“That’s all? He didn’t say anything?”
“Oh, he did. He said I’d heard wrong, that he only had one son. The other was dead.”
And dead men weren’t admitted through the front door, Margaret thought. Good God, it must have hurt Sebastian to hear that. Then again, maybe he really didn’t care, as he’d said. But he’d been right. The estrangement had escalated severely if Douglas now considered Sebastian dead to him. He wouldn’t be welcome, except as her husband. And even that was going to be highly uncomfortable. She could well lose her own welcome if she brought the “dead” son home to Edgewood.
Chapter 14
S EBASTIAN BLENDED WELL WITH THE SHADOWS, a knack he’d developed long ago. The moon was making only sporadic appearances through a bank of gray clouds that were moving rather rapidly overhead. But he’d taken that into account when he’d decided to wear his dark gray greatcoat, which covered him from neck to boots, and was less discernible than his black one on nights when there were no shadows. The air smelled and felt as if there were going to be a downpour at some point during the night, but not, he hoped, while he was skulking around the grounds of Edgewood.
His old home was still well lit at that hour of the evening. He had to be a masochist to come here and watch his family through the windows, knowing he was not welcome to join them.
He leaned against the tree he and Denton had often climbed as children. One summer they’d dragged boards up there and put together a little hut. It had been a nice hideaway until Denton had brought up one too many things to decorate it with, and the main branch supporting it had cracked. They were lucky the limb had fallen slowly and had dropped them rather gently on the ground. But it had frightened their father enough for him to forbid them to make another tree house.
That old tree was outside the dining room where his family was currently gathered. For once his expression wasn’t so inscrutable. Pain, regret, anger—they were all there for anyone to see, his guard completely gone as he stared at his father through the windows.
Douglas hadn’t changed greatly. He wore a half century of years very well. His hair was still as pitch-black as Sebastian’s. If there was any gray in it, it wasn’t noticeable at that distance. His grandmother, Abigail, had changed a lot. Her hair was snow-white now, her shoulders more bent than they used to be. She still wore her hair in the old style. On her it looked good.
God, he’d missed that old woman. She’d been more than just their grandmother. She’d been everything to them after their mother died when Sebastian was nine. Proud, regal, but warm and loving. She didn’t look so warm and loving now. She spoke readily with Denton, but no smiles crossed her lips. And not one glance was directed toward the head of the table.
Douglas sat there alone. Abigail ate at the other end. Denton kept her company there. He’d changed greatly as well. He had begun looking dissipated before Sebastian had left. He looked more so now, haggard, almost downtrodden. Juliette hadn’t made an appearance yet, but they obviously hadn’t waited for her.
The distance between his father and his grandmother at that table was telling. It was not a happy scene he was watching. A tightness welled in his chest. So much he had to account for. And so much more that he hadn’t even known he was responsible for. His family was no longer a family, they were just people who lived in the same house. All of the warmth was gone.
The contrast was tearing him apart. He remembered other dinners so clearly. Giles had been there more often than not, and even his father, Cecil, had been a regular guest. There had been laughter, revelry. Abigail had often been teased mercilessly and she’d loved it. And they’d all sat close together. The table had been smaller, and all the chairs had been filled. There had never been a lull in the conversation, or in the laughter. It had been a place you wanted to be, not a place to quickly escape from—as it seemed to be now.
Douglas left the table first. He said something to Denton in parting, but he barely even glanced at his mother. Sebastian moved farther down the side of the house until he was outside Douglas’s study. It was where his father usually retired for a few hours after dinner. Cecil had always joined him there when he and Giles had come for dinner. The two old friends never lacked for discourse, and their laughter frequently traveled through the large house.
The draperies hadn’t been closed in the room. Several lamps had been lit earlier. Douglas entered the room and closed the door. He poured a glass of brandy and brought the bottle and glass with him to his desk. He sat down behind it and downed the entire glass, then poured another. Alone there, unaware that he was being watched, he let his shoulders slump. He lit a cigar, but he didn’t smoke it. He picked up a paper on his desk, but he didn’t read it. His head dropped back against the chair.
It was apparent that he had become a man with nothing to look forward to, with nothing to hold his interest, no friends to share in the joys of life—no joys to share. He wasn’t just alone in that room, he was alone with himself.
The tightness increased in Sebastian’s chest. He’d done this to his father, made him a shell of the man he used to be. All these years and he hadn’t known that Douglas had become as empty inside as he was. They were so similar.
It was no wonder they’d all taken to Margaret while she lived with them. She’d probably brought life to the house with her incessant chatter.
A while later, Sebastian lay on his bed, arms crossed behind his head. He hadn’t undressed, had known sleep would be a long time in coming that night and he’d probably have to fetch another bottle of brandy from downstairs to help it along. He’d barely touched the first one, though, his thoughts so deep that he kept forgetting to drink it.
Dead. His father had told Timothy that he was dead. Figuratively, of course, but even so, had a gravestone been put up for him? He had assumed, once he came face-to-face with his father, that they’d have words. Harsh ones, probably, but at least he would have an opportunity to express his concerns, or rather, Margaret’s concerns, and possibly work with Douglas to unravel the suspicions that had been raised.
That assumption had been made before he knew about his father’s estrangement from Cecil and his own mother, and that his enmity toward his eldest son had increased rather than dissipated with the passing years, to the point where Douglas wouldn’t even admit that Sebastian was still alive. Dead. And he’d thought his own bitterness couldn’t be matched.
What he was looking at was an insurmountable wall. He couldn’t break it. Margaret possibly could. She’d been accepted into the bosom of his family. She was close enough to Douglas that she’d gone above and beyond in her effort to “save” him, if he really needed saving. Maybe he needed saving only from himself. Bloody hell.
Sebastian would have liked to blame his father for this current state of affairs, but he couldn’t. All of it, every reaction and result thereafter, could rest only on his own shoulders.
He snarled as he got back up, disgusted with himself for re-hashing what couldn’t be changed. He went in search of Margaret. They needed to finalize a plan so he could quickly accomplish what she’d hired him for and return to France.
She had refused to have dinner with him that night, which was why he’d gone to Edgewood instead. He wasn’t surprised. His behavior the previous night had been reprehensible. Deliberately reprehensible, but still, he hadn’t needed to be quite so insulting to get her to maintain her distance. She seemed to be having no trouble a’tall keeping her enmity high on her list of priorities without any help from him. Perhaps it was the other way around. He needed a reason to keep his hands off of her.
There it was, the crux of the problem. She’d walked into the dining room last night looking so incredibly soft and enticing in her peach velvet gown, and his attraction to her had instantly turned into lusty desire. She shouldn’t be able to tempt him like that. Her dislike of him should have been enough to put him off, but instead it was having the opposite effect.
He rapped on her bedroom door. There was light
coming from under it, indicating she hadn’t retired yet. It was nearly a minute before she opened the door, though. The fluffy white robe she was clutching close to her throat suggested she’d kept him waiting while she put it on. Her hair floated loosely around it, very dark in the dim lamplight behind her. She was looking too bloody soft again, turning his thoughts in an intimate direction. Was she wearing anything under that robe?
“It’s rather late,” she said. “What do you want, Sebastian?”
Her curt, no-nonsense tone got his mind out from under her robe. “We need to discuss tomorrow’s agenda,” he told her.
“It can’t wait until the morning?”
“No. Waiting led to that unpleasant scene with Courtly today. I gathered from your splendid tirade afterward that you’d rather avoid any more like that.”
She made a tsking sound. “Very well, I’ll meet you in the parlor.”
“Don’t be absurd, Maggie. We’re married. Your servants won’t raise a brow if you invite me into your room. They’ll expect it, actually.”
“I told my housekeeper, Florence, about the marriage so she can turn away any well-wishing visitors tomorrow that we aren’t ready to deal with, but the rest of my servants aren’t aware of our supposed—”
“Yes, they are.”
She glared at him for taking that liberty upon himself but opened the door wider and walked back into her room to put some distance between them. She secured her robe more fully, tying it about her waist. Her hair was longer than he’d realized. Having seen it tossed about on the ship, it had been hard to tell that it reached her hips. Easy enough to see now since she was still giving him her back.
Her room was a surprise. He would have expected someone of Margaret’s gruff temperament to prefer dark, masculine colors to match her aggressive nature, but her walls were papered in pink roses, her vanity draped in white lace, her large bed covered with a lilac spread and fluffy silk pillows. The velvet drapes were a darker, bold shade of pink.
Numerous chairs were scattered about the room, upholstered in the same theme. Her plump reading chair was in purple and pink flowers, the seat of her desk chair in dark purple and red. The carpet was a red and pink floral swirl in a typical motif. The large bookcase that covered half of one wall was overstuffed with books attesting to his suspicion that she was also a bluestocking. All the wood in the furnishings was white oak. And there were flowers everywhere, in large vases on the floor, small vases on the tables, in pots near the covered windows, giving the room a pleasant scent. The woman really did like to garden.
Her desk was a working desk, cluttered with household account books and receipts, a few framed pictures, one of her sister Eleanor, whom he recognized. Sadness swept over him as he thought about her death. She’d been a charming young woman and so happy about her engagement to Giles. It bothered him that Margaret blamed him for her death.
Margaret’s back stiffened perceptibly when she heard him close the door behind him. She turned to face him. The white lace of her nightgown was revealed at the top opening of her robe. He was glad to see it. Imagining her naked under that robe would have kept him awake the rest of the night.
“We seem to be progressing rather rapidly, to have reached this point already,” she commented, her tone still showing her annoyance with him. “Weren’t you going to do some investigating first?”
He strolled across the room. He was heading to the comfortable-looking reading chair behind her, but when she scurried so quickly out of his way, he changed his mind and continued in her direction instead.
“A waste of time,” he said, “now that news of your marriage will be making the rounds. And I’ve taken the liberty of sending one of your servants to Edgewood with the news of your return…with a husband.”
“You take far too many liberties,” she replied, still retreating from him.
“You hired me and will be paying a princely sum for my efforts to find out if there’s a plot against my father. Don’t quibble over the way I do my job. Now, in the morning, send a note to my father that you’ll be coming by for a visit with your husband.”
That got her to stop moving. “Am I to warn him who I married?”
“No, let’s get me in the door before he finds out. Otherwise, we might not find him home a’tall.”
“You really think he’d just leave, so he doesn’t have to deal with seeing you again?”
“Either that, or he will simply inform you that while you are still welcome, your husband isn’t, which will defeat the purpose of this farce.”
She sighed. “Very well. So once we arrive, what exactly do we tell them? How did we meet? Where did we marry?”
“In which country did you stay the longest during your travels?”
“My visits to Germany and Italy were about equal in length.”
“I spend a good deal of time in Italy, so that will do. We were staying at the same hotel. You recognized me and refreshed my memory of who you are. I was immediately charmed and began a whirlwind courtship that swept you off your feet, and we were married two weeks later.”
“Oh, my, that soon?”
“My plan was to not give you enough time to recall all the reasons why you probably shouldn’t marry me.”
“Smart man,” she rejoined with a nod. “But I prefer the simplicity of love conquers all obstacles, so that wouldn’t have been an issue. At least, that’s what I will tell your father.”
“It may not be necessary to say anything to him a’tall.”
“Why not?”
“Because he probably won’t stay in a room with me longer than it takes him to see me.”
“You really think he’ll walk away without saying a single word to you?”
“You think he won’t, after what he said to Timothy?” he rejoined.
Her expression changed. Good God, was that sympathy for him that she was exhibiting? When she despised him? No, that would be too much of a contradiction. Of course, his situation was pathetic. Anyone with a soft heart might pity him.
“Careful, Maggie,” he warned. “You don’t want to start liking me.”
She scowled at him and pointed a finger toward the door “You’ve apprised me of the course you have set in motion, now you can leave. I won’t tolerate any more of your insults.”
He didn’t move. “How the deuce do you perceive an insult in what I just said?”
“To imply that I could like you after everything you have done is an insult to me.”
“All that rubbish you’ve laid at my door, eh?” he replied sardonically. “Half of which I decline responsibility for. But that reminds me, do you still have those two letters from your sister?”
She blinked at the change in subject. “Why?”
“I’d like to look them over,” he said. “Do you still have them?”
“Yes, actually.” She moved to the writing desk set up in a corner of the room, opened a drawer, and retrieved the letters. “I’m not sure why I kept the first one,” she remarked as she returned and handed the letters to him. “It really isn’t legible it’s so tearstained. Why do you want to see these?”
“I find it odd, the manner in which she left. Three years after Giles’s death. Three years was ample time to recover from her grief. To up and leave without telling anyone implies a new reason for doing so, not the one you assumed.”
“The second letter doesn’t suggest that.”
“No, but the first might.”
She shook her head at him. “Look at it. There’s nothing to see.”
He did. Practically every word on the page had been smudged or washed away, as if Eleanor had cried buckets while writing it. But as he’d hoped, there were a few letters intact, not many, but he might be able to decipher a word or two if he tried.
“I’ll keep these for a bit if you don’t mind, to study them.”
“If you must. Just remember to return them. Now if you don’t mind, the hour is late.”
“You know, Maggie,” he said, br
ushing a lock of hair back from her cheek, “you’re going to have to pretend to adore me when others are around. You did marry me, after all. Do you need me to help you practice?”
She sputtered, jumping back out of his reach and pointing a finger toward her door again. “I’ll manage—somehow. Now get out!”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Suit yourself. But if you change your mind—”
“Out!”
He obliged, though his inclination was to push her a little harder. He wasn’t sure what it was about Maggie, but he was surprised to find he enjoyed riling her.
Chapter 15
M ARGARET HAD BEEN FORCED to turn her callers away that day, and there had been a slew of them. Even the dowager duchess had come by for a look at her new husband. The news had traveled fast through the neighborhood, and, according to Florence, everyone was asking who was Henry Raven, where was he from, and how had he won an earl’s daughter’s hand in marriage? But she refused to lie any more than she had to.
It had stormed through the night and briefly at midmorning. There was a new bank of storm clouds on the horizon late that afternoon. There was no telling which way they’d blow, but she hoped they’d blow back out to sea before reaching shore. Visiting in the rain wasn’t just unpleasant, it was in bad taste, putting one’s host on the spot to offer accomodations until the weather cleared.
Edgewood wasn’t on the cliffs, but it was close enough that the sea could be seen from its upper floors with an unobstructed view. Margaret had enjoyed those views while she lived there, especially in the early morning when she could watch the sun rise on the water. White Oaks was farther inland, with no view of the coast at all.
Margaret sighed, sitting on the seat across from Sebastian in the coach. “All this subterfuge is quite distasteful,” she remarked. “There’s still time to reconsider and simply make a clean breast of it.”