Barbara Metzger by Lord Heartless Read Free Book Online

of unsolicited advice, the viscount tossed a coin to a waiting urchin to hold the horses.
    Now Byrd could sit on the squabs with Mrs. Kane's daughter and the baby, since the institution held too many dangers and diseases to take them inside. Pippa was sucking her thumb and the baby was whimpering—or was that Byrd? He removed his hat to mop at his brow, and Pippa's big brown eyes widened at the seagull tattooed on his bald head. The baby started crying in earnest. Byrd took out his flask. Pippa took out her thumb. “I'll tell Mama."
    Inside, conditions were worse. Children were everywhere, and so was the filth and stench and noise and misery. In answer to the viscount's request, the gray-haired, gray-complected matron explained that the infants were weaned onto cow's milk as soon as they arrived, and there was never enough of that to go around, nor willing hands to feed the poor mites. Some lived; some did not. She shrugged weary shoulders.
    Carissa dabbed at her eyes when they returned to the carriage, and hugged her daughter closer to her. Lesley's pockets were lighter, but his heart was heavy. “My daughter will never, ever be sent to a place like that. I will keep her myself rather than worry that she might land in such conditions."
    Carissa was rocking the infant, letting Sue suck on her knuckle. “You cannot keep her, my lord. It wouldn't be fair, for she would always be reminded of her blighted birth. A loving couple can give her a good life, away from those who would blame Sue for her parents’ sins."
    "You do not know my world, ma'am.” Lesley did not enjoy being referred to as a sinner, no more than he liked to consider his daughter a bastard. Both were true, of course, but he did not need to hear it from a cit's chatelaine. “If I adopted her as my own, Sue would be the daughter of a viscount, with an Honorable in front of her name. That and a generous dot count far more than her mother's morals among the ton. ‘Struth, with a large enough dowry, the chit could look to the highest in the land for a husband."
    "She would still be your love child."
    "Fustian. I can give out that she is my ward, a missing cousin or something."
    "Anyone can look in Debrett, my lord, or into her eyes. There will always be whispers."
    "Bastardy is not the end of the world, Mrs. Kane."
    "Not to one born with a title, a fortune, and no blot on the family escutcheon. To those of us in the real world, it is a considerable affliction."
    "You appear to feel strongly on this matter, Mrs. Kane. Is it possible you speak from personal experience?” He nodded in Philippa's direction. “Was there really a Mr. Kane?"
    "How dare you, sirrah, ask such an insulting question! As if I would do what Sue's mother—Of course there was Mr. Phillip Kane!"
    Lesley was enjoying seeing the colors flare across her countenance. The female might be halfway passable, with this much animation. Of course, the black gown deadened her complexion, and the bonnet, hiding her hair again, accentuated the widow's rather pointed nose. “Yet you are not baseborn, I'd give odds."
    She gasped. “You are impertinent, my lord. Indelicate and impertinent to be impugning my mother's honor. I know about the prejudice against those of uncertain parentage because such intolerance exists among the working class as well as among the Quality."
    "And you are no more of the lower orders than I am, my girl. I wondered what seemed peculiar about you; now I realize it is your educated speech, your polished manners, the whole aura of refinement you carry with you. No housekeeper I ever met had the airs of an heiress."
    For a moment he thought he'd gone too far. The woman was going to swoon or slap him. Or both.
    Carissa took a moment to gather her composure. “As you said, my lord, I am not of your world. I may have been born to a different way of life, but now I am, indeed, of the working class. I am not an heiress; I am a housekeeper. Nothing more."
    "And I would give a pretty