She stepped away from the window, and he saw by the look on her face that she was hardly pacified by his words. “A new—dare I say unique—circumstance for you, Mr. Makepeace.”
“Isn’t it time you call me Winter?” he murmured, trying another tack—he certainly wouldn’t win any arguments on his punctuality.
“Is it?”
“It is.” He smiled hard. “Isabel.”
She frowned. “I don’t—”
Just then, a tiny sob came from the direction of an ornately carved sideboard.
Both he and Isabel looked at the piece of furniture, and oddly her expression turned from anger to uncertainty. She started forward, but then stopped.
She made no further move, so Winter strode to the sideboard, crouched with one knee on the floor, and opened the door to the cupboard underneath.
A tear-stained face peered out.
“Christopher,” Winter said, remembering the boy’s name from the first time he’d come here. He glanced over his shoulder, but Isabel seemed frozen. He looked back at the boy. “Is it comfortable in that cupboard?”
The boy drew a velvet sleeve across his nose. “No, sir.”
“Would you care to come out?”
The boy nodded mutely. Winter gently reached in and lifted the child in his arms. This close he could see that Christopher was a handsome boy of only four or five. Winter stood, still holding the boy, and turned to Isabel. Many women were naturally inclined to take a child from a man—the maternal instinct being considered stronger than the paternal, perhaps—but Isabel made no such move. Indeed, she’d folded her arms as if to keep herself from reaching for the boy.
Winter raised his eyebrows at her and she shook her head as if coming to her senses. “I’ll ring for Carruthers.”
“Want to stay,” Christopher whimpered.
Isabel swallowed. “I… I think it best that you return to your nanny.”
When had Lady Beckinhall ever been unsure of herself, let alone stuttered? There was something here that he was missing.
Winter cleared his throat and murmured to the boy, “I was thinking of trying one of those scones on the tea tray. Would you like one, too?”
Christopher nodded.
Winter sat on a settee by the low table, the boy on his knee, and gave one of the pastries to Christopher before selecting one for himself.
He bit into the flakey scone, eyeing Isabel’s stiff back. She’d gone to stand by the window again, completely ignoring him and the boy. Strange.
“Good, isn’t it?” he said to the boy.
Christopher nodded and whispered rather wetly, “Cook’s scones are the best.”
“Ah.” For a moment they munched in companionable silence.
“Where is Carruthers?” Isabel muttered from across the room.
Christopher, who had been about to take another bite of the scone, lowered the pastry and gripped it between sticky fingers in his lap. “She doesn’t like me much, most of the time.”
Winter wished he could deny the boy’s words, but he’d never believed in lying to children, and Isabel was across the room, obviously trying to pretend the boy wasn’t in it. He leaned forward and poured some of the milk from the pitcher into a teacup and added a couple of drops of hot tea. He held the teacup up for the boy.
Christopher dropped the scone—onto the floor, regrettably—and took the teacup with both hands, eagerly drinking. When he lowered the cup, milky tea stained his upper lip. “She told me a corker of a story last night, though.”
The boy looked wistfully at Isabel’s back.
The nursemaid, a rather plain woman of middling years, ran into the room. “Oh, my lady, I am so sorry.” She came over to scoop up Christopher from Winter’s arms before turning back to Isabel. “It won’t happen again, my lady, I promise.”
Isabel still had her back to the room. “Please see that it doesn’t.”
Poor Carruthers blanched before curtsying and hurrying out the door with Christopher.
Winter thoughtfully poured himself a cup of tea.
“You think I’m mean,” Isabel said.
Winter looked at her. Her back was straight, but he could tell by the bow of her shoulders that she’d folded her arms about herself as if to shield her center.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that I would like to know who Christopher is and what he means to you.”
There was a long moment of silence in which he wondered if she was going to answer him; then her voice came, steady and without emotion. “Christopher is my late husband’s son.”
Winter’s brows knit, but before he could ask the question, she turned and paced to the middle of the room.
Her beautiful mouth was compressed into a straight line as if to contain some overwhelming emotion. “His mother was Edmund’s mistress.”
“I… see,” Winter said, though he didn’t. “And he lives here with you? Was this your husband’s wish?”
She shrugged. “I never knew about Christopher and Louise—his mother—until after Edmund’s death. He appears to have made no provision for them.”
He simply looked at her, waiting, wishing the distance between them weren’t so wide.
Isabel clasped her hands at her waist. “Louise came to me a month after I’d buried Edmund. She said that Edmund had set her up in a little town house, but with his death, the lease on the house was no longer paid. She had no money. I’ve since learned that she doesn’t understand even the most fundamental basics of managing her funds. She asked me for some money and I…” She trailed off, shrugging again.
She looked so forlorn standing alone in the center of the room, her hands clasped as if for an unpleasant but necessary recital. “Isabel, come have some tea.”
To his great relief, she came toward him, sitting on the settee opposite him, watching numbly as he poured her a dish of tea and added plenty of milk and sugar.
“You shouldn’t pour for me,” she said absently as she accepted the dish.
He gave her an ironic glance. “No one pours for me at the home, I do assure you.”
“Oh.” She took a sip of her tea. “Yes, of course.”
He watched her uneasily. There was something here that he was missing. Something she hadn’t yet told him. “Did you know your husband kept a mistress?”
She shook her head as she lowered the dish of tea to her lap, holding it there between both her palms. “No, not really, but I wasn’t at all surprised. Edmund had been widowed for many years before we wed and he had his needs.”