Mistress by Midnight (25 page)

He watched her cut away from the track over the field, the feather on her flirty little hat trembling valiantly at every step. He let her go. Had to let her go. Had to let her live her life as she saw fit.

A life with no room for him.

Con felt a bleakness he had hoped to never feel again. But it was a selfish black emptiness he had no time for. If Beatrix had somehow discovered the truth, Laurette would need his help, whether she wanted it or not.

T
he smudges of dirt on her daughter’s face told her everything she was afraid of. Bea’s nose was pink and it looked like she had been crying. The children were waiting for her in the hallway, looking like two solemn sentinels. Between them both they had managed to find the painting and juggle it down three flights of stairs. Resting along the wall was a nearly life-size portrait in a chipped gilt frame.

Katie Stanbury, dressed in a golden-green panniered gown that matched her eyes, was posed outdoors with a collie that looked a lot like Mr. Carter’s Sam. She appeared not quite old enough to put up her light red hair, but too old for Beatrix’s braids. A large tear had split off one slender foot from the rest of her, and a glob of something stuck to the white of the dog’s coat. The artist had written “Miss Katherine Desmond Stanbury” in the misty background. Laurette felt the blood drain from her face.

“My! Mrs. Hardwick was right. The likeness is remarkable, isn’t it?” Her voice sounded amazingly normal, though a bit breathless from the near-run home.

Best just to seem absolutely unruffled by the proof listing against the smart new wallpaper. Have no interest in it. Treat it as insignificant, and Bea would think the portrait was nothing more than a fluke.

Bea shot James a triumphant look. Laurette half-expected
him to whip out a list of questions with which to interrogate her.

“She’s
my
grandmother and I look nothing at all like her,” he said doggedly. “This looks just like you, Beatrix Vincent.
If
that is your name.”

Bea sniffed. “Of course it’s my name! And you look like your papa, except for your eyes. You have Lady Conover’s eyes.”

The palest blue. Eyes that looked like they could pierce through the cobwebs to the truth with very little effort.

Marianna had always taken an interest in Beatrix when she came to Dorset for her week, and to Laurette’s surprise had promoted a friendship between Con’s children. James had considered himself too masculine to socialize much with a lowly
girl
—especially one who was taller than he—which made the friendship he and Bea had formed now in Yorkshire all the more bittersweet.

“Well,” Laurette said briskly, “it’s no wonder people thought you were a relation, Bea. Stand you next to Mr. Carter’s dog Sam in a few years and we’ll be seeing double.” She laughed, but the sound was hollow to her. “I’m sure Lord Conover will thank you for finding this. He doesn’t really remember either of his parents.”

James looked through the open door to the crushed stone drive. “Where is he anyway?”

“I expect he’ll be right along. Bea, I thought we could start packing. Come on upstairs with me.”

“Now? Can’t Sadie do it?”

“Sadie has enough to do without worrying about us, young lady.”

Con had deliberately kept the staff to a minimum, only the people he trusted. Laurette supposed she should be grateful that her situation was not being bandied about from the Orkneys to Lands’ End. She put her arm around Beatrix. “Come. I fear we’re going home with much more than we brought. It will be a challenge to fit it all in our luggage.”

“If it comes to that, James and I saw lots of trunks in the attic. We might borrow some. I’m sure his father won’t mind.”

“The coach will never get us down the lane as it is. Excuse us, please, James.” Laurette smiled at him, but he didn’t return it. Something about the stubborn set of his jaw told her Con was in for a grilling. The sooner she and Bea left, the better.

When Con entered the house a few minutes later, James sat on the bottom stair, his chin wedged into his fists. “I think, sir,” the boy said, his voice not wavering, “you’d better tell me what’s going on.”

Con’s eyes flicked from his son to the portrait beside him and his breath stopped. But any pleasure he might have had seeing his mother as a young girl evaporated when he looked into James’s ice-blue eyes.

He tried to brazen it out. “Good Lord. No wonder that old woman was confused. Quite a coincidence, what?”

James rose. “I’m not a child. Well, I suppose I am in years, but I had to be the man of the family while you were off doing—whatever it was that you did. Bea’s birthday is just a few weeks before mine. Mama always said I was a honeymoon baby.” His tanned face flushed in embarrassment, but he continued. “You must have gotten some poor girl in trouble before you married.”

Con tried to put his hand upon the boy’s shoulder but James flinched away. Con saw the progress he had made the past week dissolving like smoke in the hushed hallway. “Not here, James. Anyone might hear us. We’ll talk outside.”

He owed the truth to his son—had in fact wanted to tell him—but how to keep his promise to Laurette to preserve her fiction? This was not the controlled atmosphere in which he had hoped to divulge the past. In his demented dreams he had seen them all in a meadow, laughing,
looking
like a family. When they discovered they
were,
roses would bloom and rainbows would banish any clouds from the sky.

Pure idiocy on his part. No wonder Laurette was disgusted with him.

They walked silently behind the house to the gate in the stone wall where the sheep had first been penned. The animals were dispersed now, fuzzy white dots grazing in the distance on his grandfather’s land. Con shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t be tempted to touch his son again.

James climbed atop the fence, putting himself almost at eye level with Con. It was probably an unconscious move, but Con was impressed. The boy would have made an artful negotiator. Although he was obviously bursting with questions, he waited for Con to speak first, another sign that Berryman blood was strong. Con was reminded of the old adage “He who speaks first loses.”

Con had already lost so much. What was one more thing? He had a feeling he’d never have his son’s respect. His son’s love. He was undeserving anyway.

“This is a more than awkward conversation. Don’t let your imagination run away with you, James.”

“It doesn’t take much imagination to put two and two together. Bea said you came to visit her at school this year a couple of times. Why would you do that if she’s no relation to you? And why is she here now?”

A thousand thoughts whirled through Con’s head. “This is not how I would have wished to have this discussion,” he said at last. “Hear me out. You may judge me if you like. One more black mark to add against me on your list, but please don’t judge Bea. Or her mother.”

James looked him in the eye. “Who is she?”

Con shook his head, but kept his gaze upon his son’s uncompromising face. “I will not name her. She was a girl I cared for a long, long time ago, when I was a boy myself. Someone I—someone I loved, James. Suffice to say, the affair happened before I was married. I never knew about Beatrix—didn’t have an inkling—until I came back from abroad
last year. I hadn’t the first idea that I’d abandoned
two
children. One was enough to shame me.”

He swallowed. “I know I let you down, James, and that it would be too much to ask you to forgive me. I was a young fool when I left England and very, very unhappy. Your mother and I did not—did not suit. It wasn’t her fault, not a bit of it. It was an arranged marriage, conjured up by my mad old uncle and your grandfather. I—things were very bad for Ryland Grove financially. Surely she told you something,” Con said, the desperation rising. How had he ever thought this was going to be easy?

“She only read me your letters, every one, even when they bored me to bits. That’s all. Grandfather Berryman was furious with you, though. He called you a cheat.”

“I was. But I was never unfaithful to your mother in all the years I was away. Not once.”

James snorted. The breeze picked up the scent of grass and sheep dung. Bile rose in Con’s throat and he wished they’d walked in a different direction. He brushed his hair from his brow with a shaking hand.

“You don’t have to believe me. I can’t expect you to. If it’s any consolation, I have hated myself far longer than you’ve hated me.”

“I don’t hate you.” Con heard the lack of conviction in his son’s voice. James spoke out of automatic duty, not affection.

“Please get down from there. Why don’t we walk to the lake? It will be cooler there.”

James swung his leg over and slid down, catching his jacket on the wire. Con tried to get him free but James pulled away, causing a robust rip instead. Con reminded himself to respect the physical boundary between them his son was setting, although all he wanted was to give James a hug and tell him how sorry he was for bollixing up all their lives.

Instead he followed the boy down a grassy track, keeping a respectful five paces behind. They entered the deep shade of
the woods path that led to the lake and Con unwound his sweat-ruined tie. “I was just nineteen when I married your mother, not even of age. I’m not making excuses, but my great-uncle as my guardian had to give permission for us to wed. I was deeply in debt to your grandfather Berryman. There were many people who depended on me and the estate, and I was next to bankrupt. My uncle had seen to that.”

James had too much Berryman in him to ever be caught in so vulnerable a position, and Con was sincerely glad of it. His son would be spared from making decisions that rent his heart—if he had one—in two.

“Mama didn’t like your uncle. She had to send him money all the time.”

“She was wise, your mama. He and his brother, my grandfather, were always at odds, and when he inherited me and a ledger full of red ink, he saw his chance to stick it to the House of Conover. Whether it was all deliberate or a mixture of bad financial planning I’m not sure, but by the time I came down early from Cambridge, things were dire. My uncle had made a deal with your grandfather, and the marriage was arranged.”

The glare of the sun on the silvery water was blinding. Con turned his back to it and sat down in a bed of rusty pine needles. James lowered himself opposite, his legs crossed Indian-fashion.

“I’d had a youthful attachment with Bea’s mother. We—we weren’t very sensible when we knew I had to marry someone else. I’m sure you’ve heard—you go to school—you know what’s talked about in the dormitory. What happens between—”

“Yes, yes.” James’s face screwed up with disgust. Con nearly smiled. That would change in a few years. When he met the right girl.

When he met his own Laurette.

“Well, the girl and I broke it off and I married your mother. You know she was very pretty. Intelligent. She helped
her father with his business. She was quite a bit older than I, and very—forceful. Marianna knew what she liked, went after it, and got it.” He paused, reliving the crushing oppression he felt under the thumb of the Berrymans.

He had confessed to Laurette—that he’d broken his standing stones vows to her and was about to become a father. Con trudged back, hands in his pockets. He fingered the stitched inch-square of sheer cloth he’d found in the tree limbs yesterday, filled with silver beading from Laurette’s come-out dress, the dress she wore to their “wedding.” He remembered her walking through the garlanded door of the modest assembly room the night of her debut on her father’s arm. The deep indigo of her gown had turned her eyes dark as she sought him out in the crowd of neighbors. Her hair gleamed bronze in the fading daylight. He had taken her virginity the next morning in the sheltering shade of their tree. The act had been too quick and awkward, but they had found their pace over the heat of the summer, contriving to meet as often as they dared. When they had made love after their stone circle wedding, their bodies had learned well.

He had lost her for good, now. The shock in her eyes told him he’d betrayed her for the last time. He had a duty to his wife and their child, duty to his dependents. He kicked a fallen branch savagely out of his way. Next year he’d get his allowance and be free of the Berrymans. He’d beg Laurette to leave with him. They could go anywhere in the world. He could follow in his feckless grandfather’s footsteps.

By then, he’d have a son or daughter. Pray for a son, his father-in-law had told him, for until his wife delivered an heir to Con’s misfortune, he was bound to Marianna Berryman by the complicated agreement his uncle had signed on his behalf.

Con suppressed his urge to tear something to tatters. One hand worked around the smooth rock in his pocket, the other pressing the bag of beads into his palm hard enough to hurt. Two worthless signs of years of love and friendship. He
could toss them into the Piddle and be done with them, but Laurette would not be uprooted from his heart so readily.

He entered the serene vacuum which was Ryland Grove. The house was hushed, the workmen packed up. Marianna’s Town servants moved with impeccable grace as they handed him off to his own chamber, a template for all that a nobleman’s bedchamber should be. Here at least was some color, dark red bedcovers to match the dark red walls, fur rugs before the hearth, a painting of a stiff stag ever on alert. There was no trace of Con’s collection of stones or his grandfather’s books, the fleet of boats he’d carved with Laurette to set sail on the river. Although it was full daylight, he threw himself down on the bed, boots and all, and let the silent racking sobs loose.

James could not possibly understand what he had felt, so he couched his next words. “I was resentful, I suppose. Felt outmaneuvered at every turn. I was still a stupid boy and your mother—she was a woman.”

James nearly smiled. “She was bossy. She bossed me around too.”

“I tried to make it work, James.” Con tasted the lie but hoped James would believe it. “Your mother was very excited when she knew you were on the way. We both were. But when you were born, I felt even more useless than I had before. So I left.