The Return of Lord Conistone (33 page)

Lucas seemed about to say something else. Then— ‘We will talk later,’ he said curtly.

Yes. Later. And she must put an end to any lingering hope.

Paid in full and more?
Perhaps. Yet she had made such dreadful mistakes along the way. She had misjudged Lucas
again and again, assuming him lazy and indolent. Believing Deb’s false accusations about him. Thinking he had set Bentinck to spy on her when really Bentinck was her protector.

Misjudgements could be corrected. But the final hurdle was insurmountable. Yes, she believed he
did
love her, in his way; but how could marriage ever work, when every time he looked at her, he would be reminded of her father, his treachery and his death?

Her heart surged with almost unbearable emotion. Yes, it was all almost over. But—and she lifted her chin in defiance—no one could take away the love she’d felt for him. Still felt for him. She would never love anyone else. Lucas Conistone was incomparable.

That was her tragedy; the memory of his love would also be her inner joy, in the years to come. She closed her eyes, clenching her teeth, because now the pain in her wrist was white-hot, consuming all her thoughts, and only his strong grasp was keeping her from succumbing to it.

* * *

It was Dr Pilkington’s spinster sister Maude who answered the door. Maude quickly summoned her brother, and he looked suitably startled to find Lord Conistone there, carrying Verena in his arms.

‘We need your services, Doctor,’ Lucas said quickly. ‘Miss Sheldon met with an accident’.

Dr Pilkington sized up the situation swiftly, and if he wanted to ask more, hid it well. ‘St Luke’s Eve celebrations, I take it, my lord Conistone?’

He drew Lucas aside and spoke briefly with him, while Maude kindly ushered Verena through to his consulting room and lit candles. There Dr Pilkington soon joined her and gently examined her wrist. ‘My dear Miss Sheldon,
it looks as if you’ve broken it! No, perhaps it’s just a bad sprain…’

‘I fell, you see. So stupid of me,’ she murmured.

‘Hmm’. His voice expressed mild but significant doubt. Gentle though the doctor was, the pain still sliced through her as he applied a cold compress and went to search for bandages. ‘Good of Lord Conistone to bring you in,’ he went on as he worked. ‘He was just telling me he must leave for London tonight, some important business; but he wanted to see that you were all right first. He works for the government, doesn’t he? Rather dangerous stuff, I believe’.

‘You know!’

‘I guessed. That sabre scar, amongst other things. Thought I’d better keep it quiet, eh?’

He was binding her wrist now, with the utmost care, then called to Maude, who brought hot, sweet tea laced with laudanum drops. Verena took only a sip. She was in torment, both physical and mental, but laudanum was not the answer. The door was open and briefly she saw Lucas outside, pacing the hallway, his hands clasped behind his back, his dark head bowed.

She wanted to call out to him.
Lucas. My love, please forgive me, for everything. Take care of yourself. And remember that wherever you go, you take my heart with you.

* * *

She woke in the night. The room was dark except for a single candle glowing in a corner. She saw Maude sitting in a chair with some embroidery lying in her lap, snoring gently.

Verena’s wrist, still tightly bandaged, seemed to ache a little less, but her heart, she felt, would never mend.

Lucas would have gone by now. Martin Bryant would be
dead or captured. Her father’s maps had saved the British army at Busaco, and now it was over. She closed her eyes and felt tears pricking at her lids.

Stupid, stupid to cry. Verena Sheldon was not supposed to cry. Verena Sheldon was the sensible one, the pillar of her family. It was only because she was tired still, and because of the pain.

* * *

She must have slept a little again, but she opened her eyes quickly, because she thought she’d heard footsteps, and quiet voices.

Maude had gone. The door was open.

‘How are you feeling?’

A drawling male voice. Lucas’s voice. He stood in the doorway, his tall frame dominating the small room, his handsome face etched into planes of light and dark by the candlelight.

She blinked. Confused. ‘But Dr Pilkington told me you were going to London—’

‘I decided London can wait a while’.

She caught her breath.
Implying that he would rather be here?
No. Impossible.

He strolled closer, soft-footed as a cat. But she knew that softness was deceptive, because he was a leader of men. A killer of men.

‘Did you—find Captain Bryant?’

‘He died in his fall from the cliff, Verena. Alec arrived very soon afterwards, and with the help of some of the villagers he rounded up Bryant’s French friends and escorted them to Chichester gaol’. He sat by her side, pulling up Maude’s empty chair. ‘I asked you how you were’.

She managed a faint smile. ‘A sprained wrist—it’s nothing, I assure you! But Lucas, you should have gone to London, I’ll be quite all right now’.

A shadow of anger crossed his face.
‘Leave
you? In God’s name, why?’ He clenched his fists. ‘You are ignoring the fact that I asked you to be my wife! Damn it all, Verena, what if I refuse to let you go?’

She swallowed hard on the ache in her throat.
I never knew love could hurt so much
. ‘Lucas, I know that you feel bound by duty. But I understand that you cannot possibly marry me’.

‘Why ever not?’

‘Because of my father!’

He rasped, ‘Your father, Verena, was led by foolishness and greed to
attempt
to become a traitor, and you have more than made up for his folly—’

She broke in quietly, ‘I know that you killed him, Lucas’.

He was on his feet. He sat down again. He drew one hand across his brow. ‘Tell me. Tell me how you know that’.

Her throat was dry, her wrist throbbing. ‘I—I overheard you and Alec talking, down in the courtyard, when you came for me at Coimbra…’

His eyes were dark. Hooded.
That damned conversation with Alec in the courtyard of the inn where she was staying
. She must have been somewhere near. Hell and damnation.

‘Dear God,’ he said softly. His eyes burned into hers. He said at last, slowly and deliberately, ‘I did not kill your father’.

‘But Alec said—’

He got up suddenly again from his chair and this time paced the room, running his hand distractedly through his hair. ‘I was responsible for his death, yes. But—
I did not kill him’.
He swung round on her. ‘Hell. I had better tell you everything’.

He sat down again, tense. ‘That autumn, when I was
home on leave, I knew nothing about what your father was up to, Verena, I swear. But—when Lord Wellington asked me to resign, and to work in secret for him, in England, as well as the Peninsula—I was told about your father’.

She nodded mutely, feeling a black hole of despair opening up within her.

Lucas went on tersely, ‘We knew, I’m afraid, that your father was negotiating to sell vital information to the French. We knew that he kept a diary, crammed with records and maps of his travels. We could not let the French get it. That winter we chased your father into the mountains on the Spanish border and caught him at the edge of a deep gorge. He could go no further. He said, "Look after her for me, will you, Lucas? Tell her I did it for Wycherley. For all of them." Then he said, "For God’s sake, look after Verena…"‘

Lucas let his voice trail away. Verena gazed at him, white as a sheet.

Lucas went on, in a low voice, ‘I told him that if he would come back with me, and hand over his diary and all his papers to the British, there might be hope for him. And your father hesitated, Verena! I’d swear he hesitated! He was clutching something wrapped in oilskin, and I guessed it was his diary. But then—’ and here Lucas rubbed his fingers across his temples ‘—some of our soldiers came rushing up. He just repeated the words, "Look after her," and stepped backwards—to his death. The river at the bottom of the gorge swept him away. He chose his own end, Verena’. Lucas sighed and leaned back. ‘And his very last thoughts were of you’.

The silence lay heavily between them. Verena said at last, in what was little more than a whisper, ‘And he did not have the diary anyway’.

‘No. At least, not the one we wanted, the old one; my grandfather had that. Your father’s body was found earlier
this year, Verena, and he was buried in the mountains he loved’. He was gazing at her with dark, ravaged eyes. ‘You will think I should have told you all this from the beginning. But you see, I guessed you already hated me. You’d answered none of my letters, and I thought you would hate me even more if you realised I was there at your father’s death. Yes, I wanted that diary for Wellington, but I still loved you. I never stopped loving you’.

He drew a deep breath. ‘We know the truth now. The diary Jack Sheldon had been holding was one he’d started afresh, only weeks before. My grandfather had tricked him. And my grandfather had hidden the diary we wanted, though, frustrated and half-mad, he’d been unable to read it. Whereas you, Verena, possessed what turned out to be the most important of all your father’s possessions—the map of the mines at Busaco’.

Verena closed her eyes, imagining her father’s desperation before he jumped to his death.
Oh, Papa. Why.…

Lucas eased his chair back from her side and said quietly, ‘I will leave you in peace now, to sleep. I just wanted you to know the truth. All of it’.

The anguish tore through her very soul. Yet again, she had misjudged this man. And surely this time he would never forgive her.

‘You must go, Lucas,’ she said steadily, swallowing on the burning ache in her throat. ‘The doctor told me you have urgent business in London’.

He was standing up. ‘It’s true, I’m afraid I can’t postpone my journey any longer. Alec tells me Bryant’s French friends have begun to reveal vital information about a network of enemy spies here in England, and I must report it’.

She nodded. ‘I understand’.

Afterwards, when he’d gone, she lay awake; and the
pain in her bound wrist was nowhere near as great as the pain in her heart. This, surely, was the end.
Oh, Lucas
. Oh, my love.

W
ycherley Hall had never been a busier or happier place, for Izzy was having her eighteenth birthday party here tonight, and almost a hundred guests had arrived already. But Viscount Conistone, whom her mother had invited along with his friend Alec Stewart, had not replied to the invitation. Lucas was living the high life with the Prince’s set, people said.

Verena knew the truth about Lucas Conistone now and she felt privileged for knowing it. She had been busy for the last week from dawn till dusk, organising everything; though just sometimes she would stop, for no reason, in whatever she was doing, remembering Lucas. Thinking she heard his soft, drawling voice. Thinking she saw him striding towards her, a glad smile on his handsome face.

The nights were the hardest. She would lie awake, afraid of sleep, because sometimes she dreamed he was there, holding her in his arms. And to wake from those dreams was agony.

Though it was mid-November, the day had been full of sunshine. All afternoon the villagers had brought presents
for Izzy, and been offered copious refreshment. And now the Sheldons’ friends and relatives were still pouring in for the evening’s party.

Then Verena suddenly saw a familiar figure—’Alec!’—and her heart skipped a beat, but as he came striding towards her, smiling, she saw he was alone. Verena forced her disappointment aside to greet him warmly and only later asked him if he had news of Lucas, putting her question politely, as if she and Lucas were but distant acquaintances.

‘He’s busy,’ Alec replied equally lightly, ‘busy as ever, my dear Miss Sheldon!’

So—he was going to tell her nothing.

‘And Portugal?’ she asked, quickly changing the subject. ‘I heard that Lord Wellington and his army reached Lisbon successfully’.

‘They did,’ he told her earnestly. ‘Wellington won the race for Lisbon, which has been turned into a mighty fortress by the British; and there his lordship can prepare his troops for a fresh offensive against the enemy come the new year’.

She thought,
The victory at Busaco helped make all this possible. And my father’s papers played their part. I played my part.

Small compensation for waking every morning with a cold, empty hollow where her heart should be.

Suddenly she heard her mother.

‘Captain Stewart?’ Lady Frances’s voice was coming piercingly nearer as she swept towards them and pulled up in a rustle of silks and lace. ‘My dear Captain Stewart, I do trust you are enjoying our
petite assemblée?’

Her mother was still practising her French phrases for London; next week, they returned there. Alec bowed low over her hand. ‘Most thoroughly, Lady Sheldon; charming feathers in your hair, by the way; excellent to see you in
such blooming health! You look as young as your lovely daughters!’

Lady Frances tapped his hand with her fan. ‘Dear boy,’ she crooned, ‘you’re such a tease!
Such
exciting times—I knew everything would come right for us! Oh, my darling Deb, my darling Izzy—next spring one of them will doubtless make the match of the Season!’