She glanced at Verderan and saw the stark lines of his face. She wanted to run to him, but instead she went to his mother.
“Mrs. Verderan,” she said, drawing on a lifetime of training in correct behavior. “I am Emily Grantwich of Grantwich Hall. You doubtless remember my father, Sir Henry, and my aunt, Junia. You must have had a tiring journey. I’m afraid this house isn’t in the best repair—Ver’s only been here for a few weeks. We would be pleased to have you come to stay at the Hall for a day or two if that would be more comfortable.”
She cast a quick glance at Verderan, trying to judge if she was doing the best thing, but he was looking down at the fire and she could not read him.
“Comfortable!” repeated Helen with a half laugh. “Comfortable! I’ve forgotten what the word means.” She looked up at Emily, wild-eyed. “We ate gruel. I turned my dresses. I scrubbed the walls with my own hands . . .
He left one hundred thousand pounds
!”
Emily looked to Verderan in bewilderment. He met her eyes. “My grandfather is dead.”
“Crushed!” declared Helen. She smiled feverishly at Emily. “You’ve heard of people being crushed by debts? Well, old James Verderan was crushed by miserliness. These last years he wouldn’t even spend to keep the place in good repair, and in the end the arch into the courtyard collapsed on top of him and did for the old bugger.”
Emily gaped at this sudden burst of vulgarity and flashed another look at Verderan. He, however, seemed to be plagued by his own devils. “You’re Lord Templemore,” she said blankly.
“Damnable, isn’t it?”
Emily hadn’t the faintest idea what to say or do. Had these two been here in silence ever since Verderan had arrived home? No, Helen must at least have told him the news.
“It’s late,” she said at last. “Everyone is tired. You need your bed, Mrs. Verderan, and it is your choice as to whether you stay here or at the Hall.”
Helen looked down at her roughened hands. “He hasn’t asked me to stay.”
Emily looked up at Verderan. “You’re his mother. There’s no question of asking.”
Verderan met her eyes, but there were depths behind his gaze that she could not begin to grasp. “Given an alternative,” he said, “I am not sure she would want to stay here.”
“She has an alternative,” Emily responded. “She may also stay here.” It was a statement and she meant it. No matter what had happened between these two in the past, she could not marry a man who would refuse his mother a bed for the night.
“Of course she may stay,” he said with a sigh. “This is her old home, after all.”
It was something Emily had forgotten, but it put a grudging edge on the invitation she did not like. She did not presume to judge too quickly, however. She had no idea what was going on beneath the surface.
“Mrs. Verderan?” she prompted, catching on Helen’s face a yearning look at her son which tore at her heart.
“I will stay here,” the woman whispered. “Just for a day or two,” she added hastily.
Without prompting, Verderan said, “You will stay here as long as you wish. Or at any other of my homes. You may wish in a while to set up an establishment for yourself, but there is no hurry. I’m afraid Casper let this place fall to rack and ruin too, but I’ll see what can be done.”
With that he walked out of the door and Helen watched him. Emily was horribly aware that he had not once called Helen “mother.”
“No matter what happens,” Helen said with a sigh, “never let yourself be estranged from a child.” She turned to Emily curiously. “I never thought to wonder where you had come from like an angel of mediation.”
“From the Hall. Lord Randal Ashby brought me to see if I could help.” At Helen’s blank look she added, “He’s Ver’s friend and he’s staying here with his wife.”
Helen sighed again. “I didn’t expect him to have friends. I believed it all, you see, that he was a thief and a libertine. I knew he was living richly, but I thought . . . I thought it would be seedy somehow, and full of low characters.”
Emily smiled wryly. “You should meet my cousin Felix.” She took Helen’s rough, dry hand. “Many people believe it, and in truth Ver’s not exactly a saint, but he is a good man at heart and so he has friends.”
“You love him,” Helen said.
“Yes.”
“Does he love you?”
Emily thought of hedging her answer, but simply said, “Yes.”
Helen smiled faintly. “I’m glad, but a little jealous. I find myself foolishly hoping that we might get back a little of the time we missed. But now he will have someone else to absorb him.”
“There will be time for you too,” Emily promised. “But I think he needs time now to accommodate himself.”
Helen stood, proving to be quite tall. Her travelling cloak was stained, worn, and patched; the gown beneath was so faded that the print could scarcely be distinguished. How many years had it been since Ver had left for Eton, never to return? About sixteen.
Sixteen years of scrimping and slaving for tyrannical Lord Templemore, believing her son had stolen the family money and left her in penury.
“He feels guilty,” Helen said. “I should have thought before I fled here, and not turned up as quite such a waif. The old man took my money, though. I don’t understand these legal matters, but somehow my annuity died with him ...” Her fingers plucked at a loose thread in her cloak. “He feels as if he abandoned me, but it was I who abandoned him.”
The thread broke in her fingers and she looked down with a frown. “I was lost without Damon, you see, and awed by the fact that Piers was heir to a title. I let Lord Templemore bully me . . . and I let him ...” She shuddered. “So many nights I have thought of the things I could have done ...”
She turned suddenly to Emily. “Can you make him happy?”
Emily felt no doubts. “Yes,” she said. “And you too, I think.”
Helen’s lips turned up in a quizzical smile, and for the first time she showed the ghost of her younger beauty. “You can make me happy, too?” she queried. “Or I can also make him happy?”
Emily smiled back. “Both.”
Verderan came back in and caught the smile. He looked startled. “I’m afraid the spare beds are all damp,” he said. “You will sleep in my room tonight. It is aired and comfortable.”
Helen looked as if she would protest, but then accepted.
Verderan looked behind him and Sophie came into the room. “This is Lady Randal Ashby, Mother. She will take you up and see you have everything you need.”
The word “mother” sounded in the room like a deep bell. Emily caught her breath; Helen looked at him, startled, and a little color came into her cheeks. She did not look quite so old.
He took her hand and drew her closer for a cool kiss on the cheek. “You are welcome, Mother, and will not be in need again.”
Watching, Emily silently begged Helen to draw him in for a warm hug. The woman hesitated, obviously tempted, but then just touched his face gently, said, “Good night, Piers,” and left with Sophie.
Verderan turned to Emily and gave a sigh that was close to a shudder. “I wonder how long it will take for her to stop calling me that,” he said brittlely. Then he held out a hand. “Thank you for coming.”
She went straight to him to give him the hug his mother had not. He clung to her.
“All these years,” he said bitterly, “I’ve sat on my grievances and ignored her situation.”
“You could not have known ...”
He pulled away and paced the room. “Oh yes I could. If I hadn’t been able to guess, I had plenty of people willing to drop hints. I sent her a curt invitation to come and live in England and when she refused, I abandoned her.”
“She did refuse,” Emily pointed out.
“You didn’t know my grandfather. He could make a starving man refuse food.” He turned to face her. “I was punishing her. She didn’t stop him, you see. I don’t know what I expected her to do, but she was my mother . . . and she didn’t stop him.”
Emily walked over to Verderan and raised her hands to his face, which was scarred with old horrors and new guilt. “She feels she abandoned you and you feel you abandoned her. I think you’ll find your tallies wipe each other out. Start afresh, Ver.”
His arms came around her. “With you?”
She rested against him. Angel wings. Michael, not Lucifer. “I still have to pluck up the courage to ride the hunt,” she teased. It suddenly seemed a matter of small significance.
“Would a kiss encourage you?” he asked.
“No,” she said and moved away, “It would seduce me, and well you know it. Wait until tomorrow.”
He grinned. “To seduce you? I haven’t got a Special License, you know.”
“How very unthoughtful of you. We probably could have been married on the field by one of the Blackcoats.”
“You are developing a taste for the unusual, aren’t you?”
Emily blushed. “I’m developing a taste for you.” She eyed a large walnut desk. “Is that . . . ?”
“Yes,” he said. Adding, “Not till tomorrow.”
“I think you should give me the letter as fair warning of what’s to come.”
“I’m not so foolish.”
Under this banter he was already looking better, more himself. Emily was aware of a temptation to stay and improve upon her work—
The clock struck midnight and Emily started. “I must go home.”
“Of course,” he said, and kissed her gently. “Thank you again.” As if impelled, he added, “You are going to come to the hunt tomorrow, aren’t you?”
The vulnerability of it brought tears to her heart. “Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away,” she said. “Even if it means I’m going to be, God help us, Lady Templemore.”
The words brought all that starkness back to his face. “Don’t make it an excuse to renege,” he warned. “If I can bear to be Lord Templemore, when the name makes me feel sick, you can damn well bear to be Lady Templemore.”
She soothed his face again with her hands. “We’ll make it a name to be proud of,” she promised. “It will mean love and happiness and charity. And lots of happy little Verderans to carry on the tradition.”
He hugged her tight. “I’ll hold you to that. If you don’t come to the hunt, I’m going to come and kidnap you.”
“Good, but it won’t be necessary.”
He drove her back to the Hall in the moonlight and talked a little of his mother as they went. It was mostly his faint memories of his younger life before the death of his father, when his mother would take over the kitchen to bake special treats, and let him help. And sit by his bed when he was sick. And sing duets with his father in the evening.
“She was made to be happy,” he said, “but not to fight. My father would have expected me to preserve her happiness.”
Emily didn’t point out that he had only been eight years old. From adult hindsight that perhaps did not matter.
She had him stop at the end of the drive so she could slip back into the house unobserved.
They shared one quick, searing kiss before parting.
“Till tomorrow,” were her parting words.
13
M
RS. DOBSON imparted the terrible news to Junia Grantwich. Junia sat up in bed and stared at the woman. “You must be dreaming. Why would she do such a thing?” But these days Emily was capable of anything.
She immediately pulled on a wrap and led the way to Emily’s room, where Emily clearly was not. Even worse, there was no sign of her having gone to bed at all.
The two women searched the house—quietly for fear of waking Sir Henry—but eventually had to admit that Emily was nowhere within Grantwich Hall.
“The stables!” exclaimed Junia with relief. “Of course, with the hunt tomorrow, she’s probably gone to visit the stables.”
“At nearly midnight?” queried Mrs. Dobson in disbelief.
“These young people. I’ll just put on some clothes and fetch her.”
She pulled on the simplest garments—loose trousers, Cossack shirt, and boots—and hurried out of the back door.
The stables, however, were depressingly quiet. All the horses which should be present were there, including Beelzebub.
“Well,” said Junia, eying the handsome black thoughtfully. “If she and Verderan were eloping they wouldn’t leave you here.” She went slowly back to the house, considering the possibilities.
It was possible a lovesick Emily had taken a moonlit walk, though it was cold and breezy and not particularly pleasant. If so, she was nowhere in sight.
It was possible she had slipped away for an assignation with her beloved, but such behavior seemed extremely unlikely from someone who was having the tremors over hunting, a less heinous crime.
If one was given to gothic flights of fancy it was possible to imagine Emily being lured away from the house by some other lustful male. But the only possibility was Hector Marshalswick, and even Junia’s imagination could not stretch that far.
By the time she reached the warmth of the kitchen again, Junia had persuaded herself that Emily was a grown woman and able to take care of herself. She set herself to convince Mrs. Dobson; an altogether harder task. They shared a cup of tea, and she gradually brought the woman around to the idea that Emily had voluntarily gone about her own business and would soon return home safely. She also persuaded her that alerting Sir Henry could do no good and would only agitate him.
Just as they were draining the pot, there was a loud rap on the front door-knocker.
“Lord save us!” exclaimed Mrs. Dobson, clearly fearing the worst.
“I’ll go,” said Junia, “since I’m decent.” She had to admit to a tremor of alarm herself. Who could be calling at such an hour except someone with bad news? She lit a candle from the one on the table and left the kitchen. There was another sharp rap. “Wait, wait,” she muttered as she hurried across the hall, shielding the flame from the draft of her own movement. “You’ll wake the whole house.”
A shouted query from Sir Henry’s room showed the damage was already done. She popped her head in to tell him she was attending to the matter and put her candle on the hall table. Then she swung open the door, fear in her heart, a tart comment on her lips.