Chapter Twenty-Two

M orvoren did know what to do, as it turned out. Once they'd arrived back at Ormonde, and Kit had sent Ysella to her room in disgrace with orders not to come out of it again for a week, Sam went with him to see Morvoren in her room.

"You're back," she exclaimed, looking up from the book she was reading. "How was Bath?" Kit had taken her there to take the waters when she'd first been with child and had suffered from a lot of sickness, so this was where Kit had told his mother to say they'd gone. Sam knew, because Morvoren had confided in him, that she had only pretended to drink the sulfurous waters to please Kit.

She looked very becoming with her hair loose to her shoulders and a pretty, pale-blue shawl wrapped around her. Some color had returned to her thin cheeks and an air of health hung about her that had not been there when they'd left such a short time ago.

"Ah," Kit said, taking the chair beside her bed. "A small white lie. We haven't been to Bath."

Morvoren inclined her head to one side much as a dog will when being talked to. "I had a suspicion you hadn't been."

What? How had she known? Sam distinctly remembered Kit asking the dowager to tell Morvoren that they had gone to Bath on business to look at some agricultural machinery Kit was thinking of buying.

Morvoren, who seemed to be taking all this very calmly, smiled at their discomfiture. "I'm not stupid, and neither are the servants. Loveday has brought me every bit of gossip from the servants' hall while you've been away, so I know Ysella has been missing. And I can see, Kit, that you have been in some kind of fight by the state your ear is in." She indicated the stool beside her dressing table. "Do sit down, Sam, you look like a spare part standing there fiddling with your cuffs."

Sam pulled the upholstered stool nearer to her bed and sat down, trying hard to leave his cuffs alone.

"I didn't want you getting upset about Ysella," Kit said. "Not with you having been so ill."

Morvoren sighed. "Oh, Kit, darling, I'm well on the road to recovery now, have no fear. I should be up and about if it weren't for Doctor Busick. My legs will atrophy if I have to stay in bed much longer. And being upset over Ysella would not have set me back at all but given me something to think about. I'm so bored having to sit here all day and sew or read. And you know how much I hate to sew. Now, tell me what's been happening to her, because otherwise, all I have to go on is the gossip from the back stairs."

So, Kit, with Sam adding in his own bits here and there, recounted the tale of their rescuing of Ysella. When he at last ground to a halt, having informed his wife that Ysella was now confined to her room, a silence fell.

Sam watched Morvoren as she frowned down at her hands as though deep in thought. An intelligent and resourceful woman, as well as a sensible one, she must surely have an answer to their problems. Hopefully.

She reached out and took Kit's hand, but her eyes were fixed on Sam, a speculative gleam in them. "Let me sum up the problem," she said, her gaze brimming with a mixture of determination and compassion. "Ysella fancied herself in love with a man who has turned out to be a cad. Who has been proven by his own words to be nothing but a fortune hunter. A man who only wanted to marry her because he thought she had a sizeable inheritance coming to her. Thanks, in part, to Fitz. And, because it was revealed to him that you could delay her coming into her money until she's thirty, he promptly withdrew his offer. Whereupon this degenerated into a rather childish fight resulting in you and him taking part in a duel—which is quite illegal nowadays, and a very silly thing to have done."

She bestowed a frown on Kit, then glared at Sam. "I would have expected you, Sam, to have persuaded my husband of the foolishness of fighting a duel with not just the illegality of the thing, but also all the risks involved."

Sam opened his mouth to say that he'd tried, but she held up a hand. "No. Let me have my say. You wanted my advice in this, and that's what you're going to get."

Sam shut his mouth, feeling put in his place. In the light of what he now knew about Featherstone's attempted perfidy, perhaps he should have tried harder. Neither of them had told Morvoren how close Kit had come to being murdered.

"But the nub of the matter is that while Ysella was with the man she fancied she loved, he persuaded her to consummate their love and she is now no longer a virgin."

Heat rose up Sam's face. Morvoren could be a tad too blunt at times, but that was her upbringing. She didn't possess the gently bred reluctance to talk about all things personal that most women had. Not that he had much experience of women or their conversation himself.

"So," Morvoren went on. "You are now quite rightly worrying that she might be with child. I can tell you that the chances of that are probably minimal, but that depends on a number of things. To ascertain a more accurate idea of her risk, I would need to talk with her myself."

"I'll see to that," Kit said, a hint of annoyance in his voice. Having told Ysella he didn't want to see her again for a week, Sam could see how he didn't want to have to go back on his word so soon after saying it.

"I can fetch her here if you like," Sam offered.

Morvoren shook her head. "This is women's talk. You can fetch her when you two leave, but neither of you is staying while I talk to her. It will be too embarrassing for her and for you. We will be discussing intimate matters. I also intend to help her find an answer to her problem—the problem of not being able to return to her London season in view of what's happened to her."

"Do you have any ideas of what we should do?" Kit asked.

Morvoren shrugged. "A few. But I need to talk to her first. She needs to be in agreement with my suggestions before I share them with you. I think it best if I see her straightaway."

*

Ysella tapped on Morvoren's bedroom door, heard a sweet voice bid her enter, and did as she was told. She found Morvoren sitting propped up in bed with a book open in her lap. She looked almost back to her old self, although still a little thin.

Ysella inwardly cringed with hot embarrassment. The certainty that she'd never be herself again washed over her. Gone was the old Ysella and in its place was the unforgiveable strumpet who her beloved Kit hated so much he'd said he didn't want to see her again for a week.

Morvoren smiled and patted the bed. "Come and sit here, beside me. No, not on the chair. Here where I can hold both your hands and comfort you."

Faced with such obvious compassion, Ysella burst into tears and flung herself into Morvoren's open arms, the book squashed between them. Eventually, her sobs began to lessen and she pushed herself upright again. She must look a sight with her eyes all red-rimmed and her face blotchy. No one would ever love her again, now she was not just spoiled but ugly as well. What an idiot she'd been.

"Oh, Ysella," Morvoren said. "How shall we sort this all out?"

"I don't know," Ysella said, sniffing. Where was her handkerchief when she needed it? She never seemed to have one. "I'm so sorry I've caused all this trouble and nearly got Kit killed. I didn't mean that to happen. I didn't know Oliver was only after my money." Her woes poured out in an avalanche. "He was so handsome that all the girls wanted to dance and go in to supper with him. But he chose me , and he said he loved me." She frowned. "And I thought I loved him, but now I think about it, I don't love him at all!" She wrinkled her small nose. "In fact, the very thought of him makes my toes curl with horror and my blood boil in my veins."

Morvoren passed her a clean handkerchief and patted her hands. "First love can be very hard, especially when someone sets out to fool you."

"He was so sincere," Ysella whispered. "I didn't for a moment think he was out to gull me. How was I supposed to know?" If this was life, then she wasn't sure she wanted what it had offered her. "How am I supposed to know if a man loves me or not? Are they all like Oliver? Out just to get what they want, and when they've had it, they don't care anymore about you."

Morvoren shook her head. "You're still very young, Ysella, with no experience of men. It's little wonder you were taken in by him. Partly, it's my fault. If I hadn't been the way I was, then Kit and I could have taken you up to Town ourselves and overseen your coming out."

Ysella shook her head. "No, it was nobody's fault but my own, and I will take the consequences. I deserve them for being such a fool." More tears ran down her cheeks and she gave an unladylike snort to clear her nose. "I'm sorry. What does being polite matter now? I'm never going back to London to the balls and parties. I'm never going to be happily married. I'm disgraced, and, on top of that, I might be with child." There. She'd said it. The thing that had been eating away at her ever since Oliver had declared he no longer wanted to marry her.

Morvoren patted her hand again. "That may very well not be the case. You'd be extremely unlucky if it were. Now, think carefully and tell me when your last courses began. Then we can work out the risk you took."

"My courses?" Ysella's cheeks flamed. This wasn't something she'd ever talked to anyone about before. Well, only Morvoren when she'd been explaining how babies were made, and that had been too embarrassing for words. She didn't even mention it to Martha, who seemed to have a certain intuition about when Ysella would need the cotton pads she used.

"Um," Ysella said, hesitating. "I think about two weeks ago."

Morvoren's face fell. Something must be bad about what she'd said.

"Well," Morvoren said, after a pause. "There might be some small danger of being with child. You were at the start of the at-risk time, although strictly speaking, no time in your monthly cycle is without some level of risk. But the chances are you're not. Higher than the chance that you are. As I said, you'd be very unlucky to conceive the very first time you had sex."

Ysella blushed again. Even after a year she couldn't quite accept Morvoren's casual references to things young ladies were not supposed to know about. "But I might be?"

Morvoren nodded. "But most likely you're not."

"When will I know?"

"In just over two weeks, if your courses don't arrive. That could mean you were with child. Although you also could just be a little late starting them. That can happen. They're not always perfectly regular."

Ysella freed a hand from Morvoren's grip and covered her mouth. "I think I feel sick."

"Come here for a hug." Morvoren held out her arms.

Ysella collapsed into them again, burying her face in Morvoren's soft shawl. "What am I going to do?"

Morvoren stroked her hair. "Well, to decide what to do you have to answer some questions."

Ysella nodded. "Go on."

"Firstly, do you want to return to London for the rest of the season? That is, if in two weeks you find out you're not with child?"

Ysella shook her head. "No. I couldn't go back. I couldn't face it. I don't think I ever want to go to Town again. Someone is bound to know, and even if they don't, I'll think they do. And I don't think I could trust a man again. Not after Oliver. I don't want any man like Oliver paying court to me ever again. I want to stay here, where I feel safe."

"And do you want to remain here unmarried for the foreseeable future?"

Ysella bit her lip. "Unmarried with a child?"

"No. I mean if there's no child. If there's a child, which I'm sure there won't be, we'll have to deal with it differently. What I mean is, do you wish to remain unmarried here at Ormonde for the rest of your life, a maiden aunt to my and Kit's children?"

Ysella was silent. Did she? For the rest of her life? That was forever. She'd be as old as Mama, who must be about a hundred, and only ever be an aunt. Did she, Ysella, want to reach that age without a husband in her life and children of her own? Although, of course, she didn't want this one, if it even existed. She shook her head. "No. I don't. I think I would like one day to be married, but no one is likely to take me, and I couldn't go to a man with a lie in my heart. No one will want me if they know what I've done."

"Men marry widows all the time."

"But I won't be a widow, will I? I'll just be a… a strumpet. A fallen woman. No better than the women who perform in bawdy houses."

"Then perhaps I have a solution."

"You do?"

Morvoren nodded. "Ysella, you are a flighty flibbertigibbet with little common sense. No, I don't mean that as an insult. It's part of what makes you so loveable. But you have been attracted to a man who was a little bit too much like you. A rake, a fortune hunter, a man with no sense of how to behave. In him, it was not at all attractive."

"I suppose so." How was Morvoren so wise at such a young age? Ysella would give her right eye for a small part of Morvoren's clever common sense and calm demeanor.

"What you need is a husband who knows what you've done but doesn't mind. A husband who will cherish you for what you are and let you be yourself. A husband who already cares deeply for you."

"I do?" Maybe Morvoren was right. "But where am I to find such a man here in the wilds of Wiltshire? Do you want me to tell him the truth about what I've done? I don't think any of the young men around here would accept me knowing that."

Morvoren hugged her tighter, her breath warm on Ysella's hair. "All you need to do is look beyond the end of your nose. There's a man, right here where you see him every day, who cares very deeply for you. You should marry Sam."