Page 54 of The Scoundrel's Daughter
James cast his mother-in-law a scornful look. “Frail and elderly, my foot! As I recall, you turned fifty-four last month. In any case, I haven’t noticed a shortage of servants in this establishment. And they’re not ‘someone else’s children’—they’re your grandchildren!”
Lady Fenwick snorted. “They’re a trio of young hoydens, more like—and no wonder, dragged up in the wake of an army of rough soldiers, living in frightful conditions in close proximity to foreigners instead of being raised as decent Christian young ladies. School was the only possible alternative.”
“And yet Deborah has been entirely in your charge since birth.”
“Yes,” she said disdainfully, “but she carries your blood.”
He clenched his jaw. “I doubt very much whether you had the raising of her anyway. Your own daughter was raised by nursemaids and governesses—oh yes, I know all about her upbringing. But at least you never sent her away to live with strangers.”
She shrugged a thin shoulder. “There was no need. Selina was a quiet, well-behaved, well-bred gel—until she met you.”
He let that pass. The woman knew next to nothing about her own daughter. “There was no need to send the girls away from all they knew, especially since they’d lost their mother.”
She dismissed that with an airy wave. “Children adjust. They’re perfectly happy there.”
He pulled a worn, stained letter from his breast pocket and held it up. “And yet these ‘perfectly happy’ girls wrote to me saying they were miserable and begging me to come and get them.”
Lady Fenwick frowned and sat forward. “They can’t have. They were given—” She broke off.
“Given letters to copy?” He nodded, remembering the short, bland, almost formal letters his daughters had written each week. “I thought as much. They didn’t sound at all like my lively little Judy, and Lina used to draw pictures all the time. I haven’t had a single picture from her in months—until this.” He held up the letter showing a brief letter in childish script and a drawing of three small girls of varying heights, all looking sad.
“Children always complain—” his father-in-law began.
“Enough.” James cut him off with a curt gesture. “I have no interest in your excuses. Just give me the address of that school, and I’ll be gone.”
Lord Fenwick glanced at his wife, then rose and took a pen and paper and ink from the drawer in a nearby table. He scribbled the address and handed the paper to James.
James glanced at the address and almost crushed it in his fist. It was another day’s travel away. He stalked to the door.
Lady Fenwick rose and followed him. “What are you planning to do with my grandchildren?”
James snorted. “It’s too late to pretend any concern for them. You’ve shown your hand. Goodbye. My daughters and I shan’t bother you again.”
She drew herself up indignantly. “You—you can’t mean to deny me their company, surely?” There was a thread of anxiety in her voice.
He knew the real source of her concern: How would it look to outsiders for a grandmother whose only granddaughters had nothing to do with her? He let her stew for a minute, then said evenly, “If the girls want to see their grandparents, of course I will allow it. Despite what you seem to think, children need family.”
***
James gave instructions to his driver, and the coach headed off into the night, the coach lights glowing goldagainst the darkness. He would stop at the first decent inn he came to; he refused to spend a single night with his in-laws.
Brooding, he stared through the coach window at the shifting shadows of the passing countryside. He thought of his daughters, the last time he’d seen them. Seven-year-old Judy and three-and-a half-year-old Lina, with her shabby, much-loved dolly, standing at the rail of the ship, clinging to their mother’s hands, Selina standing straight, red-eyed but calm, the swell of her pregnancy outlined by the wind pressing her dress against her.
Now Selina was dead, and Ross and his parents, too, drowned in a boating accident. Not to mention all the friends he’d lost during the war. So much death...
James’s girls were all he had left. Sending them away at such a young age, when they could have stayed with family—that he couldn’t forgive. Three little girls in a seminary for young ladies, one of them just four years old—still a baby.
Why, why, why had they been sent away? He couldn’t understand it.
He knew his girls weren’t hoydens—or if they were, it was a reaction to their mother’s death. But that was no reason to send them away. Servants could be hired who would care for children with all the warmth their grandparents lacked.
His daughters had been born into a rough and unsettled life, traveling with an army, but they’d thrived. They might have lived in tents and billets and slept on the ground or in the back of a wagon, but between Selina and himself—and his batman and the woman he’d hired to help Selina—they’d had a home, a home made of people and love, not bricks and mortar.
He’d missed them damnably, had thrown himself into his work to ease the ache of loss.
He pulled out the letter and read it for the umpteenthtime. Short and to the point, just like Judy.We hate it here, Papa. We miss you. Please come and get us.
Judy’s writing. He settled back in the corner of the carriage, remembering her birth.
