All About Seduction(34)

“Will there be a baby?”

“If God wills it,” she whispered.

“God has nothing to do with whether or not you lie with one of the guests.”

“I was not suggesting an immaculate conception.” Caroline tucked her lips around her teeth.

Mr. Broadhurst had about as much use for sarcasm as he did for leisure pursuits.

“You ask too much. When he is healed, if he can do his old job, he can have that back.” He gave a dismissive gesture. “It looks as if the men have returned. You should go to them.”

The guarantee of Jack getting his old job back was better than nothing. She nodded. And now she had to face the men, one of whom she would have to pick for a lover.

The door opened and skirts swished through the breakfast room. Jack struggled to lift his weighted eyelids. God, how was he going to get to London in two weeks if he couldn’t even stay awake?

“I’m to sit with ’im while you help with dinner,” whispered a female voice. Not Mrs. Broadhurst.

Jack stopped trying to open his eyes. He’d been in and out of consciousness since the doctor’s visit a few hours earlier. Mrs. Broadhurst had checked in on him in the morning and been present when the doctor was there, but other than that he’d been seen to by servants.

“Sleeping he is,” said the redheaded maid who’d been sitting sewing in the corner since Beth left. “Not a peep out of him.”

“Caw, least he’s peaceable. My mistress was late getting dressed for dinner and I thought the master was like to kill her.”

The new entrant to the room rattled on, “He stayed on while I dressed her, and tried to do her hair, but the way he kept looking at her—fair made my skin crawl.”

“Hush, that be the master you’re yapping about.” The chair screeched back.

“Not him. I works for the missus. She goes, I go. It ain’t right him leering after her. He’s old enough to be her grandda.”

“He’s her husband. He has the right of her.”

“ ’Fore I came in he was jawing on about getting a baby. As if that is going to happen after more’n a baker’s dozen years of marriage.”

Did Broadhurst blame his wife for her childlessness? Broadhurst had not had a single baby from his first two marriages. The fault probably lay with the old man.

“My aunt was married for fourteen years before my cousin was born. They had to go at it every night for nigh on a decade. He’s her only. Fair dotes on him, she does.”

“Pish,” said the newcomer. “I think the master’s so old his seed dried up.”

“An old man in my village got him a new wife after his wife passed, and got five more babies on the new wife. He musta been ninety if he was a day.”

“I suppose you’d have an answer for everything, but he ain’t been to her bed for a month of Sundays. They won’t get no babies like that.”

“Shush, we shouldn’t talk of such things, and I best get along before Cook is ready to roast me.”

The conversation bothered Jack and wouldn’t let him fall back into sleep. Was Mr. Broadhurst tired of his wife? Did he intend to be rid of her? Both of Broadhurst’s wives were buried at the crossroads. Even if the deaths were more than three decades apart, it always seemed unlikely that both had taken their own lives.

But he had no room to judge.

He’d wanted to be like Broadhurst, just not in that respect. He’d put off marriage. He’d put off having children. All because he hadn’t wanted to be held hostage to responsibilities to others. He’d hurt beyond measure the first girl he’d ever loved and forced her to a horrible choice. And it was probably all for naught.

With his injury, he would be lucky to live the life he’d been planning to rise above.

Jack shook off his gloomy foreboding. No, he would find a way to get to London, convince the owner of the machinery company he could still do the work. He could still design. He had money to live until he could prove he would be an asset to his company. He would figure out a way to get the machining done. He had to make it work, otherwise what point was there to his life?





Chapter 7



The interminable dinner was finally drawing to an end. Two hairpins jabbed Caroline’s skull. After she walked Beth back to the village, her maid had worked a miracle getting her into fine London feathers and her hair coiffed in the space of a quarter hour. But the hasty twisting and pinning had led to a dull aching headache. Or perhaps Mr. Broadhurst’s reminder that she was to fulfill her part of the bargain had been to blame.