Читать книгу Redemption Of The Rake - Elizabeth Beacon - Страница 10
ОглавлениеAt last James took Virginia’s letter from his pocket and examined the outside as if it could take him back to the moment she had finished, folded it precisely and directed it in her familiar, flowing hand. He imagined her getting to the end of her self-imposed task of writing four letters to her ‘boys’ and leaving them to be read after her death—one given out for every season of the year after she died. Missing her never seemed to fade, however many months he had to get used to it.
Luke had been ordered to do what he’d always wanted and discover all Chloe’s secrets, then Virginia’s godson, Tom Banburgh, Marquis of Mantaigne, had to face his childhood demons next, before Gideon took on a summer of abiding love and startling revelations. Now it was his turn. It would be a workaday ending to a year of changed lives. The others were lured into doing what Virginia wanted by the promise of James being independent of his half-brother and wasn’t that the biggest irony of all? He smiled wryly at the thought of Virginia baiting her hook with a lie. She knew he could buy a house and estate like the tumbledown one he’d acquired without feeling a dent in his ill-gotten gains.
He wondered why she had done it and why he’d failed to mention his fortune. Even a brother who wasn’t supposed to care a snap of his fingers for anyone could see Luke had lived half a life since he wedded his first wife Pamela. The woman was ten years dead, but some of the damage could never be undone, James concluded bleakly. At least Virginia made the stubborn great idiot change his mind about love and marriage and his great-aunt’s mysterious housekeeper. Now Tom Banburgh and Gideon Laughraine were happy as well and Luke’s new wife had given him his letter with a look that said she knew he wanted to sob like a child at the sight of it. Heaven forbid Virginia expected some impossible love match from him because he’d hate her to be disappointed. Not that she was here to be anything. He tested the weight of several pages of closely written hot-pressed paper and still hesitated to break the familiar seal of two Vs interlocked that always made him smile at their effrontery.
For goodness’ sake, boy, why don’t you get on and open the dratted thing?
The voice popped into his head as if Virginia was pacing about this manmade glade waiting to have her say and as impatient with shilly-shallying as ever. James looked round as furtively as he’d done as a boy when his great-aunt caught him in mischief and she felt so acutely present he only just stopped himself peering round this glade to see where she was hiding herself.
Don’t be ridiculous, it didn’t take supernatural powers to read the mind of a grubby schoolboy then and you’re not so different now.
So much for the calming effects of nature and a serene autumn day; fighting a superstitious shiver, James fixed his gaze on the only part of her that could be real today and lifted the seal with a neat penknife she would have confiscated on sight in the old days. Anything was preferable to the madness of conjuring up the beloved, infuriating, marvel of a woman he missed so badly nine months on from her death.
Darling James
Now don’t sit there thinking, Who? Me? I love you and always have done. From the very first moment I laid eyes on you as a squalling brat I knew you were special when you decided to trump your mother’s cast-iron certainty you would follow her family and came out a Winterley instead. Now I love you for your own sake and you have to accept that, James. You are a good, loving and, yes, a lovable man, and it’s about time you realised it.
So why did I do all this? You know as well as I do there’s no need to provide you with the fortune you will receive the day Gideon carries out his task to dear Chloe’s satisfaction. I hope she and Luke are happy together by now and Gideon attained his heart’s desire, by the way? I set the other boys quests they were eager to carry out, deep down, except perhaps for my beloved Tom. I had to push him to going back to the place he least wants to go to for his own sake.
You know almost as well as he does how it feels to be damaged and manipulated by those who are supposed to care for you the most and yet do not. I trust you to watch out for Tom and see he is not going wilder than ever since I made him return to Dayspring Castle and face his demons.
James looked up from his letter with a broad grin at the idea of Tom doing anything wild without his rather fierce new love at his side. The new Marchioness of Mantaigne was sure to outrage the ton as carelessly as her husband, but she would love him until their dying day. James felt the lightness of knowing all three were deeply and abidingly happy with their chosen brides and realised Virginia was right, he had worried about them—at least the ones he knew about. Gideon was a new comrade-in-arms and for some reason his wife, Callie, felt almost like a sister. Who would have thought he’d feel fraternal towards such a spectacular beauty as Lady Laughraine, bastard daughter of Lord Laughraine’s son and true heiress of Raigne?
That odd idea brought him neatly back to people who didn’t know themselves. Callie still thought of herself as a superannuated schoolmarm, even now she was reconciled with her doting husband. He frowned at the idea he’d settled near his newest siblings of the heart to protect them from wolves who saw Callie’s vulnerability and tried to exploit it. No, he had fallen for broken-down and neglected Brackley Manor House at first sight and that was quite foolish enough to be going on with. Almost feeling the impatience of Virginia’s letter in his hand, he went on reading as if she was here to nag him into it.
As for Gideon, I think you would like him and his wife if you would let yourself.
James laughed and shook his head, she would have enjoyed the joke that he was perilously close to being both friend and kin to the pair of them after years of walking alone. Nobody could accuse Virginia of lacking humour at his expense.
I know you have the makings of a fine man in you, James, and I trust you to be the strength at the heart of the Winterley family in the years to come. You have a power for good in you that you refuse to trust. I want you to know yourself better than you do today, lest you become a lonely and frustrated man and the true glories of this life pass you by. The pity of it is your mother poured all her frustrated ambition into you as a boy and you were still too fine a human being to let her turn you into a fool and envy your brother his future title and possessions. I only wish she and your father were blessed with more children to dilute her folly.
Still, at least you and Luke managed to love each other as boys. When Luke married Pamela because of some maggot your father got in his head about getting the boy wed and begetting heirs since he knew he was dying himself, she was determined to destroy that love, because she knew he didn’t love her. She was incapable of feeling true love for another human being, although she craved it as a miser does gold. I know she did something terrible to you both, but I dare not probe the sore places she left you both. I love the two of you too much in life to risk it, so in death I can say your quest will take longest, which is why I left you until last.
You have to learn to love and trust a lover, my dearest. Be she mistress, wife, or friend, I want you to open your heart to love as you never have since the little witch Luke married cast some wicked spell over you both and froze you in your tracks at seventeen. That’s so heartbreakingly young to cut yourself off from the most dangerous and breathtakingly wonderful of human emotions, my love. I was blissfully happy with the love of my life and couldn’t wish I’d never met him, even when he died, and grief and fury seemed likely to send me mad for a while. Love is something to celebrate and treasure, never a burden to be avoided at all costs as you appear to think.
So, even if it takes you until your deathbed, darling James, your quest is to learn to love with all the strength and humour and power in that great heart of yours. Don’t shake your head; I know you do your best to keep it secret from the rest of the world, but you are a special person and I value you as such. Luke always wanted to love his brother and I felt so sorry for you both when it became clear the main purpose of your mother’s life was to prevent him doing so. What you choose to do about your frosty relations with your half-brother is up to you. If you think it right to hold aloof from your family, I ache for you all, but know you have good reason.
James looked up from his letter to stare unseeingly into the soft autumn afternoon. Oh, yes, he had very good reason to stay away from those he loved. It ached in his heart as if a tight band had been strapped round his chest at seventeen and would never be loosed this side of the grave. He shook his head and found himself a coward for refusing to explore it. Revisit that pain and anger and sense of worthlessness, when all that could be done was move on as best he could? No; this time Virginia was wrong. Hadn’t he said he’d be her only failure?
‘Three out of four is a fine record, darling,’ he murmured as he stared unseeingly at the soft, serene blue of the October sky.
And a full house trumps it every time, came the reply so certainly he looked for Virginia’s shade again, then called himself a fool for expecting it to show up for him. There was a little more in her missive from some time last year, when she had put her affairs in order while she had the strength and certainty to do so. How he admired and loved the one woman he could safely adore until his dying day. Come to think of it; if she was ordering him to give his heart, wasn’t she already too late?
Cheating, my boy, the gruff almost-sound of her voice reproached him and what he wouldn’t give to actually see and speak to her one last time? That’s a different sort of love. Virgil and I simply tried to give you and your brother and Tom a firm foundation of love to build your lives on. Love between a man and a woman, full and true and without boundaries, is very different to the deep affection of true family. That love is an undeserved gift that can light up a whole lifetime with the joy and surprise of it, for however long or short a time you are together. I want you to love like that, James, I need you to love truly if I am ever to have peace and join my far-more-saintly Virgil in heaven one day.
‘Now that’s blackmail,’ James muttered with a frown at the circling buzzard that had taken off from the perch where it had been dreaming in the sun at the top of the tallest oak in Lord Laughraine’s beloved woods. ‘I’ve made love to some of the loveliest women in this land and quite a few further afield and not fallen in love with a single one of them. If I couldn’t love any of them, I’m beyond heavenly intervention.’
No, just looking in the wrong place, the not-quite sound of Virginia’s distinctive voice in his head insisted stubbornly.
James felt that restriction where his heart ought to be again and did his best to ignore it. Did she expect him to find a saint? The very idea made him snort with derision. Even the slightest hint of the saintly martyr in a woman would make him play the devil more than ever. No, he didn’t have it in him to give himself wholeheartedly to any deep human emotion, let alone loving a woman who’d preach at him and pry into his sooty soul. Shaking his head at the very idea, he forced himself to read the final farewell of the most matchless woman he’d ever met.
Whatever you do, live well and never close your heart to loving those around you if you can’t let go of your pride or your tender conscience long enough to truly love a partner for life. I was lucky to adore your great-uncle from the moment I met him and perhaps that’s not a miracle given to many of us sinners. You must believe that if I could have had a son I wanted him to be just like you, James. Know that now and please shrug off the self-loathing you struggle with for some reason you never would confide in me.
I find it hardest of all to stop writing to you, but now my pen is in need of mending and I am weary of this wide and wonderful earth of ours at last. Don’t grieve for me any more, love. I’m more than ready for a new adventure the other side of this little earthly life, if God will allow a sinner like me into heaven where I know Virgil already abides.
Farewell, my love; be happy and true to yourself. I pray one day you will be truly loved by the right woman, despite your conviction you do not deserve her,
Virginia
James blinked several times and watched the buzzard lazily circle its way up to the heavens on a warm thermal of autumn air and call for its mate to join it. Soon two birds were mewing in that circle, gliding and calling in the still air as if all that mattered was the miracle of flight and one another. For wild creatures with only their next meal and the urges of nature to answer perhaps it was. For James Winterley there was good earth under his feet and a mass of mixed emotions in his heart. He must go back to Raigne soon and show his sister-in-law and his hostess he wasn’t bowed down with the task Virginia had laid on his shoulders. Truth was he didn’t know how he felt about it. How could an unlovable man end up like the other three? Impossible, so he shook his head and decided he’d been right all along, he was destined to be Virginia’s only failure.
Perhaps he should give back the small fortune Gideon had passed to him as Virginia’s lawyer? James had plans for it, so, no, he’d accept the sacrifices Virginia’s nearest and dearest had made to get him off their hands. It would be an insult even he couldn’t steel himself to make if he was to throw the money back in their faces and tell them he didn’t want it.
‘Are you a hermit, mister?’
James jumped and looked for the source of that voice, so attuned to ghostly intervention he wondered for a moment if it came from a cherub instead of a child. He looked harder and spotted a grubby urchin peering down at him from halfway up a vast and curiously branched tree.
‘No, are you a leech?’ he asked as casually as he could and watched the girl squirm a little higher. Was there some way to get close and catch her when she fell without alarming her into falling in the first place?
‘Of course not, do I look like such a nasty, slimy bloodsucking thing?’
‘Only by hanging on to an unwilling host and defying the laws of gravity.’
‘You’re a very odd gentleman. I watched you for ages until I got bored and decided to see if I could get to the top of this tree instead.’
‘So that’s my fault, is it? I suppose you will tell your unfortunate parents so if you survive the experience?’
‘No,’ the pragmatic cherub said after a pause to think about it. ‘They will know it’s a lie,’ she finally admitted as she carefully worked her way up a little further and James’s heart thumped with fear as he let himself see how far from the ground she truly was.
‘How perceptive,’ he managed calmly as he strolled over so casually he hoped she had no idea he had his doubts about her survival if she took a wrong step.
‘Yes, it’s a trial,’ she admitted with a sigh that would normally have made him laugh out loud, but he was holding his breath too carefully to do any such thing as a branch writhed and threatened to snap when she tried it too hard.
‘I can see how it must be,’ he somehow managed to say calmly. ‘Sometimes knowing what you know and keeping quiet about it has to be enough, don’t you think?’
‘What?’ the adventurer asked rather breathlessly, as if not quite willing to admit her lucky escape had scared her so much she hadn’t been listening.
‘You know you can climb that tree, so perhaps that’s enough.’ He did his best to reason with her as if every inch of him wasn’t intent on persuading her to come down before she fell and he must try to catch her.
‘There’s no point me knowing I could do it if nobody else does.’
‘Yes, there is. You have the satisfaction of achievement and I’ll know.’
‘No, you won’t. I’m only halfway up.’
‘Which is about ten times as far as anyone else I ever came across can get. Being further up than anyone else can be has to be enough at times, don’t you think? I believe that’s the sign of a truly great person—knowing when it’s time to stop and be content.’
His latest critic seemed to think about that for endless moments before she took another step either way and he felt slightly better when the whippy branches above her head stopped swaying from the intrusion of a small human into its stately crown.
‘Do you really think it’s a big achievement to get this far?’
‘Of course it is; Joan of Arc couldn’t have done better.’
‘She got herself burnt,’ the urchin said doubtfully.
‘There is that, of course. Well, then, whatever great woman you think the most highly of couldn’t have done, as well. No woman of my acquaintance could touch you.’
‘What, not even one?’ she asked as if she didn’t think much of his taste in friends.
‘One might have done, but she died nearly a year ago now and I suppose by then even she was getting a little old for climbing trees. She would have been up there with you like a shot otherwise,’ he assured her.
‘And you think she would have thought this is far enough?’
‘I’m certain of it, she was the most lionhearted woman I ever came across and even she would say it’s enough to prove your courage and daring to yourself at times. Now I do wish you’d come down, because I’m getting a stiff neck and I’m devilish sharp set.’
‘Why don’t you just go, then?’ the girl said rather sulkily.
James wondered if he’d blundered and might have to risk both their lives by climbing up after her. If the girl insisted on going too high for him to be able to break her fall, even if he could judge the right place to try, he might have no choice. A lot of those branches simply wouldn’t take his weight, though, so he wondered if he could shout loudly enough to attract the woodsmen and hope they were lean and limber enough to do what he couldn’t.
‘There’s roast lamb and apple pie for dinner,’ he said as if that was all he could think about right now. He hoped the mention of food would remind her she hadn’t eaten for at least an hour and eating might trump adventures even for intrepid young scamps like this one.
‘I wish I was going to your house for dinner.’
‘I suppose if we’d been properly introduced I might get you invited another night. I’ve heard rumours about plum cake being available for hungry young visitors at any time of day, but I don’t suppose you like it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Only boys like plum cake, don’t they?’
‘No, I’m as good as any boy and twice as hungry.’
‘So girls don’t prefer syllabub and sponge cake after all, then?’
‘I don’t.’
James was delighted to see the girl look for a way down almost without noticing she was doing it. She might make it back down to earth without killing herself on the way now, but he tried not to let his relief show lest she went further up the tree, because she couldn’t let him see she was almost as scared as he was she might fall right now.
‘What don’t you like? So I can tell Cook when you come to dinner,’ he went on as if he hadn’t noticed she was thinking better of her plan to reach the top of the slender tree.
‘Cucumbers and rice pudding.’
‘Oh, dear me no, I can’t think of a worse combination.’
‘Not both at the same time, idiot,’ she said scathingly and felt less confidently for footholds on the way down and his heart seemed about to take up residence in his mouth as he watched her fumble, then find one.
‘How, then?’ he made himself ask as if he hadn’t a serious thought in his head while she hesitated between the next unsteady foothold and an even less likely alternative. Luckily the first held long enough to let her find a better and he sucked in a hasty breath and tried to look calm and only mildly interested when she found the nerve to look down again.
‘Rice pudding is worse, it looks like frogspawn and tastes like it by the time it gets to the nursery all cold and shuddery,’ she told him rather shakily.
‘I know exactly what you mean, but it goes down much better with big spoons of jam. I would never have got through school without wasting away if my brother hadn’t insisted I have jam with my pudding or succumb to a mysterious ailment unique to our family.’
‘I wish one of my brothers would think up stories to get us out of having to eat cold rice pudding on its own,’ she said wistfully and moved a few feet closer to the ground.
James estimated she was still about thirty feet above his head and worryingly unsafe when the girl’s elder sister appeared at the edge of the clearing, looking visibly shaken and pale as milk. She seemed about to distract the girl with a terrified exclamation and part of him whispered it would be good if she turned out to be a widgeon and released him from the spell he’d been in danger of tumbling into since the first day he laid eyes on her.
This wasn’t about him, though, so he shook his head and glared at her to keep quiet. He’d done his best not to know the Finch family better after spotting this disaster of a female hovering on the edges of it after church a few weeks ago. And who would have thought he’d let himself be cajoled and persuaded inside one of those for the good of his sooty soul quite so often?
‘I don’t think my brother would save me from rice pudding at every meal now we’re grown up if that makes you feel better,’ he shouted cheerfully enough.
He held his breath as the next branch the child tried gave an ominous crack. Again she skipped hastily on to the next and both watchers let out a quiet sigh of relief. The girl in the tree had frightened herself with her own daring and he had to keep her calm enough to take the next step to safety and the next, until she was low enough to catch if she fell.
‘Why not?’ she quavered bravely and how could he not put all he was into saving a girl who seemed as reckless and brave as Virginia must have been as a child?
Despite her mass of golden hair and bluest of blue eyes, she reminded him of Hebe’s little daughter Amélie. The defiant determination not to cry and admit how frightened she was put him in mind of the poor little mite he’d smuggled out of Paris at the behest of Hebe’s mother. The Terror had taken her husband and sons, now treachery had robbed her of her daughter, but she was still brave enough to part with her grandchild. Now it was up to him to see that the child had a better life than her mother and the responsibility felt terrifying at times.
‘We argued,’ he admitted, although it wasn’t exactly true. The problem was he and Luke hadn’t even had the heart to argue, they just let each other go and that was that.
‘Me and Jack argue all the time,’ the girl said matter-of-factly.
‘Is he your only sibling?’ he said with a warning glance at the one he wanted to know about least right now.
‘What’s a sibling?’
‘A brother or sister.’
‘Oh, no, but Nan’s only a baby and can hardly walk yet. I’m next, then there’s Jack, he’s two years older. Sophie is fifteen; Josh is at Oxford. Joanna is quite old and she’s getting married in November. Rowena has been grown up for years and years; she lived with her mama-in-law for ages but she’s home now. I hope she stays with us. She’s really old, but much more fun than Sophie. It’s nice to have one big sister who doesn’t scold all the time.’
James couldn’t spare a glance at Mr Finch’s eldest daughter to see how she’d reacted to that quaint summary. ‘Your parents must be busy with such a large and enterprising family,’ he managed coolly.
‘Oh, Papa and Mama are always busy. What with Papa’s pupils and all those services, Mama says it’s a wonder we ever see him.’
‘You must be Reverend Finch’s daughter, then?’
‘Why do people always say that as if it’s a surprise?’ the girl grumbled.
‘I really can’t imagine,’ he said wryly.
His breathing went shallow as the child stretched a grubby bare foot to find her next precarious hold. At a crash of unwary movement behind him he turned his head to bark a furious command at Mrs Westhope and saw a gangling stripling stumble into the clearing. Shock at the sight of his sister perched halfway up the wretched tree was written all over the boy’s ashen face. James drew breath to shout out an order to be silent just too late.
‘Good Lord, this time she’ll kill herself, Rowena,’ the boy shouted furiously.
The girl in the tree started, snatched at a much-too-slender branch to steady herself and screamed when it snapped off. This time there wasn’t another close enough to grab and save herself. She did her best to stumble on to another slender branch and shuffle her way back to the relative safety of the trunk. James’s heart seemed to jump into his mouth as he tried to calculate where best to stand to break the child’s fall, at the same time as briefly snatching off a prayer she wouldn’t need him to in the first place, since it was so hit and miss. The force of even her slender little body made the fine branches whip away or break as she grabbed at them. He winced for the scratches and bruises they would cause even as he reminded himself far worse would happen if he didn’t get in the way and stop her fall.
‘Stay back, you’ll do no good,’ he ordered the boy who looked about to dash forward and get in the way.
James had to forget him and hope his elder sister would stop the boy. She must have dragged her brother away, because James could pick the best spot to try and catch the child. He braced himself against the impact of the solid little body now hurtling towards him in a flash of flailing arms and grubby petticoats. A pity she couldn’t grow wings like the buzzards he’d been watching earlier, he found time to reflect as stalled time passed sluggishly. He did his best to second-guess gravity and snatch the girl from the shadowy arms of death by adjusting his stance as she fell. An image of this intrepid child lying lifeless and broken if he failed flashed in front of his eyes to truly horrify him, even as he stepped back to compensate for a little flail she managed, as if trying to slow her flight on the way down. He couldn’t quite think her a hell-born brat as every sense he had was intent on saving her from as much harm as he could.
Time flooded back in a rush. The girl’s speed crashed into him with all her slender weight behind it. He frantically closed his arms and caught her close. In the flail of limbs and hammer of his own heartbeat he knew he was between her and the dry, hard-packed earth. For a long moment it seemed they would escape winded and a bit bruised. Then he felt his foot slide on the smooth bark of an outstretched tree root, as if the wretched thing was reaching out to claim them even now he had the girl safe. Unable to flail about and get his balance because of the child in his arms, he had no hold on solid ground. He twisted and turned as best he could to save the girl injury and fell heavily to earth with a bone-jarring thud and actually heard his own head slam against the next tree root with a vicious crack. Almost at the same time a harder, sharper slap of sound rang through the wood like a death knell as James fought hard to hold on to his senses.
