Two hours later and with her bags packed, Meg went in search of her aunt. But she was informed that Lady Hullworth was tending to a matter with the master gardener.
This did not come as a surprise. Aunt Sylvia practically lived in the gardens that she had designed and cared for during the years that her husband had been the Marquess of Hullworth. Crossmoor Abbey had been his estate until an outbreak of typhus had taken Sylvia’s husband and eldest son, along with Meg’s father.
This family knew too much about loss, but also a great deal about love. And that was the very reason Meg knew her aunt would understand her need to leave.
She refused to lose her daughter to a man who hadn’t shown an inkling of interest since her birth.
Resolved in her decision, she returned to the nursery to prepare Guinevere for their journey. Instead, she found the nurse in the hallway, looking frantic, her face pale with concern.
Meg stopped at once. “She’s done it again, hasn’t she?”
“I only turned away for a second to retrieve the doll she wanted from the top shelf,” the nurse said, fretfully chewing on her thumbnail. “By the time I stepped down from the stool . . .”
Meg nodded and quickly scanned the surroundings for her little escape artist.
It wasn’t the nurse’s fault. Ever since Guinevere could walk, she’d dart off without anyone the wiser. It had happened to Aunt Sylvia, to Maeve and Myrtle and Ellie, even to Brandon when he was watching both his son and his niece.
Usually, Guinevere would take her cousin with her, and locating the pair of them was much simpler as there was often giggling involved.
But Brandon and Ellie had taken Johnathon with them to visit the north estate and then to close up Maeve and Myrtle’s house for the winter. Since Guinevere was without her favorite cohort, there was no telling where she’d run off to this time.
Unless . . .
“Yesterday, we’d had a picnic in the garden, and there were fuzzy caterpillars munching on the leaves. Then last night, I tucked her in with a story of a caterpillar who became a butterfly named Guinevere,” Meg said, already turning on her heel. “I’ll look there. You check all the rooms with butterfly collections.”
The nurse nodded, and Meg dashed downstairs.
Once outside, Meg could hear her daughter’s giggle rising from the walled garden, and she sighed with relief.
Stepping beneath the ivy-shrouded archway, she called, “Sweetheart? Are you in here—”
She stopped in her tracks.
Lucien was there, sitting on the stone bench beside her daughter.
“After your less than cordial greeting to me earlier, your term of endearment comes as quite the surprise. But you were always rather changeable, were you not, ma petite louve?”
Her heart lurched painfully. “Don’t call me that.”
“I should hardly know what to call you, then. Lady Avalon, Miss Parrish, Mrs. Arthur or . . . Margaret Stredwick?”
Meg felt cold, frozen in place. She wanted to get her daughter away from here as quickly as possible, but she couldn’t seem to move or make her feet cooperate. How many different ways could he ruin her life, if he chose to?
“More, more,” her daughter said, the words sounding rather like mo, mo because her rosebud mouth refused to form certain letters like Rs and Ls. But that didn’t stop her from pointing excitedly to the butterflies as she tugged on Lucien’s coat and repeated her favorite word.
Lucien chuckled when she climbed up to stand on the bench so that she could put her hands on his cheeks and direct his attention to the cerulean butterfly. He obliged her with a grin, listing the Latin name and scientific classification. “That is the Adonis Blue, Lysandra bellargus.”
If Meg weren’t a pillar of fear, she’d almost think the sight of them together was sweet, with their heads close, her daughter’s blonde ringlets brushing Lucien’s cheek. He was patient with her, too, obeying her every rude command.
He glanced over his shoulder. “She’s quite an inquisitive child. Your brother’s, I presume?”
“My brother’s?”
“Brandon Stredwick, the Marquess of Hullworth, married to the former Elodie Parrish,” he supplied with that knowing look. “It is astonishing what one can discover in a small country village in a matter of minutes. And it seems that you weren’t lying about having an older brother, after all. Though, I never would have guessed he would be so well-esteemed in society. That you could have a brother with such an unblemished reputation. It must be difficult being the black sheep of the family, all the secrecy involved in hiding who you really are.”
She’d told him exactly who she was in the note she’d left. And she was mortified to recall the beseeching, almost pleading, words she’d written.
Come to me, Lucien. I will be waiting for you. With all my heart . . .
But never once, in the last two years, had he bothered to find her.
Not that it mattered any longer. “What are you doing here?”
“As I said, you stole the book that is my legacy, and I will not leave here without it.”
The book?
She blinked. As she started to put the pieces together, a great rush of relief flooded her. He wasn’t here to take Guinevere?
He was only here for the book.
Apparently, Lucien’s spectacles had never corrected his myopic vision in his quest for those recipes. He either didn’t care that he’d sired a child with her or didn’t realize this was the daughter she’d written to him about.
Whatever the reason, she was relieved.
Her limbs thawed, and she stepped into the garden and picked up her daughter. “Then you’ve come to the wrong place. I left that book with you when we were last . . . together.”
He stood. Something hot flared in his gaze, and suddenly the memory was so potent between them that she felt flushed from head to toe.
Her body’s uncontrolled reaction irritated her, and she forced herself to take a step back. “Whatever you’ve done with that book since then is no concern of mine, I’m sure. Now, please leave.”
“I will. But not until you’ve given me the name of the man you’re working for—the one you actually gave the book to.”
“I’ve told you this a dozen times. There is no man. When are you going to start believing me, Lucien?” At the irritation in her voice, Guinevere started to fuss, her cherub cheeks puckering sourly. Before she started to cry, Meg held her close, rubbing a soothing hand down her small back. Over the top of her head, she whispered, “I am going now, and I expect you to leave here and never return. As I recall, you’re good at disappearing.”
He frowned as she turned on her heel, and she thought she heard him mutter, “I would say the same of you.”
Stepping into the house, she pressed her back against the door and released the breath she’d been holding for, it seemed like, forever.
“Out,” her daughter said on a heavy sigh, resting her cheek against Meg’s shoulder as if she’d been through an ordeal as well.
She kissed the top of her head. “Yes, Mummy knows you like to play outside, but you mustn’t run off like that again.”
Her daughter grumbled her disagreement, and Meg started to walk through the house to find the nurse. And then Bryony.
If Lucien was only here for the book—which she still didn’t understand, since she’d left it with him—then it stood to reason that her sudden flight would only cause him to give chase. And quite possibly alert his suspicions. Because, at the moment, he assumed that Guinevere was Brandon’s child.
But how could that be after all the tear-filled and, eventually, hate-filled letters she’d sent to Caliburn Keep?
They must have been misdirected. Which meant that she would have to tell him, face-to-face. It was the right thing to do. And yet . . .
If she told him while he was still convinced that she had his book, wasn’t it possible that a man who was so focused and driven on a singular pursuit would use anything he could against her?
Meg held her daughter close as she climbed the stairs. She knew in that moment that the best course of action would be for her to stay here, where she would have the support and security of her family around her, while she tried to figure out what to do next.
Until then, she would have to keep her family from knowing the truth. They couldn’t find out that Lucien was the father. At least, not yet. And in order to keep her secret, he would need to stay far away from Crossmoor Abbey.
But what were the odds that she’d gotten rid of him so easily?