He didn’t expect her to personally come back to collect what she’d left behind, but he had counted on at least someone, even if only a servant, showing up to do so. But she hadn’t sent anyone by to claim her jewels from him. She still didn’t even know where those furnishings of hers had been stored. Demanding one or the other would have given him someone to have followed to lead to her, but no one had come.
Hotels and inns had been searched. He had people scouring the whole town and watching Ascot’s office around the clock. The ship George had returned in was still in the harbor waiting for permission to dock, so at least he was still in the country. But there was simply no due as to where he had taken his family off to.
Jonathan apparently got tired of waiting for an answer to his last question. With a sigh he said, “I have a confession to make.”
Vincent winced mentally. “Don’t. I’m not in the mood for confessions.”
“Too bad,” Jonathan grumbled. “Because this one is coming whether you listen or not. I came to you to find La Nymph for me, not just because I desire to own that painting. There are countless others I could have hired to find the painting, and for much less cost to me. I came to you in particular because I like you, Vincent, I like your style, like the fact that you’ve never tried to ingratiate yourself with me to get something out of me, as is the case with most people I know. I have no friends, you know, no real friends, that is.”
“Nonsense, you don’t go anywhere that people don’t flock to your side-“
“Leeches, the lot of them,” Jonathan cut in, disgust in his tone. “They don’t care about me or what I’m feeling, they only care about how they can manage to get some of my money into their pockets. And that’s always been the case, even when I was a child. I was born rich, after all.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Vincent asked uncomfortably.
Jonathan’s cheeks bloomed with a bit of color, but he still admitted, “Because I had great hopes that you would become the close friend I’ve never had. And since nothing else has worked to accomplish that thus far, I’m falling back on the old premise that confidences are a sound basis for developing lasting friendships. And besides, you don’t seem to have any close friends yourself. Do you?”
Vincent saw no reason to deny it. “No.”
“Well then-“
“You haven’t gathered yet that I am rather reclusive?” Vincent pointed out.
“Course I have, which is one of the things I like about you. And just because I flit about here and there doesn’t mean I enjoy doing so, just that I’m so bloody lonely, I crave companionship of any sort, even from sycophants, if that’s all that’s available.”
Vincent was beginning to get embarrassed over these “confidences,” not so much because Jonathan felt a sudden need to pour out his guts, but because his confession was sounding much too familiar. He hadn’t realized they had quite so much in common, neither of them willing to trust anyone enough to get close to them, neither of them willing to risk being hurt if anyone did.
“Are you feeling sorry for me yet?” Jonathan asked hopefully.
“No.”
“Bloody hell …”
“But you’re welcome to stay for dinner.”
The viscount laughed.
CHAPTER 22
Ironicaily, Larissa was sitting in front of a Christmas tree at the same time that Vincent was. She was also alone, also recalling the decoration of that other tree. This one wasn’t hers and hadn’t been preserved well, was mostly brown now, with pitifully broken branches and a pile of fallen needles beneath it that the servants couldn’t manage to keep up with. It belonged to the Applebees, good friends of her father’s who still lived in Portsmouth. He had taken her and Thomas straightaway there after they’d left Vincent’s town house.
Despite Larissa’s state of shock when they arrived there, it wasn’t lost on her that she hadn’t once considered the Applebees as an option when she had agonized over where to take her brother when they lost their home. She would have thought of them eventually, because they really were very old friends of her father’s, and she had thought of them after she was already moved into Vincent’s house, as well as her many childhood friends in Portsmouth, any one of whom would have opened his or her door to her. But by then she had conveniently ignored their existence for the simple fact that she had wanted to stay in the baron’s home.
Of course, Thomas’s illness had been the deciding factor; at least she had convinced herself of that at the time. It was better for him not to make that long trip to Portsmouth while he still had that lingering fever. But they could have managed it, could have sealed up a coach against drafts and got him there as quickly as possible if it had been necessary. Vincent’s offered hospitality had made it unnecessary. And Larissa’s desire to get to know Vincent better had kept her from considering those other options, even if she hadn’t owned up to that at the time.
They had been staying with the Applebees now for nearly a week. It had taken that long for the shock to wear off completely for Larissa. The knowledge that she had been used in a plot for revenge had utterly crushed her. Everything she had supposed about Vincent Everett had been wrong. She had fallen in love with someone who wasn’t real, who was a complete fake.
Her father had wanted to comfort her, but after her first outburst of tears when he tried, he had decided the best way to help her get over her heartache was to not discuss it at all, which meant not discussing Vincent. She was grateful for that. She really couldn’t bear to talk about him yet, when just thinking about him could start the tears flooding again. But she had been in such a state of despair that she hadn’t done much communicating with her father at all yet.
She still didn’t even know what had kept him from returning to London for so long. If he had mentioned it, and she supposed he probably had, she hadn’t been listening. When she was around, a lot of whispering tended to go on. The Applebees were kind, but if they had been told why she was mired in such misery, they no doubt pitied her.
They were a large family. William and Ethel’s four children had married and had young families of their own, and all came to visit their parents at this special time of the year. The house was full. It was a large house, though, so there had been plenty of room for the Ascots, and Thomas had many youngsters to keep him quite occupied. A blessing that, because if her father might be kindly avoiding the subject of her unhappiness, her brother certainly wouldn’t have if he could have found her alone. Fortunately, with so many people in the house, it was rare to find anyone alone- until today. The Applebees’ four married children had all leit to go back to their respective homes that morning.
Because of that mass exodus, Larissa had had the parlor to herself for several hours now. No more pitying whispers. No more attempts to cheer her when she couldn’t be cheered. But no more relief either, with the numbness of her shock finally fading. And much too much introspection now and mental browbeating-and anger.
The anger had sneaked up on her, not really unexpected, just all at once it was there and a lot of it, and now bitterly contained just below the surface. Having been used and deceived so easily marked her clearly as a naive fool. And Vincent had done it so easily. That was the quelling blow. She’d almost begged him to dupe her. Every tactic he’d used on her had worked, not because he was so adept at fooling people, but because she had wanted to believe that he cared about her.
Good God, he must have hated touching her, hated making love to her, despising her family as he did. And how he must have laughed at how easily she had succumbed to his seduction and his lies. Everything between them had been a lie, everything she had believed about him, a lie …
“Do you want to stay here with Thomas while I return to London?”
The question came from her father, who had just entered the room. At least she heard him right off this time. She recalled a number of times in the last week when he’d had to wave his hand in front of her face and repeat himself to try and
get her attention.
“When are you leaving?” she asked.
“In the morning.”
He was going to find them a new home. She vaguely remembered that being discussed last
evening during dinner. If he went alone, he’d stay at the London office. If she went with him, he’d need to get them rooms at a hotel. She saw no reason to incur the extra expense. She hadn’t asked him about his finances. It wasn’t her place to ask. In the few conversations that she’d managed to hear when she wasn’t so deep in self-pity, she gathered that he’d found new markets in the Caribbean and was no longer worried on that front.
“I’ll stay here,” she replied.
“You’re feeling better?”
There was a great deal of concern in his expression. There was also some hesitancy in his tone that wasn’t like him. Her state of nearly deaf distraction since his return must have begun to seriously worry him. But she saw no reason to hedge about the subject now.
“Better, no. Fully cognizant again, yes.”
He smiled gently. “A little absentmindedness never-“
She cut in, “I might as well not have been here, Father, for all the awareness I’ve had lately. Do you know, I don’t even know what detained you from returning home when you were supposed to. Each time it has occurred to me to ask you, we haven’t been in the same room, and then I as quickly forgot about it again. But I’m sure Thomas and everyone else knows by now. I’m sure you’ve mentioned it to me as well …”
“Three times, actually.” He chuckled, then surprised her by saying, “Damn me, never thought I’d reach the point where I could laugh about any part of that ill-fated trip.”
“Ill-fated?”
“From the moment we entered the warmer waters of the West Indies. The island we came to first wasn’t a major one, though we were so happy to see land of any sort, we stopped there anyway. But as soon as we docked, we were met by the local magistrate and a full troop of guards, and charged with attacking one of the local plantation owners. The man was there to support the charge, and quite a gruesome account he gave of it, that his plantation house burned to the ground, including his barns, that our ship just sat offshore and continued to rain fire down upon his property for no apparent reason.”
“Someone actually did that to him?”
“As it turns out, no. But at the time, Peter Heston was an old and well-respected member of the community whom not a single person on that island would even think of doubting, while I and my crew had never been there before and could have been pirates for all they knew. We were found guilty before there was a trial. The actual trial was a mockery where Heston repeated his ghastly tale. No other witnesses were necessary for us to be sentenced to prison.”
“Prison!” she gasped, incredulous. “You were actually put in prison?”
“Yes,” he replied. “And with absolutely no hope of getting out of it, when we knew that the entire island thought us guilty.”
He shuddered unconsciously. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how horrible that experience must have been for him and his crew. He’d never been in jail before, never suffered any real physical hardship that she was aware of. Nor should he ever have experienced anything like that, when he was a good, honest man who would never do anything that might get him arrested, much less sent to prison.
Which was what she couldn’t help but point out. “But you didn’t do anything!”
“No, and our ship’s guns were quite cold to prove it,” he agreed.
She frowned, getting a bit confused now. “Then why were you even arrested, much less put to trial?”
“Because our proof of innocence required immediate clarification, which didn’t occur.”
“For someone to examine the guns?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t they?”
He chuckled again. She was surprised herself now that he could, especially after he replied, “Probably because we were about to be lynched on the spot. This was midmorning, you see. And quite a few people had noticed the town guard heading for the docks and followed them. There was a huge crowd by the time we docked, and everyone there was able to hear Heston’s accusations. Understandably, the magistrate wanted to break that up quickly, and could only do so by getting us off the dock and into his jail.”
“When it would only have taken a moment or two for verification?”
“It was a very tense situation, Rissa. There were other plantation owners in that crowd who were
no doubt thinking it could have been their houses that we might have destroyed. And when an issue becomes personal like that, emotions can be quite heated. We really were in danger of that mob of angry islanders taking the law into their own hands. Frankly, we were rather glad to be put behind bars until the matter could be straightened out. Knowing ourselves innocent, we didn’t really doubt at the time that it would be straightened out, so we were more concerned with the angry crowd than with the charges being filed against us.”
“Yes, I suppose the immediate threat would have been of more concern,” she agreed. “But you said the man’s house hadn’t really burned down. Why weren’t you released after that was discovered. “
“No, I said no one else had done it to him,” he corrected her.
She blinked. “He burned down his own house?”
George nodded. “But that didn’t come to light soon enough to keep us out of prison. And at the time, the magistrate had two completely conflicting accounts on the matter, so whom do you think he would be inclined to believe?”
“Heston, of course.”
“Exactly. The man’s plantation really had burned to the ground. Our ship’s guns hadn’t been fired. These were facts that we were assured were both going to be investigated right after we were all secured in the jail. But too much time had passed, on getting us secured and getting the crowd to finally disperse. And since it wasn’t immediately proven that the guns weren’t heated the least bit from use, it couldn’t be proven at all. Yet there was a burned down plantation, proof for the other side, and the word of one of their own well-known and respected citizens.”
Larissa shook her head. “How did the truth finally get discovered?”
“When Peter Heston’s wife finally returned to the island. She had been there that day when Heston went completely mad. She had known his mind wasn’t quite right for a long time, but she had never warned anyone, since his increasingly strange behavior had seemed harmless. But early that morning she came upon him starting the fires. He was raving that there were pirates hiding on the property and the only way to flush them out was to give them no place to hide by burning everything to the ground.”
“There weren’t any, though?”
“No, it was all in his mind. She tried to stop him, of course. But he didn’t recognize her. He thought her one of the pirates and tried to kill her as well.”
“How horrible for her.”
“Yes, though she did manage to escape, and by the quickest means possible. Unfortunately, that was by boat. They lived on the coast, had their own small dock where Heston kept a fishing vessel. She used that, leaving the island completely rather than going to town to get help.”
“I think I would have rather been out in the water where he couldn’t reach me than still on the island where he might catch up to me, if I were her.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right. Never looked at it from her perspective, merely from my own, which included her long delay in returning. I would have preferred she come straight to town to report what had happened, thus leaving my crew and me out of the incident completely, but she was so frightened by having her own husband not recognize her, call her a pirate and try to kill her, that she wanted only to get as far from him as possible.”
“Where did she go?”
“She had a daughter by her first marriage, who lived on a nearby island. Unfortunately the daughter wasn’t home, was on a shopping trip to the mainland.”
“Unfortunately?
”
“It was the daughter who convinced her that she had to return to get help for Heston, who was obviously quite crazy now, before someone did get hurt by him. Heston’s wife had been thinking only of her own safety, which included never returning to her own home. Which was why so much time passed before she did return and the truth was learned.”
“Why was there no one else around to witness the fire and how it started? Had they no servants at all?”
“That was one of my own questions, answered by one of the jailers. It was common knowledge that Heston had had bad crops for three out of the last four years. Other plantation owners in the area had suffered from the same bad weather, but it wasn’t all a weather problem, not for all three of the bad years. Most of it was likely part of his decline; he simply wasn’t attending to his crops properly. But the Hestons were barely making a living by then, because of so many failed crops. The plantation workers were seasonal, so none were around this time of the year. But the house servants had been let go a few years ago. And they lived on the far east end of the island, with no other neighbors close by.”
“It is amazing indeed that you can laugh about any of that misadventure.”
He grinned at her. “It really wasn’t that much of a hardship, their prison. What I find amusing myself is there was no one else in it. The place had been closed up for years. They had to open it and clean it up just for our benefit. There was even a debate to just keep us in the jail instead, though it was finally decided the accommodations there just weren’t big enough to contain an entire ship’s crew.”