Free Lady in the Veil by Leah Fleming Page B

she suckled his son contentedly.
    ‘What in God’s name are you doing with my son?’ he screamed and the baby startled, screwed up its face and began to wail. Mirabel looked up at him blushing and for once had the
grace to give him her full attention. Bella looked at him square on, the brazen hussy.
    ‘Someone has to feed William. He’s hungry and Mirabel has no milk. Wet nurses are common enough, Sire,’ she spoke without asking for permission.
    ‘Aye and we all know that a milk cow must first deliver to produce its milk. A barren cow cannot suckle a calf. Hellfire! What are you two she devils up to? Give me that thing . . .’
he snatched the child from the breast and slammed the door, his mind afire with rage at such deception.
    What had been going on under his roof? This was mischief indeed. What he was thinking was unbelievable. Whose child was this bastard? His head was ringing with fury at the scene he’d just
witnessed.
    So that was their little game. They had hatched up this plot to deceive him, giving him the child of a maid and some quisling from the tavern too drunk to see her face. How could he have ever
been deceived into thinking this was his own heir when he had been with his wife but twice? How they had deceived him! Matt tore through the kitchen, striding out into the yard with the screaming
infant wailing for all to hear.
    ‘Out of my way!’ he ordered as the yard boy stepped aside. Then, seeing Sadie the dairymaid, he dumped the bundle into her arms and made for his horse to saddle up and mount,
strapping the screaming child tight around his chest in a makeshift sling.
    He rode like the furies towards Gunnerside Foss but not before he halted suddenly to look up at his house, and the world that was fast collapsing around his head. How grand the farmhouse looked
with whitened walls set against the emerald moorland, the sun torching the windows with golden light, so proud and outstanding but so full of corruption. How he had been duped and humiliated by
those scheming women: one unfit to be seen and the other not right in the head. Poor Matt Stockdale who thought he could be a gentleman, fobbed off with someone else’s bastard, made a
laughing stock in the district. No wonder they had hidden away in Lawton to deceive him. It was as clear as a mountain stream now. Well, he was going to have the last laugh now . . .

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    ‘What’s going on?’ puffed Lucy Stockdale, as she rushed into the bed chamber unannounced, hearing the screams. ‘Where’s the babby?’ Eliza
was simpering and shaking her head and Mirabel was buttoning up her shirt trying to stay calm. How could she explain the mess they were all now in? But there was no time for explanations. Matt had
taken her baby in a rage of fury, thinking William some bastard imposter. There was danger in the air and she must go to him.
    ‘Please see to Miss Mirabel,’ she begged, trying to stay calm and not alarm Mistress Stockdale further. ‘I must take the baby a warm shawl or he will be chilled in the fresh
air.’ She ran down to the kitchen but there was no sign of her son. She ran through the yard calling his name but there was no answer until Sadie came out of the dairy and said the Master had
saddled up and gone. Her heart was thumping with fear.
    ‘Saddle me a horse and be quick. The Master is out of his senses. He thinks the baby unwell,’ she lied. Now was not time for explanations. All she could think about was little
William, hungry, cold and in danger from a man in the throes of furious confusion. This was the moment she had dreaded, the moment when all the tight ball of lies they had wound was unravelling
fast. Mirabel mounted the brown horse for the first time in months, racing off down the track in pursuit of Matt, taking a flying leap over a wall in the race to save her son.
    Sitting in the saddle with the whimpering child, Matt suddenly felt as if all the stuffing had gone out of him. Matt wanted to cry out