Coming Home (21 page)

C
OLLY STRODE TOWARDS the stables. He had much work to catch up on since the last few days had been spent on his own interests. Granted, the Trewbridges were the most generous of employers and had taken Juliana's cause as their own. But he could not presume upon their generosity any longer.

First, he would arrange for the empty tied cottage to be cleaned and repaired. Now that their interloper had been despatched home to Cornwall with, as John had put it, ‘a flea in his ear', they could prepare the cottage for one of the new workers Colly intended to employ. The marquess and John had endorsed his plans to expand the cattle-breeding programme on the home farm, and institute grain crops on a couple of outlying farms where good fertile land was lying fallow.

He must also look over the big gatehouse that had been unoccupied since the last steward retired.

‘Buildings first, people next,' he muttered to himself. It was an old axiom of his father's about preparing for new employees. It was about the only thing he and Colly had agreed upon.

He passed a colourful flowerbed of London Pride and pinks. Juliana would like those. He'd have some taken up to her room.

‘Sir!' A footman hurried towards him. ‘Mr Hetherington?'

Colly waited for the man to catch up to him. He knew his long legs ate up the ground much faster than most people's.

‘You have visitors, sir. In the large drawing room with her ladyship and Miss Colebrook.'

Colly's eyebrows rose. If Twoomey had seen fit to show the visitors to the large formal drawing room, then there must either be a very large group of visitors, or else the butler wished to impress them with the grandeur of the salon. The Trewbridges preferred the smaller room.

Perhaps some of their army friends had descended upon them. That would be fun, but they would be more likely to ask for John than for Colly. It was early for a morning call but ex-army men were notorious
for not keeping to the prescribed rules of polite behaviour. He sighed and retraced his steps, wondering if he was going to get any work done today. The footman pattered behind him. Colly had still not got used to the deference with which the Trewbridge servants treated him. If his father could see them, he would be amazed.

Then Colly stopped dead on the threshold of the big room. Good heavens! It
was
his father.

Here. Now. And his mother and his grandmother. No William, however.

His eyes flicked to where Juliana sat beside the marchioness and he felt the sharp fangs of betrayal bite.

‘You knew of this?' he asked her, ignoring everyone else in the room.

Into the fraught silence Juliana whispered, ‘Only since yesterday. I did not have time to—'

He cut her off. ‘Really?' He was unable to keep the derisory tone from his voice.

‘You must not blame Juliana,' the marchioness said. ‘It was my idea.'

‘I do not doubt it, ma'am,' Colly said bitingly. ‘But Juliana—'

‘Colwyn!' his father barked. ‘How dare you speak to the marchioness like that?' His father had been seated in a wing chair near the marchioness but he leapt to his feet to give Colly a dressing-down. He hadn't changed a bit.

‘Enough, sir.' The marchioness could bark too. ‘Colly, please be seated.'

To his annoyance, Colly found himself obeying her like a lapdog. Naturally he had to obey his employer's wife, but in his anger, for one dangerous minute he considered defying her. Simmering, he concentrated on reining in his temper. There was no point in doing battle when you were so irate you could not think straight.

‘My boy.' With a footman's assistance his grandmother had risen and was bearing down upon him. He jumped up again and hugged her.

‘Grandmama! Dearest Grandmama, why did you not continue to write? I—'

‘Hush,' his grandmother cautioned. She jerked her head in his father's direction.

‘I thought as much,' he muttered, for her ears only.

‘One of my own servants, too,' she explained. ‘When I found out, I sent him to your father with a note telling him that I had thrown the fellow out and he might like to employ the spy himself.'

Colly grinned. He could see a few wrinkles on the old lady's face that hadn't been there five years ago, but then, he had a few more wrinkles
now, too. She looked tired. No doubt travelling in a closed carriage with his father was responsible. They must have left very early. But he was pleased to see his grandmother still retained her fiery spirit.

‘I'm proud of you, boy,' she said loudly. ‘A brigade-major, Miss Colebrook tells me.'

He flicked a glance at Juliana. Her back was ramrod straight against the back of the red velvet sofa. Her glorious hair glowed against the rich fabric and, although her eyes were downcast, he could see the hurt in the hunched shoulders and the elbows held tightly against her sides. Well, she deserved it. How dare she conspire with the marchioness against him? Friends did not betray each other. The marchioness was … well, a marchioness. But he would never have thought Juliana would do this. She
knew
how he felt about his family.

Concentrate, Hetherington
, he told himself.
Find out what is going on
. But he found it difficult to tear his eyes away from Juliana's bowed head and tried to swallow a trace of guilt. Had he been too harsh?

‘My boy,' his mother husked. To his knowledge, his mother had never raised her voice. Even when he and his brother had been naughty and their tutor complained, she had been patient, almost long-suffering.

‘Mama,' he said gently. He had always been gentle with her, even when he was still in leading strings. He had barely been able to toddle when he discovered that she received a constant stream of harangue and pointless gabble from his father. His first memories of his mother were ones where she sat silent, meekly listening to one of his father's monologues. As Colly grew older he had often wished she would show some spirit when his father made a scathing comment about one of her bosom friends, or was speaking rubbish about the political situation. For Lady Hetherington was very knowledgeable about the important issues of the day, having been brought up in a politically aware household.

And perhaps that was the crux of the matter. Mama seemed to have a wide circle of associates, whereas his father did not have her easy talent for making and keeping friends. And as much as Ambrose Hetherington fancied himself to be
au fait
with the revolutionary ideals of Mr John Wilkes and the far-sightedness of Lord Grenville's support of Catholic emancipation, he could never understand the motivations which drove politicians to go out on a limb and saw off the branch. Yet his wife observed such extremes with an amused tolerance that came from an educated understanding of men in power, and from the natural distance with which she observed life's foibles.

‘Colly,' she murmured again. ‘
How
I have missed your dry comments and reliable kindness. When your grandmama told me you had joined
the army, I—' She broke off to swallow hard. ‘Never mind. Here you are, safe and sound.' She blinked away a tear and he took her gloved hand and kissed it.

‘Mama. I thought about you every day. How is my little sister?'

His mother smiled. ‘Not so little any more. She is turned seventeen.'

‘She's a baggage,' his father broke in.

Lady Hetherington raised her eyebrows at this, and kept hold of Colly's hand. ‘She is quite the young lady. I doubt you'd recognize her,' she said, smiling, and Colly, dismayed, found himself feeling uncomfortable as he always had when his parents disagreed. They seemed to take a disdainful delight in holding opposing opinions.

‘She did not come today?'

Sir Ambrose answered. ‘We had a carriageful,' he said resentfully. ‘Your grandmother
would
come.'

‘I wrote to your grandmama as well,' the marchioness explained from the sidelines.

Then to Colly's horror, the marchioness took her fire straight into the enemy's camp. ‘Have you found out the truth yet from Miss Blevin?' she asked Sir Ambrose, as if she were discussing the exorbitant price of coal or the latest of Mr Watt's inventions.

‘What truth?' Ambrose Hetherington spluttered.

‘The truth about who her baby's father is, of course,' the marchioness replied impatiently.

‘Well I …' Sir Ambrose floundered, out of his depth.

The marchioness pressed her advantage. ‘But why not, Sir Ambrose? After all, it is as plain as the nose on your face that Colly would not do such a thing.' She managed to instil a large amount of incredulity into her question, leaving everyone in no doubt of her opinion.

Colly looked around the room, trying not to show how eagerly he awaited his father's answer. His grandmother perched on the edge of a chair, her eyes never once leaving his face. His mother's head was bowed as she examined her gloved hands. Two very different women, but both with his interests at heart. How could he have forgotten that?

Miss Colebrook's eyes were fastened on his and for a moment he thought she would speak, then the door opened.

The rest of the Trewbridge family trooped in, followed by Twoomey and a footman bearing trays of wine and refreshments.

It tickled Colly's sense of humour to see his father leap to his feet again and fawn over the marquess, who favoured him with a brief nod. Instead, the marquess addressed Colly.

‘Colly, do introduce me to your – father, is it?' he asked. Not
Sir
Ambrose Hetherington
. Not a person in his own right. But a person attached to Colly, and therefore acceptable at Trewbridge.

Colly knew an evil moment of smug satisfaction.

Then the marquess motioned John to come forward. ‘Sir Ambrose, I'd like you to meet my son, John, Lord Brechin, who had good reason to be grateful to Colly during a couple of skirmishes on the Peninsula.'

John bowed towards Sir Ambrose then faced the ladies. ‘And who are these ladies, Colly?'

Colly sensed his father's ill-concealed displeasure. He obviously couldn't understand why the Trewbridges had befriended his son. Colly didn't care. Not one bit. He had spent half a lifetime trying to appease his father for some unknown sin, all to no purpose. He was tired of living his life to spite his father, because the Marquess of Trewbridge had just brought home a simple fact to Colly.
He
was not his father. He was Colwyn Ellett Hetherington, who had always been honest, who had acquitted himself well in wartime, and who now held a responsible position in the household of the Marquess of Trewbridge. And if his father could not abide him then it was regrettable, but it did not matter greatly. The world would continue to turn.

Colly felt as if somebody had freed him from bondage. Well, almost. He would like to hear his father's reply to the marchioness's question. If Father was so sure Colly was the culprit, what evidence did he have to back that up? Or if his father had any doubts at all, why had he treated Colly that way? Why hadn't he searched for the real culprit?

Colly glanced across to where the marquess smiled down at his wife. Thank goodness. His lordship was not going to chastise her about taking the law into her own hands. Much as Colly deplored the way the lady went about things, one could not doubt her courage. Of course, he tempered the thought, it was easy to be courageous when one was a marchioness.

‘Now,' Lord Trewbridge said conversationally when the company was settled, ‘how can we clear Colly's name?'

Both Sir Ambrose and the Dowager Lady Hetherington spoke at once. The lady's ‘Quite easily' cut across Sir Ambrose's ‘Personally, I don't see the need—'

Everyone stared at Colly's grandmother.

‘Easily?' the marchioness asked.

The dowager gave a snort of amusement. ‘All one has to do is look at Amelia Blevin's child. He is the spitting image of your brother, Colly, right down to the drooping eyelids and jet-black hair. Anyway, Amelia has already admitted it to her parents. She sees herself as the future
Lady Hetherington. But the joke is on her. She thought you were the easier catch, Colly, but you refused to marry her. And now William, the culprit, ignores her. She must have suspected he would not come up to scratch so she tried you first.'

‘
William
?' Colly was aware his voice had risen, but he couldn't help himself. ‘B-but William believed in me. He—' Then he remembered how William had turned on him. He spun around and glared at his father. ‘You suspected this at the time, didn't you?
Didn't you
?' His body shook with the effort to restrain himself from planting his own father a facer. ‘Yet you threw me out. Why? I don't understand. I don't care what you think about me any more, but I want to know
why
.'

‘Because,' the dowager's voice said clearly, ‘the fool knows that you are far more suited to run Heather Hill than William is. You had to be got out of the way so William could succeed. But instead of doing that sensibly, like giving you one of the minor estates,
my son
,' and here his grandmother's voice dripped scorn, ‘elected to throw you to the wolves.'

Colly blinked, unable to say anything. Of all the scenarios he had envisaged, lying lonely and unhappy beneath the skies of Spain and Portugal, this was the last thing he had expected.

‘Mama! Please,' Sir Ambrose bleated in distress.

But Colly's mother leaned across and held her mother-in-law's hand. ‘She is quite right. It was despicable. Colly could have been killed and all for naught. And William has not precisely shone with all the opportunities he has been given.'

‘It makes no odds,' Sir Ambrose shouted. ‘He is still the future owner of Heather Hill and that's all there is to it.'

‘I know,' Lady Hetherington said, as if this was a road they had travelled many times before.