Slightly Tempted (34 page)

Becky wanted to play with Jonathan on a chilly, blustery day when everyone else was content to remain indoors. Morgan offered to take the child to the vicarage, and of course Gervase came along too. Pierre was out on a sick call, but Emma was at home and was delighted to have another child to amuse her son, since she was busy in the kitchen with her housekeeper making jam.

"We will not disturb you," Morgan assured her. "We will go for a walk and come back for Becky later, if we may."

The walk turned into several calls on villagers, all of whom worked for Gervase in some capacity.

"I need to get to know my people,chérie, " he explained to her. "I still feel like a stranger among strangers. Worse, I feel like an impostor. When people ask me for some favor, it is on the tip of my tongue to refer them to my steward, as if I do not have the authority to grant or refuse requests myself. And when Ido agree to something, like reroofing the schoolhouse, which leaks like the proverbial sieve every time it rains, I feel instant guilt and wonder if my steward will scold me when he learns of it."

He chuckled, but she guessed he was confiding real truths to her. She could not imagine Wulfric's steward daring to voice an opinion even if ordered to have every field on the home farm sown to salt. But Wulf had been carefully trained for his position from the age of twelve and had been Duke of Bewcastle since he was seventeen.

"They like you," she said. "Your people like you, Gervase."

It was true too. He talked with them and laughed with them and listened to them. They responded to his charm, which seemed very genuine in his dealings with them.

"I believe,chérie, " he said, "it is because they perceive that they can wrap me about their little fingers. They set eyes upon me and biblical quotations leap to their brains. Ask, and it shall be given."

"What you need to do," she told him, "is to discover how profitable Windrush is. You need to study the books and talk with your steward. Generosity is a fine thing, but if you give what you cannot afford to give, then ultimately everyone will suffer and you will be in ruin."

"Yes, ma'am." He looked down at her, laughter in his eyes.

"I suppose," she said, "you are already doing that."

"I am," he said. "I am also realizing how irresponsible it was of me to stay away for a full year after I succeeded to the title and inherited all this. But then if I had not,chérie, I would not have met you."

"We both would have been better off if you had not," she said tartly.

He laughed softly.

They had been strolling back along the main village street, a full hour or more after leaving the vicarage. The clouds were still low overhead and the wind still blustering, but at least it was at their backs.

"I want to see the churchyard," she said when they drew abreast of it.

"It is chilly," he said. "Let us go and wangle a cup of tea out of Emma. Maybe Pierre is back home."

"I want to see the churchyard," she said again, turning to face him. He was looking rather grim, the laughter all gone from his eyes. "You cannot avoid it for the rest of your life, Gervase. If you try, you will find that it looms larger and larger each time you come to the village."

"And who filled your head with such foolish wisdom?" he asked her, flicking her chin with one gloved finger.

"Show me the graves of your ancestors," she said.

It seemed appropriate that it was a gray and blustery day. But at least, she thought, therewas a grave for his father. Wulfric intended to erect a stone memorial for Alleyne in the churchyard at home, but they would all be painfully aware that his remains were buried in some unknown grave in Belgium.

He did not waste time, as she had expected he would, making a show of giving her a guided tour of the churchyard. He led her straight toward the marble headstone whose shining whiteness proclaimed it a recent addition. There were flowers on the ground before it-Cecile and Monique had come here together yesterday.

Here lie the earthly remains of George Thomas Ashford, Sixth Earl of Rosthorn . . .

There followed a reminder to the living of his virtues and the fact that he had been beloved by all who knew him.

They stood silently side by side, the wind at their backs.

"Did you hear from him at all after you left England?" Morgan asked.

"No," he said.

"Did you write to him?"

"Every week for six months," he said. "Often more than once a week. Begging, groveling, indignant, reasonable, furious, self-righteous, self-pitying, accusing letters-they ran the gamut of human emotions. And no, he never answered any of them. My mother wrote occasionally, though her letters often took a year or more to find me. So did Pierre and my sisters, though only for the first two or three years."

"He must have suffered," she said.

"My father?" He looked inquiringly at her. "Hesuffered?"

"You told me that you were a close family," she said, "that he loved you. He must have believed the worst of you to have acted as he did. He must have been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. He acted harshly and probably hastily. But having done so, he must have felt bound by his decision. I daresay he wished there were a way out."

"Therewas a way out," he told her. "He could havebelieved me. He could havetrusted me."

"He is the unfortunate one," she said. "It is too late for him to admit that perhaps he made a mistake. It is too late for him to discover or to admit that perhaps love is more powerful and more enduring than all the negative emotions with which we punish ourselves as well as the person against whom they are directed. If he had time before he died to know that he was dying and to look back on his life, I feel almost certain that he would have given anything in the world to have you there so that he could forgive you."

"So thathe could forgiveme, " he said softly.

"And perhaps he wanted your forgiveness too," she said. "Hatred and love-they can be such overpowering emotions, and very often it is hard to distinguish the one from the other. If he had not loved you deeply, would he have been so harsh on you-and on himself?"

He touched one hand to the headstone and patted it lightly and then over and over again, not so lightly.

"What are you suggesting?" he asked her. "That I forgive him? Does it matter? If I shout curses into the wind or whisper forgiveness into the ground, will he hear me? He is gone."

"But you are not," she said. "If you shout curses, poison will lodge in your heart. If you forgive, you will be cleansed."

He turned his head to look at her and laughed.

"How old are you,chérie ?" he asked her. "Eighteen or eighty?"

"I have spent a great deal of time alone," she said. "I may not have done a great deal of living, but there are things I understand about life."

She was a Bedwyn through and through-she was bold and unconventional and not easily cowed by other people or by life itself. But she was different from the others too. She had always known it. There was a solitary, mystical side to her nature that she very rarely revealed to other people.

He was still patting the stone. He had looked away from her again.

"It is something I should do, then," he said, laughing again. "It is strange, is it not, that all these years I have convinced myself that it is another man whom I hate most in this life-a man who meant nothing to me and so was safe to hate. But it is my father . . . My father . . . Can you evenimagine what it would be like if Bewcastle did to you what my father did to me? It was like a living death-to be so misjudged, so utterly rejected, so completely cut off . . . If I ever have children of my own . . . If . . ."

He turned then and strode abruptly away until he was standing some distance off, one hand propped against the ancient stone wall of the church, his head bowed. His shoulders were shaking.

Morgan did not go after him.

He came back after perhaps five minutes. He did not look at her but at the grave and the headstone.

"I daresay he did suffer," he said. "Even if he never had doubts, he would have suffered. But how could he not have had doubts? I suppose he got caught in a trap of his own making, and pride-or the conviction that he must have done the right thing-kept him snared in it for the rest of his life. Rest in peace . . . Papa."

There were unshed tears in his eyes when he turned to Morgan and tried to smile.

"Are you satisfied,chérie ?" he asked her, mockery in his voice.

She stepped against him and wrapped her arms about his waist. His arms came tightly about her, and he lowered his head and kissed her.

What was it about death, she wondered, that impelled the living into a passionate embrace of life and one another? She moved her hands to spread over his back and opened her mouth to the hot invasion of his tongue. She leaned into him, feeling the hard masculinity of his body, the moist intimacy of his kiss.

But what she felt was not passion-not at least the blind, urgent sexual need that she felt was driving him. It was more a tenderness-a deep, knee-weakening, heart-stopping tenderness. She remained fully aware of everything, including the fact that this particular corner of the churchyard was out of sight from the street behind two ancient yew trees.

She was aware of who he was and what he had done to her, and whatshe intended to do tohim in retaliation. But for the moment none of that mattered. This was different, as outside the normal course of life and events as her visit to his rooms in Brussels had been after she discovered the truth about Alleyne.

He lifted his head after a couple of minutes and smiled down at her with heavy-lidded eyes.

"If this is your way of making me fall even more deeply in love with you,chérie, " he said, "it is a devilishly clever plan. But I have time. There is a week to go before the ball. A week in which to makeyou fall in love withme . As well as the rest of the summer after that."

She stepped back from him and brushed at the skirt of her dress beneath her pelisse.

"This wind has chilled me to the bone," she said. "It is time to go back to the vicarage."

He chuckled softly.

THERE WERE TWO DAYS OF SHOWERS AFTER THATand a continuation of the chilly, blustery weather. They occupied themselves mostly indoors, playing billiards and cards and charades and on one afternoon a lengthy, noisy game of hide-and-seek with the children in which no part of the house was out of bounds. They read and they conversed.

Gervase managed to spend some of the time with his steward, though he did not neglect his guests. Inevitably the question of the schoolhouse roof came up again. The repairs should be done now, before winter came on again, Gervase had decided. His steward was very deferential and very tactful, but nevertheless the gist of his opinion was that such major capital expenses had always been cautiously undertaken by his lordship's father with at least a year's careful consideration before any decision was made.

Gervase looked squarely at him.

"Iam Rosthorn now," he said. "My understanding of this year's profits balanced against expenses and the risk that the summer crops may not be as abundant as they promise to be is that I will not be beggared if the repairs are done. And from my own observations of the roof as it is now, I would conclude that the job has been needed for far longer than one cautionary year. You will make the arrangements if you please."

"Yes, my lord," the man agreed with what appeared to be considerable respect. "I will see to it without delay."

Perhaps after all, Gervase thought, he would be able to settle to this new life and lay the ghost of his father.

Summer returned after the two days were over, with clear blue skies and sunshine and heat. They were all able to resume outdoor activities-morning rides, afternoon walks or visits, even an evening swim, during which he discovered that all the Bedwyns swam like fish and enjoyed themselves with noisy enthusiasm. But then so did his sisters and brothers-in-law.

But on one afternoon when an excursion to a nearby castle had been suggested and organized by Cecile and Monique, Morgan announced her intention of remaining at Windrush.

"I need some quiet time," she told everyone at breakfast. "I need to be alone. I need to paint. Gervase gave me all those lovely supplies as a betrothal gift, and I have had no chance to use them."

There was a chorus of protest and suggestions of where they might go instead if Morgan did not fancy the castle, but Aidan spoke up in his sister's defense.

"Morgan is different from the rest of us mortals," he said, "who need company and activity every moment of every day. She always did need time and space for herself before becoming sociable again."

"Where will you paint, Morgan? At the lake?" Cecile asked.

"Perhaps at the summerhouse," she replied. "I have not decided yet."

The excursion would proceed without her, then, it was decided. Gervase waited until they had all left the breakfast parlor and he could have a private moment with her.

"You would like the grotto, I believe,chérie, " he said. "I will show you how to get there. But it is some distance away and you will need someone to carry your easel and other supplies. May I be your servant?"