Martha Schroeder (22 page)

Overcome with remorse, Meg hugged him convulsively. “Oh, James,” she said, “I am so sorry.”

Chapter Twenty-one

At just before seven o’clock the next morning, James sat at the breakfast table, ignoring his toast and tea. Meadows thought the captain looked a mite peaked this morning. Usually he came downstairs with a spring in his step and a light in his eye. Meadows hadn’t been married for twenty-seven years without knowing what that meant. Both he and Mrs. Meadows had been heartened by that look. They’d been more than a little leery when the captain and Miss Meggie had married so quickly. But that was Miss Meggie all over—leap first and look afterward, that was always her way. But it had all seemed to work out, and both the Meadows had heaved a sigh of relief.

Until this morning. Now here was the captain, staring off into space, looking as if he’d just lost his last friend. Meadows was worried. What would they see when Miss Meggie came down?

James was unaware that Meadows was in the room. His newfound confidence had evaporated last night.
“I’m so sorry.”
He knew now exactly what people meant when they spoke of their hearts breaking. His had simply shattered, like hot glass too quickly chilled. It lay now in painful shards in his chest.

“I’m so sorry, James.”
So sorry I can’t love you, you hopeless fool. So sorry you’ll never be what I want. So sorry my children will have to have a worthless bastard for a father.

So sorry.

Well, there was always work. That was what had sustained him before. Being sent away from Kettering had hurt, but the hard, backbreaking, mind-bending work of a midshipman had sustained him, given him something physical to exhaust him, something challenging to absorb his thoughts. And after a while, the pain of leaving a home that had never truly been a home faded to insignificance. So today he would ride out and talk to Old George, a tenant who had been at Hedgemere all of his seventy years. Old George knew more about the land than even Meg’s books, which James had been poring over. And he could tell you what he knew. Illiterate, George was nevertheless a born teacher and had taught Meg when she was young. Yes, he’d ride over to Old George’s son’s house and sit and talk to the old man for an hour or so.

James threw his napkin on the table and was preparing to rise when the knocker sounded at the front door. Meadows hurried through the dining room on his way to answer it.

“Who in God’s name is coming calling at this hour?” James growled.

“I am sure I do not know, Captain,” the butler answered.

James glowered into his tea. He couldn’t hear what was being said at the front door, which annoyed him. He liked to be prepared for what he had to face. But the low murmur of voices told him nothing.

At last Meadows came in, his manner apologetic as he said, “There’s a young person who wishes to see Lady Margaret, Captain. Won’t give her name. Says she isn’t expected. Says she’ll wait outside. Would you care to speak to her, perhaps, sir?”

How very odd. The “young person” must be of the Quality or Meadows would have sent her to the servants’ entrance forthwith. A prickle of interest teased James’s brain. Something to think about besides Meg’s being sorry. “Yes, Meadows. Show her into the library.”

But he had hardly had time to get to his feet when a familiar voice said, “Jamie! Is that you, Jamie?” And a slender young woman with golden hair much like his came running into the room, straight at him. “It is! Oh, James, thank God she wrote me.”

For the first time since he’d actually seen Admiral Lord Nelson himself in the flesh, James was struck into immobility. Then his arms closed tightly around his visitor.

“Claire,” he said. “Oh, Claire!”

For a moment, he just stood and held her. She still sounded like his little sister, still looked like the young girl he had sent away in Naples. And the affection shining from her deep blue eyes was like balm to his wounded soul. His sister, his friend, his childhood companion. All the old emotions, walled off and unacknowledged since he had left for the navy, came rushing over him and swamped him for a long moment. Then he pulled away, his eyes narrowed.

She was so thin, she seemed almost transparent, and her clothes were not what he would expect of the daughter and sister of the eighth and ninth Dukes of Kettering. They were not in the first style of elegance. He looked deep into her eyes and saw shadows.

“Claire! Why in the world have you come? How did you know where I—” He broke off.

“Just what did my wife write and tell you? That I was being ostracized by the neighbors and needed you to lend me consequence? That evidence that someone from my family spoke to me would help her hold her head up among her friends?”

His moment of euphoria was over. Meg had meddled again, enticing his sister, with who knew what harebrained tale, to set forth alone and travel all this way to see him. He felt the familiar bars of his interior prison close around him, separating him from other people, isolating him with his anger and pride.

Claire’s eyes darkened, the way he remembered they did when she’d been hurt. “No, Jamie, she wrote only that you and she had married and you had spoken of me, and she wanted to tell me that you were well and thought of me often. That is all, truly.” She reached out to touch his face. “Oh, Jamie, it meant so much to know you had found a home and a wife. That you were happy! That is so wonderful!”

Despite her thinness and shabby clothes, she was his Claire, her vivid face as expressive as ever, her eyes as bright, although shadowed. He could not prevent himself from smiling down at her. “Always my well-wisher and champion.”

Meadows cleared his throat and James looked up, startled out of his reverie. “I was thinking, Captain, mayhap the young lady would like some breakfast.”

“The young lady is my half-sister, Lady Claire Devereaux, Meadows.”

The butler bowed and smiled. “Welcome, your ladyship. May I fetch you some breakfast?”

Claire smiled, and it caused the same miraculous transformation in her face that it did in her half-brother’s. “Oh, thank you! Yes, I would love something to eat if it isn’t too much trouble. I forgot to eat dinner last night, and this morning I was in such a hurry I never thought of food.” She laughed, a little self-consciously.

“Of course. I will bring it right up.” Meadows smiled kindly at her and hurried off.

“May I sit down, Jamie?” she asked, still smiling.

“You shouldn’t have come.” His deep voice was shadowed with concern. “Why did you? Does Reggie know where you are?”

Her lips tightened, and sensitive as always to her moods, James knew she was angry. “Oh, yes, indeed,” she said. “I left him a note.” She unbuttoned her traveling pelisse of gray twill and looked around. “If I could just wash my hands, Jamie. I’ve been traveling for what seems like weeks.”

“Didn’t you stop at the inn at the crossroads to freshen up and hire a gig?” he asked.

“No, I walked from there, if that’s where the stage stops,” she said.

“The stage! You took the stage all by yourself! What were you thinking of, Claire? What was Reggie thinking of to let you go?” He was horrified. His little sister, traveling all night and day with God alone knew who.

“I’ll tell you everything once I have washed the travel dust off myself and had a bite of breakfast.” Once again he saw the Claire of his youth in her mischievous smile. “I do not think I can face your disapproval on an empty stomach.”

“Nor should you have to.” Meg walked into the room, a smile on her face and her chin tilted in that familiar way that James had come to recognize as her signal that she was not going to give an inch. She would go down, if she had to, with all flags flying, as always.

She stretched out her hands to greet her sister-in-law. “Claire! I would have known you anywhere as James’s sister. Are all of you so good-looking? It isn’t fair! I had hoped for a visit, but for you to come so soon is an unexpected pleasure! But as you said, you need to refresh yourself before we hear of your journey.” Meg put her arm around Claire and led her from the room without a backward glance.

James sat down hard. His emotions were in such turmoil that he hardly knew what he felt. Anger at Meg. That he recognized. That was an old friend. But this time it was mixed with a sense of sorrow and loss such as he had not felt for years. He was thrown back to the age of twelve. That was the last time he could remember feeling so hurt and so angry all at once. And mixed with it all, he felt love. Just as he had as a boy, leaving Kettering.

He understood the feeling now for the first time. That ache, buried soul-deep beneath the anger and the sorrow, was love. He had felt it then, despite all the ostracism and the indifference. He had loved Kettering, and he had loved his father, although not for anything the duke had done after taking him in. James had scarcely seen him. But the duke was his father and had rescued him. He had cared enough for his bastard son to take him into his home and risk the wrath of his wife.

James had never realized it before. Until Meg came into his life, he had never again felt overwhelming love and anger and loss all at the same time. But now the floodgates had opened, and old emotions, never fully acknowledged and thus still fresh, rushed in to mingle with what he felt toward his wife.

The suddenness and strength of those feelings all but swamped him. James, who had spent most of life trying to avoid situations where he might feel something or care for someone because then he risked loss and pain, now was awash in emotion. So much so that he could hardly tell what he felt for his wife—the wife he loved, who was sorry she couldn’t love him. The wife he had trusted with his secrets who had betrayed him by bringing his past into his present. Did he love her despite his anger?

Of course he did.

He propped his elbows on the table and lowered his face to his hands. If he was not very careful, he would risk the unthinkable. Tears. He hadn’t cried then. He’d been so proud of leaving his home dry-eyed, knowing he’d never belonged there and would never be back. He knew now he could not leave Hedgemere and Meg the same way.

Meadows cleared his throat. “Mrs. Meadows has breakfast ready, if you’ll just ring when the ladies return.” He saw the look in the captain’s eye and it almost made him gasp, so bleak and lost he seemed. Oh, dear, what had Miss Meggie done now?

“Yes, Meadows, someone will ring.” James heard his voice as if it came from somewhere very far away. He turned and looked out the window without seeing the deep, green English summer he had enjoyed only yesterday.

Meg and Claire returned to the room, both smiling until they saw him sitting there, a thousand cold miles away. Meg swallowed hard. She had not had time to tell Claire much—only how glad she was to see her, how happy James surely was, and that her coming was a surprise to them both, but a most welcome one.

Claire seated herself and looked uneasily at her brother. “Jamie?” she said. “Have I upset you by coming? Did you not want to see me? I know that’s what you said the last time we met, in Naples, but I thought—when I heard from Meg—” She broke off as James swung around to face her, his expression inscrutable.

“She said I might call her that,” Claire continued, still fearful of his disapproval, doubting his love. Just as he had intended. He said nothing. He couldn’t.

Meg rushed in, her warmth and friendliness enough to melt the iciest atmosphere. “Of course, you must call me Meg. We are sisters, after all.”

She looked around. “Where is my breakfast? And Claire’s?” She rang for Meadows. When he appeared with a laden tray, Meg kept on talking: explaining Hedgemere to Claire, telling her of her first meeting with James when Gerald had brought him home, how the two of them had saved Tim Barnes’s arm, their wedding. The night James had taught her to waltz.

The warm, steady stream of conversation pulled James inexorably back from the cold wasteland of anger and loss he retreated to so easily. Her words were golden threads, binding the three of them together with memories now shared.

When Claire had finished eating, she joined in, telling Meg of incidents from her and James’s childhood. She recounted games they’d played, books he’d read to her, forbidden treats from the kitchen they’d shared. Meg listened to it all with shining eyes.

James sat silently, wondering, as he had so many times, why he could not share his life, why distrust and pride always kept him apart, even from these two—the only people in the world he loved. No wonder Meg could not love him. And Claire’s affection was that of a child for an older brother—part hero worship and, in his case, part pity as well.

The silence in the room penetrated his self-absorption. He looked up, surprised. “Well,” he managed to say, his voice hoarse with suppressed emotion, “Claire, you look as if you could use a rest. Meg will show you to your room. I am going—

“I think Claire has something she would like to talk to you about, James.”

Both James and Claire looked at her in surprise. “How did you know?” Claire said.

“Why else would you come here by stage, with only a small bandbox? You must have left as soon as you received my letter.”

James gave her a chilly smile. “Meg is very good at ferreting out secrets, whether you want her to or not.”

Her face whitened, but she rose gracefully and gestured for Claire to precede her. As they reached the library, she said, “I will leave you two alone to discuss family matters.”

“Oh, please, Meg,” Claire said, “I would like you to stay. After all, you are James’s wife, and what I must tell him will affect you, too. And we are friends already, so please stay.”

Meg smiled and entered the library. James noticed she didn’t look at him. She must know how angry he was. How could she not? Even Claire could sense something was wrong, judging by the puzzled look she gave them both. He sat down in a deep leather wing chair and looked at his sister. Yes, Meg was right, damn her. Something was very wrong with Claire. And what right did Meg have to understand him and his sister so well?

He refused to allow his anger at Meg to interfere now. He would put aside his feelings and help his sister. Perhaps he could repay Claire now as he had not been able to do when she had helped the friendless outcast years before.