Dangerous in Diamonds - Madeline Hunter [125]
“You are very sure that he has gone to France?”
“Very sure.”
“Then I will tell you about her.”
They walked down the lane at the slowest pace. The breeze conspired to dishevel Daphne’s hair quickly. A tendril here, another there, and soon she looked for all the world like a woman rising from a bed of pleasure.
He tucked that observation away into the place in his heart where he kept the other memories.
“I was with child when I went to old Becksbridge and told him about his son,” she said. “I stupidly thought he would tell Latham to do the right thing by me. Instead he accused me of trying to trap his son. He insulted my character and my virtue until I was in tears.” Her expression firmed at the memory. “Then, when I was in despair, he offered to help me if I obeyed his instructions.”
“He sent you north, to live with another woman whom his son had misused.”
“Margaret was beholden to him, of course. He believed he could count on her making sure that I did as he commanded.” She paced on. “He was not correct there, and I am thankful to this day for that.”
“How did you disobey him?”
She stopped walking. “I was to live with her and give the child over to a family he had chosen after my lying in. I was too sinful to raise a child with his blood, you see. My bad character would poison her. As the months passed, however, my heart mourned the very thought of that day. Margaret saw my melancholy. She guessed the reason and proposed that we deceive him.”
“I am liking her more all the time.”
“She wrote to the duke that I had lost the child during an illness. During my last months we moved to a cottage outside Eccles. After Estelle was born, I stayed there alone for some months. I could not keep her with me forever, I felt. If the duke found out, he would cast out Margaret from her home, and me too. Mostly I feared he would take Estelle and I would never see her again.”
Some of that fear was in her voice as she said it. He took her hand and pressed his lips to it. “Do you fear that still? With Latham now? Is that why you wanted to be sure he had gone to France before admitting even to me who she is? Daphne, a father has no rights to a child if he is not married to the mother.”
She moved closer, so she looked in his eyes over her raised hand. “You cannot know what it is like, to be a woman alone, with no means of support except the largesse of a family that has wronged you. If either took her, father or son, I could never find the means to fight them. Do not tell me about the law, Castleford. For a woman alone, with no money, a duke’s power is a fearful thing.”
He wanted to say this was not true, and that no man had such power. Except he knew all too well that he could have a child torn from a mother’s arms and arrange it so no one would ever find the men who did it or the child again.
“There is a good family near Eccles, the Foresters, who had befriended me. I left her with them. I sent money, and I visited when I could. I would take the stagecoaches there, hold my child for an hour or so, then travel right back by stage again. Only once did I stay longer, when Estelle was ill.”
“When did you become Mrs. Joyes?”
“When I first joined Margaret. It was obvious soon that I was with child. I became a war widow, since there were enough in England that one more was not notable. When I approached Becksbridge again, I let him believe I had married Captain Joyes, only to lose him soon in the war. I hoped that after the duke died, if Latham should see any documents with Mrs. Joyes’s name, he would never guess it was me. I never thought to find myself near London again. I had hoped he would give me property near Margaret and Estelle. Instead, he gave me this.” She gestured to the land they now walked.