Someone to Honor (Westcott #6) - Mary Balogh Page 0,3

Katy’s birth when Gil had been recalled to his regiment following Napoleon Bonaparte’s escape from his first exile, on the island of Elba, and his return to France to gather another vast army about him.

Caroline had wanted to go too, leaving the baby with her mother. He had refused. Following the drum was no life for a lady, though Caroline had done it for a few months before he married her when her mother brought her to the Peninsula after she had finished her lady’s schooling. And a baby needed her mother and a home and her father’s financial support and the promise of his return as soon as he was able. A baby actually needed both parents, but life could not always be ideal. He had tried to make it as secure and comfortable as was possible under the circumstances.

By the time he had hurried home after Waterloo, alarmed by increasingly mutinous letters from his unhappy wife, she was gone. So was their daughter. And her nurse. But no one—not their servants, not any of their neighbors—knew just where they had gone or when they were likely to return. He had not seen either one of them since, though he did know that Katy was in Essex, living with her grandparents, General Sir Edward and Lady Pascoe, to whom, unbeknown to him, she had been taken before Waterloo, soon after his own departure for Belgium. Lady Pascoe had refused to let him see her, however, when he had gone to her home, frantic for news. Caroline, he had discovered later, had gone off to a house party at the invitation of old friends and from there to another party and another. Gil could neither pursue his quest to retrieve his daughter nor go in search of his errant wife before he was abruptly and unexpectedly posted to St. Helena. Doubtless thanks to General Pascoe.

Katy was still with her grandparents. Caroline was dead. Word of her demise had reached him on St. Helena.

Now, more than a year later, the situation had become more fraught. General Pascoe was back at home, and he and his wife were determined to keep custody of Katy. They had acquired a lawyer who intended to see that the whole matter was wrapped up right and tight—and legally—in their favor. They had two angry, threatening letters he had written from St. Helena to use against him in addition to Lady Pascoe’s account of the frantic, demanding visits he had made to the general’s home and the lies Caroline had told when she took their daughter to her mother. He would be made to appear to be a violent, uncontrolled man and an unfit father.

Gil’s first instinct upon leaving St. Helena had been to return as soon as he could to England, where he would rage at his in-laws until they relinquished his daughter into his care and he could take her back home where she belonged. A cooler wisdom had prevailed, however, and he had hired a lawyer of his own, a man recommended by his agent as the best of his kind in London. And Grimes—of the law firm Grimes, Hanson, and Digby—had insisted in the lawyerly letter he had written his client after the contract was signed that Lieutenant Colonel Bennington leave the matter of the custody of his daughter entirely in his hands and do absolutely nothing himself.

Doing nothing was the hardest thing Gil had ever had to do in his life. For a lawyer, even this one—the best of his kind in London—might not be enough. The general had considerable power and influence. So did Lady Pascoe. She was the sister of a baron who held a prominent position in the government. Both had been vehemently opposed to their daughter’s marrying the bastard son of a blacksmith’s daughter, even if he was an officer of high rank. They would undoubtedly have withheld their consent had Caroline not already been increasing. That fact had drawn their tight-lipped consent, but it had done nothing to endear him to them. It was also a fact that had deeply shamed him. After becoming a commissioned officer, he had tried hard to behave like a gentleman even if he could never be one.

Gil’s offer to accompany Harry home and his agreement to remain with him for a while had been made at least partly for selfish reasons, then. It would take him back to England, not far distant from London, where he would be able to consult