Martha Schroeder (22 page)

“River!” Sir Richard exclaimed.

“Yes.” It was Amelia who answered. “Tell him, Gideon.”

“If nothing else, it will end his attempt to bully you and blame you for his nephew’s disappearance,” Jane added in her schoolmistress voice. Sir Richard started to smile at her.

“He disappeared?” Gideon said, suddenly alert.

“I think we had better share our memories and dreams,” Sir Richard said, his smile gone. “Jane is right. The truth uncovered in the sunlight may set us all free. And it will end my attempts to force you to remember what you so clearly do not wish to. I promise you that.”

“Very well.” Gideon drew a deep breath and pulled Amelia’s hand closer to his chest. The movement lifted her out of the chair, and once again she took up her position on the edge of the bed, guarding Gideon from any threat.

“I remember running water ... and sunlight upon it. It seemed to me that I knew that stream or river well. But in my dream the water changes and swirls and eddies, and my mouth is full of water and my nose, too.” Gideon spoke faster and faster, as if trying to get rid of the words as quickly as possible so he could be done with reliving the pain and loss of that time. “I cannot breathe. My eyes sting, and I cannot see. I try to breathe, but there isn’t any air. Just water. Then there is a great flash and a burst of pain in my head. And then I see white light everywhere, and the pain in my head and in my lungs starts to go away.”

His hand squeezed Amelia’s so tightly she had to fight not to cry out. She could see his eyes grow wilder and more frightened with every word. “After that, I don’t remember anything until I woke up with the gypsies. I was under a wagon, covered with rags, and I could hardly breathe. My head hurt, and my chest ached. I didn’t know where I was or why I hurt.” Gideon sighed and leaned back against the pillows, closing his eyes. “And that is all I remember.”

There was silence in the room. Gideon’s tortured voice had held them all spellbound, each one trying to picture what could have caused such a reaction.

Jane spoke first, her matter-of-fact voice defusing the unbearable tension. “I think perhaps you fell into a swiftly moving stream and could not swim. And then the flash and pain and waking up much later, still confused, make me surmise that you hit your head on something.”

Gideon shrugged, as if anxious to put the whole topic behind him. Amelia could see the sheen of perspiration gleaming on the part of his chest exposed by his nightshirt as well as on his face. The hand that held hers had grown cold as he talked. The white lines around his mouth had grown deeper. He was just about at the end of his tether, she thought.

Sir Richard turned away from the other three. He stood alone in front of the fireplace, isolated in his deep concentration. His frowning face seemed carved from stone, a face that would never smile again.

At last he looked around, and when he spoke it was in the tone of a barrister summing up before the jury. “I have thought about this a great deal. I have come to a conclusion, but I understand that the rest of you do not know what I know. So let me go over the facts.” He began to tick off points on his fingers. “First, Gideon Falconer is about the age my nephew Francis would be if he were alive. Second, Gideon Falconer knows the private lullaby that only Francis and members of his immediate family could know. Third, when Francis disappeared he had in his possession the silver ball he had received for his birthday shortly before. Fourth, that ball is now in Gideon Falconer’s possession.”

“It is iron,” Gideon said stubbornly. “It is black iron.”

“It is silver,” Sir Richard responded in the same tone. “Badly tarnished silver.”

“I will see to it that it is polished,” Amelia said, striving to keep her tone calm. “Then we will know.”

“In any case,” Sir Richard continued, “there are a great many coincidences in these two stories. Too many to be accepted as
just
coincidences. I believe there is a pattern.”

Amelia tensed. If he was going to insist again that somehow Gideon had known Francis and taken his keepsake and stolen his song, she was not going to order him out of her house again. She was going to get Hugh Sidley and one of the farmers to escort him bodily off the premises!

“Then there is the matter of the river.” Sir Richard stepped away from the fireplace and fixed Gideon with his gaze. “A river runs through our estate. Francis used to play there with some of the tenants’ children. He was playing there the day he disappeared. Everyone always thought he went into the river somehow. Francis could swim, but not very well. We all believed he drowned.” He looked at Gideon with something very like wonder in his gaze. “Just as you remember doing.”

Gideon could not seem to stop staring at Sir Richard, as if he were trying to decipher the message contained in his eyes. At last he spoke. “Are you saying once again that I knew Francis? Perhaps that I killed him for his possession?” He threw his chin up and stared defiantly at the friends who looked back at him with worry and fear in their eyes. “It happened more than once on the streets. I can tell you I did not harm anyone to steal from them, but I have no way of proving it. I can say that I never met anyone named Francis, but we all took whatever names we wanted, or were given, on the street. If I did know him, he could have been called anything.”

Sir Richard moved as if on marionette strings to stand by the bedside, looking down at Amelia and Gideon.

“I think he was called Gideon,” he said.

“Yes,” Amelia breathed. It fit. It answered the nagging questions she had asked herself about the song and the iron ball. It explained Gideon’s nightmare. “It could be.”

Gideon stared at Sir Richard. “You do not think I harmed him? Your nephew?”

There was a long pause, heavy with expectation. Sir Richard extended his hand, and a painful half smile crooked his mouth. At last he spoke. “I think you
are
my nephew,” he said. “I think you are Francis, that you fell in the river, cracked your skull, and were fetched up out of the water by the gypsies. Why they did not recognize you as the grandson of the ‘seigneur’ of the neighborhood I do not know. Perhaps because in your plain breeches and shirt you looked like anyone’s child. They must have hidden you under the wagon and covered you with rags so you wouldn’t be discovered when our men were out searching for you.

“By that time they must have known who you were and feared being accused of hitting you over the head and kidnapping you because you had been missing for so long. I remember they left the area not long after you were lost. They must have taken you with them so they would not be pursued for kidnapping a peer’s child, which would have happened if they had left you behind to be found.”

Gideon released Amelia’s hand and ran his hands over his face. “No. I do not remember anything like that—and I would remember. I did not know the secret of the ball. I do not remember you or—or my parents. It is just a dream of running water. (must have found the iron ball somewhere. I am not your nephew. I am not some long-lost scion of a noble house! I would have known! I would have remembered.” His voice grew hoarser and more tortured as he spoke, and Amelia thought she could see the glitter of tears in his eyes.

“I am convinced that it
is
true. There is no other explanation that covers all the facts.” Sir Richard reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, flat case covered in worn petit point embroidery. He flipped a hidden latch and opened it up to reveal two miniatures. One was of a small boy with unruly black hair and a mischievous smile. The other picture was of a beautiful young woman with the same tumbled black curls and smile.

“That is Serena. She has dark hair, as you said of your mother.”

“Of the woman who sang,” Gideon corrected. He drew back from the open case as if afraid it might harm him. “I do not know if the woman I remember was my mother.”

Amelia picked up the case and looked at the smiling child. “Oh, Gideon, that is just the way I imagined you must have looked in the years before I knew you!”

Gideon looked away, as if her words pained him. Immediately Amelia reached for his hand. She had not meant to hurt him, but she was more and more convinced that Sir Richard was right.

Sir Richard turned away, fighting some emotion of his own. It could not be easy for him, probing like a surgeon at the painful boil of Gideon’s past, Amelia thought.

“I am convinced of who you are,” Sir Richard said. “I know that this is sudden for you and that you are having some difficulty with the idea.”

“I am not having any difficulty.” Gideon spoke in the cold, controlled voice he used when he was clamping down on all emotion, fighting to keep it under control. “I reject the idea. I cannot believe that a small toy and a song can have truly led you to this mad notion.”

Sir Richard turned back to face his adversary. He spoke as if Gideon had said nothing. “I want you to come home with me, to Southbridge. For Christmas. If we wait here for a few more days, you will have recovered enough to travel. Christmas isn’t until next week.” Sir Richard held out his hand, but Gideon ignored it. “If you prefer, I will introduce you simply as my fellow officer, Gideon Falconer. But I want to see you there, and I want you to see it. Once you are there, you may remember something more of your past.”

Gideon looked up, and after hesitating a split second, took Sir Richard’s hand. “And to see if your sister-in-law has an infallible vision that I am her son? It is very kind of you to overcome your distaste for my origins and try to claim me. I do not know your sister-in-law, but I do not want to play guessing games with her about her loss. It would be unfair to her and to me. I make no claim of being anyone’s heir.”

Amelia had sat silent, unwilling to utter so much as a word if it would lead Gideon to one reaction rather than another. She wanted to know how he felt, what he believed about himself. For years he had been at odds with Society because he was an outcast who through luck and grit and hard work had made a precarious place for himself in the world. He had despised those who despised him either because of his supposed origins or because he had no origins at all. But he had also rejected any attempt to accept him. He had refused Amelia’s love because he felt unworthy of her, for no reason other than his lack of known parents.

Now he was faced with another possibility—that he had been born into the highest levels of the very Society which had scorned him, and which he, in turn, had scorned. Now he had an opportunity to be accepted into those previously closed circles solely on the basis of his ancestors. No wonder his instinctive reaction had been to flee and reject this gift that demanded he turn his back on what he had made of himself in order to become what he had been born to be. Amelia sighed. One way or the other, Gideon’s life would never be the same.

Sir Richard looked down at her and smiled. “Will you spend Christmas with me at Southbridge, Lady Amelia? If you come, I feel sure I can persuade Gideon to do so, no matter what his feelings about my ideas of his family. Will you come?”

She answered from her heart, without thinking. “Yes,” she said.

“Amy!” Gideon looked at her as if she had betrayed him. “How can you?”

“I have no plans for Christmas, nowhere to go. I do not want to stay here or return to London. Not yet. Not until Eustace has gone.” She tried to smile, but the truth of her words pierced her heart. “I do not want anyone’s sympathy, Gideon,” she hastened to add, despising the idea of being seen as pitiful. “You must make your own decision, but if there is any possibility that Southbridge is where you were born, I want to see it. So thank you. Sir Richard. I accept with pleasure.”

The colonel turned to Jane, sitting silent and watchful, a little apart from the others. “Miss Forrester?” he said. “Will you do me the honor of accompanying us to Southbridge for Christmas?”

She shook her head and smiled. “I do not belong at your family reunion, Sir Richard,” she said formally. “But I thank you for including me in the invitation. I have work awaiting me in London. Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for me.”

Richard smiled at her. “Lady Amelia is not a relation so far as I know, and Gideon refuses to acknowledge even the possibility of belonging to my family. At least you own yourself my friend. That puts you in a very small group.” Looking down at her, he locked his gaze with hers. “Please come, Jane. Surely someone else can take over your work. What would they do if you were ill?”

Jane hesitated. Amelia could see that she truly wished to go but was held back by some apprehension. She couldn’t allow her friend to give in to fear. Or Gideon to do so either.

“I wish you would come, Jane. I would like you to be there with me. And you, Gideon. Would it not be better to face the past than to hide from it? Whatever you find at Southbridge cannot change the man you have become.”

“Very well, Amelia.” Jane’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, and she looked at Sir Richard as she spoke. “I will go.”

“Outspoken as always, Amy.” Gideon’s smile was forced, but he raised their clasped hands to his lips. “You win. We will all journey to Southbridge for Christmas.”

Chapter Seventeen

Three days later, they set out. Gideon had spent the intervening time sleeping and trying not to think of what Sir Richard had told him. As he had done when hurt fighting other boys years before or when wounded in battle, he set himself the task of healing as rapidly as possible, and managed to convince Amelia and Jane that he was ready after only three days.

After spending the better part of the day in the carriage with the ladies, Gideon insisted on riding the last few miles. He needed the open air and the feel of a horse underneath him when he saw Southbridge for what he insisted to himself was the first time.

The seat of the Marquess of Southbridge was a graceful stone castle, the major part of which dated from the time of the seventh Henry. It fit so perfectly into the woods and rolling lawns surrounding it that it almost seemed to have grown there. When they rounded the last turn in the long, rhododendron-lined avenue, and the mellow golden stone could be seen for the first time, glowing in the pale sunlight of a December afternoon, Gideon and Sir Richard instinctively reined in their mounts.