Part 19 (1/2)

I love you. She did not mean it, did she? He had not tried to attach her emotionally, she had made no attempt to cling to him, to plead with him. Her eyes as she said it had been dry.

Why had he not let her tell him her story? If she could bear to tell it, then he should have the patience to hear it. Then he realised that it would have taken courage for him to sit and listen, that it mattered to him, more than an abstract story of an everyday outrage. It mattered because Phyllida mattered.

Sara was alone in the drawing room when he walked in. 'Whatever have you been doing? You look as though you have been in a fight!'

'That is because I have been in a fight.' He sank down on the sofa beside her and leaned his aching head on the cus.h.i.+oned back. 'And don't worry Mata by telling her.'

'Of course not. Did you win?'

'I think so.'

'Excellent.' She picked up her embroidery and let him rest.

'Sara, may I ask you something shocking? Something I should not even dream of speaking of to you?'

'Is this something else I should not be telling Mata about? Of course you may.'

Ashe sat up, rested his elbows on his knees and studied his clasped hands. 'What would drive you to sell yourself? To give your body to a stranger, a man who revolted you. Hunger?'

'No!' He felt the movement as she shook her head vehemently. 'I would rather starve.'

'Money?'

'Well, the money would be a reason, otherwise why do it? But...' She fell silent for a while, thinking. 'I would do it if it would save Mata from some awful danger. Or for you or Papa. If one of you were sick and there was no money for a doctor and medicines, then nothing else would matter.'

She said it earnestly, obviously meaning it. After a moment she moved close to him and put her hand on his arm. 'Is that why you were in a fight?'

'Yes. She was very young.'

'Oh, poor thing,' Sara said compa.s.sionately. 'Is there anything I can do to help her?'

'No, she's safe now.' I have broken her heart, but she's safe. Ashe got to his feet. 'I'm going out, probably won't be home for dinner.'

Fransham, when he finally ran him to earth, was at White's, dozing over a newspaper in a quiet corner of the library. 'Clere! Have a drink.' He waved to the waiter and tossed the paper aside. 'You're looking uncommonly serious.'

Ashe had washed, changed, combed his hair, before he had left home, but it seemed he had not been able to scrub away the darkness in his mind. 'I wanted to ask you something personal, something you probably don't want to talk about. Only it affects Phyllida and I need to understand.' Understand not only Phyllida, not only what had driven her to that desperate act, but himself. How he felt for her, why he ached inside, why he felt worse than he had when Reshmi had died.

'All right.' Gregory sat up and poured a couple of gla.s.ses of brandy. 'Ask away, I can always punch you on the nose if you get too personal.'

'Phyllida told me about your parents, why they didn't marry until after she was born. But what happened when your mother died? She didn't seem able to talk about it.'

Fransham's face clouded. 'G.o.d, that was an awful time. She told you how unreliable our father was? Well, the time he spent with us got less and less-and so did the money. And then Mama got sick. Consumption, the doctor said. We did the best we could. I was fifteen and I got a job with the local pharmacist, just a dogsbody, really, but he paid me in medicine. Phyllida was seventeen and she ran the house and nursed Mama and kept writing to Papa.

'He never answered, so in the end she sc.r.a.ped together enough money for the stage and set off to London to find him. She came back a month later, looking ghastly, and said he'd died in a tavern brawl. Knock on the head and too much drink. She'd seen the lawyers and they said there was some a.s.sets and more debts. I was the earl, and that kept the creditors at bay for a bit, but it was too late for Mama. She died a week after Phyll got home.'

'If she took only enough money for the stage, how had she lived in London?' Ashe asked, knowing the answer only too well. She could have turned around and gone home when she didn't find her wastrel father at once, but she had hung on, kept searching even though she was starving.

'Got some odd jobs, I suppose. I never asked, what with Mama and the news about Father.' Gregory scrubbed his hand over his face. 'I should have thought. She was as thin as a rake, took her ages to put the weight back on.'

So she had sold herself for the money to stay alive while she found her father, because if she did not then her mother and brother would starve. And the world would think-he had thought, d.a.m.n it-that what she had done dishonoured her. And she believed that if she married him it would compromise his honour.

'I have fallen out with Phyllida,' Ashe said bluntly. 'I've hurt her and I doubt she'll open the door to me now.'

'Do I need to name my seconds?' Gregory asked and set his gla.s.s down with a snap.

'No. You need to give me your door key and eat dinner out. In fact, I suggest you go and beg the Millingtons for a bed for the night.'

'The devil you say!' But Gregory was pulling the key out of the pocket in the tail of his coat.

'Don't ask and I won't have to lie to you. Thanks.'

'You had better be intending to marry her,' Gregory warned. 'I've been a d.a.m.ned slack brother, but I mean to do the right thing by her now.'

'I can ask. Only Phyllida can accept,' Ashe said and pocketed the key.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Ashe let himself into the house in Great Ryder Street with the care of a burglar. The ground floor was silent, but he could hear the murmur of voices from the bas.e.m.e.nt, the clang of copper pans. Soft-footed, he moved to the top of the stairs and listened. Three feminine voices, none of them Phyllida's.

They were devoted to her, he knew that from observing Anna. Whether that devotion would move them to fillet him with a boning knife or help him, he had no idea, but he could hardly be alone and uninterrupted with Phyllida unless they knew he was there from the start.

'Good afternoon.'

The cook dropped the ladle she was holding and the little maid gave a squeak of alarm. Anna jumped up from the chair by the range where she had been mending and marched up to confront him. 'What did you do to her? You got her away from Buck, I'll say that for you, but she's shut herself away in her bedchamber and she won't talk to me, or come out. If you've hurt Miss Phyllida, you rakeh.e.l.l, his lords.h.i.+p will beat your brains out and we'll cheer him on!'

'I didn't do anything to her,' Ashe said and sat down in a chair by the kitchen table, neatly unsettling Anna who did not seem to know how to deal with gentlemen lounging at the table, stealing Cook's still-warm jam tarts. 'I managed to say the wrong things, not say the right ones, and comprehensively put my foot in it with her. So, yes, I've hurt her, but not the way I suspect you mean, Anna.'

He laid the key on the table. 'That's Lord Fransham's, by the way. He knows I am here and he won't be in now until tomorrow.'

'So that's the way it is,' Anna said and sat down too.

'If you're all going to eat those tarts, I'd best put the kettle on,' Cook said, suiting her actions to her words. 'Get the tea caddy, Jane.'

'Are you in love with Miss Phyllida?' Anna demanded. Ashe raised his eyebrows at her tone, but she was not to be intimidated and sat there glaring at him while she waited for an answer.

Am I? 'Do you think I'd tell you before I tell her?' he asked. 'I do not mean her harm, that I promise you.'

Cook pa.s.sed him a cup of tea and pushed the plate of tarts closer. 'Well, get your strength up. You'll need it,' she added darkly.

She could not stay in her room for the rest of her life. Nor the rest of the day, come to that. Phyllida swung her legs over the edge of the bed and ran out of energy to stand up.

This would not do. Life had to go on and Gregory would be worried and the staff would fret if she hid herself away like a lovelorn adolescent. There was much to be done, that would help. A manager to find for the shop, the Dower House to whip into habitable shape, Gregory's wedding to plan for.

Goodness, she would be so busy she would forget Ashe Herriard in a few days. Oh, who was she deceiving? Not herself, obviously. Phyllida lay down again, curled up into a miserable ball and stubbornly refused to cry. A girl was ent.i.tled to mourn for a day when her heart was broken, she told herself with a rather hysterical attempt at humour.