Lily (29 page)

“Yes.”

The one-word answer was loaded with some meaning she couldn’t fathom. She glanced at Devon in perplexity.

“Only at first,” he put in smoothly. “Clay’s going to find out if he likes doing an honest day’s work. Then … some other arrangements will be made.”

She felt as if she’d floundered into deep waters that were none of her business. For a tense moment she fiddled with her glass again. When no one spoke she said, “May I have some lemonade, please?” and Clay reached for the pitcher, grim relief evident in his face.

Devon said something incontestable, the conversation became general, and in no time they were all at ease again. Lily basked in a lovely, unwonted feeling of acceptance. The affection between Devon and his brother was obvious, and to be included in their companionable railery made her happier than she could remember being in a long time. She loved watching them laugh and joke with each other, sensing an understanding between them that went beyond brotherliness. She almost felt jealous of the easy smiles Clay could draw from Devon with such effortlessness, but her envy was nothing compared to the pleasure Devon’s unusual high spirits gave her. She never considered that her own presence had anything to do with it, nor that Clay was as surprised and intrigued by his brother’s uncharacteristic good humor as she was.

“Excuse me. Afternoon t’ you.”

Devon glanced up at his land steward, standing a respectful distance away, twisting the wide black brim of his hat in his hand. “Arthur,” he greeted him, nodding. “Do you need me?”

“Ais, in a manner o’ speaking.”

Devon pushed back his chair and walked over to Cobb. The two men had a short conversation, then Devon turned back to the table. “I’ve got to go have a look at Robert Slopes’s cottage. Cobb says his wife tried to burn it down last night.”

He stared back impassively when Clay’s first impulse was to laugh, and Lily had a swift insight into one of the differences between the two brothers. If Clay had been the firstborn, she wondered idly, would he have been the responsible one? Or was the distinction more fundamental, more a matter of nature than order of birth?

“Take care of Lily,” Devon told his brother with a smile that didn’t diminish the seriousness of the admonition. “Don’t let her get too tired. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

When Devon turned his smile on her, she felt a queer twist in her chest. She watched him walk away, admiring his long-legged stride and the smooth, fluid movement of his wide shoulders, until he and Mr. Cobb were out of sight.

She felt Clay’s intent gaze and turned to look at him, then away to hide a blush. She had let too much show in her face, she realized. What must he think of her—the girl who had once worn cap and apron and brought him his breakfast on a tray? Now she was his brother’s coddled and protected … what? “Companion”? She had no idea. Clay’s bewilderment over this odd turn of events must be extreme, although it could hardly be stronger than her own. She saw that he was still watching her, his expression frankly bemused, and blurted out the first thing that came into her mind.

“How did Mr. Cobb lose his hand?”

Clay looked startled, but answered readily enough. “It was a long time ago, when he was fourteen. Cobb’s father was my father’s steward. We grew up together at Darkstone, played together like brothers. When I was four, Dev and Cobb and I were playing where we weren’t allowed to play—in an abandoned tin mine on the estate. It’s been razed since then, but at the time there was a way to get into the main shaft if you were small enough and curious enough. We were.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t remember it very well, but somehow I got into a long, narrow crawl space above the shaft roof where the timbers were half rotted. And then for some reason I was afraid to come out. Dev crawled in to get me, and the strut collapsed. We were both trapped.”

“How old was Devon?”

“Ten. So then Cobb climbed up and got his shoulders under the broken roof of the thing somehow, giving us enough space to slither out. And at the last second, everything came down on him. His arm was crushed. They had to take his hand off.”

“How horrible,” breathed Lily, imagining it. “You must have felt—terribly—” She stopped in confusion.

“Guilty? I suppose I should have, but I was so little. Devon’s the one who really suffered.”

Yes, thought Lily, he would have. Even at ten, he’d have taken on his shoulders the burden of responsibility for Cobb’s tragic accident.

“Dev was always the sober one,” Clay said as if reading her mind. “Even when he was little he was serious and intense, like my father. He felt things more deeply than other people—or,” he specified, laughing, “certainly more than I did. And sometimes that made him unhappy.”

“I see.” But she didn’t, not really, and a natural reticence prevented her from asking questions.

“Do you know about Dev’s wife?”

Lily started. Was her face that transparent? “No, I—that is, I’ve heard that she died.”

“Yes, she’s dead. Her name was Maura.” He put his dusty bare feet on the chair Devon had vacated and folded his arms across his chest. He wore no coat or waistcoat, and he’d rolled his shirt sleeves up to the elbows. He looked completely relaxed, the picture of the indolent country squire at home, but there was tension in the set of his lips and a new seriousness in his fine blue eyes. “Devon fell in love with her when he was twenty-three. She was half Irish, half French. Black-haired, white-skinned. Very beautiful. She was my sister’s oldest child’s governess. Needless to say, it wasn’t a suitable match.”

“No,” Lily said faintly. “No, I can see that.”

“They had a clandestine affair. But Dev couldn’t leave it at that. I don’t know if it was his passion for her or his sense of honor, but he made up his mind to marry her. You can imagine the family’s reaction.”

“They must have been—shocked.”

“Horrified. My father threatened to cut him off, everyone was universally against it—even after Dev found out she was pregnant and told them so. But he was set on it and nothing else would do. He told them he had to marry his own child’s mother, and it didn’t matter to him if she were a milkmaid.”

He reached for his glass and swallowed a sip of lemonade. Lily sat perfectly still, making pleats in the cloth belt of her dressing gown, waiting.

“So he married her. My father didn’t cut him off—that had never been anything but a threat. He could have brought her here to live, or to my mother’s house in Devonshire, but instead he bought a farm in Dorset with his own money and set out to learn farming. She was from Dorset. He drought it would please her.” He grimaced and fell silent again, as if it hurt to recollect the rest of the story.

“Clay, you don’t have to tell me.”

He shook his head quickly. “I don’t know what their life was like, because Devon won’t talk about it. The baby was born—they named him Edward, after my father—and eight months later Maura took all the money she could find in the house and ran away with Dev’s hired man. For some reason, God knows why, they took the child with them.”

“My God.”

“Dev went after them. He searched for weeks, and finally found his baby in Crewkerne. Dead from smallpox, in the cottage of an old woman Maura had given him to so that she and her lover could travel faster. A little later he found them as well, in a pauper’s grave in Weymouth. They’d been waiting for a boat to take them to France when the disease killed them, too.”

He stood up and went to stand at the top of the terrace steps, facing the deep blue of the Channel. Lily stayed where she was. She pressed her fingers to her lips and blinked back tears of sorrow.
Devon.
She wanted to see him so badly, to hold him. The terrible story filled her with grief for him and his infant son, and with a cold and murderous fury toward the woman named Maura. She’d thought of her from time to time, but only the bare fact of her; she’d never been substantial enough in Lily’s mind to warrant more than an occasional twinge of unhappy curiosity. Now she saw her clearly, with her black hair and her white skin, her corrupt and treacherous heart.
Maura.
She even hated her name. She wanted to do violence to her.

When a little of her composure returned, she stood up and went to join Clay. She touched his arm; he pivoted to face her. She could imagine that the bleakness in his face mirrored the same emotion in hers. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I’m not sure why I did,” he admitted with a hint of his old smile behind his eyes. “Maybe because Dev seems almost happy these days.”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken if you think that has anything to do with me. But I—care about him, and I’m grateful to you for telling me what happened. He… never would have.”

They stood side by side, staring out at a restless high tide, thinking their separate thoughts. “He came back to Cornwall,” Clay resumed after a minute, “and lived like a mad recluse for about a year. None of us could help him. He was literally untouchable. The only comfort he could find was in drunkenness. That was the worst time,” he confided, turning to look at her. “We’d been so close before, but he couldn’t even talk to me. I missed him,” he said simply.

“Then my father died. It’s ironic, but that’s what made Dev start to heal. Finally he was able to come out of himself and look around at other people. His world was black, but he’d learned he could survive in it, so he was able to comfort us. Especially my mother, who was completely shattered. After that, he threw himself into the running of Darkstone. It wasn’t for the money, of course—he could live like a king for the rest of his life without lifting a finger. But he needed the work, the routine, I guess, to give him back his equilibrium.”

He faced her again, this time with a real smile. “He’s still not the brother I grew up with, but he’s a great deal better off than he was five years ago. And you can think what you like, Miss Troublefield, but part of it is because of you.”

Simple words, spoken in a light tone. Clay could have no idea of their effect on Lily. She turned her face aside, fearful again that he would see too much. The thought of meaning something to Devon, the possibility that he might care for her—But it couldn’t be. In her heart she knew better. Clay was being kind, or naïve. Devon’s interest in her had always been quite narrow and specific. At least, having listened to Clay, she had a better understanding of
why,
what it was in him that would not allow him to see her, or perhaps any woman, as anything but a bed partner—and a temporary one at that. Someone to give money to in the morning—or perhaps, if she were very special, at the end of the month.

“You may believe whatever you like, too,” she answered, striving to echo Clay’s lightheartedness in her voice, “but what Devon feels for me is a very nice mixture of gratitude and guilt. Which is quite wonderful, and something a bright housemaid would be foolish not to exploit, don’t you think? Why, if I play my cards right, I might even get him to buy me a new dressing gown. Then I won’t have to listen to any more slanderous and unkind slurs on this one.”

“You’re no housemaid.”

Her teasing smile froze; her heart stuttered. He couldn’t know, he
couldn’t.
“Would that that were true,” she answered, hoping she sounded wistful.

“You’re a lovely young lady who seems to have fallen on hard times. I doubt that Dev could do much better with a countess.”

Too fast to hide, tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. It was because she’d been ill that she was so emotional these days, she told herself. But Clay’s sweetness undid her.

He laughed softly and brushed the tears away, then took her hand and led her toward the house. “Enough excitement for you today, Miss Lily. You’re to take to your bed for the rest of the afternoon.”

“Oh, but—”

“No arguments. I want you hale and hearty on Saturday.”

“Saturday?”

“Your first
real
outing. I’m selling the
Spider,
did Dev tell you? That’s my ship. I’d like you to see her before I do—help me say good-bye to her and all that. She’s lying in the Fowey, below Lostwithiel. What do you say?”

“Well, I—I don’t know. Will Devon come?”

“Most certainly. He’d never trust me alone with you.”

“You are very silly,” she scolded him with a misty-eyed smile. “And, yes, I’d love to come.”

L
ILY AWOKE TO THE
high, plaintive cry of stone curlews nearby, and for several blank seconds she couldn’t remember where she was. A heavy footstep overhead confused her further. Then she heard the watery slap of waves and noticed the gentle rocking motion of the feather bed she was lying on, and memory filtered back. She was aboard the
Spider,
having a nap in the captain’s cabin.

And quite a fine cabin it was. Not luxurious—too small and tidy for that—but wonderfully comfortable in a masculine, unadorned style that radier surprised her. The “young master,” for all his kindness to her and his abundant charm, was not a man Lily had ever been able to take quite seriously. Now that she’d seen his ship, however, and listened to his energetic, informative—and exhausting—commentary on the sloop’s innumerable seafaring attributes, she was ready to revise her opinion. Clayton Darkwell might be carefree, irresponsible, and immature, the classic younger son, but about ships and sailing he was plainly a bona fide, unmitigated expert.

He also had a fanatic’s habit of assuming that everyone else shared his obsession. “I know what you’re thinking,” he’d told Lily thirty seconds after she’d stepped from the Darkwell carriage and beheld the
Spider,
tied up below in a picturesque river estuary. “For her size, she’s grossly over-rigged. But that’s what makes her so fast! Besides the gaff main, she carries double square topsails, roached and sheeted to that spread arm low down on the mast, and a big jib sail and a flying jib as well. That’s why she needs those great running backstays, to take the driving strain. That’s why she’s clinker built, too, which is much stronger than carvel. Come on, let’s go aboard.”

Lily and Devon had exchanged blank, humorous glances before following him down the dusty, twisting path to the water’s edge. Clay whistled, and across the way a head popped up above the sloop’s gunwale. A man waved. Soon a small, single-masted boat Clay called a lugger was being rowed toward them by the man who had waved, and a few minutes later they were all on board the
Spider.