Page 49 of Her Impeccable Scoundrel
That brought him up. “He has nothing to fear from me.”
“No?” She stared into his face, and he had the impression she was trying to look into his soul.
On the way to becoming a formidable lady was this new cousin.
“He can’t help it, my lord. He says that two different men, two different times, have tried to take him. He thought you were here for the same reason.”
A frisson of alarm had Graeme standing taller. The taking of boys was the sort of thing that might happen in some of the countries of the subcontinent for a special sort of harem, or in Africa for the slave trade, or in London where chimney sweeps and small thieves were valued. But in the country?
“Does Lady Chilcombe know this?”
She shook her head. “No one knew until this morning when he told me, just before he ran off, and I have not had a chance to tell anyone.”
She’d trusted him enough to tell him first. He was touched.
“Come,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to the sofa. “Let us sit down. I want to hear this.”
Together they cleared some needlework and newssheets out of the way and sat down.
“You won’t take us away?” she asked.
“From Lady Chilcombe? No. From Bluebelle Lodge?” There’d be no false promises. “We must see what the court decides about your father’s will. Has Lady Chilcombe explained the matter to you?”
She nodded. “I knew something was worrying her even before he died. She finally told me.”
By he, she surely meant Archie.
“Whatever happens, I will provide for Lady Chilcombe, and for you and Nicholas as well. Now, I wonder if Nicholas’s problems are related to your godmama’s. When did all these worries start for her? I want to hear everything.”
“I know the very day they started,” she said, hands twisting in her lap. Well, perhaps it truly was earlier, much earlier, when Louisa and Samuel took us away from Risley Manor and brought us here.”
“Louisa and Samuel?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Stockwell. I was very little then, but I remember being frightened. I thought Godmama would die. I… I wasn’t supposed to see, but I heard all the shouting, and so much was happening no one noticed me coming down from the nursery.”
The blue eyes pinned him again, the shock of that long-ago day burning in them. “The baby… there was a baby, a boy, so very tiny, and he died, and there was so much blood. Samuel wrapped Godmama in blankets and carried her away, and Louisa took me, and we all came to Bluebelle Lodge. Then Nicholas’s mama came to live with us and he was born, and Godmama promised that I would live here until I grew up and got married and went to my own home.” She paused for a long moment.
“Your godmama lived here?” he prompted.
Coralie waved a hand dismissively. “She would go away to see to things at Risley Manor, but not overnight, and she never went up to town, though my papa—Lord Chilcombe as was—went away often.”
Her long pause begged the question about whether Archie had come to visit her. He chose to not ask it, waiting.
“I saw him sometimes when he was out riding with his friends. It was better he stayed away.”
There was old wisdom in this child.
“It wasn’t spoken of here, but I heard things in the village. I have… had… a friend.”
“A girl named Mirabelle?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I saw her speaking to your godmother at the assembly, asking how you are.”
“Godmama won’t tell me. She doesn’t want me to feel sad.” Coralie shook her head and met his gaze. “But you asked when her worrying started? It started the day that man turned over his phaeton in the lane. Godmama had a message summoning her to Risley Manor and she left quite suddenly. And when she came back later, she was flushed, and angry, and agitated too. It wasn’t like her, and when I went to see what was wrong. I found her in her study kneeling before the fireplace, burning papers.”
Coralie looked away, visibly more troubled by the more recent memory, than by the one from her early childhood.
