of how to comfort a grieving child when he was feeling bereft himself. He was so relieved to leave her with his mother and bury himself in work again that he’d ignored all her letters pleading to be allowed to join him on his travels and escape the constant criticism and disapproval of her grandmother and the stiff-necked governess hired especially to teach her to be the perfect English gentlewoman so she could attract a stern English gentleman one day. No wonder she had spent most of her time at Porter House fantasising about being adored by a dashing hero out of a Gothic romance. Lieutenant Champion had looked like the answer to a maiden’s prayer, but appearances were deceptive.
She had been even more lonely in the neat little cottage in Lyme Regis Brandon had bought to store his wife in. Once he realised none of his plans would bear fruit he tried to live almost as freely as if he’d never met and married her. Bran would come home, slake the lust of however many weeks he had spent at sea without a woman on her, then walk away whistling to find the knowing and flirtatious sort of women he preferred to his wife. Never again, she swore to herself as she shook off those uncomfortable memories. Never again would a man woo her, then walk away as if she was nothing. If not for his Admiralty masters’ raised eyebrows Bran would have left her in Lyme that day and never gone back and she would not have Toby. She would not undo a day of her failed romance if it meant losing her son, so she had best forget the past and live for now. The fleeting picture of a man as mighty and passionate as Magnus Haile desperate to share life with her was folly and she consigned that to outer darkness as well.
Now the next tangle of wagons and porters and furious drivers snarled the traffic to a halt again and it seemed even more stifling inside the tired old hackney than ever. At least Toby was chastened enough by his latest misadventure to only fidget and sigh and peer out of the small window to listen to colourful arguments being traded all around them. Hetta dreaded to think what gems were taking root in his busy head, but she would have to trust him to save the worst for his peers at the school she must find him before summer’s end. He knew enough insults in several languages to keep a pack of scrubby boys happy, but at least their wandering life had given him a wider view than he would have got in Lyme or at Porter House with her rigidly formidable grandmother. Her son had a robust sense of his own worth. Now she owed him stability, she decided as she eyed the sweaty chaos outside the window and sighed. She would have to endure this benighted country while her son grew up and there was no point having the blue-devils about it.
Since before he was even born Toby had been her counterweight against the failings and sadness of the past, and hope for the future, but she had to be careful not to smother him. The fact that most schools were closed for the summer let her put the idea of him going to one at least as a weekly boarder to one side, so she could at least get her breath back and give herself more time to look around for a place that wouldn’t stifle his character and try to turn him into the crushed pattern card of a gentleman. Not that it seemed likely, but the attempt to force him into such a mould would end in disaster for him and his mother, so she would need to be very careful about this school and the place she would eventually settle—nearby, but not too near.
The new Earl of Carrowe’s odd behaviour seemed a good way to distract herself from thoughts of her imminent parting from her son, so she let him steal her anxiety about the future, as the ancient vehicle finally trundled on. Shouting at Toby to come down off his less than noble roof had almost shocked her son into the tumble Lord Carrowe had claimed he was trying to prevent. The panic in the dark eyes the Earl shared and yet didn’t quite share with his younger brother Magnus had looked odd as well. Understandable for her to feel her life was hanging in the balance while Toby teetered between safety and a crashing fall, but why had his lordship been so concerned about a boy he didn’t even like? He’d continued to stare at the chimney Toby was clinging to even after he had let go and taken the lesser risk of a jump into the ancient attic below rather than a fall to unkempt grounds far too many feet below. At the time she had been so concerned for her son that his lordship’s odd behaviour had seemed irrelevant, but now she thought about it the more the man had seemed almost as hard-pressed to keep his feelings in check as his younger brother had under very different circumstances at Dover.
Hetta sighed and concluded she was making mountains out of molehills. Toby had been exploring where he wasn’t supposed to, so the Earl could hardly pat him on the head and claim it didn’t matter. Her fault for weakening and agreeing to stay there instead of facing a tramp around London looking for suitable accommodation. She should have recalled Haile was the Earl of Carrowe’s family name and steered clear of the rest of them the moment she heard Magnus’s name at Dover. Still, she recalled all the heart and intelligence under the misery in Magnus Haile’s dark brown eyes as he’d watched his little girl sail away and decided he had hopes, dreams and a passionate nature his elder brother must have sidestepped at birth. She marvelled Lady Drace was so obsessed with the current Earl of Carrowe that she refused to see how much less of a man he was than his younger brother. Perhaps ten years ago the eldest Haile brother had been as dashing and deliciously dangerous as the Honourable Magnus was now, but Hetta couldn’t imagine it. There was coldness in the Earl’s gaze his brother would never share, and if she was lucky enough to have a lover as potent and passionate as Magnus Haile, she hoped she wouldn’t be as big a fool as Lady Drace was by whistling him down the wind.
No, close off that notion right now, Hetta Champion. One failed love affair in a lifetime is enough.
She refused to be second-best ever again and Magnus Haile wouldn’t even notice if she fell at his feet and begged him to take her instead of his precious Lady Drace.
A week after he had to watch Delphi and his daughter sail away Magnus was halfway down a second bottle of cognac and still the memory refused to fade. He’d felt so hollowed out and despairing that day he had been trying to fill the void ever since.
‘Oh, no, what the devil are you doing here?’ he asked when he heard rapid footsteps outside, then looked up and only just managed to silence a groan of protest. Maybe he was asleep and dreaming. He blinked and the apparition still didn’t go away. The boy glared back as though Magnus was somehow at fault. Well, he was drunk and noxious in his mother’s newly decorated dining parlour. He needed a hot bath and someone to shave him, then push him into clean clothes, since he was too cast-away to do it himself. He didn’t think he deserved a hallucination as ill timed as this one, though.
‘Mama! Mama! It’s the man from Dover and he’s got horns,’ the boy’s treble voice yelled and managed to make Magnus jump as if he’d been struck by lightning.
He put up a shaky hand to feel his hair standing up in two peaks where he’d run his fingers through it and smoothed them down as best he could. He still didn’t see why the boy had to trumpet his sorry state to his mother when she was standing right behind him and could see for herself. ‘Oh, the deuce, please get him out of here,’ Magnus begged, putting his hand over his eyes and hoping the boy would disappear if he pretended not to be here hard enough. He thought he’d done quite well not cursing his imagination for dreaming the boy up, but next time he looked the brat from Dover was glaring at him as if he was the interloper here. Even thinking about the day they’d met made Magnus’s stomach give a heavy roll of nausea in protest. He only just managed to force it back and go on glaring at them owlishly.
The sight of him glowering must have made the bespectacled lady hesitate in the doorway, far more daunted by the rough welcome than her appalling offspring. For a moment Magnus felt guilty about making it so plain he didn’t want them here, but she shouldn’t march into strange houses if she wasn’t prepared for a rebuff. Before he could repent his harshness and recall his manners, she raised her chin, braced her shoulders and sailed further into the room as if she had every right to be here as well. He was almost ashamed of himself and could see the effort it cost her to brazen this out, but he was three-parts drunk and looking forward to adding the last quarter as soon as she and her son left, preferably as fast as their feet would carry them.
She was eyeing the chaos Magnus had wrought during his day of drunken misery instead of obliging him, though. A tidal wave of sickness ground again in Magnus’s belly as dread of Delphi and his little girl being unmasked by this woman who knew too much joined all that brandy and very little food, if any, he recalled hazily. This woman