Page 12 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
Ben hesitated, and the silence that stretched out between them was such a fragile thing. At last he admitted, “I have got twelve shillings to my name. I can hardly afford to feed us.”
Diana’s hands knotted in her lap. “But surely your father—”
“Cut me off years ago, when I informed him that he had a grandchild born outside of matrimony.” He gave a small, derisive laugh. “There is no one left in the village who will mind Hannah, even if I could afford to pay them.”
Which he certainly could not, if the sum total of his assets was a meager twelve shillings.
“I want better for her than this,” he said. “She needs a proper education; aqualityeducation. And I can’t give her that. Not in my present circumstances.” His fingertips rapped an unsteady rhythm upon the surface of the table. “Unless I have someone to mind her, I can’t even put in the labor that might lift us from poverty.”
A strange, niggling suspicion bloomed in the back of Diana’s mind. He was working up to something, she was certain of it. “Where, exactly, do you mean to say?”
His lips flattened into a firm line. “I wouldn’t ask. But I am quite desperate.”
Diana swallowed. Hard. “You want me to mind your daughter.”
Ben had the good grace to look abashed. “Only temporarily,” he said.
“To teach her?” Bewildered, she shook her head. “I’m not a governess.”
“No, but you know the sorts of things ladies learn. Far better than I do.” He splayed his fingers out upon the table. “You’ve come here alone,” he said, “so you must be afforded some level of independence.”
Not really. Not yet, though he couldn’t know that. But Marcus would expect that she would be gone for some time, at least. She hadn’t intended to inform him of her true destination, her real purpose, until she had returned.
“It’s a small village,” he said. “The people are…not well-traveled. You won’t be recognized. Your reputation will be entirely safe, provided you don’t offer the story of your life to anyone.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “Do this for me—forHannah,” he said, “and I will accompany you to London to formally break our engagement. However it pleases you to do so.”
Chapter Five
It wasn’t a fair thing to ask of her, Ben knew. She’d come to be free of him, not to take his daughter in hand—hell, she hadn’t even known hehada daughter.
Then again, no one else had, either. Only his father, who had promptly declared him an embarrassment to the family name. There had never been even the faintest suggestion of support; only demands that Ben relieve himself of the child at once. And when that had failed to garner the desired response, then had come the threats.
He’d been on his own for years and years, now. Since Hannah had been just an infant. Just the tiniest little babe, with her huge blue eyes, depending upon him to do his best for her. And hehadtried, damn it all. But he had been young, so young—only two and twenty the day Hannah had been laid into his arms. He’d been on his Grand Tour at the time, his living situation subsidized by an allowance. Which had promptly been withdrawn upon the revelation of his daughter’s existence.
He hadn’t known, then, just how difficult it would be for a young man with no skills valuable to the laboring world to support himself. But God, how he had learned.
He had learned how to work until his hands bled. How to haggle and bargain for the things they needed. How to stretch pence further than they ought to go. How to cook a decent meal and repair torn hems and plait a little girl’s hair. He’d learned how to find work in each new town they had arrived in, and he’d done more than his fair share of backbreaking labor in return for whatever coin it paid.
With luck, his current venture would, eventually, pay off well enough to set them up comfortably for some time. Perhaps even forever, if he hit a large enough vein. If it didn’t deplete itself too swiftly. If he could get enough off the sale of it to invest the majority of the profit.
If he could manage to get down to the mine atall, considering that hemost certainly could not take Hannah with him—or leave her to her own devices for a dozen or more hours each day.
He would have bargained away his soul for Hannah’s security. Surely he could stomach London just long enough to give Diana the freedom she so desired in return for his own freedom. For a better life for Hannah.
She had been silent a good, long while. Behind the silver rims of her spectacles, she had narrowed her dark eyes into what he imagined was meant to be a speculative look.
When had she acquired those spectacles? He could not recall her having worn them when last he’d known her—though it had been some twenty years since then.
“Diana?” he prompted.
“I’m thinking,” she said swiftly. Her eyes had drifted toward the dusty little kitchen window, and Ben turned to glance through it himself. Hannah bounced along on the lawn, having finished feeding the horse. She’d gotten a copious amount of hay in her hair, and somehow she had ended up with three massive splotches of mud upon the skirt of her dress.
At least he hopedit was mud.
“I want the best for her,” he heard himself saying. “Everything I can provide—and those things I can’t, I will bargain for. Every good thing for her.”
He thought she might’ve sniffled. She nudged one finger beneath the rim of her spectacles and swiped it beneath her eye. And at last, she said, “All right, then. I will do what I can.”
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