It was best she stay there. She would find it difficult to look upon
him without reliving the past. His own inadequacy. A spasm of pain tore through
him. He couldn’t bring himself to ask Miss Morecroft the extent of Sarah’s
humiliation.
“You may take away the soup, Miss Morecroft,” he said. He barely
cared whether he ever ate again but of course there was Caro. He needed to be
strong for her.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Miss Morecroft.” Wearily he dragged his gaze to meet hers.
“I have a letter.”
From an oilskin pouch she withdrew several folded sheets.
“My father wrote it after four of the little ones had died. When he
felt the beginnings of fever he bade me bring him pen and ink.” She handed him
the brittle, sealed parchment. “He said it was the most important letter he’d
ever written and I must guard it with my life.”
Roland scanned the few lines. Tears burned his eyes.
Miss Morecroft twisted her hands in her lap. Turning in her chair,
she fixed him with a wavering gaze. “I’ve done you a terrible disservice, sir,”
she began haltingly. “Not only for my part in what happened to you, and to Caro
and Lady Sarah.” She paused, struggling with the words. “I never knew, until
recently, why my father was sent to India. And” - she swallowed – “I
understand now he owed you his life.”
Roland drew in a ragged breath. At least this time he was not the
villain. He felt as if a great load had been lifted from his shoulders. “Your
father was young and he lost his nerve under fire. I’d challenge any of his
superiors who were so ready to make an example of him to prove they would not
do as Godby under similar circumstances.”
“Yet he blamed you for banishing him?” Miss Morecroft’s lip
trembled.
“He thought I was doing it for other reasons,” said Roland,
recalling that dreadful night he had discovered Venetia in bed with his foster
brother. Roland and Venetia had been married only a month, and she was already
pregnant with Caro. He’d not thought he could survive her betrayal.
“Are you able to … forgive him, as he asks?”
“I only wish he was here to hear it from my own lips,” muttered
Roland. Taking refuge in brusqueness, he added, “You’ll stay here, of course.
This is your home now, Sarah.”
To his amazement Miss Morecroft kissed his hand and burst into
tears.
Sunlight glanced off the snow-capped mountain. Roland sat back in
his chair on the terrace of the Chalet and savoured the now familiar backdrop
of the Swiss Alps that had helped calm his disordered spirits for nearly two
months.
For the first few weeks he had missed his customary eggs, bacon and
haddock. The strange foreign food would have been unappetizing, if he’d had
much of an appetite. But then, it had been a long time since his appetites were
of any consequence.
He’d taken Caro to this place on the advice of his physician who
believed Caro was at grave risk of succumbing to her mother’s emotional
excesses. Though Caro had exhibited no such propensities Roland considered time
away from Caro’s critical, prying aunt as important as the need for a period of
calm reflection for himself. Time, age and maturity had given him an
understanding of what had angered and perplexed him before: Venetia’s addiction
to the poppy. To some extent, Lady Sarah’s youthful and innocent desire for
instant gratification had helped him put Venetia’s desperate pleasure-loving
into perspective. But while Sarah’s natural sensitivity and generosity towards
others tempered her impulses, Venetia’s wild, untutored spirit had been allowed
to develop at will, becoming warped in the process. Her father, addicted to
drink and gaming, had lost his wits and his fortune through both.
Was it any wonder that Venetia’s appetites were what they were? Or
that she’d traded on her beauty, becoming venal and selfish in consequence?
Was it any wonder that Roland had failed miserably as a husband when
he, himself, was so green, a slave to his own youthful desires, as yet
untempered by the wisdom that came through age and experience?
He felt the rough parchment of Godby’s letter in his coat pocket and
the words chased themselves around his head.
‘I make no apologies for what happened between Venetia and myself;
from the moment I saw her, reason was beyond my power. Now I am older, and
wiser, my heart breaks at the knowledge that my passion for Venetia destroyed
your love for me which I have come to value so much higher. Forgive me.’
“Father, you’ll catch your death!” Caro’s admonition came upon a
cloud of frosted air as she seated herself opposite him at the breakfast table.
Roland transferred his gaze from the magnificent, snow-covered
Matterhorn, to his daughter’s green eyes. It was nine o’ clock in the morning.
Caro rarely made her appearance before noon.
“Come,” he said, rising. “Let’s walk.”
She tucked her gloved hand into the crook of his arm and they left
the terrace, taking the snow-covered path Roland was in the habit of taking,
alone.
And as they talked his soul, which had felt a dry and shrivelled
thing only hours ago, began to grow and thrive. He felt hope for the future,
both for them, and for the reforms he believed would one day improve the lives
of all.
Lady Sarah …
Sarah was one topic on which he dared not dwell. He acknowledged the
great good she had wrought in his daughter, but that was as far as he was
prepared to let his thoughts wander in that direction.
The nightmares that resulted from that ghastly evening at the
Hollingsworth’s were too brutal, too vivid to revisit willingly. Whenever his
thoughts turned unexpectedly to Sarah his breath caught and his body burned
with desire, only to be extinguished by shame.
Caro smiled up at him. The crisp air had put roses in her cheeks and
he no longer doubted his wisdom in removing her from Larchfield’s cloistering
atmosphere and the carping of her aunt.
“You look so much better, Caro.” He was uncertain if it was the
right thing to say. He did not want to spoil her lightness of spirit by
fostering unhealthy introspection.
“I am,” she said, simply, adding after a silence, “I’ve been talking
to a doctor of the mind. I realize how much worse things could have been for me
but for your care and concern.” Her eyes filled with tears. “But now
you
appear to be the brooding invalid.”
He looked at her with amazement.
The gentlest of breezes loosened the snow from the branches of the
fir trees. It fell like powder, and caught upon Caro’s lashes so that he
fancied she looked like a wood sprite when she turned her large eyes upon him
once more. Her words cut him to the bone as she said, wistfully, “I wonder
whatever happened to Lady Sarah.”
“Lady Sarah.” He could do no more than repeat her name with longing.
Caro glanced up at him quickly. “You were fond of her, weren’t you,
papa?”
Roland shot her a narrow look. What was this? For nearly two months Caro
had shown little interest in her surroundings, had not uttered a word of her
ordeal. Now she was dredging up the past and it was intruding uncomfortably on
Roland’s own blurred understanding of events after he had lost consciousness.
It was bad enough to have to remember his lack of heroism while he
could still stand; unbearable to consider what might have happened after he had
passed out, despite Miss Morecroft’s reassurances.
“She was a fine young woman,” he conceded, embarrassed.
“She saved our lives, papa.”
At Caro’s reproachful look he added, hastily, “I wrote acknowledging
that. She is still with her father.” Then – for Caro continued to look
accusing, “A very long letter, thanking her for all she did for you, Caro.”
“And
you
, Papa!”
Roland looked away. “I’m sure I thanked her very properly,” he
muttered, wanting to turn the subject. “Miss Morecroft tells me you were very
brave.”
“Brave! Lady Sarah was the brave one, for leaving her father once
she had learned my likely whereabouts, and venturing alone to the
Hollingsworths. Miss Morecroft – the real one - was only brave in taking
a risk to escape. Her very life depended upon it. After Mr Hollingsworth
grabbed me when he found me walking in the park, then pushed me into the coach
and tied me up, I did nothing but quiver and cry.” She bit her lip. “He made me
write that letter, you know. You believed I went with him willingly, didn’t
you?”
“It would have been understandable if you had,” he said, squeezing
her hand, “considering the lies I thought he’d told you about me-” He broke
off, realizing he had said too much.
“What lies?”
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s turn back, it’s freezing.”
But Caro wouldn’t let him off so easily. After some moments in
silence she said, softly, “You thought he’d told me you weren’t my father.”
“I am your father.”
“I know.”
The silence wasn’t broken after that. The path took a circuitous
route and they returned to the hotel just as luncheon’s enticing aromas wafted
out to greet them.
SARAH SAT
STIFFLY in her crimson and gilt chair and stared at the guests enjoying this
evening’s charades. Once she, too, would have added her laughter to the peals
which greeted Miss Emmeline Farquhar’s racy charade but now she felt wrapped in
a cocoon of misery and loneliness, disembodied from her old friends. They’d
welcomed her back with a rapture born of her novelty, but as she remained
withdrawn so too they had ceased to make an effort. Sometimes she almost felt a
growing hostility. Perhaps they saw that she despised their thoughtless
frivolity. Knowing the depth of pain that came from loving, she certainly
despised the use of charades to so publicly mock the pain of a fellow house
guest.
She slid her gaze across to Lady Stokes. On stage the attractive
Lord Stokes, playing the Duke of Cumberland, was in an intimate clinch with
Miss Emmeline Farquhar who played his mistress. Lady Stokes’s jaw clenched with
the effort of appearing to find the charade as amusing as everyone else.
Clearly, she did not.
Sarah turned away in disgust as the audience broke into rapturous
applause.
“And now for True or False!” Lord Stokes, tearing himself from the
arms of his lady-love on stage addressed the audience. “The charade will first
identify the three people chosen to take part in tonight’s quiz. They will then
have to answer questions put to them upon the roll of a dice.”
“Lady Sarah? Are you alright?” Lord Giles, beside her, touched her
arm. His frown was full of concern.
She smiled weakly. “I’m just a little weary.” How could she admit
that games involving the roll of a dice brought back terrible memories?
“Perhaps we could take a turn around the supper room?” he suggested,
and although Sarah knew he had no ulterior motives, she shook her head. His
admiration the past few days had been balm to her anguished soul after Roland’s
devastating letter but she had no intentions of pushing the boundaries of
propriety. Who knew where a turn around the supper table could lead?
Another spasm of anguish gripped her as she reflected upon Roland’s
words. Indirectly, they were the reason she was here. At her father’s
admonition. It was he who had almost physically ripped her from Roland’s side
all those weeks ago and bundled her into his coach to take her home. But
watching his daughter pine over Roland Hawthorne’s silence had driven Lord
Miles to the extremes of his limited forbearance.
“Worthless puppy if he can’t appreciate a prize jewel like you, my
love!” he’d fumed, forgetting that he had been strenuously against a possible
match from the moment Sarah had finally hinted at her feelings for Roland.
“A girl with your wit and beauty mustn’t squander her chances
mouldering in the country with her cantankerous old Papa. Lady Mettling has
invited you to spend the week at Middlebrook with a group of friends. You will
write this moment and accept her kind invitation.”
There had been a fierce battle between the strong-minded Lord Miles
and his equally strong-minded daughter before Sarah had finally given in.
However the past few days only proved that she would have been far
happier mouldering in the country with her cantankerous old Papa. The frenetic
gaiety she’d once embraced seemed stupid and pointless. Though she tried to
enter into the spirit she knew old friends and acquaintances whispered to one
another that Lady Sarah was greatly changed – and not nearly so much fun.
To her confusion she heard several members of the audience cry out
her name.
Lord Giles tapped her arm. He was smiling. “It’s a shipwreck, can’t
you see?” he told her, indicating the badly painted backdrop meant to represent
waves and Miss Hemmersly acting out a brave attempt at keeping her head above
water. “They want you to go on stage.”
Fear gripped her. Dear Lord, this couldn’t be happening. “I don’t
think I can,” she whispered honestly. Her legs felt weak and her head reeled.
“Mr Roger Burbank, you are also required,” Lord Stokes called amidst
general clapping and excitement. “Come, Lady Sarah, you’re not known as a
shrinking violet. It’s all in the name of honest fun.” He extended his arm and
before Sarah knew it Lord Giles had pushed her forward and she was being helped
onto the stage.