Page 6 of If I Loved You
Taken aback as he was by the sight of those haunting eyes, Zach did not answer immediately, but considered as he also stood from his stool, that she tried just now with this query, to dismiss him.
“Yes, I have business with you, Miss Ainsley,” he said coolly.
She nodded tensely and led the way from the taproom, ignoring the watchful and frowning eye of the beefy man behind the bar. Zach met the proprietor’s stare straight on, in such a foul mood as to nearly want to provoke something here. But the man, having curled his lip to advance his own opinion of Zachary, continued only to apply a damp towel to the inside of the used tankards and otherwise intrude not at all.
Zach followed her down a dim corridor and up a flight of narrow stairs at the end of the building, pretending that he was not at all entranced by the smooth sway of her hips, nor the length of her dark hair floating down her back. Upon the second floor, she opened the last door and stood holding its handle while her hand invited him inside.
A middle aged woman, with a harsh country look of long years of sun-up to sundown work, sat in a chair within the room. She may have been dozing but jumped a bit as light spilled into the room.
“What is it, girl?’ She asked, rising and going to Miss Ainsley, giving a quick matronly frown to Zachary.
“Oh, Mrs. Smythe, the earl... he’s gone,” the younger woman cried. Mrs. Smythe looked equally upset and hugged the girl long enough to cause Zachary discomfort, impatience perhaps, standing in the doorway.
He took in the whole of the room in one glance, the lone narrow cot in one corner of the room, the pretty lace curtains hanging from the one small window, the neatness of these chambers despite its cramped appearance, and even the warmth they seemed to emanate. But his brow furrowed, forgetting all of this, when his eyes settled upon a pine crib, crudely made, in another corner. Zach’s brow lifted as he realized the crib was occupied.
Sitting up within that piece of furniture, while two chubby hands held tightly onto the side rail, a cherubic blonde baby began to bounce her bottom upon the firm mattress at the sight of Emma. “Mama! Mama!” The child cried happily.
“Thank you, Mistress, for looking after her,” Emma Ainsley said rather absently but dismissively as she went to the child. Mrs. Smythe bobbed her head a bit, her own eyes glistening with tears and left the room, giving one more hard glare to Zach and making a point of pushing the door even wider open.
Glancing nervously at Zach, Emma went directly to the child, scooping her up and out of the crib. “You should be sleeping, darling,” she said softly, kissing the girl’s pink cheeks, seeming not at all put out that the child was indeed awake. But upongathering the baby to her bosom, another bout of tears consumed her, and she kept her back to Zach while she cried heartily into the baby’s hair.
Zach witnessed this scene with something akin to horrified shock. While the child looked nothing like his father, seemed in fact to resemble her mother quite favorably, aside from the very blonde hair, Zach had to imagine that this was indeed...his sister.
He erased all expression from his face as Emma turned to him again, while the child clung to her neck. He discarded the idea that Emma Ainsley appeared entirely too young and too...innocent to have borne a child—for the evidence stood not ten feet from him—and finally understood the stipulations in his father’s will. The monthly stipend had been created to care for his father’s child, not simply the mother.
“Please, have a seat,” Emma offered, indicating the small cloth covered table and two slat-backed chairs which were pushed snugly against the wall at the end of the cot.
Feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of him, Zachary certainly thought heshouldsit right now and pulled out the closest chair, depositing himself upon it.
“Who is this?” He asked, wondering why—embarrassment not being a plausible excuse—his father hadn’t informed him that he had a sibling.
“This is Bethany,” Emma told him in a teary voice, taking up the opposite chair, pulling a very expensive looking doll upon the table top nearer to the child, whom she settled nicely in her lap. The little girl, however, seemed as curious about Zach’s presence as he was about her very existence. “Bethany, say ‘good day’ to Lord Lindsey.”
“Good day,” said the baby, though it sounded more like ‘goody’. And then she giggled and gave her full attention to her doll, whose dress, it seemed, might have cost more than the plain frock that Emma herself donned.
“I am sorry for your loss, my lord,” Emma finally said, but her eyes did not meet his. “Your father spoke often of you.” She struggled with these words, and Zach thought she might begin to cry again, but she did not. Eventually, she did raise her watery eyes to his, and he was amazed anew at the bright blue of those orbs, and the pain reflected there presently.
“Thank you,” he acknowledged, and found himself so disturbed by this woman and these circumstances, and the presence of this child that he thought to get right to the crux of his visit. “I came today, having been read my father’s will only yesterday. I was not aware of your existence until only then.” Without further preamble, he informed her, “My father made provisions for you in his will, added only recently, and you will thus be given a monthly allowance. I assume his intent was that these monies be used for the care of...Bethany.” Admittedly, at this moment, he was a bit surprised to find no spark of interest in her eyes at this news, no lightening of those sad features upon hearing of her good fortune. Purposefully, he named the monthly sum she was to be granted, expecting now for certain to witness some selfish jubilation, some twisted grin that might have said,Ah, I swindled the old man after all, but there was no evidence of this either.
“I don’t understand,” she said instead.
Perturbed by her lack of telling response, Zach said tersely, “Miss Ainsley, my father changed his will to include you—apparently you made quite an impression upon him—and changed it so benevolently toward you that you needn’t remain here in thishovel if you preferred not to, and you needn’t slave belowstairs for little more than a swat on your rump and too little coin. I am only surprised that my father allowed you to remain here while he lived.”
She waved this aside, seemingly still affected by the very fact of the earl’s death, and said vaguely, “He...he tried often to persuade me to find other accommodations—your father was exceedingly kind and generous when he needn’t have been—but it wasn’t his responsibility to take on the burden of Bethany and me.”
Growing angrier by the moment, her continued pretense at innocence draining him, Zach bit out sharply, “I beg to differ, Miss Ainsley. Many mistakes my father might have made—pardon me for saying you might have been his greatest—but he was a man of honor and he knew his obligation and thus, itwashis duty to see to your care, and that of the child.”
Now it was her turn to frown heavily at this, but she also appeared a bit shaken by his rough tone and pointedly unkind words. The child in her lap had refocused her attention on Zach as he’d spoken so callously, and now he met with two pairs of equally blue eyes, both wary and unnerved.
Emma Ainsley stood, settling the child again at her trim hip, and squared her shoulders as she said to Zach, “Lord Lindsey, I am sorry for the loss of your father and I do thank you for bringing me this news when it is quite apparent you’d rather be anywhere else.” She walked to the door with clear intent, holding the handle firmly. “I did not ask anything of your father, and I do not need it. Bethany and I do just fine by ourselves. Good day, my lord.” And she waited expectantly, her breath coming in short and shallow huffs.
Zach stood and strode purposefully toward her. “This is not something you may refuse, Miss Ainsley. I will not allow the child to continue to live here.” He gestured angrily to the sparse room as a whole, and again his tone was brusque. After all, who was this chit to refuse these monies? Was she holding out for more? “If you think—“
Her hand, lifted to silence him as no man had ever dared, did indeed quiet him.
“I think,my lord,” she began with mocking emphasis, “that your father was twice the man you are—for you are not more than an overbearing brute without a speck of his kindheartedness. The money is yours. I refuse it. Good day.”
“So be it,” he allowed contemptuously. With only one last look at the baby, he stalked from the room, hearing the door slam behind him when he was barely passed through it.
