Slightly Tempted (23 page)

Alleyne was dead.

He was gone forever.

For the first time since that evening in Brussels she gave in to a storm of grief.

CHAPTER XII

THE SUN WAS FINALLY BREAKING THROUGH THEclouds on the afternoon that Gervase arrived home. The gravel of the driveway that wound its way in leisurely meanderings through the woods and over the rolling hills of the park surrounding Windrush Grange was wet but not soggy. Water dripped from the leaves overhead and clung in sparkling drops to the grass. There was a richly verdant smell in the air.

He was powerfully reminded of how he had always loved Windrush, how thankful he had always been that he was the elder son, that he would be the one to inherit while his brother, Pierre, was the one destined for the church. This lengthy approach to the house had always lifted his spirits.

But it was nine years since he had last ridden along it. His father had been alive in those days. Both his sisters had still been at home. He had been a carefree young man, eager to enjoy the pleasures of town and the companionship of his peers, but eager too to learn all that he needed to know as his father's heir. He had been a basically happy, blameless young man whose life was progressing smoothly along a path that had been mapped out for him since childhood.

And then disaster had struck in a series of nightmarish events over which he had seemed to have no control whatsoever.

He felt as if he were riding back into someone else's life.

There was a large flower garden to one side of the gabled, red-brick house, complete with a trellised arch, cobbled pathways, and wrought-iron seat beneath an old weeping willow. There were three women there, he could see as he rode closer, two of them bent over the flowers, long baskets over their arms to hold the blooms, the third holding an infant on one hip as she watched. There was a man on the seat.

One of the women straightened up at the sound of his horse's hooves and held the floppy brim of her straw hat. And then she cried out, hastily set her basket down, and came running toward him, one hand holding up the hem of her dress. She was petite, still youthfully slender, still dark-haired. Her face was alight with welcome.

Gervase dismounted, tossed the reins over his horse's neck, and strode toward her, his arms outstretched.

"Gervase!" she cried. "Gervase,mon fils. "

"Maman!" He caught her up in his arms, spun once about with her, and set her on her feet again.

"You are home." She stood back and raised one slightly trembling hand to his cheek while her eyes devoured his face. "Ah, my beloved boy, and you are more handsome than ever."

"Whereas you have stayed the same age,Maman, " he said with a grin. "You are a mere girl."

It was not quite true, of course. There were streaks of gray in her hair and there were lines in her face. But she had aged well in nine years. She was still lovely.

The man had come hurrying up behind her. He had been still a boy when Gervase saw him last. He was a bespectacled, soberly clad gentleman now, tall and lean and balding.

"Pierre?"

For a moment it seemed that the brothers would hug each other. But both hesitated and the moment passed. Gervase held out his right hand, and Pierre clasped it.

"Gervase," he said. "It is fitting that you have come home. I am glad. Allow me, if I may, to present my wife. This is Rosthorn, Emma, my dear."

She curtsied to him, a brown-haired, unremarkable young woman. Gervase took her hand and bowed over it.

"Mrs. Ashford," he said. "My pleasure, ma'am. And this is your son?"

The child gazed at him with fine gray eyes. There was a halo of blond curls about his chubby face.

"This is Jonathan, my lord," she said.

"Jonathan." His nephew. He had one other and three nieces, offspring of his sisters. Life had gone on in nine years as if he had never been.

"And here is Henrietta come to greet you, Gervase," his mother said.

She was his second cousin and had lived with them since the death of her parents had made her his father's ward. She at least looked much as she always had-small and solid, dark-haired, square-faced, by no means ugly but not pretty either. She had never married. She must be seven or eight and twenty by now.

"Henrietta." He smiled and bowed to her.

"Gervase." She curtsied without smiling.

It was not a poor welcome, he thought as his mother took his arm and drew him in the direction of the house and a groom led his horse to the stables. There was no sign of hostility or resentment in any of them. But there was a guardedness, a certain awkwardness, as if they were all strangers-as indeed they were.

He had been robbed of his family, he thought, among other things. Would the closeness that had always characterized their relations with one another ever return? Could it be retrieved? He felt the absence of his father keenly. His father had been his hero.

And then his father had rejected him. Utterly. He had preferred to listen to the lies and fabrications of others rather than to the protestations of innocence of the son he had always claimed to love.

That had been a terrible betrayal.

Worse than Marianne's.

Worse than Bewcastle's.

It had been devastating.

DURING THE COMING DAYS THERE WERE THEservants to meet and the steward to consult with-almost all strangers to him. There was the home farm to be inspected and the park to be explored-all familiar yet somehow irrevocably different. There were tenants to call upon and neighbors to receive since word of his return home spread quickly in the countryside and people came to pay their respects. If they had ever known the reason for his hasty departure to the Continent years ago and his lengthy stay there, nothing was said of it now. Indeed, one or two seemed to assume that he had gone in order to live for a time with his mother's relatives. Almost all these people were familiar to him, and yet all felt like strangers.

Gervase felt uncomfortable and uneasy in his own home. Whenever he had thought of coming, he supposed he had thought of returning to everything and everyone exactly as he had left them. He had thought of returning to himself as he had been.

But everything had changed, himself most of all.

He resented it. He deeply resented it. But after a few days he realized that he could not simply return to the Continent and continue with the life of wandering dissipation that he had lived for the past number of years. Because he had come home, he could not go back. He was a man caught in limbo, belonging nowhere and to no one.

Not that he had any tangible reason to complain. His mother in particular doted on him.

He asked her one morning at breakfast about his absent neighbors. Several families were away in London for the Season. Indeed, Gervase had only just escaped coming home to an empty house. His mother and Henrietta had been planning to leave for London themselves within a few days, to do some shopping and to attend the theater and perhaps a few selectton entertainments.

His mother prattled on with stories about the neighbors, filling him in on much that he had missed in his years away. There had been very few changes of any significance, he gathered-very few losses of families, very few new ones.

"And the Marquess of Paysley?" he asked her. "Has he been much to Winchholme Park lately,Maman ?"

He hoped the man was not there now. There would be all the dilemma of deciding whether he ought to be called upon. But Winchholme was one of the smaller of the marquess's properties. He never had been in residence there a great deal.

"Ah, but the marquess you remember died some time ago, Gervase," his mother told him, leaning slightly sideways so that the butler could pour her a second cup of coffee. "Did I not tell you so in one of my letters,mon fils ?" She darted him a quick smile but then concentrated upon stirring sugar into her drink.

"No," he said. She knew she had not, of course. It was not something she would have mentioned.

"The new marquess does not own Winchholme," she said. "It was unentailed, if you will remember. The old marquess left it to his daughter in his will."

Gervase looked sharply at her. The marquess had had only the one daughter.

"To Marianne?" he said. "And does she live there?"

"Yes, she does," his mother said. "You should perhaps see her and talk with her. It would be very distressing for you to be avoiding each other for the rest of your lives when you live a mere four miles apart, would it not? All that happened was a long time ago."

He stared mutely at her. Yes, a long time ago indeed-all of which time he had spent in exile. Did she seriously expect that he could forgive and forget and simply let bygones be bygones? He had known Marianne since childhood. His sisters and Henrietta had played with her. So had he on occasion. And then she had betrayed him so horribly.

"Henrietta and she are still friends," his mother continued when it became obvious that he would not reply. "You cannot ignore her existence entirely."

"Who is her husband?" Gervase asked.

"But she never married," his mother said. "Beautiful as she is, she has never found the man who will please her. Promise me you will call upon her."

"No!" he exclaimed more sharply than he intended. "No, I will not do that,Maman . I cannot think kindly of her."

Indeed, it hurt that his mother accepted her as a neighbor with such complacency and had not discouraged the friendship between Henrietta and Marianne. It hurt that Henrietta had not spurned her erstwhile friend. Had it mattered to no one that he had been cut off from his life almost as effectively as if someone had put a bullet through his heart? Had they imagined that he wasenjoying himself on the Continent?

But even within the confines of his own head his complaints were beginning to sound annoyingly self-pitying. He got to his feet, kissed his mother's hand, and excused himself to go about his day's business.

The old life was gone, never to be retrieved. His years of wandering and debauchery were over. It was time he carved a new life for himself. And that new life, of course, was to involve a journey to London in the near future. He was just not sure exactly when he would go.

He had been home for a week when Horace Blake came to call on him. Blake was one of the neighbors who had been absent in London-he had arrived home just the day before. He was a few years older than Gervase, but they had nevertheless shared an easy camaraderie in the past. They shook hands amiably now and settled in the library, one on each side of the fireplace, each with a drink in his hand.

"Well, Rosthorn," Blake said with a grin after they had exchanged pleasantries and some idle chitchat, "you are still the devil you always were, I hear."

Gervase raised his eyebrows. He never had been much of a devil.

"You are the talk of town," Blake said. "There are even wagers in the betting books in all the clubs on whether you will offer for the chit or not-and on whether Bewcastle will accept even if youdo offer. There was some sort of altercation with him, was there not, before you went away?"

Ah. Ithad happened, then, had it? They had not escaped the gossiping tongues of theton.

"One might say so," he said. "I assume you refer to Lady Morgan Bedwyn, Blake? I had the honor of escorting her home from Brussels since she needed to return in a hurry with the news of her brother's death."

"Ah, yes," his friend said. "Lord Alleyne Bedwyn. Tragic that, poor devil. There is to be a grand memorial service at St. George's on Hanover Square in a few days' time. It is a good thing Lady Morgan has the excuse of mourning to keep her at home until it is over. Did you really dance with her alone in the middle of a forest one night, Rosthorn? And whisk her away with you when the Caddicks would have brought her home to England? And kiss her in the middle of a street in Brussels? And stand on the ship's deck alone with her, your arm about her shoulders? And then abandon her as soon as you set foot on English soil? The girl will be fortunate if Bewcastle does not lock her up for the next decade or two on a diet of bread and water."

He appeared to find the idea amusing as he laughed down into his glass and swirled the contents before tossing them back in one swallow.

It was every bit as sensational as Gervase had guessed it might be-perhaps more so. Dancing alone with her in the middle of a forest indeed! Kissing her in the middle of a street! Whisking her away . . .

He wondered how much she was suffering from the scandal. His guess was that she would snap her fingers in its face and lift that chin of hers and those arrogant eyebrows and invite it to do its worst. But of course she had Bewcastle to deal with now, and that gentleman would not be amused.

He changed the subject, and the visit continued for another half an hour before he rode down the driveway to the gates of the park with his guest. He rode back, alone with his own thoughts.

It was time, he realized.

He left his horse with a groom at the stables and hurried back to the house. He took the stairs two at a time and found his mother alone in her private sitting room, as he had hoped. She set aside her embroidery and smiled warmly at him.