea, we might be able to risk
taking her for her first walk in the perambulator, don’t you?”

Nanny Robinson clasped her hands in front of
her white pinafore and smiled with barely suppressed glee. “Oh yes,
my lady. That would indeed be a fine idea. I will make sure Lady
Jane is well-rugged up mind you, and that the footman carries lots
of umbrellas, just in case.”

Finding it difficult to resist the
infectious enthusiasm that radiated from the nurse, Elizabeth’s
smile widened. “Very good then.”

As she settled into a comfy armchair by the
fire and began to feed Jane, Elizabeth’s thoughts drifted, as they
inevitably did, to where James was and what he might be doing right
now. After Jane’s arrival, she had written to him as she had
promised, to inform him about the birth of their child. And Hugh’s
untimely death.

But that had been six weeks ago. It would
have only taken two weeks at the most for her letters to
arrive…

Elizabeth sighed and stroked the dark, silky
hair on the back of Jane’s tiny head as the baby suckled noisily at
her breast. She prayed the missives hadn’t gone astray. But then
she’d sent two letters—one to his Edinburgh address and one to
Eilean Tor—so it was unlikely that both would have failed to
arrive. She’d assumed that if James had been in London at the time
of Hugh’s death, he would have heard the news and all of the rumors
that were undoubtedly circulating throughout the
ton
, about
the scandalous death of the Earl of Beauchamp. And the sudden
arrival of Lady Jane Elizabeth Harcourt on the very day he
died.

Even if James had met someone else, she
thought he might have called on her by now, to at least meet their
child.

But she’d heard nothing. Not a word.

You told him to forget you, Elizabeth. You
can hardly blame him if he took you at your word.

Nevertheless, his silence stung.

In the immediate weeks following Hugh’s
death and Jane’s momentous arrival, she had been so caught up in
the tumult of events that she had not really had a chance to dwell
on when James might make contact with her.

Arranging Hugh’s funeral and attending to
his affairs had claimed much of her attention at first. Indeed, she
had been quite flagrant in ignoring Dr. Morton’s advice for once,
and had travelled with a barely week old Jane to Scarwood Hall,
where Hugh was laid to rest in the Beauchamp family vault, located
within the local parish church.

Despite Hugh’s position and title, it had
been a quiet and relatively small ceremony, attended only by
herself, Hugh’s solicitor, Mr. Beasley, a suitably mollified Lord
Kendal— Lord Blaire was still indisposed—and the Scarwood estate’s
staff and tenants. Like herself, Hugh had been an only child and
his parents had both passed away during his adolescence. His
heir—the distant cousin he had mentioned to her—was currently being
tracked down by Mr. Beasley. The new Earl of Beauchamp was rumored
to be an employee of the East India Company and was currently
living and working somewhere in India.

That meant that Elizabeth would still have a
little time to relocate to the unentailed residence Hugh had
bequeathed to her, a small but elegant townhouse just off Berkley
Square.

Jane pulled away from her breast, and
Elizabeth lifted her warm, tiny body to rest against her shoulder,
inhaling her sweet baby scent. It was the most beautiful smell in
the world, other than the lingering memory of spicy sandalwood soap
and the man who used it.

Stop torturing yourself, Elizabeth. If he
still loves you and wants you, he will come.

And if not…

She had the blessing of their daughter. And
James could never have given her a more precious gift than her.

* * * *

Fortunately, it looked like the rain was
going to continue to hold off as Elizabeth—with Nanny Robinson
pushing Jane’s perambulator and a footman bringing up the
rear—walked the short distance from Grosvenor Square to the Park
Lane entrance of Hyde Park.

As they wandered quietly down one of the
wide meandering paths between sodden lawns, hedgerows and garden
beds, Elizabeth glanced skywards every now and again, encouraged to
see increasingly more patches of soft blue appearing between the
clouds that seemed to have darkened the heavens for most of the
year. She smiled, not caring a bit when she subsequently splashed
through a puddle in her completely frivolous purple walking boots,
and the hem of her smart lavender-grey walking gown became
stained.

Although she was still supposed to be in
deep mourning, she had decided to flout convention this afternoon,
and had donned an outfit that was more suitable for the period of
half-mourning. Aside from her new gown with its matching spencer,
she’d also given into the whim of wearing a jaunty black bonnet
trimmed with violet ribbons and a waving grey ostrich plume. She’d
already received a censorious look from Lady Newbury—one of the
prickliest of society’s grand dames—as the countess had passed by
in her fine barouche. But after everything she’d endured, Elizabeth
no longer gave a fig.

The
ton’s
opinion be damned.

It wasn’t until they paused beneath a large
weeping willow beside the banks of the Serpentine that Elizabeth’s
buoyant spirits unexpectedly plummeted to earth again. Casting her
gaze over the still grey water, she spied a pair of mute swans
drifting toward them. The memory it invoked of another day in
another park was so strong, her throat constricted and her eyes
brimmed with tears.