of her life—he was the father of the little darling watching him as if she knew he mattered. Why wasn’t her mother agreeing with her? Delphi must have deliberately lured him into her bed to fantasise he was his elder brother when Gresley stayed sternly away and left her to find comfort in another man’s arms. It was never him she’d wanted and that felt bitter as gall as he nearly choked on the taste of it after all these years of being half in love with a woman he could not have. Delphi had loved and been loved by Gresley for a time before the dutiful heir married money to save the Carrowe estates from bankruptcy instead of lovely, not very wealthy Lady Delphine Bowers. So, she in turn had made a marriage of no affection to keep her true love alive in her heart while she flaunted Drace’s almost legendary wealth in her lover’s face and effortlessly outshone his new Countess at every turn. It seemed a poor reason for marriage, but what room had Magnus to criticise when he’d nearly married a friend for the sake of her fortune only a few months ago?
‘Wed me for her sake?’ Magnus begged huskily even so and leaned forward to kiss his baby daughter before she was snatched away for what could be for ever. The little minx gurgled at him and his heart lurched with love and his need to protect her against every harsh wind that might blow on her for the rest of her life. She was still his child, whether her mother liked it or not.
‘No, I won’t have her watch us tied together only by duty and not love. I lived in a hollow marriage for a decade after I could not marry the love of my life and I swore never to do it again the day Drace died. Angela is mine and her own, but she is not yours, Magnus.’
‘Explain that to anyone who ever lays eyes on her and has seen one of us Hailes first, then. You can call her by another man’s name as much as you like, but you can’t pretend Drace had any hand in her with those features and dark brown eyes and all that jet-black hair to give you the lie.’
‘I won’t have to if you stay away from us. If you truly love her, you will go away and leave us to live a good enough life in another country without you. I can afford to give her the best of everything and make sure she has a good education and all the things you can never afford, circumstanced as you are. You have nothing to offer her and I can give her everything. Now my maid is getting frantic and signalling we must get aboard, before she and my worldly goods are forced to cross the Channel without us, so get out of the way, Magnus, and leave us be.’
‘And that is all you have to say to me?’
‘Yes. You must live a good life and forget all about us.’
‘How can I?’
‘Take lessons from the man who knows how it’s done,’ she said with a thin, bitter little smile and waved a dismissive hand in his direction before she turned away with his child to be scurried up the companionway by the impatient Captain of the packet boat. Then she took herself to the other side to look towards Calais and away from him. At last the boat embarked with Magnus gazing after it like a fool, watching every step and sail they took away from him as if he had a wicked spell laid on him and there was nothing he could do to tell the world his heart had been ripped out.
‘Guv,’ a skinny young man said to the brooding figure Hetta was suddenly so reluctant to disturb. Magnus Haile stood stock-still now and looked as if everything he ever cared about had left him for ever and his life was meaningless and empty without them. She must have caught at his name, like carelessly thrown jewels, when Lady Drace dropped it into her bitter farewell. This man Lady Drace had refused so coldly looked as if he’d been broken by his lover’s final rebuff. Hetta almost cried for him and she was no watering pot and was nearly sure she didn’t like him. ‘We need to get home, Mr Magnus,’ the youth urged, clearly uneasy in the face of such raw emotion which seemed to come off his master in waves as he stood there trying so hard to be impassive and rocklike and failing at it rather badly. At a distance he might look so, but this close to he was clearly spent. He ignored his unlikely-looking rescuer as if his ears had shut down after Lady Drace’s last bitter words stung him to the heart.
‘Mr Haile, your man is trying to get your attention.’ Hetta spoke up at last, and thank goodness she was too much of a stranger to need to search for words of comfort when the man looked back at her as if he knew there was none to be had.
‘Eh?’ he managed to say, as if reluctantly realising he had a new world to live in now the two people he most wanted in it had left him. ‘Oh, yes. There you are, Jem. Horses calmed and dealt with, are they?’
‘Aye, stabled and fed and asleep already when I left—which you looks as if you ought to be as well, if you don’t mind me saying so, Mr Magnus.’
‘Wouldn’t that be a handy trick?’ Mr Haile said softly, as if he hadn’t slept properly for longer than he cared to remember.
‘Whatever it is, you needs to come away now. Mr Wulf will skin me alive if I get you home in an even worse state than you was in last Easter when—’
The young man stopped himself and eyed Hetta as if he had suddenly realised she was a total stranger and couldn’t be trusted to keep a still tongue in her head about his master’s family and their obviously very tangled affairs.
‘I am no gossip,’ she reassured him earnestly and turned to meet Mr Haile’s dark eyes. Shock and a terrible weariness looked back at her. There was a faint glimmer of the man he ought to be looking at her with a tepid sort of interest, as if she was a being who knew far too much about him and he ought to care, but could not quite make the effort to do so. He seemed to have shut down all the power and vitality that made him so memorable at first sight, even if her motherly instincts had been on the alert for her son’s welfare at his furious hands at the time. This man now looked as if he was too tired and battle-weary to care what anyone did to him. Toby could dance on the topsail of the next ship to come in and drop on his head to break his fall and he would shake him off after a few stunned moments and go on with hardly even a blink to admit he had a headache.
‘I think you had best find this gentleman a good meal and a clean bed for the night, young man,’ she advised his unlikely companion gently, as if she knew he was being left to deal with a casualty and might need a little advice from a woman who was all too used to wrenching comfort out of spartan lodgings and a sometimes less than perfect life of her own.
‘You’re in the right of it there, missus. Rode here as if the devil was on his tail, he did. Ought to know better, but I can take care of him now,’ the youth said as if he was decades older than the man Lady Drace had just whistled down the wind as if lovers like him were ten a penny. Magnus Haile seemed almost broken and the last thing in the world to make him feel any better would be the pity of a strange woman. A part of her that should be ashamed of itself mourned for him as her fantasy lover. She could only imagine having a man like him in her own bed in her wildest dreams. Lady Drace was obviously made of finer stuff, though, and, since he was used to a lover of such graceful beauty and elegance, he would have no eye for a plain Mrs Champion even if he wanted another lover to comfort him, sensible Hetta argued. Being second-best would feel more hellish than being alone with all these feminine longings and frustration when she sought her lonely bed tonight. No, it was time she got back to real life and forgot Magnus Haile and her odd welcome to a country that had never felt like home to her.
‘Reassure your master, once he is refreshed and well enough to listen properly, that I never gossip,’ she said with a nod to say You can trust me. The lad returned with a wary Maybe I can nod back.
‘Heaven send I never see you or your brat again to test you on that assertion, ma’am,’ Magnus Haile said as if her words had woken him from a stupor. He looked so revolted by the idea that she felt stung, but before she could summon up a sharp answer he marched off as if it was her fault he had suffered such a felling blow at his ex-lover’s hands today.
‘The feeling is entirely mutual,’ she muttered into the damp and empty air even as she gazed at his fast-retreating back and noted his loping stride had already taken him well out of hearing distance, proving he had more energy than she’d thought. ‘Of all the rude, abrupt, bad-tempered m-m-monsters...’
No, that won’t do. Hetta stopped herself in mid-stammer