A Secret Passion (30 page)

“Please, Harry, let’s not start this again. You will benefit the most from our change of plans, as long as my father doesn’t find you!” Jane insisted. She was tired of being forced to endure Harry’s lighthearted arguments. “Enough of this. I must go and find out what George needs,” she said, rising to her feet.

Clarissa rose as well. “We can discuss all of this later, dear. I’m sure Harry is eager to be on his way to the manse.” She turned to him. “I do hope you will not be facing the inquisition there. I must warn you that my brother was most unhappy with your father after you departed. He did not spare him his tongue. He even threatened to remove him from the living, but I don’t think he will go through with it now.”

“It is quite all right if he does. The earl’s brother, a very nice old chap, invited me to ask my father if he would consider accepting the living in Seaton, as the rector there died just one month ago. He rightly guessed what Jane’s father would do. Well, I’m on my way now, to face the tears and sermons.”

Jane hugged Harry, thanking him for everything he had done for her. Harry brushed off her gratitude and grasped Clarissa’s hand in parting. Jane could not meet her aunt’s eyes as she too left, mounting the stairs to change into her riding habit.

“I shall see you at dinner, shan’t I, Jane, dear? We have much to discuss,” Clarissa called after her.

Jane found, after she had been at Pembroke for one day short of a fortnight, that she had little desire to leave again. Oh, it was not that she was avoiding the future. It was just that she loved the clean, crisp sea air, and the sparkling whitewashed walls in the village, and of course her animals—from the horses to the sleek, yowling barn cats guarding the grain in the stables from the scanty mouse population. As she stood at the first of the long rows of stalls in the main barn, she knew it was life surrounded by her animals that she would miss most.

Her mother and her mother’s mother before her had been the momentum behind everything that happened here. Her grandfather had built the stables for his wife to indulge her passion for all things equine. And Jane’s mother had only furthered the enterprise by encouraging her parents to begin a breeding farm. Her mother had dreamt of emulating her parents’ blissful marriage but had been doomed to failure. Losing her head to Edward Fairchild, a man who had ridden brilliantly, neck or nothing, to hounds, had been her first mistake. A dangerous fall, which broke his collarbone, and his courage, along with his love of horses, had been the next step on their road to ruin. Yes, marrying him had been her mother’s fatal mistake. But she had not departed this earth without instilling in her daughter the same passion she had shared with her own mother. And Jane felt the better for it.

Looking at the small gray pony munching sweet hay in the first stall, Jane sighed. Sadness engulfed her heart and forced another chilling thought. She would never have a daughter to inspire, as her mother and grandmother had had. The end of the females in her grandmother’s line would be Jane. She could almost see an image of her beautiful grandmother, who shared her unusual eyes, shaking her head.

Jane let herself into Snowy’s stall and ran her hand over the neck and back of her old first pony. She slid practiced fingers down one of her hind legs and felt the bowed tendon.

“She hasn’t suffered much since she bowed it. It only looks bad,” George said as he leaned over the lower half of the wooden stall door. “The new head groom should never have put her in with the two-year-olds—all kicks and bites, they are. As I told you, I don’t think he will work out, this new man. A bit of a jackass, if you’ll pardon me saying so.” Jane, intent on her examination, didn’t bother to look up.

“It is the cut on her flanks that makes me uneasy. Her days of being ridden are long gone, so the bow won’t matter,” Jane said as she stood up from her bent position and looked at the person, more friend than servant, whom she had depended on for so many years. “It will be hard to overlook this new offense, George. Let us give the man his papers and have done with it.” Jane patted the pony’s neck and moved her long forelock to the center of her head. “Sweet Snowy. You mustn’t desert me now. I’ve too few old friends left.”

“Well, you still have me, little miss,” George said in the darkness of the stall. The sound of munching filled the silence.

“Not for long. We leave in three days. George, I am mortally tired of saying good-bye. I would give my soul to be able to stay and fill up the rest of my life with days spent right here,” she replied sadly.

“If there was a way to reconcile with your father, I would suggest it. But you need not waste your breath. I am well aware of the incontractibility of your good father.”

Jane unlatched the stall door and let herself out. They agreed to take a look at the group of new foals out with their dams in the far pasture. After they walked side by side in long strides for a good distance, Jane grasped the elder’s hand.

“You won’t ever leave here, will you?” she asked.

“No. Never fear, miss.”

“Do you promise? I couldn’t bear the idea of this place going to wrack and ruin.”

“I won’t break the promise I made to you, nor the one I made to your mother. This place was her world, just as it is now yours. I would have done anything for her, as I would for you.”

They reached the wooden gate leading into the pasture and leaned against it. Her heart started pounding as she worked up the courage to ask the question she had tried to push to the subconscious depths of her brain without success.

“George, I know I can depend on you to tell me the truth if you know it.” She paused to pick up a rock and worked its edge with her gloved fingers as she concentrated her attention on it. “Theo has some far flung notion that… that the gamekeeper didn’t accidentally kill my mother, that it was my father,” she finished in a rush. “Is it true? Please, I beg of you, tell me the truth.”

George looked at her through kindly old eyes and sighed. “It is a bit of a story, really. But I guess it is time for you to know the whole of it.” He looked away, and his expression became distant. Jane was aware of his discomfort. “You see, I loved her and she loved me. I would not tell you, as I abhor distressing you, but she asked me to tell you when you were ready to hear it. She left me a letter explaining why she would do what she did, but I’m afraid it did not console me, nor will it help you. In it she explained that she just could not live anymore. She had begun to let fears of your father’s rages seep into her bones, and the guilt of our secret was eating her alive. She thought all of us would be better off without her. She thought it would calm your father, and she thought you and Theodore were old enough to be able to continue on without her. How very wrong she was.”

“What are you saying? She didn’t kill herself, did she? Good God! She would never do that.” Jane could see that George’s face was filled with the same grief that was consuming her soul. “She wouldn’t do it, I tell you. She loved us all too much. She wouldn’t have left the farm, her animals, and all of us,” cried Jane. A great sob escaped from her throat, and she reached for George. He took her in his arms, and she drew comfort from the familiar, musty warmth of her companion. When he did not respond, she continued to wallow in the jangling shock of it all. Long minutes passed before she could raise her eyes to George’s face. “You are quite, quite sure my father didn’t do it?”

George nodded his assent. “Your father hushed it up. Even threw the pistol she used into the sea, or so I believe. He hid the truth more for his own lofty aspirations than for you and your brother, I am sure. But I will give him credit for not telling you. I think he feared that you and young master Theodore would blame him if you knew the truth.”

“But how did it all start? She loved my father at one point, I think. She had everything to live for.”

“It was my fault. I fell in love with her after her father sent me to watch over the estate when the old steward died. I remember the time well.” His eyes seemed to glaze over a bit. “It was just before your brother was born. I was bowled over by her beauty, and her spirit. She insisted on getting on and backing the new batch of one-year-olds, laughing off the doctor’s warnings a week after Theodore arrived.

“She was filled with joy and light, until the day your father returned from his fortnight in town. He had missed the birth. It seemed as if all the happiness and light were extinguished when he returned. He delighted in antagonizing her, stooping to call her a simple country miss, who couldn’t hide her obsession with horses. Said most girls gave up that passion when a husband entered their lives. She never fought back. But over the years she turned to me more for comfort—comfort I was too eager to offer. Until finally, a decade later, she confided her love for me.”

“Well, of course she fell in love with you,” Jane responded with feeling. “I was blind not to have guessed.”

“No, no. Your mother’s moral strength and character forbade her to ever indulge in her dreams with me. And so we were stuck. We could never imagine going off together, leaving you and Theodore and her familial home. And we knew we could not take you with us, as he would have followed in a murderous rage until we would have been found. It was an impossible situation.” He looked past Jane to the field of horses grazing. “And your father’s temper… he never knew I had your mother’s heart, but he knew it did not belong to him anymore. And so he made her life a misery—with accusations of adultery, even questioning your paternity and sometimes even your brother’s! All this, when your dear mother refused to even kiss me. I tell you this not to turn you against him, but for you to be able to understand your mother’s state of mind at the end.”

Jane straightened George’s neckcloth, which she had disturbed in her distress. “I wish you were my father. I think I always did long for it. Maybe that is why I so calmly accepted my first marriage to Cutty. He and you embodied everything I craved in a father.”

“I am so happy to hear you realize that now. I was very concerned when you departed with Mr. Harry. He is a fun-loving young buck, but not at all for you, I think. Are you unhappy with the choices you have made?”

“Oh, George, I’m afraid I have made a muddle of things, just as Harry says. Almost as bad as my mother, really. But at least I did not follow through with it. Now all I must face is the shame of it. But Aunt Clarissa will stand by me, as will Sir Thomas. My despair rests in leaving here, and you. At least I will take comfort in knowing you are here to manage everything.” She paused before continuing, “And Theo has sworn off gaming, which assures that eventually we will be able to pay off all the debts, even the one to Lord Graystock.”

Jane could see concern etched in his wrinkled old face. “Are you quite, quite sure he won’t return for you?”

“George, it is an impossibility. I told you earlier I refused him two—no, three—times. No man returns for more abuse of that kind, least of all Lord Graystock.”

“And what if you went to him?”

“I could not. Not after all that has happened. And I cannot allow the ugly smear of my past to spread to his name. He has enough demons to contend with. George, really, we would be the most notorious couple in all of England.”

“Would that matter to you? You are spouting words so familiar to me. The ones your mother shouted at me all of a decade ago. Learn from her mistakes, Jane.”

Jane knew when George dropped the formality of her title that he was as serious as he ever got, which was as rare as a display of his anger. “I couldn’t bear for him to be ostracized further. Moreover, he detests the very sight of me, I assure you. After all the ridiculous things I have done, and the people’s lives I have disrupted—his being a prime example—you really can’t expect the man to have me. He has lost whatever regard he might have held dear, long ago,” she said, avoiding his gaze.

“Maybe, but perhaps not.”

“I shall never know. It is a fruitless question. I shall not see him again. It would make both of us wretchedly unhappy.”

Jane pushed open the gate, signaling her desire to end the conversation. She looked up and took his hands again in her own. “Thank you for telling me about Mother. It is a relief to know my father did not kill her. But I don’t know how I will ever reconcile the anguish of her final action.”

“Give it time, my dear. Peace will come as it did for me, years later. I take joy now in the simple things—the turning of the seasons, my circle of friends, and, of course, watching over her home and her children.”

Jane smiled and began walking toward a group of young horses nickering and kicking up their heels. “I am certain I have caused you nothing but sleepless nights rather than joy!”