The second pile of letters consisted of finer quality paper, but the florid, curlicued script was smeared, as if by tears. The notes were sealed with pink wax and embossed with a rose. A hint of those flowers wafted from the letters of Bette Field, Lady Lynbrook, the dowager baroness who was below hatches.
The third collection had black borders and precise black lettering. No frivolous perfume, no smudges or stains would dare encroach on the finest vellum or distract from the messages contained therein, sealed in black wax with the Ingall emblem. Deuce take it, Wynn’s sister-in-law had usurped his signet!
“I thought
un perfecto signore
was supposed to call on his hostess the day after,” Barrogi said as he handed over the cursed correspondence.
Damn if Wynn wasn’t being lectured on manners now by a world-class scoundrel. Even the dog was looking up at him accusingly. No, Homer only wanted more of the roll. Wynn tossed the whole thing to the floor in disgust. Everyone was trying to make him into something he was not, the perfect London beau. Well, he would not do it.
“No, I am not calling on that managing female. Next thing I’d know, she’d have me traipsing after her through the park. You can go in my stead, though, delivering a bouquet. That ought to satisfy the conventions. She likes violets.” Wynn brushed the crumbs from his hands. “Oh, and while you are there, why don’t you hang about the place, out of sight but where you can see who comes and goes. To keep an eye on the lady, you know, just in case.”
Barrogi smiled, showing the gap where a tooth had been. He knew. Violets?
Per Dio,
he would bring roses.
Wynn, meanwhile, had to decide which troublesome wench to call on first. He decided to flip a coin. Heads, he’d visit Rosie; tails, Lady Lynbrook. If the coin stood on its edge, he’d go see his sister-in-law.
Rosie won, because her dilemma seemed most pressing. Pressing against the front of her gown, at any rate. The once-pretty gaming hall faro dealer, merry as a grig and up to every rig and row, was up to her seventh month, and looked like hell. Her skin was sallow, her brown hair was dull, and her eyes were swollen from crying. Her ankles, propped on a footstool, were simply swollen.
“What is wrong, my dear?” Wynn asked when she held a limp hand out to him. “Are you unwell? I know I told you to consult an accoucheur and send me the bill. Did you? Perhaps you should consult another. I thought women in your condition were supposed to be glowing.”
She glowered at him. “You try carrying this weight around and see how you glow. Besides, I’ve been stuck in these two dreary rooms for weeks now.”
Wynn would be blue-deviled himself if he had to look at the same cabbage-rose wallpaper and the same chintz upholstery every day, even if he were not worrying about birthing a bastard. “Why don’t you go out for some fresh air, then?”
“Because if I do go out for a stroll, the neighbors all pull their brats to the other side of the street or snicker behind their hands. No one comes by except the day maid and the delivery boys, and they look at me as if I were a whore.”
Wynn refrained from the obvious comment. There was a fine line, it seemed, between courtesan and Covent Garden ware. Rosie knew the demarcations. Her neighbors, apparently, made no such distinction. Well, he’d be damned if he’d let anyone point their fingers at Rosie. “Come, my dear. Get your bonnet. It is a lovely day, and we can speak together in the park as easily as here. We can take a hackney there, away from your bothersome neighbors, and walk my dog a bit before it gets crowded with the fashionables. That will put the roses back in your cheeks, my girl. And after, we can go have an ice at Gunter’s.”
“But it is not yet noon.”
“So what? I have not had a raspberry ice in decades, it seems. I used to dream about them when I was in India.”
“I prefer lemon.”
Rosie was already placing a cherry-trimmed straw hat on her head and tying a crisp pink bow under her chin— with admirable speed and style, Wynn noted, and without even looking in a mirror. His own knotted kerchief was already wilted.
He took her arm and said, “Good, that will leave more of the raspberry for me and Homer.”
Wynn could see the curtains twitching as he led Rosie down the steps to his waiting hackney. He turned and waved. Rosie giggled, more like the gay young charmer he remembered. Perhaps he could scrape through this interview without an emotional maelstrom after all.
When they reached the park, he adjusted his stride to her slower, more ponderous gait, and put his arm around her when the path was uneven. Impatient with their dawdling when there were so many new scents, Homer ran off on his own. Few pedestrians were out so early: an elderly gentleman feeding the squirrels, which Homer chased off, a few nursemaids with their charges, whose ball Homer stole. Wynn hurried Rosie along.
Some equestrians were exercising their horses along the carriage paths, dull work, Wynn thought, compared to riding hell for leather across open country. He missed that, not having a good ride since coming to London. The viscount idly wondered how a breeding farm would fare at his estate in Hertfordshire, or if he would enjoy setting up an Irish stud, like Lord Duchamp’s.
Rosie, meanwhile, tilted her face up to the sun. “You were right, lovey. This does feel heavenly.”
“Would you like me to find you a place in the country, then? A little cottage away from prying neighbors?”
“Lands, no. What would I do there? Who would I talk to? For sure there would be no work for a skilled professional such as myself.”
Again, he held his tongue concerning her various professions. “I had not meant for you to work. I would purchase the cottage, of course, if none are empty at any of my holdings. And pay its upkeep, naturally. Without asking anything in return,” he hurriedly added, lest she think he was making her a business proposition.
“Oh, no, you have been more than generous already.” She patted her protuberant belly. “With no good cause.”
“Well, if you do not wish me to support you, perhaps you would like me to look into finding a home for the infant, so you can go back to, ah, dealing. I am certain one of my tenants would take in the babe if I—”
“Give up my babe?” Rosie’s voice was so shrill one of the nursemaids hurried her charges away from the nearby duck pond. Homer jumped in to finish the bread crumbs. “Never! I could of done what some of the other girls do, but it’s my baby!”
“Yes, yes. Of course it is, and no one is going to take it away.” Wynn tried to sound soothing, instead of near panic. Lud, you’d think he stood between a mother bear and her cub the way Rosie was screeching. “But what else can I do to help, then?”
“You know what I want, Wynn. Although I suppose I should be calling you Ingall now, or my lord.”
He brushed that pomposity aside along with Homer, who wanted to wipe his wet whiskers on Wynn’s biscuit-colored pantaloons. The dog took off after the squirrels again. “Wynn is fine. Go on.”
“Didn’t you read my letters?”
“Of course, I did,” he lied, having read only the first two or three. “Your letters were one of the reasons I came back to England. To be of assistance. Tell me how again, now that we are face-to-face.”
“All I want is a name for my baby.”
Alan? Albert? Alexander? Wynn’s mind was racing, knowing full well he was on the wrong course. Hell, he was not playing the same sport!
Rosie was going on, unaware of his unease: “I want my baby to have a better life than I have, and for that he or she needs another name than mine. I can work again as soon as I get my figure back after the lying-in, and support us all, including the wet nurse. But no matter how hard I work, I can’t never buy my child respect. He’ll be shamed his whole life, without a father’s name, and shamed of me, his ma.”
“What about the father? Won’t he ... ?” Wynn was too polite to ask if Rosie even knew who the father was. He’d vowed never to duel again, but that would not prevent him from beating the man to a pulp, leaving just enough of him to stand in front of a curate.
“Gone on his honeymoon, the dastard.”
“I, ah, see.” He’d still flatten the dirty dish. He saw some ladies walking up ahead, so steered Rosie down a different path.
“And I thought you would marry me, instead.”
“But no one will believe I am the child’s father. I was not even in the country at the right time.”
“That’s no matter, if you don’t claim otherwise. I checked with a barrister. Since you’ve got no close kin to contest it, no one can say my baby isn’t yours.”
Wynn knew how the squirrels must feel. “But I, um, never led you to believe that I ...”
She slowly lowered herself to a nearby bench. “No, you never gave out false hopes, not like some I could mention, God rot his soul. But you never did get wed, for all these years. I would of read about it when you came into the title. So I figured you had no mind to settle down. And I don’t intend to ask you to change your ways, neither. I don’t mean you to be a proper husband, just for the parish register. It’s not your money I am after, and don’t you go thinking that it is, not for a minute. I know you’d lend me the ready either way. You can go off on your travels and never see the babe if you don’t want, as long as you leave him or her your name behind on the marriage lines.”
But his name was not just Wynn Ingram anymore. He was now Wynn Ingram, Viscount Ingall. If he and Rosie wed, and the child was a son, the boy could claim to be Wynn’s heir. That might be a good joke to play on his dead father and brother, but Wynn was alive and he was not laughing.
Aside from the succession, the notion of standing as father to another man’s by-blow did not sit well with Wynn. Supporting orphanages was one thing, calling a stranger’s offspring “son” was quite another, especially as it would be his first son. Perhaps his only. Wynn started pacing in front of Rosie’s bench. “What, by all that’s holy and half that isn’t, makes you think that I would marry you and name your child as my own?”
“Well, we did have some good times.”
They were not
that
good! Wynn was wearing a path from the bench to the base of a nearby tree. There and back, there and back. At least the squirrels got to run up a tree. “Those times were few, and far in the past.”
“Yes, but you were always good to me. You’ve been right generous whenever I’ve asked, even before you had so much yourself.”
“That was my pleasure, for the pleasure we shared, not a promise to support you and your progeny forever!”
Rosie adjusted her bonnet to a better angle. “I know that. But you did cost me Lynbrook, you know. I haven’t had a gentleman with such deep pockets since. I figure you owe me.”
“I owe you?” Wynn stopped himself from squawking like one of the ducks Homer was back to chasing. Ducks, squirrels, what was the difference when he was the quarry? “How can you figure that? Lynbrook was so cruel to you, you could not wait to leave his protection.”
“But he was rich.”
“He was married.”
“And his wife had not conceived in five years of marriage. I wouldn’t be in this fix now if you hadn’t gone and killed him.”
“Devil take it, I thought you knew—”
“Aye, I should of known, all right.” Rosie began to sniffle, her chin to tremble, her brown eyes to fill up.
Oh, hell. Wynn sat beside her and patted her hand. “You could not have been certain.” He was speaking about the duel.
Rosie was not. “I should of known you’d never marry me, not a fine swell like you, a viscount and all. I was good enough for a toss and a tumble back when you was a green lad, new on the town, but now I’m just used goods. No one is going to marry the likes of me,” she bawled.
Dash it, now Wynn was feeling guilty for another crime he had not committed. “Don’t cry, Rosie,” he begged, too late. “I never looked on you that way. Why, you are a fine girl, and I am sure you’ll be a good mother. It’s just that, well, were I to wed you, I could never take a wife of my choosing. And lately—”
Rosie clapped her hands in delight, her tears forgotten. “You mean you’ve found a lady to love? That’s all right, then. I would never want to stand in the way of your happiness.”
“No, I—”
“Haven’t asked her yet and mum’s the word.” Now she patted his hand. “I understand. And who am I going to say anything to, anyhow?” She started to get to her feet, with his assistance, for the walk back to the park’s entrance. But then her face and her legs both crumpled. “Oh, Wynn,” she cried. “You were my last hope. What’s to become of me and my babe now?”
He caught her and held her against him, thinking while she sobbed. He thought of those tattered veterans on the street corners. If one could be a valet, one could be a husband. Then he thought of the valet he’d shipped off. He could have made him marry poor Rosie, but Rudy had left too soon. Hell, he could pay some down-at-heels gambler’s debts and get him out of Fleet prison—and in front of a vicar. But then Rosie and her babe would be the property of some ne’er-do-well, some brute who could steal her nest egg, beat her, sell her son to the chimney sweeps, her daughter to white slavers.
Dash it, he had not challenged Lynbrook to that duel just to have Rosie abused by another mawworm.
“I’ll think of something, my dear. I swear it, and you know I never go back on my word.”
Rosie wrapped her arms more tightly around him and whimpered onto his shirtfront. “I always knew you was a right ‘un.”
He tried to reach around Rosie’s bulk for his handkerchief to offer her. He looked back up—into blue eyes wide with shock, right behind Rosie. Homer was barking a welcome. Some distance away his own man, Barrogi, was shaking his head. The rest of the world seemed to have come to a standstill, including Wynn’s brain.
He could never pretend Lady Victoria Ann Keyes had not seen them.
He could never explain why his arms were around an enceinte ladybird.
He sure as Hades could not introduce them.
Wynn would not get the chance, anyway, for Lady Torrie spun on her heel, took the arm of her gray-clad maid, and hurried down a different path.
“You see?” Rosie wailed, loudly enough to be heard by the retreating women, and anyone else in the park that morning. “Decent women are always going to turn their backs on the likes of us.”