Читать книгу Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 2 - Elizabeth Rolls - Страница 67

A part of Sophie wanted to watch, to stand implacable in the face of her uncle’s pain, exactly as he had done to her for years. She could not do it. She turned away, unable to look at him any longer, as Charles arranged for help, and sent for a doctor. She refused to watch as he was carried out by a brace of footmen. She acknowledged Lady Dayle’s quick embrace, but did not turn from the bank of windows as the viscountess bustled off to see to the sick old man.

Beyond this room, the house was in an uproar. Guests clamoured to know what had gone wrong. The village doctor arrived and was ushered upstairs. Footmen and maids scurried back and forth with linen and water and simples from the stillroom.

Through it all, Sophie stood waiting. She waited to hear whether her uncle was going to live or to die. She waited for her wildly conflicting feelings to settle enough for her to know which of those outcomes would be more welcome.

Eventually the house grew quiet once more. Sophie heard the doctor leave the house. She did not hear Lady Dayle approach until the viscountess was almost upon her.

‘Sophie, darling,’ she said quietly. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Is he …?’ Sophie could not finish the sentence.

‘No, dear. He is weak, but resting comfortably now.’ She paused, and then laid a hand on Sophie’s shoulder. ‘The doctor says he cannot be certain, but he doubts whether Cranbourne has much time left. It could be a matter of weeks, he says, or months.’

Sophie did not answer. She could not sort through the myriad of emotions besetting her.

‘He is asking to see you, dear,’ Lady Dayle said gently.

‘No,’ Sophie said at once. Of one thing she was certain, and that was that she was not ready to face him yet.

‘I fear you must. No matter what he has done, he deserves the chance to confess, to at least try to right some of the wrongs he has perpetrated. Before it is too late.’

Sophie shook her head.

‘I think you need to hear it as much as he needs to tell it,’ Lady Dayle insisted. ‘And if you will not do it for him, or for yourself, then do it for Charles. I will send for him as well.’

Against her will and better judgment, Sophie allowed herself to be persuaded. She entered the room where her uncle had been taken, hesitantly, on Lady Dayle’s arm.

He lay, looking thin and pathetic in the large bed. His skin tone had faded almost to the colour of the bed sheets. She could hear the rattle of his breath from across the room.

Charles and his brother entered the room behind her. They both looked as comfortable as she felt. Lady Dayle drew Sophie to the chair situated close to the bed and called her uncle’s name.

His eyes fluttered open. He looked at once into Sophie’s face and sighed at what he saw there. His gaze flickered to Charles, standing by the door, then returned to Sophie.

‘Niece,’ he said. She could barely hear him, his voice was so frail.

‘Uncle,’ she returned. For some reason it made him smile.

‘Dayle is right,’ he said. Sophie lowered her head. ‘I just wanted you to hear why.’

Sophie was instantly angry. ‘Do you look for forgiveness? This is not the theatre, where the villain is excused all on his deathbed just because he makes a pretty speech of contrition. These are real people, not actors, whose lives you have tampered with.’

‘Not forgiveness,’ he said quietly. ‘I just want the truth to be known.’ He paused for several breaths, gathering strength.

‘Then why?’ Sophie asked. ‘Just tell us why.’

‘I’m old,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve worked long and hard for this country, done the things that had to be done. The hard and dirty jobs,’ he rasped, ‘the sorts of things that are not celebrated in society’s parlours. But it has all been clandestine, behind the veil, as they say.’ He shrugged, a pitifully small gesture in the vastness of the bed. ‘For a long time I was satisfied with that, happy even. Then I began to become aware that my time on earth is limited, and I suddenly realised that no one knew my name. Only a handful of people would ever know what I had done.’ He looked at Sophie intently, clearly wishing for her understanding. ‘I want them to know my name. Before I shuffle off this mortal coil I want to be acknowledged. I want my name in the history books, too.’

‘But what has any of this to do with Charles?’ Jack Alden demanded from his position at the door.

‘Nothing at first.’ Her uncle spared a glance for Charles, who had moved into the room and now stood implacably at the foot of the bed. ‘Rapscallion turned politician—I didn’t take him seriously. No one did. But he kept his nose to the grindstone, proved himself on small issues, until he began to be noticed, praised, held up as a bright future for the Party.’ He was silent a long moment and only the sound of his laboured breathing filled the room.

‘Your name came up too often, and then it came up for the appointment I wanted. You’re young. You’ll recover, despite your tendency to side with the ones with no power or influence.’

‘But all those stories, the statue of King Alfred, the jockey at the Hampstead races, even I had never heard of half those pranks that Charles had played,’ Sophie said. ‘How could you have known?’

‘He kept a file on me,’ Charles said quietly. ‘Going back for years. What I want to know is why?’

Cranbourne creaked with laughter. The sound made Sophie cringe. ‘Good Lord, son, I’ve got files on everyone. If there is a dirty little secret in London, then I have it at my fingertips. But why you?’ He cast a feeble grin. ‘Because of a letter I received from an impudent pup years ago. Do you not recall?’ He smiled at Charles’s blank look, but it faded as his gaze drifted to Sophie. ‘A letter from a sprout of a boy, telling me how a gentleman treats his family.’

‘Oh my God.’ Charles gave half a laugh himself. He turned to Sophie, something unreadable in his eyes. ‘I had forgotten. I wrote, chiding him for his neglect of you. He never answered.’

‘Neither did I forget,’ Cranbourne answered with something of his old energy. ‘I had a feeling you might be trouble. Kept an eye on you.’ He nodded towards Sophie. ‘It’s like I told the girl, knowledge is power. How do you think we beat old Boney? Wellington might have whipped him on the battlefield, but it was behind the scenes that the real work was done. We whipped him there, too.’ He finished with pride.

‘It sounds like an expensive undertaking,’ Charles said.

Cranbourne closed his eyes and nodded. ‘A sight more expensive than you might think.’ He stopped suddenly and his eyes opened again. Sophie did not understand the arrested look on his face. He stared for a long moment at Charles. ‘I give you credit, Dayle. Never expected you to figure that out, too.’

It was all becoming too much for Sophie. All the pain, all the embarrassment Charles had suffered these last months. Her fault. She was reeling. Lady Dayle was softly crying. But Charles wasn’t through yet.

‘Sophie,’ he said softly, trying to get her attention.

She shook her head, tried to gather her thoughts. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

‘No, I’m sorry, sweet, for there is more.’

More? God, how could there be more?

Charles looked at Cranbourne. ‘Tell her,’ he said harshly.

Her uncle looked away, refused to meet her eyes. Sophie shivered. It must be bad. ‘What is it?’ she asked Charles.

‘I think he’s stolen all of your money,’ he answered grimly.

‘What money?’ She glared at her uncle. ‘What is he talking about?’

Cranbourne’s head tossed back and forth upon the pillows. She stared, fixing on the motion, not the face of the man who had hurt them all so callously. ‘Not all of it,’ was all he said.

‘Your parents left you money,’ Charles broke in. ‘It was to be a marriage settlement.’

Sophie was almost relieved. ‘No, there was no updated will. I wasn’t mentioned. Their estate went to the family shipping company. I, however, was given their shares in the company. I receive the dividends each quarter.’

‘I don’t know the specifics, but there was a large dowry. Eighty thousand pounds. If you do not marry before you are five and twenty, it goes to him.’ He waved at her uncle. ‘However, I suspect he’s stolen it.’

‘Not stolen,’ Cranbourne whispered. ‘Spent. Put to good use, for the good of the country. Do you think that bribes to the people close to Napoleon came cheap?’ His voice was harsh, his breathing rattled louder now.

Eighty thousand pounds. Sophie thought of what she might have done with such an amount. Hospitals, schools. She thought of the difference it might have made to Mr Darvey, and all the men at the workshop back home. But then the words registered. Marriage settlement. It had never been hers, in any case.

‘I don’t need it,’ she said with conviction. ‘I’ve done well enough with what I have.’

‘Yes, you have done marvellously well, dear,’ Lady Dayle whispered through her tears, taking her hand. Sophie clung to her, drawing strength.

‘Unfortunately he’s robbed you of something more valuable than money,’ Charles said grimly.

Sophie did not want to hear any more.

‘Recall how he campaigned against me, here in town? Not just the papers, but the rumours, the whispers, the innuendo?’ He met Sophie’s eye. ‘Do you remember what you told me about the aftermath of Mr Wren’s visits? I think he’s waged a similar war on you, in Blackford Chase. To make you unmarriageable.’

Surely not. Not even her uncle could have been so cruel. All the taunts, the rejection, the anguish of always being on the outside looking in. She couldn’t ask, couldn’t speak. She only stared at him, unspeaking.

‘I don’t regret it,’ he rasped. ‘It was the making of her. Look at her! The girl has spirit, strength.’ His face contorted.

Lady Dayle stood, at last putting an end to this torture. ‘That is enough, now,’ she said. ‘I will fetch your medicine, Lord Cranbourne. The rest of you, we will speak more of this later.’

Sophie left the room in a hurry, not stopping to wait for Charles. How could she face him, knowing what their friendship had cost him?

She did not return to her room. She could not bear the thought of being confined. The enormity of her distress forbade it. She had to be out, in the fresh air, where perhaps some of her emotional turmoil could leak away, bleed into the black heavens and leave her less burdened.

The kitchen door was locked again. She slid open the lock and stepped out into the night, aware of the vast emotional distance between those same simple acts last night and this.

She walked through the night, annoyed that the beauty of the evening had not faded, resenting the fact that everything could look so unchanged, when her life had been shattered so completely.

Unerringly her feet carried her the long distance to Lady Dayle’s folly. The tears came as she stepped in. She stumbled to the nearest column and leaned against the cool marble. She gripped it while she sobbed, as if the force of her anger and grief might tear her away, and when the storm of crying abated she stayed, letting the beauty and serenity of it support and calm her.

She heard Charles’s footsteps long before he arrived. But then he was close behind her. His body loomed over hers, so large and warmly masculine. He wrapped her in his arms, and she was safe in the warmth of his embrace again. She leaned back into it. All she wanted to do was forget. Forget it all, and stay here, secure in his arms forever.

‘I am so very sorry,’ he whispered.

She sighed. He’d held her in just this same way last night. The difference was, this time she knew how short the moment would last. He would leave. She would be left hurting. It was a pattern in her life that was becoming entirely too apparent. She straightened, stepped away, and put a little distance between them.

‘What do you have to be sorry for, Charles? Nothing, except for the fact that you ever met me. It is I who am sorry. It seems I’ve been nothing but trouble since the beginning.’

‘Don’t think of it like that,’ he said. ‘Let’s just be happy that it’s over. We know the worst now, and can go on from here.’

‘Over?’ Her voice sounded strained, strange, like it belonged to someone else. ‘It is hardly over. You can have your life back now. Reveal what he’s done to you. Do it with my blessing.’

She stopped, cursing the devastating irony of the situation. The discovery of her uncle’s perfidy was the answer to Charles’s prayers, and the end to hers. For once scandal was going to work in Charles’s favour, but it was going to tear her down along with her uncle, placing her for ever out of Charles’s reach.

She tried to sound pleased for him, but even she could hear the hollow echo of her words. ‘You’ll be back on the path to the ministry in a matter of weeks, once the truth is known.’ And back to the search for the perfect political hostess.

The tears were gathering force once more, she could feel them building up from the bottom of her soul. She turned away. ‘Please, I need to be alone.’

‘No, you don’t.’ He was coming toward her again, the image of tender concern. ‘You don’t have to face this alone.’

‘I am asking you not to make this more difficult for me.’

‘I’m trying to help, not make it more difficult. I know how you must feel. Let me help you.’

She felt a fleeting moment of anger. How could he even begin to know her feelings? Then she remembered—she wasn’t the only one who had been betrayed.

But he had seen and understood her flash of emotion. ‘No, you are right. There is no comparison to what he’s done to you, and with such callous disregard. I could kill the man myself.’ He drew close and this time she let him. ‘I don’t know how you feel. Tell me.’

She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘I feel naked. Vulnerable.’

She could feel him smile against her hair. ‘No, yesterday we were both vulnerable and alone. Then we came together, here in this very spot, and today we are together and strong.’

‘How I wish that were true,’ she whispered.

‘It is true.’ He took both her hands in his. ‘As far as I’m concerned, last night’s events are all that matter. We may have cleared up a lot of mysteries tonight, but when you cart away the rubble, it changes nothing.’

She gaped at him. ‘Are you daft? It changes everything! It changes my past, and both our futures.’

‘What’s past is just that.’ He dropped one of her hands and cupped her cheek. ‘I’ve known your uncle was evil since the first day I saw you come crying down that forest path. Today isn’t any different. The future is ours to shape.’

Ours. It had to be the most beautiful word in any language. She leaned into his caress. He gathered her close, pulling her in for a kiss. A soft, sweet, decadent kiss, full of visions of the future, full of promises. For a long moment she lost herself in it, let the heat and the lethal longing he stirred in her sweep away reality.

He broke the kiss and buried his face in her hair. His breath burned against her ear, sending a shiver down the length of her, igniting a slow burn of desire. ‘No one has to know, if you don’t wish it. We don’t have to tell anyone what he’s done.’

A splash of cold water could not have quenched her fire more thoroughly. Is that what he wished for? More secrets? More lies?

‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘That is not an option we can consider.’ She pushed away from him. ‘Haven’t you learned that lesson yet? I have seen what the weight of your secrets has done to you. Do you think I would add to that? Would you ask me to carry a similar burden?’

He stiffened, the oh-so-familiar mask dropped into place. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Sophie was growing more furious by the minute. ‘You spout the words like you actually believe them. “What’s past is past.” Should I follow your words or your deeds, Charles?’

He didn’t answer.

‘You see, even now you shut me out. My life, my soul is bared before you, and still you close yourself to me. Even after all of this …’ she waved an encompassing hand ‘… you still do not trust me.’

‘You speak in absurdities. How can you say such a thing?’ Now he was growing angry. ‘You dare to speak of trust? When you went off half-cocked and pulled that stunt with Lord Avery and his wife?’

‘I was trying to help them.’

‘Yes, after we spoke of helping them. I said I would call on them, and I did, at the first opportunity. But it wasn’t enough, was it, you interfering little minx? Did you trust me to handle it? No—you brewed up another of your hare-brained schemes and you came close to ruining them both for ever!’

‘You know what I was trying to accomplish—for them and for us, too. But I’m not going to debate it with you now. This is just another distraction to keep me from the real topic. You are just building another wall to keep me out.’

‘Stop it.’ Now the anger in his voice was tempered with exasperation. ‘You are just being fanciful.’

‘Am I? No secrets, have you? Then explain it to me, Charles. Tell me just how you have come to believe that you killed your brother?’

Charles had once had the wind knocked out of him by a champion pugilist at Gentleman Jackson’s. He had lain gasping like a fish out of water for a good fifteen minutes. But even that blow had not held the power of Sophie’s words. He gaped at her, unable to accept that the truth had been uttered out loud.

‘That is it—is it not? The truth you have laboured to hide? Or rather, that’s the load of nonsense you have accepted as the truth.’

He stood, unmoving. He’d become accustomed to the swirling, unruly mess that replaced orderly thought and emotion whenever he stood in Sophie’s presence, but this, this was reaching a new depth of chaos. He couldn’t think, couldn’t formulate a coherent response. He could only stand and wait for the surge of adrenalin to ebb, for panic and fear to recede.

‘You don’t know what you are talking about,’ was all the response he could manage.

‘Oh, but I think I do. I can scarcely believe it took me this long to unravel. It explains so much: the guilt, your talk of redemption, and the way you cringe every time Phillip’s name is mentioned. Once, at this very house, I asked if you wanted to turn yourself into your brother, when all along the truth is that you think you must replace him.’ She moved and took up a position between him and the house, as if she expected him to run. ‘I want to hear the reason why.’

Charles couldn’t bear to look at her. He turned away, and swept both hands through his hair. He wished he could cover both his ears to block her out, the way he had done to irritate Phillip when they were small. Oh, God, Phillip. He missed him so damned much.

But Phillip was not going to rescue him from this situation, or any other, ever again. He breathed deep and reached for courage. He only hoped he had some.

‘Fine,’ he finally said. ‘Only you could take this hellish night and wish to make it worse. I can see that you will not be satisfied until I am naked and vulnerable too.’

He began to pace. He couldn’t hold still, couldn’t believe he was admitting the ugly truth.

‘You want to know why? Because it is the truth. Phillip came to me after Castlereagh offered him the assignment. He hadn’t accepted it yet, and didn’t know if he would.’

‘And you encouraged him?’ she asked softly.

‘No—I taunted him. It was obvious he was wild to do it. He was actually thrilled that Napoleon had come back, because it gave him one last chance to get in the action. But Father had forbidden him to go. I laughed at him. Mocked him. Asked him if he meant to live under our father’s thumb for ever.’ Charles couldn’t believe how much it hurt to say it, to remember it. He stopped at the far edge of the folly and stared out at the lake. ‘He was so angry.’

‘And you think that was the reason he decided to go?’

‘The next time I saw him, he was preparing to leave. He came to say goodbye. If only I had known …’ Grief choked off his words.

Sophie was behind him now. Her hands, so strong and capable for a woman, touched his shoulders, and slid around to embrace him. She laid her soft cheek in the middle of his back. ‘Phillip was a good man. He did his duty, but he knew his own mind. He was only human. He chose to go because it was what he wanted, not because his little brother goaded him into it.’

‘If you had seen his face. You can’t know how it haunts me.’

‘I know he would have been in his element. I imagine he was supremely happy in the time he was there.’

‘I don’t care—he shouldn’t have been there at all. He shouldn’t have died. He was the good one, the useful one, the one who would have become a great man.’ He hung his head. ‘It should have been me who died, not him.’

She circled around until she stood before him, her face aghast. ‘How can you say such a thing?’

‘I didn’t. I didn’t have to. My father said it for me.’

‘Oh, Charles.’ Her face crumpled, her lip trembled. Tears welled in her eyes. Charles felt like the biggest ass in the kingdom. She’d been through so much tonight and now here she was, grieving for him.

‘How horrible. I wish I could give him a piece of my mind.’ She wiped her eyes; he could see she was trying to pull herself together. ‘I’m sure he regretted saying such a hateful thing.’

‘The only thing he regretted was losing Phillip. He had been so proud of him. I don’t think he could conceive of living in a world where his eldest son was no more. He didn’t want to. When he contracted the lung fever, he didn’t even try to get well. He just let it take him.’ Charles did not want to remember the horror of those days, or his mother’s frantic worry. ‘He never forgave me.’

She stepped forward until their bodies were in contact. Her warmth and softness were a comfort. So was the hand that she slowly stroked through his hair.

‘My poor Charles,’ she breathed.

‘That’s not even the worst of it,’ he whispered. ‘When I heard the news about Phillip, I thought that I would die too. But do you know how I felt when my father died?’ He took her by the arms, to be sure she looked him in the face, to be sure she saw the stark horror of the truth. ‘Relieved,’ he said harshly. ‘I was relieved, almost glad, that I wouldn’t have to see the bitter disappointment in his eyes every time he looked at me.’

He let her go. He felt empty, drained. ‘There you have it. Now you know the worst, all the monumental failings of my life. But do you know, Sophie, as much as women value talking and sharing, I think there can be a point when two people know too much about each other.’

Now he was the one to draw away, to create a physical distance to represent the emotional room that he needed. ‘We know the worst about each other now. You are afraid you will be hurt yet again, and I am just the selfish idiot to do it.’

There was sympathy and understanding in her eyes. He didn’t want to see it.

‘You are being too hard on yourself. You have been letting this gnaw on you for so long. Now that you have faced your demons, you can begin to heal. You must learn to make peace with yourself, Charles. Only then will you be able to move past this.’

‘No. The only people whose forgiveness I need are dead.’

‘Charles, please.’

‘You’ll never look at me in the same way again. I couldn’t bear it.’ He turned away. ‘I can scarcely look at you now, knowing that you know.’

He was afraid she would press him. She didn’t. For several long minutes, she stood silent. Then she squared her shoulders and breathed deep. ‘You are wrong, Charles. There is only one person whose forgiveness you require. Your own.’

She came to him and laid her head on his chest. ‘Tonight has been very difficult for both of us. I think we each have some serious decisions to make.’ Her arms were around him, embracing him tightly. ‘Let us both take some time and try to absorb all of this.’

She looked at him again, her face weary, her eyes serious. ‘If you reach the point where you are ready to let go of the past and look to the future, then come to me.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I will be waiting.’

She pressed a quick kiss to his lips and was gone.