Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

" O ne hundred and twenty-four miles."

Adelaide stared at Lord Oakley. This, it transpired, was the distance from High Brook to Chiltern Court. Leaving with the viscount had seemed a grand idea in the heat of the moment. It had briefly become even more exciting when she climbed into his carriage—quite the finest equipage she had ever seen, let alone ridden in—and High Brook had shrunk to a pinpoint on the horizon behind them. Learning that the journey ahead would require two nights at coaching inns with a man who was, despite his wild assertions, a stranger to her, Adelaide hastily reconsidered.

"Please ask the driver to stop. I cannot travel all that way with you unattended. 'Tis bad enough that I have been accused of wickedness in Southampton. Such a journey would see me branded a jezebel in every town south of Luton. I should never work again."

"You never need to work again," he replied with the grin that had taken up permanent residence on his face. " Besides, you most certainly can travel with me, for who better to escort a young lady than her older brother?"

" If you are my brother. And what if you are not—what then?"

Lord Oakley leant forwards, his elbows resting on his knees, and took up both her hands. "Miss Booker, I am not always sensible. I have been known to make rash decisions from time to time. But I am not a fool, and neither am I heartless. I comprehend the consequences of this undertaking to you, to me, to everyone, and I would not have acted thus were it not for the absolute conviction that you are my sister."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I do not know. But I am."

Adelaide wished she could share his confidence, but the longer she sat in his lavish carriage, wearing her worn and dowdy work-clothes, the more implausible the whole thing seemed.

"What of your friends? What will they say when they discover that you have left with one of the maids?"

He let go of her hands and flopped back in his seat with a disdainful huff. "I doubt many of them will notice. They are all too busy celebrating Lady Veronica's engagement."

"I did not know Lady Veronica was engaged."

For a moment, the amiability left Lord Oakley's face. His jaw tightened and he said stiffly, "She was not until last night, when that oaf Tattersall proposed to her."

It was obvious this was a source of vexation, and on reflection, Adelaide thought she recalled hearing Lord Oakley's name associated with Lady Veronica. A disappointment, then—but she was a long way from feeling ready to offer sisterly consolation and chose instead to return them to their previous discussion.

"What about Lord Kemerton? I daresay he will be displeased by your departure. He did not want you to have anything to do with me."

"Oh, he did not, but only because he is violently opposed to anyone of our station consorting with servants. He is a good sort, though. All will be forgiven the moment I explain who you are."

"Pray, do not bother. I have no need of his lordship's forgiveness, thank you."

"No, not you, me—oh, enough about my friends. We have weightier matters to discuss. My father is going to be delighted when he hears about you. My uncle, you understand. That is to say, Lord Tipton."

"I know who you mean by ‘father'."

"Then why did you look at me in that way?"

"Because no matter whether he is your uncle or your father, he is not likely to be as readily convinced as you that I am any relation, nor so delighted by the discovery. Another mouth to feed never made any man rejoice." At least, not in Adelaide's experience, though Lord Oakley gave her a queer look that suggested he did not agree. To avoid having to explain her remark, she asked, "Will you tell me about him? And your aunt? Your mother, I mean? I should like to know whom I am on my way to meet."

"But of course! They are both equable, steady people. Lady Tipton is particularly kind and spoils me rotten, so I cannot begin to imagine her raptures when she meets you. His lordship is intelligent and practical, as evidenced by my history."

"He certainly seems to have found a sensible resolution to your predicament—and his. But do you know the cause of your trueborn father's estrangement from the family?"

"Robert went against his father's wishes when he married my mother. He was disinherited and his whole family instructed never to recognise him again."

"My goodness, they must have truly disliked her. Who was she?" The question asked, Adelaide felt suddenly nervous. It was one to which she had wished to know the answer for a great many years.

"Her name was Susan Browning. She was a weaver's daughter—an only child, thus I have no surviving relatives on that side."

"Robert must have loved her very dearly to give up so much to be with her. Was she very beautiful?"

"I have no memory of her, and Lord Tipton never met her."

"How did they die?"

Lord Oakley shook his head sadly. "Nobody knows anything about how or where they lived after they were banished—or what took them in the end. They died still estranged from the family."

Adelaide felt an unexpected pang of sorrow for these people she would never know and were likely not connected to her anyhow. She swallowed. "How sad."

"Indeed—but all the more reason for you and me not to go our own ways. If we were all the family they had, it would be a travesty to separate again now that we have found each other at last."

It was a moving observation, and since they had, by then, travelled far beyond the point at which Adelaide could easily make her own way back to anywhere familiar, she resolved to continue with him to Chiltern Court to see the thing through.

A deep and burning desire to discover that two people shared an immutable, personal bond was, however, quite a different thing to the reality of two strangers sharing the confines of a carriage for two and a half days. They were each unwavering in their efforts to become better acquainted, but their lives could scarcely have been more different, and the onus to uncover an innate understanding soon rendered the undertaking more trial than pleasure as every topic exposed yet greater disparity between them.

More than once did she stare into a mirror, or out of a window, or into the darkness in the middle of the night, questioning what on earth she had done. Lord Oakley's enthusiasm was difficult to defy, yet whenever she paused to truly consider it, her being his sister seemed the most unlikely thing in the world. It did not help that he insisted on continually referring to her as such, drawing doubting or disapproving stares from every person they met. Adelaide could not blame them; she and Lord Oakley were each dressed according to their true station in life, and nobody was fooled into thinking they could possibly be related.

Added to this discomfort was the inconvenience of travelling as a single female. Lord Oakley instructed his manservant to acquire adjoining rooms, thinking Adelaide's chief concern must be safety. She was grateful for his consideration, though she was far more troubled at having but one clean pair of stockings, no one to help pin her hair, and scarcely two coins of her own to rub together.

By the third and final day of their journey, she felt about as presentable as a chimney sweep, with only her bonnet keeping her hair—and her dignity—in place. The viscount abandoned her at the last coaching inn before Chiltern Court to ride alongside the carriage on his own horse, and the solitude allowed all Adelaide's deepest misgivings to loom large in her mind. Upon reaching the end of the implausibly long drive, in front of the implausibly large house, she was ready to jump from her seat and run away as fast as her legs would carry her. Only Lord Oakley's sweet excitement as he handed her down from the carriage prevented her.

"Are you ready?"

She nodded, but already the conviction that this was the stupidest thing she had ever agreed to do was settling firmly in her mind. That notion was only heightened when they entered the house and the eyes of every servant they passed bored into her. They recognised one of their own, without doubt, and she could guess what conjectures they were presently forming about her presence on the arm of their future master.

The house itself was vast—easily twice as large as High Brook—and more fashionably decorated. High Brook was all dark wood panels and lead-crossed windows; the entrance hall here was flooded with light from a vast, domed atrium high above, and everything the eye could see looked to be made of marble. Adelaide could not help but think how much easier to clean this house must be—then she hated herself for thinking it, for it emphasised the impropriety of her being there.

Fixing her with much the same expression as had the butler at High Brook, a footman took her tattered old coat from her. She panicked when he held out his hand for her bonnet, but he would not relent, and she had no choice but to hope her hair did not look too much like a bird's nest beneath it. He tucked it carelessly under his arm and informed the viscount that Lord and Lady Tipton were in the saloon.

Lord Oakley, oblivious to it all, said his thanks and led Adelaide away.

"Wait here," he whispered outside a vast double door. "I have not yet worked out what I shall say, but I ought to give them some warning." Smiling as though they were on the brink of the best adventure—and not the most painful rejection—he stepped into the room.

"Oakley! Home so soon?" a man called. It was a deep, brusque voice, nowhere near as amiable as his son's.

"Dare we hope this means you have good news for us?" asked a lady, her voice gentler than her husband's, but clipped in the way of the highest echelons of the nobility.

"I have news," Lord Oakley replied, "but not the news to which you are alluding."

He had left the door open, and though Adelaide could not see around it to the other occupants of the room, she had a full view of him, grinning with anticipation as he teased his parents with this intimation. She wished he would not, for it was surely not a joking matter.

"My dear boy, you were so sure. What went wrong?"

"I would really rather not discuss it, if it is all the same to you, Mother. I have something else—something of far greater significance—to tell you both."

The mantle of ‘great significance' whisked Adelaide's nerves into even greater discomposure. She ran a hand over her hair to smooth it, managing only to dislodge every pin she touched, making more of her hair fall loose.

"Lady Veronica turned you down, did she?" Lord Tipton asked. "Cannot say I am sorry. You can most certainly do better."

Adelaide flinched. Lady Veronica was the daughter of an earl; if his lordship thought she was not good enough to be his son's wife, he was hardly likely to think a housemaid good enough to be his son's sister. She glanced anxiously back towards the front door.

"What is this other news?" Lady Tipton enquired.

"Not a different girl, I hope," her husband interrupted. "I keep telling you, you are too young to be contemplating marriage. Give it a few years! Enjoy your youth!"

"This has nothing to do with marriage, Father—not mine, at least. Now you must prepare yourselves, for what I have to tell you may come as something of a shock."

There was a pause, then Lady Tipton said, somewhat nervously, "Your father does not like shocks, James."

Adelaide began to back away from the saloon. This had been a vast mistake. Lord Oakley ought to have come alone to prepare his family for the meeting. Better still, the whole wretched idea ought never to have been suggested.

At that moment, he caught her eye and signalled for her to come in. She shook her head.

"Who are you looking at? Is there somebody out there?"

Lord Oakley held out his hand towards Adelaide. "Come. It is well."

"For heaven's sake, who is there? Let us see!"

Lord Oakley gave up gesturing and walked back towards her, but as he approached, Adelaide thought he had never looked less like somebody who might be her brother. He looked like a viscount, his crisply starched collar high at his neck, his jewellery and fobs glistening, the hand that he reached towards her perfectly manicured, having never done a day's work in its life. Her heart, already racing, began to pound painfully fast. Then somebody appeared behind him, and Adelaide did not wait to find out who; she turned and stumbled away. Raised voices erupted behind her, then in front of her; somebody stepped into her path, and she attempted to evade them, but they caught her arms and forced her around to face her pursuers.

"What the devil is th—good God!" Lord Tipton—unmistakably so, for unlike Adelaide, he did resemble Lord Oakley—recoiled at the sight of her. "That is not possible," he said in a tone of wonderment.

His son appeared at his side. "Let go of her this instant," he commanded the footman restraining Adelaide's arms.

She was summarily released, and the footman hastily dismissed, but she did not attempt to run again—she only stared back at the earl. She had not believed Lord Oakley when he said her resemblance to his grandmother was uncanny. A chance likeness at most, she had imagined. Yet his lordship was looking at her as though he had seen a ghost, his mouth agape and his eyes wide with wonder. Assuming it was not her drab brown coat or knotted hair that amazed him, Adelaide allowed herself, for the very first time, to truly begin to believe that she might have found her family.

"Father, allow me to introduce Miss Adelaide Booker. Or, as I think you have already surmised, Miss Adelaide Richmond. My sister."