The Loves of Leopold Singer (49 page)

Sir Carey looked up.

“You were born in Ireland, but not to Daphne, and not to Gallagher’s niece.”

“I am the son of Aristaeus Sande.”

“There was no hope for you if the truth were known. The Duke did what he could for you. He got you a baronetcy, and Wills will be Sir William. But the title attaches to no property, as you know. The Branch and the barony must pass to Circe’s child.

“You’re my mother.”

“Oh, my boy. You have been my joy. But England only loves her bastards in song. At all events, I am going where the truth can no longer hurt me. You must do with it as you will.”

He made his way downstairs, and Elizabeth met him at the front door. What did she know? Philly—his mother—had said Gallagher was the only man who knew. “I must walk a while.” He brushed past Elizabeth, and she came after him with his cloak and his walking stick. He accepted the articles and kissed her forehead, and she allowed it. “I will not be long.”

He walked into a stand of birch trees without seeing or hearing the outside world. Philly, his mother! He was overjoyed and furious at the same time. To his great astonishment, he found he no longer cared about The Branch for himself.

He had been happy at Laurelwood. Perhaps now there was hope for him with Elizabeth. But it was only right that Wills should be Lord Branch, and it was obvious the boy loved Sara Adams. He would speak to Elizabeth. She’d know how to bring it about.

He felt good. In fact, he felt wonderful. And he didn’t believe Philly was going to die. Everything was going to resolve. There was justice in the world after all. He heard a rustle in the undergrowth and looked into the eyes of a familiar face, whose features contorted with crazed intent.

“Not now” were his last words, uttered simultaneous with a revolver’s report. As his life ended, he heard the sound of departing horse’s hooves—or maybe of hooves approaching.

-oOo-

Wills tossed his coat and gloves to Norwood in the hall and found everyone in the sitting room. His mother stood near Geordie, crying. With Devilliers and Sara they listened to the surgeon. It was two weeks since Highgate. When Sara saw him, she moved to a chair that faced the fire. He wanted to go to her, fall at her feet, beg forgiveness yet again, and plead with her to be his wife. All his happiness was there, on the other side of that wood and straw and brocade.

“She lives!” Devilliers said.

His mother’s tears were of relief. Everyone was smiling. He fell onto a sofa away from Sara and her damned chair. He had ridden hard from London and just outside Carleson’s Peak had fallen from his horse. He felt sorry for himself, for the pain of his wounds, for the great distance between him and Sara’s hand on the arm of her chair.

He accepted a brandy from Geordie. “What is Lady Branch’s condition?” he asked the physician.

“The baroness’s fever has broken, and she is sleeping,” Brennan said. “She will be very weak. And, knowing my lady, I suspect she’ll be irritable. But she is absolutely to take no long walks until she is quite strong again.”

Sara stared into the fire. Her emotions were so intense, she felt conspicuous. She couldn’t look at him. Her skin tingled with the knowledge he was close by. How could he so easily drink with his brother and discuss Aunt Philomela’s health? She hadn’t had a normal conversation since that night.
 

When she and Eleanor took Miss Fiddyment’s volume of The Ladies’ Guide, didn’t they think they were bad girls then! Eleanor reasoned it was Nature’s way, and therefore couldn’t be completely unbearable. But Sara thought then she would never, could never let a man do that to her. Of course, she later accepted that she must allow it, were she to marry; but the acceptance came with no enthusiasm.

But now, though what Wills had done was unthinkably despicable, her body responded to his nearness. She wanted him to touch her again—that way. She was confused by shame and desire. She had to get away from him—and from Geordie too. She had to go home. But where was home?

She followed Dr. Devilliers and Mr. Brennan, intending to go upstairs to her room. The front door burst open, and Mr. Johns unceremoniously entered the hall followed by a group of men carrying a large bundle and a pack of frantic dogs barking all around them.

“It’s Sir Carey,” said Mr. Johns. “He’s met with foul play, I fear.”

“He’s dead, surely,” said one of the men who bore the body.

“Murdered,” said another.

“Put him down,” said the weary Mr. Brennan, and the men laid the body on the floor. Brennan loosened Sir Carey’s cravat. Sara couldn’t stop herself from looking. Sir Carey’s eyes were vacant. The wound in his chest appeared small, but it was devastatingly placed.

“He’s taken a bullet in his heart,” Brennan said. “He’s gone.”

“We shored up for one death, but it’s another we’ll have to bear,” said Mr. Johns.

“What is this?” Geordie came into the hall. “Oh, no!” He fell to the floor and cradled Sir Carey’s head.

“We’ll be going back out, Squire,” Mr. Johns said. “The men are getting up for a search party. The villain is sure to be hereabouts.”

“Good man,” Geordie said. “My brother and I will join you.”

Wills must have fallen asleep; he was suddenly conscious of his mother crying in another room, this time in real anguish. Sara stared at him. They were alone. “Miss Adams, I—Sara, please…”

“Wills, listen to me. Your father has been shot. Murdered.”

“No, that can’t be right. I saw him only yesterday. And he left word this morning about Lady Branch.”

“It happened in the last hour, apparently just before you arrived.”

There was tenderness in her expression. There must be hope he could redeem himself. She had told him Sir Carey was murdered, but his thoughts were for her. He moved, carefully, toward her. Her lips seemed willing. Her eyes were his, he was nearly sure. Then a log crackled and fell apart on the grate. The spell was broken, and she turned away.
 

He found his mother and Geordie beside the body. Wills knelt between them, an arm around each, and hung his head. He had never spoken, not even to Geordie, about what he had seen through Abby’s open door. Now in his mind the image of his naked, rutting father was joined by this, an uninformed corpse whose eyes held no object and whose open jaw moved no breath. He closed the dead eyelids and kissed the cold forehead.

So you’re gone, old man. Now, I have only myself to despise
.

Geordie observed the bruise on his brother’s temple and the scratches on his hands. “Wills,” he said, “Mr. Johns and the men have got up a search party to find the murderer. Devilliers and I are going to join them. Do you feel up to it?”

“Of course.”

“Shall I open the gun cabinet?” Norwood’s shoulders were bent, his eyes red and wet. He held a key in his outstretched hand.
 

“Good thought,” Wills answered. He patted poor Norwood on the back and gave him a sad version of one of the old magical smiles. “Let us go in together.” In the gun room, the faltering Norwood chose a long rifle to use himself in the search.

In the park, they came upon a circle of men with Mr. Johns at its center. He and another man held a bruised and blubbering Sir Herbert by his elbows. “He’s the one, Grandfather!” Abby was there, hysterical. “I saw the whole thing! Sir Carey was just walking along when this
gentleman
pops out from nowhere and fires, just like that! Murderer!”

“He’s admitted to his crime,” Mr. Johns announced for all to hear. “Seems we’ve got a jealous husband stealing away a man’s life like a thief in the night.”

“Whitley, you fool, you—damned fool!” Wills fell upon Whitley, landing blows on the man’s body, not caring what he hit. He just had to hit, hit, hit. The anger, the injustice, the misery that was his life broke through and took him over. He wanted to kill Whitley right there just for being Whitley. He was so tired of all the Whitleys who lock you up in a golden cage of rules and kill your father and deny you the woman Destiny made for you. He heard himself say, “You're a dead man!” as Geordie and Devilliers pulled him away.

The dead man’s sobs grew louder and more pitiful. He was hauled away with the curses of the neighborhood raining down on him.

Wills, Geordie, and Devilliers turned back to the house. The night was black and moonless and growing cold. The murderer was caught, and the obligations of mourning lay ahead. Geordie Carleson decided, with regret, propriety must delay the proposal of marriage he had intended for Miss Sara Adams. But he’d give her the ring tonight, as a gift. It would give him a reason to be alone with her, to feel some comfort from her presence.

Wills tripped over something. He picked up Sir Carey’s silver-tipped walking stick and absently rubbed the dragon’s head against his cheek. “I didn’t think I would feel so lonely.”

-oOo-

Sara thought she heard Wills and stood up from the chair. “Oh. Hello, Mr. Carleson. Is there any news?”

“We’ve caught the rogue. He has confessed.”

She didn’t know what to say. Her sense of security was sorely tried, with the unspeakable and the unbearable coming nearly all at once.

“Miss Adams, forgive me if the time isn’t right. I had wanted to give you something, a keepsake, the night we were to see Coleridge. I hope you won’t think me terribly forward.” He handed her a red and yellow swatch of silk.

“You intrigue me.” She unfolded the fabric.
It took me a long while
... She remembered Wills’s words as she slipped the ring onto the middle finger of her right hand. The gold serpent, its head wrapped around a small pearl, fit her perfectly. How completely Wills knew her. Yet how could she love him? And how could he respect her after he had degraded her so?

“Miss Adams.” Geordie took hold of her hands. “Darling Sara, I cannot hold back. Could you—will you be my wife?”
  

Sara looked out the carriage window for some sign she was nearing the farm. She fingered the sheet of paper she’d tucked into her cloak’s interior pocket. She’d memorized its contents. She was beginning to feel quite ill again. She was ruined. The thing undulating inside her belly had grown until she was no longer Sara Adams. She’d become a mere conveyance, with no more free will than this carriage. She hated it.
 

At last the carriage turned down the driveway to The Farm. Bright moonlight made the daffodils along the way appear gray.
The moving moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide.
Everywhere these days, reminders of Coleridge. When Uncle James used to recite the Mariner, she had always pitied the poor moon. Now she was the homeless one, abiding nowhere.

She’d lost everything except, she dared hope, friendship. The four Doric columns at the front of the house were lit, and light shone from a second floor window. It was too late for anyone to be still awake, surely.

She hauled herself out of the carriage while the driver put her box on the ground. “You need not wait.” She had hired a carriage for the journey from Boston so that she could arrive at night unseen. Inside the house, dogs barked. On the second floor, someone lit another lamp.

There were only a few steps up to the door, but it suddenly seemed too much. She had survived the voyage, endured another springless stage-coach ride, and made a lonely stop at a cold Boston hotel before coming at last to Eleanor. Halfway up the treads, the weight of it all was finally overwhelming, and as the door opened, she lost consciousness.

-oOo-

It was the first comfortable bed she’d been in for ages. Sunlight streamed through an open window with the sound of raucous birds and the lowing of a distant cow. On a chest beneath the window lay a pair of cream-colored boots decorated with pale roses of green, pink and blue. Sara’s cloak was draped over a chair beside the bed. She found the letter and tucked it inside her nightgown as the door opened.

“You’re awake.” Eleanor was dressed in mill-woven blue cotton, her hair pulled back into what failed to be a dignified chignon. Her apron was made of homespun. “I’ve brought you a little breakfast.” She had become a woman, as much the lady of this house as Lady Asher at Laurelwood. And what had Sara become?

She attacked the bread and cheese. “I did not know I was so hungry.” Eleanor said nothing, but she could feel her friend’s discomfort. “Oh, Eleanor.”

“You don’t have to say anything, Sara. Reverend Grim visits Mother this afternoon. I’m sure you would prefer Lightfeather, but Grim has changed. Would you like to see him when he comes?”