The Old Maids' Club 02 - Pariah Read online

  Aunt Rosaline nodded and stood gingerly. Bethanne took her arm and led her from the parlor to the bright music room. Even with the clouds from the snow, the yellow cheeriness of the music room made it feel warm and welcoming. They sat, side-by-side, on the bench.

  “What would you like me to play?” Bethanne asked.

  “I think you know.”

  And she did. Aunt Rosaline always wanted the same piece, ever since the first time she’d heard it: Beethoven’s fourteenth piano sonata. With a nod and a smile, Bethanne sorted through the sheet music, shuffling to find the one she needed. She pulled it free from the stack and set it out over the keys. Then she took a breath and played.

  When Roman returned to the cottage, he was greeted by the haunting strains of a familiar melody. The music coming from the pianoforte was wrought with pain and despair, and yet also with an overwhelming sense of hope. It called to him from someplace deep within, a place he’d long ago fought to close off and leave behind. Mistakenly, it seemed, he had failed to leave that part of himself in Yorkshire with his family, long before he ever bought his commission and set off for the wars.

  He wanted, strangely, to turn around and leave without looking back. Yet instead, he found his feet propelling him forward, and he knocked at the door.

  Several moments passed with no answer, but he was so entranced by the music he couldn’t be bothered by the fact that he was standing alone, in the cold, in front of a house full of women. Finally, Mrs. Temple came to greet him with a sheepish, surprised smile. The keys at her waist jangled as she pulled the door back.

  “Oh, Lord Roman! We weren’t expecting you to return so soon.” She moved back and waved her arm wide, gesturing him inside. “I wasn’t sure you’d be back before tea, after that…well, after what happened this morning.”

  Indeed, he’d thought to do more work at Hassop House. For some reason, he’d been unable to concentrate on anything but returning to Miss Shelton and Lady Rosaline, and as soon as he possibly could, at that. “I thought I could help with replacing the window,” he said, though his tone sounded as though he was grasping, even to his own ears.

  She smiled. “That would be lovely, my lord, and we would greatly appreciate any assistance you can give us. But right now, we’re all in the music room. Miss Shelton’s playing. Won’t you join us?”

  Miss Shelton was creating that haunting, enigmatic sound?

  He shouldn’t intrude. He should turn around right this moment and go about his business, and only come back at the appointed time for tea…the only thing to which he’d been invited.

  But of late, he hadn’t been doing too many things he ought to do, and he had been doing entirely too many things he oughtn’t.

  Now, it appeared, was not the time to turn the tides of that pattern.

  Roman inclined his head to the housekeeper. “Yes, thank you.” He stepped inside and removed his hat and gloves, then placed them on the table just inside the door.

  Mrs. Temple smiled at him, then bustled down the corridor toward the back of the house. She opened the door and waved him inside, then took up her seat by the window and started to work on some sewing, not looking back to see if he’d done as she indicated.

  When he entered, he stopped for a moment, stunned.

  Miss Shelton and Lady Rosaline sat next to each other on the bench of the pianoforte, the younger playing with such intense feeling that emotion dripped from her very fingertips, the elder swaying along with her eyes closed beside her, side to side, up and down, flowing with the crests and valleys of the tune.

  Joyce sat across from them at the oak escritoire on the other side of the pianoforte, scribbling away on some parchment and occasionally looking up with a wistful expression in her eyes.

  Mrs. Wyatt was in a high-backed chair close to the hearth, keeping her attention trained squarely upon young Finn, whose limbs were strewn over the floor as he stacked wooden blocks with studied fervor and a fierce scowl.

  It was such a scene of domestic tranquility, of home and family, and all of those lovely things he’d long ago convinced himself he could never take part in. The urge to turn his back and make his exit was strong. He wanted, desperately, to do the right thing. But right for whom?

  The best thing he could do for these women and this child would be to leave. Wouldn’t it? Or was that simply the best thing he could do for himself?

  Never in his life had Roman experienced such muddled thoughts. He’d always looked at the world as black and white, where one path was the proper path to take and the other would lead to ruin.

  Now, he was not so certain.

  Leaning forward over the keys, Miss Shelton pressed into a crescendo, building like a wave racing for the shore. He was caught up in the swell, moving along with her at an ever faster pace, unable to stop his forward momentum…into what?

  Joyce caught his eye, and he nearly fell over from being pulled from his momentary lapse of reason. His pulse was rapid, thundering through his veins, and his palms were sweaty and cool. Good Lord, what was happening to him? Roman forced himself to acknowledge the cook with an inclination of his head, and she pointed to a settee near Finn’s building efforts, across from the pianoforte.

  He nodded, not wanting to break the spell the music had cast over the room. Over him specifically, if he was to be honest with himself. Then he moved to sit, never removing his gaze from Miss Shelton.

  The play of emotions wafting over her face was as fascinating as the music coming from the gentle yet forceful touch of her fingers. It was as though she and the instrument were one—joined by some invisible force.

  Roman lost track of how long he sat there, staring and engrossed in the experience. But then, with a few long, mournful chords, the piece came to a close, and Miss Shelton’s fingers stilled, and the world ceased spinning.

  The clatter of wooden blocks crashing to the hardwood floor broke through the electrically-charged moment. Miss Shelton turned at Finn’s cry of frustration, but her gaze landed on Roman, not on the boy.

  “Oh!” A delightful flush raced to her cheeks. “I didn’t realize you had returned.”

  He stood awkwardly, prepared to leave should she wish it despite the unfounded desire that had struck him never to leave her presence—their presence—again.

  Finn’s howls increased in intensity, however, diverting her attention. Miss Shelton and Mrs. Wyatt rose as one, rushing to the boy’s side.

  “What’s wrong, sweet?” Miss Shelton asked, brushing a soothing hand over the boy’s brow.

  His sobs increased, though, until he almost reached the point of hiccoughs from his distress. “Fall down,” the boy managed at length, his lower lip quivering as he sucked in gasps of air.

  “Yes, Master Finn, it surely did,” Mrs. Wyatt put in. “But it is far from the end of the world for your blocks to fall over.”

  “Nooooo,” he wailed, smacking his fisted hands on the floor.

  Miss Shelton looked up at Roman, flustered as she tried to pick up the flailing boy. “I’m so sorry. I’ll just take him back to the nursery—”

  “There’s no need for that,” Roman said before he knew what he was doing. And somehow he was on one knee on the floor beside them.

  What in God’s name was he doing? He had never been around children much. Both his brothers were older, and neither had begun filling their nurseries until after he’d left for the Continent. He didn’t have the first inkling of how to deal with children.

  Yet he reached out a hand and used a single finger to wipe the tears from Finn’s cheek before he could think better of it. “There now, Finn. Why don’t we build it again together?”

  “Gether?” the boy asked with wide, green eyes. His chin quivered.

  Miss Shelton shook her head and nudged Finn again, but his attention was fixed squarely upon Roman.

  “That’s not—” she started.

  “It’s fine.” He didn’t give the pixie another opportunity to attempt to dissuade him from the course he
’d set for himself. Instead, Roman dropped to sit upon the floor and picked up a couple of blocks. “Which one do you want, Finn?”

  Tears forgotten, Finn scooted over closer and picked up a block. “This here.” He put it down right decidedly, right next to one of Roman’s Hessians.

  “Ah. Yes, that seems like the perfect spot for that block.” Roman set one of his next to it. When he reached for another one, Finn tapped on his hand and shook his head. Not that one, then. He waited to see what the boy would do. At least the tears had stopped, though.

  Miss Shelton looked at Finn and then turned to question Roman with her eyes. He lifted a brow. She snapped her mouth closed and then rose to her feet again, though she didn’t seem angered. More resigned, and perhaps a bit flummoxed, if the furrow of her brow was a true indication.

  “This one,” Finn said, pressing a block into Roman’s hand and forcing the return of his attention. Never mind that it was the same block Roman had been reaching for initially. This allowed Finn to make the choice, to decide for himself. The right to make his own decisions seemed an important thing for the lad.

  Gradually, Miss Shelton backed away then took a seat on a divan by the window. After a few minutes of Roman playing with Finn on the floor, Joyce and Miss Shelton started discussing the menu the cook had been writing.

  Roman placed a red block, stacking it on top of a blue one.

  “No. Here.” Finn replaced the red block with yellow, pressing the red one back into Roman’s hands.

  “Better?” Roman asked with a chuckle.

  The boy nodded decidedly, his eyes as serious as apoplexy. “Better.”

  In the background, Joyce stood. “Why don’t we go take care of this now?” She picked up her parchment and waited.

  The pixie, however, didn’t make a move to follow her. Her eyes were trained upon Finn and Roman on the floor.

  Mrs. Wyatt clucked her tongue and nodded her head to Miss Shelton. “We’ll be perfectly fine here without you, miss.”

  Still, Miss Shelton stood there, staring, her mahogany hair glinting in the sunlight streaming in from the windows. “Oh, very well,” she said with a beleaguered sigh. “Finn, you’ll be good for Nurse and Lord Roman?”

  “Good,” the boy mumbled, too engrossed in his block building to pay her any more moment than that.

  Roman passed her a wink, for good measure.

  Then she spun on her heels and followed the cook from the music room.

  “You’ve got a way with her, Lord Roman,” Lady Rosaline said from the bench seated by the pianoforte.

  He dropped the block he’d just picked up to give to Finn. She knew him? Knew who he was? In all of his experiences with Lady Rosaline to that point, she’d never remembered him beyond a few minutes at a time, though she did calm in his presence more easily than with some.

  Resituating his thoughts, Roman tried not to gawk in her direction. “A way, my lady? What, pray tell, do you mean by that?”

  She smiled in a way that brightened her normally fearful features. “Just that she wouldn’t typically leave Finn with anyone other than those of us who live here. She trusts you. That’s rare, my lord. My Bethanne doesn’t give her trust lightly. Don’t give her reason to doubt you, or you may never regain it.”

  It felt strangely comforting to discuss things with Lady Rosaline while she was clear-headed. Roman had started to fear that might never happen, since she so often was lost in another time and place in her mind.

  “Thank you for that advice,” he said. “I’ll be sure to remember it.”

  She chuckled and clucked her tongue. “See that you do. I don’t take kindly to anyone hurting one of my nieces, sir. Besides, my advice is the best there is.”

  He wasn’t given a chance to respond. Finn chose that moment to leap at him, pummeling him bodily to the floor with a peal of giggles and his fingers digging in to tickle. “Got you!” he squealed, tickling harder with encouragement coming from his nurse, the housekeeper, and Lady Rosaline.

  Got him, indeed. Roman’s breath was stolen from him, both from laughter and from wondering how he might ever extricate himself. Not from the boy—from the whole lot of them.

  “Do you have everything you’ll need for a nice beef stew?” Bethanne asked Joyce. “I think that would be lovely for tonight’s supper. Warm and hearty. Not to mention filling.”

  Joyce turned to the cupboards, moving a few things around and peeking behind them. “Well, that depends. Will I be making enough to feed Lord Roman as well?” When Bethanne didn’t immediately respond, she glanced over her shoulder at her. “I only ask because he seems to be here rather more frequently. And since he’s going to help repair the window in Lady Rosaline’s room, it would be nice…”

  Yes, it would be the nice thing to do. The charitable thing. A perfectly acceptable thing. Yet Bethanne couldn’t help the gnawing feeling deep in her stomach at the thought of inviting the man to be present more often than he already was.

  It had been exceedingly difficult for her to leave Lord Roman in the music room with a lucid Aunt Rosaline and with Finn—but neither of them would intentionally betray her. It was the unintentional ways they could do so that were so bothersome and perplexing.

  She let out a sigh. “Yes, I suppose we should invite him, shouldn’t we?” There was always the hope that he’d decline, claiming his duties at Hassop House were too great, too numerous, too important.

  Joyce scrunched up her nose. “I’ll have to make something to go with the stew, then. Something to make it stretch.”

  “A Yorkshire pudding?” Bethanne suggested. It had always been one of Aunt Rosaline’s favorites.

  Again, Joyce scoured through the cupboards for a moment. “Hmm…yes, I think I should be able to do that. And I’ll prepare a list for the grocer tomorrow morning.”

  “That will be lovely,” Bethanne said. Then, having finished their menu planning for the next fortnight, she left, heading back through the corridors to the music room. When she got there, her heart leapt to her throat and lodged itself there, perhaps never to be freed again.

  Finn, her darling, sweet boy, was in the midst of a tickle war with Lord Roman. The two were rolling over each other—tiny, endearing boy and massive, intimidating man. They would nearly crash into a piece of furniture, only to have Lord Roman pull them in the opposite direction just in time, accompanied by the most delightful cackling giggles her ears had ever known.

  For so long, she’d wanted this for Finn. A man in his life. A good man—one who did the right thing, even when it was so very wrong. A strong man—one who didn’t cower beneath the threats and insults of the world. A caring man—one who looked after Aunt Rosaline in the ways that Bethanne hoped she could do, yet always seemed to fall just short of managing.

  She ached to be able to give Finn something like this. But how could she risk revealing Miranda’s secret in order to give him this? Still, just for today, perhaps, Finn could know the joy of what it might be like to have a father.

  After that, Bethanne would have to steel her heart and do what was right to protect them all.

  Roman had been spending entirely too much time with Miss Shelton and Lady Rosaline of late, and in the process, he’d been neglecting Hassop House and his responsibilities there. Father would not be pleased, and more importantly, it went against Roman’s character to neglect anything. So, regrettably, he’d declined Miss Shelton’s offer of supper after fixing the window in Lady Rosaline’s chamber.

  At the Hassop House stables, Stuart took the mount’s reins, eyeing Roman askance as he did so, though he was intelligent enough to hold his tongue. Good. The last thing Roman needed right this moment was a reason to let out his frustrations on some unsuspecting member of the staff.

  He left the stables and marched across the grounds to the main house. After a meal, he’d spend some time with Milner so they could go over accounts and what positions needed to be filled after the recent vacancies, and the like.

  As had so ofte
n been the case recently, however, when he went through the doors to Hassop House, he was greeted not by the butler, but by trouble.

  “Sullivan,” barked Mr. Talbot, the beady-eyed man Roman recognized as the greengrocer from town. “About time you returned to your duties. Been off consorting with Bethanne Shelton, I take it, have you? That’s what I hear from my new assistant, Doughty, at least.”

  New assistant? Roman could only imagine that meant he’d sacked Byfield. He bit back the rage thundering a course through his chest to be released at the thought that the woodcutter he’d sacked had run off to spread veiled remarks as loathsome as those throughout town. Losing control of his temper in front of the townsman would only serve to hurt Miss Shelton, not help her.

  “I’ve been helping the ladies at the cottage repair a broken window, Mr. Talbot. And what have you been doing today?”

  “Repairing a window, eh? That’s what they’re calling it these days?”

  “I think,” Roman said in slow, measured tones, “you should be careful of what you say.”

  “Is that your advice for me, Sullivan?” He sneered over the cup of tea Milner had just brought him. “Well, I have a bit of advice for you, also.”

  Advice from this man was the last thing Roman wanted.

  “Stay away from that lightskirt, or your father will hear about how you’re running his estate in his absence.”

  “Is that your idea of a threat?”

  “Oh, no.” The greengrocer had the audacity to smile at him. “It’s a promise. Lord Herringdon would be highly interested, I’m sure, in the fact that you’re spending more time chasing that bit o’ muslin’s skirts than you are seeing to his staff.”

  As angry as that statement left him, Roman had to admit that the cur had a bloody point. Not that he’d been chasing Miss Shelton’s skirts, or that she was a lightskirt…but that he’d been thoroughly neglecting his responsibilities whilst seeing to her care.

  He couldn’t allow his father to come and see to things. Not now. After all, Roman had no business being in polite society, so he couldn’t very well take up a normal profession. That would only leave him with the option of returning to the military.