do not interfere with my wife’s running of the household, you understand. And, naturally, your appointment is within her sphere of influence.’ She looked a trifle puzzled, but she nodded. ‘However, Alice is my daughter. She is my wife’s stepdaughter.’ The governess nodded again and sat a little straighter in the chair. ‘Naturally she is very fond of Alice, but she is not her guardian, not her mother.’ His tongue almost tripped him on the lie.
‘Yes, Lord Wykeham. I am aware of that.’ Miss Pemberton was cool.
‘I am sure you are. I wanted to make it clear that my daughter does not leave the house without my knowledge and consent. She most certainly does not go on carriage journeys without it. Do you understand?’
‘Your instructions are very clear, my lord, although I confess I do not understand.’
‘Lady Wykeham is prone to occasional flights of fancy that usually manifest themselves as erratic journeys. It would be unsettling for Alice.’
‘I see.’ She looked very perturbed. ‘I can assure you, my lord, that if there is any suggestion of such a thing I will inform you at once.’
‘Thank you.’ Avery stood up. ‘I can rely on you not to mention this to my wife? She becomes very distressed when we argue about these...whims.’
‘Of course, my lord. I greatly respect Lady Wykeham, I would not wish to upset her in any way.’
* * *
Laura barely made it downstairs in time before the sound of footsteps on the upper landing sent her headlong through the first bedchamber door she came to. She closed it gently and leaned back, one hand pressed to her lips to stifle the sound of her panting breath.
She had come back into the house because Alice had forgotten her gloves and, leaving the child in the carriage, had run lightly upstairs in her thin kid shoes to fetch them herself. It was much easier than trying to explain to a footman where they might be.
The sound of Avery’s deep voice coming from Miss Pemberton’s room had caught her attention. What on earth was he doing there? Not interfering in the carefully constructed lesson plan, she hoped! She tiptoed along the landing and found the door ajar, so she stood and listened, indignation at interference swept away by horror at the tale Avery was telling about her.
She was within an inch of sweeping in and demanding to know what he meant by it when she realised what was happening, what he feared. Despite the lovemaking, the appearance of friendliness, the pleasant partnership that she was so hoping would blossom into something else, he trusted her not one inch.
He believed she would betray him. He thought she wanted to steal Alice from him.
Laura listened to the sound of Avery’s footsteps dying away, then she heard the door to their bedchamber open and close and she ran down the stairs, jerking to a walk when she reached the hallway.
‘I couldn’t find them,’ she said to the footman. ‘Never mind.’ She had to get out of there before Avery realised she had been in the house. ‘I couldn’t find them,’ she repeated to Alice and sank back against the squabs as the carriage moved off.
Was Avery insane? He knew she had no hope of setting up a separate household with Alice. He could simply walk in and claim them both, order them back home. She had no legal power and, now she was married, virtually no money either.
Then she realised. He was perfectly sane, perfectly logical. He genuinely thought she would snatch Alice away from him to hurt him. To punish him for Piers, for the things he had said about that letter and for taking her daughter in the first place. He thought she would do something so rash simply to wound him, make him suffer. After all, she had jewels, pin money, so she could, she supposed, vanish and manage for weeks, if not months, before he found her. If she told the child the truth about her parentage she might be able to do it in such a way that Alice would come to regard Avery as some kind of monster, so that when he eventually caught up with them Alice would hate him...
‘Mama, are you all right?’ Alice bounced across to sit beside her. ‘You look frightened.’
‘Do I?’ Laura conjured a smile from somewhere. ‘Not at all. I was just...thinking.’
Pretending to be Caroline Jordan had been a dreadful mistake. But there was no going back from it, even if it proved fatal to her marriage. Avery condemned her for entrapping him, lying to him and she could not find it in her to blame him. Somehow she had to convince him that he could trust her and hope he might come to understand why she had done what she had. Would he ever forgive her? She had no idea, but she had to try, she loved him too much not to.
Laura swallowed panic as Alice prattled happily about the shops as they passed and she contemplated the desert in front of her, the arid marriage of her own making. She had fallen in love with Piers with all the impetuosity of a girl, heedless of consequences, unknowing of what love truly meant. Now she loved Avery with a woman’s understanding and a woman’s heart. The heart that would be broken when he cast her off, for surely that would be what would happen unless somehow she found a way to reach him.
* * *
The realisation of what to do came to her as she helped Alice choose ribbons. ‘The blue to match your new dress and the green for the new bonnet,’ she agreed, her mind half a mile away where one tall, brown-haired gentleman dealt with his correspondence and perhaps contemplated ways of ridding himself of his untrustworthy wife.
The answer came with a jolt as she gave Alice the coins to pay for her purchases. Tell him the truth. Tell him everything, however painful it is, however it reflects on Mama and Papa. Be utterly and completely open without trying to work out whether it will make things better or worse. If he forgives me, I will tell him I love him, tell him the new secret that is still just a hope. If I tell him first he will think I am trying to wheedle him into forgiveness.
And I will forgive him, however hard it is. I will learn to understand and forgive, for Alice and because I love Avery.
* * *
‘Avery?’
Avery turned from the bookshelves he had been staring at for the past ten minutes. ‘Laura.’ She was the last person he wanted to see, not while he was wrestling with his conscience over what he had said to Miss Pemberton. It was probably a sensible precaution, a rational part of him said. You love her, his heart urged. Trust her.
‘You want to talk to me?’ He pulled a chair round so she could sit, but she stood in the middle of the floor, her hands clasped in front of her like a defendant in the dock.
‘Yes, I want to talk.’ She was very pale, but her voice was steady. ‘I overheard you speaking to Miss Pemberton.’
‘Hell.’ He did not try to justify himself or to touch her. There was a core of inner steel there, he realised as he met her steady gaze. It was not hostile or tearful, just...strong.
‘I had thought that we were...that things would be all right. It wouldn’t ever be perfect, but we could be a family even if you did not love me, even with everything that had happened in the past. But I did not realise until I overheard you how little you trusted me, how little you understood why I had lied to you, why I had trapped you into
