Читать книгу The Reckless Love of an Heir: An epic historical romance perfect for fans of period drama Victoria - Jane Lark - Страница 7

Alethea clasped the footman’s hand and descended from the carriage into the courtyard at Farnborough.

When Alethea had let go Susan held his hand and climbed down.

The air was full of the sound of the splashing water pouring from the fountain.

The front door opened. Davis the Barrington’s elderly butler stood there, ready to welcome them.

Alethea immediately said, “I wish to see Lord Henry.”

“He is in the family drawing room, Miss Forth, do come in. Shall I introduce you?”

Alethea was already stepping in as he spoke, she had not awaited his invitation. Davis was used to her ways, though. “There’s no need, Davis. Sarah sent for me. They are expecting us, and we know where it is of course.”

Susan stepped into the hall. Davis bowed to her.

They’d spent many hours here as girls, because their parents were such close friends. The Barringtons were like an extension of Susan’s family, she thought of Lord and Lady Barrington as an aunt and uncle, and called them so, and Christine and Sarah were as good as cousins to her. She had known the boys less, though, because they’d spent so many years away from home, at school.

Alethea led the way again, full of energy, excitement and concern for Henry.

The door to the smaller family drawing room, in one of the older parts of the house, stood open. Alethea did not knock but walked straight in. Then exclaimed, “Henry!” and rushed on.

“Sarah sent me word you were home…” Alethea said as Susan followed her into the Barringtons’ homely drawing room.

The walls and ceiling were covered in wooden panelling, making the room dark, but it had a sense of being frequently used. The walls were full of past and present tales.

“Oh dear you poor thing,” Alethea declared, pulling out a cushion from behind Henry. He sat forward to allow it and looked up at her with a smile of welcome and humour.

He had one arm in a sling, and his feet up on a footstool where Samson rested his head, and his sisters and his mother were seated about him, all sitting forward on their chairs their postures expressing concern, while Henry had been laying back against his bed of cushions looking perfectly content.

There was nothing poor about him, he was busy enjoying every moment of the attention his injury had brought him. A frown pulled at Susan’s forehead. She had a natural empathy for wounded things and people, she could never abide to see anything in pain. She was forever rescuing and nursing injured creatures, to the upset of her mother, who was even concerned about her visiting the sick in case she came into contact with some dangerous illness. Yet her father understood. Twice she had spent the night in the stables with him watching over a foal, encouraging it to take a bottle when it had lost its mother.

Henry’s pretence annoyed her. He did not deserve pity for his foolishness.

When Alethea set the cushion back down, to Henry’s credit, he lifted his feet off the stool and stood to welcome her properly. Samson stirred and rose too. “Alethea.” He nodded his head in greeting, but he did not attempt a bow with his injured shoulder so wrapped up. He did however clasp Alethea’s hand with his free hand and lift it to kiss the back of her fingers. “It is my extreme pleasure to see you again and perhaps the good in the bad of my accident.”

Alethea gave him her flirtatious smile—the smile that made her look her prettiest. A smile Susan had watched practiced before a mirror to achieve its perfection.

Henry’s smile lifted in return, becoming something more personal and his eyes filled with the twinkle they only sparkled with when he looked at Alethea. Alethea had had no need to worry. Henry might wander away but something would always bring him back, and when he came back his eyes said he remembered why he liked Alethea.

For as long as Susan could recall whenever the two of them had come together within half an hour they were whispering conspiratorially and laughing at something shared between them and no one else.

Henry passed his smile on to Susan. His eyes lost their glimmer and his smile twisted slightly giving it an edge of sarcasm. None of his looks were practiced. Henry did not deploy guile or artifice. He was naturally full of rakish charm. Only for Alethea that charm shone, for Susan it mocked.

She gave him a closed lip smile and bobbed a scant curtsy. “Good day, Henry.” Samson slipped his head beneath her hand, encouraging her to greet him.

Henry nodded. That was all.

While he and Alethea had always had an exclusive friendship, he and Susan had shared an undercurrent of hostility—or perhaps on his part it was indifference.

“Good day, Susan.” He still held Alethea’s hand. He looked back at her. “Sit with me.” Then he looked at Susan. “Before you sit would you call for a maid? We’ll have another cup of tea now you are both here.”

She wished to make a face at him for his arrogance but she did not.

“Do not worry, Susan, I shall do it.” His mother rose, “I presume you will both stay to dine with us, so I will need to speak with cook anyway.” She approached Susan and squeezed her hand gently. “Hello, dear.” Then she walked on to call for tea and arrange for them to join the family for dinner.

Alethea sat beside Henry, regaling him with some tale about local society as she undid the ribbons of her bonnet, then took it off and set it down beside her. She stripped off her gloves too, before looking at Susan. “Would you take them for me?”

Without even acknowledging the request Susan moved forward and picked them up then turned and took them out into the hall to find a footman to take care of them. When she did find a man she took off her own bonnet, cloak and gloves.

Alethea had not worn her cloak for fear Henry would be awaiting them in the courtyard and not then be able to observe her figure at its best advantage as she descended from the carriage.

When Susan returned to the room Henry and Alethea were laughing. Susan sat beside Christine, who was also avidly listening to Henry’s conversation. But Henry was her brother, and he had been away for a long time.

The other dogs, Goliath, Hercules and Zeus rose from the hearth rug, and came over to her for a pet, their tails wagging their welcome. Samson had returned to his position by Henry’s feet. He had always had a penchant for Henry over anyone else. Strange dog.

When they drank their tea Susan spoke with Aunt Jane, as the dogs settled back down by the hearth. But afterwards she decided it was time to remove herself. She was not a member of the Henry Marlow Appreciation Society and as the conversation orientated entirely around him she was neither involved nor interested in it. “May I look at the books in the library, Aunt Jane?”

“Of course, dear.”

Susan rose without taking her leave of anyone else, the others were intently absorbed in some droll story Henry was telling about his friends in town. She opened the door and then shut it quietly, wondering whether either Alethea or Henry ever noticed her leave.

She did not care, though, it had always been like that when Alethea and Henry were together. When they’d been young she and Alethea had often played with Henry and Percy, the brother next to Henry in age, when the boys were home from school, and Susan had always trailed behind, forgotten.

In the library, she looked along the spines of the books. She loved Uncle Robert’s library. It had been her sanctuary at Farnborough for years. She came here to be alone. When she had been forgotten, and then finally remembered, this was where people found her.

All four walls were lined with books, floor to ceiling.

Her fingers ran over the bound leather and gilded titles, as reverence swept through her heart.

At the end of the row, on the middle shelf, she came across one of her favourite books, The Native Orchids of the British Isles. She smiled and lifted it out. It was bound in light brown leather, more than a dozen inches tall and a couple more inches wide, and it smelled wonderful. It smelled of the things which made her feel better, security and comfort.

Security and comfort, then, could be found within aged leather and dust.

She smiled more broadly as she carried it over to Uncle Robert’s desk and set it down, then opened it on a random page. Her fingers touched the image, Platanthera bifolia; the Lesser Butterfly-orchid. It looked so dainty, and the illustrator had brought it to life beautifully with lighter colours and deeper shading.

Susan had longed, ever since she was a little girl, to make her own book of painted flowers, the desire for such skill as this illustrator was an ache in her chest. This book had been her inspiration. She had sat in the window seat here and stared at every page for hours.

She sat down in the chair before the desk and turned the pages. The longing to paint like this flourished in her chest again as she considered every minor stroke of the brush.

The images were so beautiful.

To be able to create something that beautiful…

~

It was damned awkward trying to eat one handed, especially with Alethea sitting on one side of him. Christine sat in the chair on his other side, Susan and Sarah were seated across the dinner table and his mother and father at either end.

The soup had been the only simple course, for everything else he’d needed to use a bloody knife and fork, and trying to cut something then spear it was not proving successful.

“Here, let me, Henry,” Alethea pulled his plate over to cut up his food for the third time. “I do not mind…”

He damned-well minded! It was uncomfortable. He did not like the need to be reliant on her in such a way. He hated the need to be reliant on anyone. Yet he bore it gallantly—even though the pain in his shoulder and the rest of his body cast him into a very ill-mood.

Alethea’s lips pouted delicately as she focused on the task.

She’d grown into a very pretty woman. Although he had known prettier in town.

Some of her blond hair had become loose from the knot secured on top of her head. It fell in tiny curls on to the back of her neck. The curls slipped forward as she cut up his food. The back of a woman’s neck was one of the places on a woman’s body he’d always thought the most appealing—he liked the delicate curve.

When Alethea had finished she looked up and slid his plate back towards him. “There.” She sounded as though she spoke to a child, but she said it with a smile. There was no ill-meaning. She was simply being kind.

When Henry’s gaze lifted as Alethea focused on her own food, he caught his father’s eye. There was a look of expectation. He’d seen Henry admiring Alethea. Henry was perfectly happy to oblige their parents and fulfil their wish—but for God sake not yet.

He looked at his plate and pierced a piece of the mutton with his fork. Then looked across the table, to avoid catching his father’s eye again. Susan was speaking with Sarah. He doubted Susan had looked across the table once. Certainly she would not seek to engage him in conversation.

She made him smile, and laugh, in private. She was so different to her sister. Her fingers lifted and pushed her spectacles a little farther up her nose. His smile rose; it was just one of her quirky little habits.

“Where did you go to this afternoon, Susan? You disappeared.”

Her grey eyes turned to him. Her eyes were a little magnified by the prescription of her spectacles, but not overly so, and her spectacles did not make her look awkward, merely intelligent and perhaps distinguished—

“Withdrawing to the library is hardly disappearing. I walked out of the drawing room. I did not vanish.”

It was a harsh whip from the lash of her quick wit and sharp tongue. Henry laughed. He equally laughed at the thought of her being distinguished, though, she’d never been that—rebellious yes, angry often, and independent always. But distinguished—never. “The library is the answer then. What did you find there? Did you enjoy it?” Of course he was teasing her, it had been one of his favourite pastimes as a boy, mocking her sharp retorts. She was clever, but he was clever too and he liked spurring her. She had always disliked him and perhaps it was his own fault for teasing her, yet he’d always liked her oddness, it amused him.

She was forever stopping to pick a tiny flower in a field, or point out a butterfly or beetle. Alethea, though, was impatient in nature, and so they had often left her sister and her odd observations behind.

Her lips twisted in the same annoyed look she’d always given him. “I enjoyed it very much, thank you.” She looked away from him, at his father, baring the nape of her neck. None of her brown hair had escaped its knot.

It was a very vulnerable curve, it expressed a side of Susan she never showed.

“Uncle Robert, would you mind if I used your book of orchids and copied the paintings in it? I wish to learn how to paint as well as the illustrator and it occurred to me that if I copied the images, it might help me understand how to build that level of detail.”

Henry shook his head as his fork lifted another mouthful. He was truly home. Nothing had changed here. His mother and father were the same, Alethea was the same, and Susan was the same—as bookish, dogged and independent as ever.

“You may borrow it of course. Take it home with you if you wish?”

“Thank you. But may I paint here? Alethea will want to visit Henry and I will need to accompany her.”

“I am in accordance with whatever arrangement suits you, Susan. I shall be out of the house visiting the farms this week and next, or with Rob the majority of the days, so you may have the freedom of the library.”

“Thank you.”

Susan’s thank you resounded with heart felt pleasure. Over painting bloody orchids… He smiled in the same moment his father looked at him.

“Rob is looking for a new ram. We are going to the market together. You might wish to join us?”

“My shoulder is not really up to it.” And he had no interest in competing with his cousin. Rob rented a property from his father and all Henry heard every time he came home was Rob has done this or is planning to do that. His cousin had become the son his father had always wanted and every comment was made with an intent to incite Henry into an interest and a desire to compete. It was one competition he’d not been drawn towards, land management… One day, when he inherited the land it would come with the package of such responsibilities but until then he was happy to avoid it. His father managed it all well enough without his help.

Sarah asked Susan something about the book she’d asked to borrow. Susan responded with animation, the pitch of her voice lifting and a light of excitement catching in her eyes.

She was an odd woman.

The voice in his head laughed. He’d met a hundred women like Alethea in town, but not a single one like Susan. Perhaps because that type of woman did not go to balls, nor mix with men like him. Clearly Susan would not mix with him by choice; she had withdrawn to the library rather than join in the conversation in the drawing room earlier, even though she had not seen him for almost a year.

She was rebellious—not distinguished. The impression her spectacles gave was a lie. He doubted anyone else would call her rebellious, though, that was the side of her nature she saved solely for him.

Her head turned and her gaze caught on his, as though she’d sensed him watching her. She did not immediately look away. Perhaps she saw the laughter in his eyes because her mouth formed a firm line, expressing annoyance. She looked down at her plate and focused on eating.

A little sound of the humour that he tried to catch in his throat escaped his lips as he turned to Alethea again. He coughed, choking on his silent laughter, then smiled. “Now Susan has decreed you will visit me, so that she may paint orchids, you must visit me often.”

Alethea gave him one of her brightest, prettiest smiles. “Susan knows me well enough to be certain I would come. She did not force my hand. You are injured. So she was not being presumptuous if that is what you are hinting at, merely kind enough to understand how much I want to be with you.”

Prettily said, and very commendably done. The sisters were close. Whenever he and Susan sparred verbally in Alethea’s hearing she would step in to defend her sister. Not that Susan had need of a defender, she was perfectly capable of defending herself.

When he answered Alethea his voice turned sickly sweet for the sake of Susan’s hearing it across the table. “Then thank you. I will look forward to your visits.”

But he was truly melancholy and feeling selfishly sorry for himself since his accident, and he would, without any jesting, appreciate Alethea’s presence; she would jump at his every breath to please him. There was much to be said for being at home when he was ill.

Alethea’s bright turquoise eyes, shone with the strength of her happiness. Her moods were as open to a person’s view as one of the books in the library which Susan loved, while Susan, the book lover, held all her pages firmly closed.

“So tell me, then, how are we to fill our time while I recover?” The less joyous part of his return was that he was fully prepared to be bored to death as there was so little he was capable of doing.

“I shall call every day if you wish, and we can play cards or chess. Or I can read to you…” Alethea reassured.