Secrets and Billionaires

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Only one thing went wrong with Gavallan's plan, as they heard at the Fleece next night, after a terrible labour of Miss Annabel's lasting well into the morning. It was a little lass, they said, with dark-gold hair. The old woman-Kitty Bowes qualified for no other description among the tavern-folk, who knew her at once for what she was, not for what she tried to be, and judged her not unkindly-the old woman had been overjoyed, and had cried out that it was the exact colour her own hair had been when she was a child, and the baby would be pretty. They did say, also, that Mrs. Annabel could never have another child; that was whispered, but in any case the poor gentleman, her husband, was known to be in no state now to father another in any case, so rapidly had he grown weaker over the past winter. He'd sat, as they knew, all through the labour behind a screen at the bed's head, with the tears running down his face with joy at last, when he knew his wife was saved for him. Then immediately, as soon as he'd seen the baby, he'd taken the coach and driven off, weak as he was, through the storm, and that young footman George Oakes with him. George wouldn't give it away where they'd gone, but it was, he said, at the request of Mrs. Annabel; there was some word she wanted carried, about the birth no doubt, and Mr. Zachary would never refuse a single one of her requests, let alone now. Meantime the baby, little Miss Sybilla, had been put out to nurse, for the poor mother had no milk and was in a bad way for a day or two; but now, praise God, better and almost herself again, though never what she'd been when she was a young girl.

Yes, Livia heard it all; and set herself still more tasks to avoid thinking about that other baby. It would be loved and cherished, that was certain, the small bundle of flesh that was both Gavallan's and Annabel's; good fathers had been found for both Gavallan's children. "Oh, my lad, my lad," she thought sometimes, "do you ever think of it at all, and do you know it's only a little lass you'll never see, after all your grand planning?" But where he was now it wouldn't make any difference, although she might have known, knowing Gavallan, he would surely mean to come home at the end of the seven years. But she'd hardly noticed their passing, and one day when a new-gilded carriage drew up in the yard, for the grooms to tighten one of the horses' girths that had worked loose, so that the inmates would not be alighting, she'd seen Mrs. Anna bel; her hair high-dressed and her pretty face rouged a trifle, under her small French hat; and by her a little fair-haired creature who was Gavallan Doon's daughter. They hadn't seen her where she stood looking at them from the door, and she'd gone away, and instead seen to the linen.

"Do you care to play cards this evening, Mama Bowes?"

Kitty smiled, pleased at her daughter-in-law's attentions; she was never, she thought, made to feel in the way at Malvie, the dear, beautiful little creature had an eye to her every con venience and comfort, her least wish. Should she play with them? She put her too-bright head on one side for instants, like some gaudy foreign bird, considering. She had herself taken pleasure, after the marriage, in teaching Zachary's de lightful, adaptable bride the intricacies of whist and faro, the latest refinements of vingt-et-un, from which Annabel had, with her strictly cloistered upbringing, of course, been as far removed as a nun. It would be a pleasure now to watch her pretty fingers deal and select the cards, while the two heads, Zachary's and her own, stayed close. How charming, how suitable, to see their devotion to one another! And if she herself had helped, in only the minutest fashion, at the begin ning, although it had made Annabel so angry... but there, Kitty told herself, it had made her, the grandmother, perhaps responsible for Sybilla's very existence. And the child bright

ened all their lives now that poor Zachary "I do not wish to play, Mama," said Clairette.

The toneless words recalled Kitty; she downed annoyance at the disturbing of her dream. Her youngest child was often a problem, ungracious, even ungrateful; after all, Zachary gave her a good home. But unmarried young women were notoriously difficult, and it had proved, with Clairette's plain ness, poor dear, so far, impossible to attract an offer for her.

Kitty smiled, revealing a flash of porcelain teeth, and gal lantly laid her hand on Clairette's arm. "Why, then, we will take a little turn instead in the garden, as it's stayed fine," she said. "Will you perhaps accompany us, Annabel?"

"No, I shall play chess instead with Zachary, if he'd like it." Zachary brightened; Kitty smiled on, and bade Clairette go and fetch the small boxwood table, to avoid tiring her sister-in-law, and the chessmen, before they set out. Clairette obeyed unwillingly; why was Annabel so much like a doll, seated there on her sofa with her skirts outspread, that she couldn't get up and fetch her own game? There was nothing the matter with her. Everyone always deferred to her because she was pretty, and the mistress of the house, supposed to be delicate; but why? It was seven years, or very nearly, since Sybilla's birth. Annabel could ride and walk when she felt like it. Clairette set the chess-things out roughly, so that the bevelled legs of the small table dragged the Persian rug, leaving a fold.

After they had gone Annabel helped Zachary set out the spiked ivory chessmen. They were so deeply and meticulously carved, and seemed so fragile, that it might have been thought that a careless touch might snap the haft of a pawn's spear, or the elaborate raised device on the turban of a king. But they had survived centuries, and would survive Zachary and herself. Annabel moved a pawn languidly, smiling at the man she had married. She had become used to be surrounded with exquisite, priceless things. She herself had become one of them.